After a year of running other games, I was asked to run D&D 5E again. While I have one big problem with 5E as a system, and many more particularized complaints with specific mechanical executions, I think 5E is a decent system. I have run hundreds of sessions with it. Thousands of hours. If I hated it, I would have found a way to get off that train. I said that I wasn't sure if I would run it again, but I'm not surprised that I am. My desire to run D&D outweighs my disdain for any particular D&D system. I have voted with my feet.
All that said, I am skeptical of the implicit presumption that 5E is the default choice for fantasy TTRPGs. When I have run other systems, with cleaner, more concise mechanical designs and ludological execution, I’ve been consistently impressed with how quickly players – whether versed in 5E, or entirely new to TTRPGs – grokked the system. I’m skeptical of the common belief that seems to exist in the TTRPG world, that 5E is the natural starting point for fantasy games, and players can then opt in to other games after they have tried out the industry standard. I don’t usually write about the 💿🐴 on this blog, but a kerfuffle over a popular actual play streamer’s defense of using 5E for games that don’t strictly fit its explicit and implicit system is instructive on this question.
I haven’t watched Brennan Lee Mulligan’s games, but I’ve wondered about the “5E as universal system” idea in other media that I have followed. I’ve been an on-again, off-again listener of the Adventure Zone, the TTRPG wing of the McElroy brothers’ podcasting family. They’ve run a variety of campaigns, some lasting dozens of sessions, and have shown a commendable willingness to experiment with different systems.
When they announced a campaign titled The Adventure Zone Versus Dracula, I thought “Ah, interesting! What system will they use? The Dracula Dossier… or something homebrewed, but still set in Night’s Dark Agents? If not, Urban Shadows perhaps? Undying? Maybe even a Vampire the Masquerade game, steering into (but also dissecting) the ‘90s edgelord reputation of that storied game?”
No. They chose D&D 5E, for… some… reason. It’s strange, because their style of play, and the podcasting format itself, really lends itself to PBtA and other story games. And the best Adventure Zone moments really sing with PBtA energy. Listening to their 5E episodes really grates my bacon, as the players, versed in PBtA play culture, wander around spamming 5E skills as if they were playbook moves. Every time someone on the Adventure Zone says “I’d like to make an Arcana check” without first framing their character’s actions in-fiction, a fairy flies into a bug zapper.
So the McElroys keep coming back to 5E. If they’ve explained why in an interview or blog post somewhere, I haven’t seen it, just like I haven’t seen that degree on Travis’ wall. I only know that it is a pain to listen to an engaged, creative, often laugh-out-loud actual play group struggle against the system they chose to play.
No comments:
Post a Comment