Monday 5 January 2015

5E: Is This the First Edition Where I Don't Care About Official Products?

We have our first 5E game scheduled for tomorrow - Tue 06Jan15 - and I will be running a Phandalin-based version of B2 The Keep on the Borderlands which I am currently calling Tyrant of the Twilit Land.

As I have mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I am not really a fan of the 5E rules but I want to run this game purely because of important friendships which, of course, trump petty quibbles about preferred D&D editions.

So, as I have been reading and rereading the various 5E products plus messageboard posts in order to ensure that I am properly psyched up and positive about playing an edition that is not my first choice, I suddenly realised: this is the first edition where I genuinely do not care what products D&D's publisher plans to release.

And that's not a slight on 5E. I realised that, after 34 years of running D&D, I've arrived in that place where a lot of old school D&D fans have been for decades: I am actually quite prepared to simply create my own stuff.

I lost interest in new monsters years ago and converting to 5E is quite simple. I have enough adventures to last me through several lifetimes DMing and conversion is pretty easy. I can create or convert any spells I feel I need because 5E is so like AD&D in this respect. And even my preferred campaign setting, the Forgotten Realms, is now at a point where I actually prefer my own direction for the world than the one that WotC is taking.

And there's my positive attitude toward 5E that I need to be in the right mood to run the game tomorrow: it's the edition I can really make my own, much like when D&D first became my hobby in 1981 and, as a 12-year old, I had no money.

Maybe I do like 5E after all....

2 comments:

  1. Thanks, mate. I really enjoyed it and we're scheduled to play again tomorrow.

    But now I need to do some new prep AND write up the actual play report.... ;)

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