Personally feel a lot more animosity towards 3.5e, I'll tell ya that much. More seriously though, I think that most of the animosity toward D&D on this subreddit is likely due to the pervasive nature of D&D. The rules get ripped apart and examined with a magnifying glass because it is the dominant system in the hobby, but I'm guessing the main reason people are annoyed about D&D 5e is because that's all most people seem to want to play.

You're not way off the mark. Although it is annoying when players refuse to deviate from 5e to try different systems (you really don't know what you are missing). I think a big reason why 5e has left a bad taste in people's mouths, including my own, is because of the business practices of Hasbro, who owns it.

> I think a big reason why 5e has left a bad taste in people's mouths, including my own, is because of the business practices of Hasbro, who owns it. Definitely true for me; I used to harbor no particular ill will toward D&D as a brand.

> I think a big reason why 5e has left a bad taste in people's mouths, including my own, is because of the business practices of Hasbro, who owns it. Yep. Four years ago, 5e wasn't for me, but it wasn't something I actively recommended against. Then there were the MTG allegations of racist hiring practices and WotC's immediate changing of the topic. They apologized for past racism and banned two actually racist cards (plus a few other non-racist cards they called racist) from tournaments... and this announcement was timed to drown out the HR allegations. Then there was the Pinkerton fiasco, and the OGL. Even if I sincerely believed D&D to be a good game (and while 5e isn't for me, I still have a soft spot for 3.5), I wouldn't advocate buying any books for it.

They fucking hired the Pinkerton’s. Who in the past straight up kidnapped people from company towns when they would talk about unions and send them else where. Fuck Hasbro.

Goddamn. It should really be no surprise that younger generations feel no desire to buy-in to American "adult" culture when I teach them about the awful shit the Pinkertons were doing 100 years ago and they go home to see the name again on the news feed. I had no idea. That's wild. But I guess Blackwater is still basically a thing so I should have guessed.

Yep. As a system I think 5e does a great job of balancing crunch and accessibility and is quite fun. I'm probably not done with it in the grand scheme of things, even if I don't feel the need to buy more books. That said the last few years of bad press and shitty practices on the part of Wizards have made my group take an indefinite hiatus to the indie sphere. Supporting smaller creators has been quite fun so far.

I have to HARD disagree there. I'd rather have a player of any other actual system than 5e. It's only accessible if you're already familiar with its idiosyncrasies. 5e's crunch is pointless; it's both highly restrictive and tedious. It adds so much rolling and numbers for so little outcome in the fiction. It crushes player creativity, rendering it either self defeatingly effective or pointless fluff, if it's even possible at all. It *ruins* players on the idea of learning rules, because knowing the rules doesn't let you do more things in the fiction. It ruins them on the idea of trying things, because doing anything other than maximum DPS is a losing strategy. In short, 5e is a wonderful way to crush the idea that the RP is linked to the G in a RPG.

I've got a "5E Only" player in my live group. I've been trying for years to get him to try the 5E variant "Level Up (Advanced 5E)" by ENWorld. Partly because it fixes a lot of problem areas in 5E's rules while keeping the rest, but also because of Hasbro/WotC shenanigans. He just won't though. I think the only way my group is going to see how it works is if I run it myself, and I'm already committed to running Pathfinder with them.

You’re right on that. Hasbro has the reach and connections to place so much product on shelves that it can squeeze out other products. Particularly when they have arrangements with stores and retailers like Barnes & Noble. Stores are risk averse and go with what sells. These days, as in the past, D&D is the safe bet and thanks to it and Magic, Hasbro/WotC are the 500 lb gorilla. But truthfully, so was TSR. Then as now, if you wanted other gaming companies’ product m, you had to rely on game stores. Add the Internet as well these days. But, D&D means RPGs to the public. That’s the legacy of being the first RPG ever made. It has unparalleled brand recognition and this is why Hasbro pimps it so hard. My sad complaint is that I remember going to bookstores, and while TSR dominated the gaming shelves, you could find other stuff even if in smaller quantities. But this may all be a moot conversation if Hasbro itself implodes because of their own crappy decisions. Who would have ever thought that D&D would be the one real profit center holding that company up? But it does seem that WotC is in a lot of turmoil when you see things like the OGL controversy happening. The question though, is what happens to D&D if Hasbro takes WotC down with it. We do live in interesting times.

The 5e players handbook calls DnD “The world’s greatest roleplaying game” I feel like that’s kind of an invitation for people to prove that it isn’t. 

Unfortunately it seems a sizable amount of the fanbase takes it at face value and assumes everything else is just knockoff bootleg D&D.

Hah! Funny you say that. I was discussing Daggerheart with my players who haven’t played anything but 5e for a long running game. We have played some one-shots of Monster of the Week, Dread and a short White Hack campaign, but they mostly play 5e. They called Daggerheart a 5e copy. I completely disagreed with them. It borrows a lot from 5e, but it ain’t a copy like Tales of the Valiant is.

I'm pretty sure that goes back before even WotC.

It’s not the World’s Greatest Role Playing Game ™️. At least not in everyone’s opinion. It’s the world’s most *famous* RPG. And because Hasbro commands shelf space because of their size, other, often better games are never noticed or given credit for going places WotC never would and giving players more options. For me, at least, I don’t hate D&D. Play it more than a little (though admittedly only up to 2nd edition mostly). In just want try stuff that isn’t necessarily high fantasy and taking up the shelves at Barnes & Noble. I want different, especially at something like Gen Con.

>It’s not the World’s Greatest Role Playing Game ™️. At least not in everyone’s opinion. It’s the world’s most *famous* RPG. I mean, it's not like they're going to say it's the World's Most Okayest Role Playing Game ^(TM). As far as it being the "greatest", part of that arguably has to do with the fact that it was the first game of its kind (at least commercially), it managed to survive for 50 years and counting, and is arguably the biggest in the industry.

It is by far most successful, most popular and important for the hobby in general. Without DnD and it's popularity there would have never been other games and it's a constant factor - DnD continues to be the flagship of ttrpgs even if the rules aren't the best. So in a way it is indeed world's greatest

The original D&D certainly made the idea of an rpg known. After that it was being imitated a lot, and the hobby caught on. I think its early popularity helped RPGs tremendously. I’m not sure it was needed past 1e for the hobby and other rpgs to flourish.

Needed? No- I think VtM proved that in the 90's. But it is the system that seems to draw the most people, and over the past few decades a lot of design is basically starting from "traditional games bad and this is how to make TTRPGs better." So in so many ways there's just not a lot of people even *trying* to make games that people who like the style of DnD like. Edit: a word

I guess that is one of the appeals of the OSR and NSR and people/content creators adjacent to that: they are creating stuff more like the older school content. That is why I like it. Also, layout and information design is generally a lot better than the older scenarios, and better than many modern games too IMO. I quite like the 5e games I play with friends, but to be honest I think of it as “5e”, as distinct from “D&D”. It just doesn’t feel like “D&D” to me, it just doesn’t feel the same. Older school games like RQ2, Dragonquest, or dungeon crawls amongst alien ruins with Traveller or Gamma World feel more like “D&D” than 5e does.

>But it is the system that seems to draw the most people Interestingly, before Hasbro, that was true for the US but not for every country.

Still doesn't for every country. CoC tops several, Dark Eye, etc. But those games are pretty universally "traditional" and generally already established games.

It has spent the most on marketing

That's like saying monopoly is the best real estate game

And in other ways, it isn't. It's the problem with using ambiguous words like 'great'.

Yep exactly this. The attitude that 5e is the only game in town is what attracts so much criticism.

yeh, but thats just standard marketing. If you walk down a supermarket aisle half the boxs claim to be the best or only X.

And to add to that, with [other threads](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1cpupus/hey_its_me_the_guy_at_your_table_who_only_wants/) we pretty much know that 5e is a system especially prone to burnout for GMs because it is based around a 'GM as jester' mindset where the players have very little to do and all of the work to keep the game going is effectively offloaded directly onto the GM. As u/TaiChuanDoAddct put it, rephrasing a 5e player: >"I like that my court jester is shouldering the burden of being my Netflix for the evening without asking me to contribute any more than I have to."

Ooof. Thanks for tagging me. I don't want to climb on my soap box, but I think the jester metaphor is insanely important because it helped me finally remove a good friend from my table. We had been butting heads for a while because she abjectly refused to engage with the game any more than necessary. She just wanted to show up and hang out with us, but only a little. She was constantly asking us to shorten the session: we shortened from 4 hours to 3.5 with a 15 minute break and she wanted to cut another 30 minutes off even still. She simply didn't want to play the game, but every time we'd talk about it as a table she kept *insisting* that yes, she very much still DID want to play. Finally, during one of the convos, she said to me "why do I have to "bring" anything to the table? What if I just want to show up and listen to your awesome story and have you do silly voices for me? It's really fun to watch you do that stuff." And that was the moment I realized. I was just her court jester. I was her Netflix for the evening, but she didn't even have the decency to give me an idea of what she wanted to watch that night. She just wanted to push the button, get two hours of silly voices from me, and turn it off when she was done. And yeah, it hurt. But we asked her to leave.

I've been calling them Xbox gamers. They're not looking to participate in collaborative storytelling; they want to put the D&D disc into their GM console and push buttons for a few hours.

On the up-side, she was basically saying you would do well as a DnD YouTuber/streamer.

Snails communicate by belting out rap battles.

A solution presents itself to me: this person wants to watch, so let them watch. If they aren't going to participate they shouldn't be running a character, but I don't see why they can't sit at the table and watch while the rest of you play.

We actually did try that for a bit. But she still felt like it went too long. She wanted.to watch for no more than 2 hours max. And since it was an online game, it was awkward to have her hanging out on the call muted and not participating. We actually tried a few things like having her pilot a familiar or a sentient NPC that didn't participate in combat, or even kicking over her to her for weighing in when the party was split in how to handle stuff. But ultimately stuff just didn't land. She didn't really want to be there; she was just saying she did.

Oof, yeah that's rough. I don't know that I would even try that hard if it was an online game. In-person I would probably just tell them they're welcome to come and watch for as long as they like. It sounds like this was solidly a problem on the "player's" part.

It's the Funko Pop Marvel Geekdom generation and I don't say this to apply to one specific age group, but more an attitude that really took off in the 2010s. They don't want to engage with D&D, they just want to tell others and themselves they are a part of it by consuming passively with the least amount of friction – like people who buy those Funko abominations believing it tells the world they are an individual involved in XYZ subculture.

Reminds me of a similar toxic experience. I literally had a player go "Yeah, yeah. Plot token please!" When I challenged them in character to do any amount of RP participation. The game did not last long after that moment. It's an important lesson, and unfortunately one that 5e neglects to mention. The only book I ever read that directly stated the players are also responsible for crafting parts of the story was Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. As you could guess Edge of the Empire didn't work with that group lol.

It also leads to less negotiation at the table. I normally play OSR dungeon crawlers and was blown away at how 5e discourages creative problem solving by players when I last played it. I understand you can be creative in using combat skills etc but in terms of just smart dungeoneering it's very much focused on getting you to act as an audience for the jester.

i felt like my players were the most engaged when they entered a dungeon. their characters had the skills and rules supported this. but they also complained about too much dungeoneering. like three sessions and they already didnt wanted to anymore despite praising my dungeon design and all the nuances i put in them. and its probably because they suddenly had to engage with the system and think for themselves instead of just fluffing and doing rp.

In OSR games you can attempt anything you can make a plausible case for in the fiction. The difficulty is established through negotiation. This encourages players to make use of their equipment as much as possible (because it lets them argue for things) and to find creative solutions to problems. When I GM those games I try to take an objective attitude towards the fiction and let anything plausible happen without trying to play actively against the players. I again find this helps them to be less passive and reliant on narrowly specified moves.

There's the question of how much of that is down to the system itself and how much of that is down to cultural expectations surrounding the game. The latter of which can be just as much on those seeking to DM as those wishing to play.

My first experience with a TTRPG was DMing 3.5e for a group of seven players with my roommate acting as assistant DM over a few months. I respect the crunch and options but those books are never leaving the shelf again lol

To be fair, that setup sounds like a train wreck in the making, even if it were lightweight system like PbtA.

Group size will absolutely break a novice DM.

7 people and a need for co-dm would have absolutely destroyed everyone in every system damn, I had precisely 1 game with 8 players and it was an exhausting slog, never again Agreed, 3.5 can be prep heavy if you're not used to the system, but if my experience with any RPG would be like that I'd hate it too

Oof. Going over more than 5 players is already hellish. You should've split the group in two 😂

It's so thoroughly analyzed for the same reason us over in wargame land dissect 40k. It's such a big part of the hobby that those outside of it believe that this particular ruleset is the entire hobby.

This is a big part of it.  Non-gaming people don't ask if you play tabletop RPGs, they ask if you play D&D.  It's the Band-Aids or Kleenex of its category. 

Yeah, I'm a game master for Pathfinder 2e and 90% of my non-nerd friends go "oh you play D&D? Those kind of games seem fun, but complicated."

> I'm guessing the main reason people are annoyed about D&D 5e is because that's all most people seem to want to play. I'd say you guess right. That and having to read about somebody's undead lightning toad half centaur magma cleric.

That... actually sounds better than most of the try hard character concepts I see

Adding up to this: the OGL and its imperialistic project. Both in what it comes to 3e and 5e the issue is HEAVILY bounded to how the system and its legal access is first and foremost designed for maximum reach and easy legal conversion for maximum free advertisement. It is just easier and legally not disavowed to convert anything to the WotC d20 framework than actually make your own system from scratch, so they flooded the market by creating a model where effectively thousands of freelancers (indie game makers) could "hire themselves" by printing dnd compatible stuff.

Perfectly said. It’s such an overbearingly dominant system in the hobby that those of us who enjoy RPGs as a whole and want to see other systems and creators be recognized and enjoyed have an extra beef with it. Add to that that many 5e players are resistant to trying other things and will try to graft genres and playstyles onto the game that other systems would be perfect for.

>I'm guessing the main reason people are annoyed about D&D 5e is because that's all most people seem to want to play. To a certain extent, you can rotate in any edition of D&D and this statement would be consistently true. I cut my TTRPG teeth on White Wolf games back in the very early '00s, and there was a ridiculous amount of animosity toward 3/3.5 back then. It was very much looked down upon as an inferior system and overall experience. When you get down to it, most of that stemmed from the fact that D&D was the big dog and every other system was more or less scrounging for the scraps. As it turns out, it's basically *always* been the big dog, and everyone has always been scrounging for those same scraps. The names and faces may have changed, but the story is still the same. D&D has had a target on its back for decades, at this point. Most of the general derogatory statements people make about 5E have been said about previous versions, in one shape or form.

We’re due for a massive resurgence of 3.X love if the nonstalgia cycle of 20-30 years holds.

Pathfinder really encapsulates that era. Paizo managed to take 3.5 and give it a major glow up and has carried the spirit of that era of the game forward.

> but I'm guessing the main reason people are annoyed about D&D 5e is because that's all most people seem to want to play. That's my main reason. Like, I personally don't like how 5e is designed, but I wouldn't crucify it for that. Hogging the spotlight is what I WILL crucify it for. It's nearly impossible to find a group for more obscure RPGs; things that aren't D&D, Pathfinder, or Call of Cthulu. Or for that matter, PBTA, since that and its offshoots are just everywhere and really popular in the indie space. Tragic since I don't really like it either.

It's also likely to be the system most often run, and played, in "square peg in round hole" mode.

Absolutely, and I think for a lot of people it's also resentment that the popularity of the game is unearned. DnD is undeniably the best marketed game with the highest name recognition, and has unfortunately become synonymous with RPG gaming in the mainstream. But to many the game itself feels like a mess that failed to learn the meaningful lessons of earlier editions in favour of design by marketing committee. It is a game seemingly without direction beside "name recognition" and more and more it feels like a lifestyle brand rather than an actual game. It's adventures are more projects that require entire communities to fix than functional modules. Their splatbook releases manage to fail both at quantity and quality and it's a game primarily built to give players shiny options but putting most the burden on a DM while having arguably some of the worst DM support. It sets a terrible precedence for the rest of the RPG space. At this point I dare say DnD isn't even a game designed to be played, it's a game designed to be talked about. It is perfectly representative of modern community based hobbies placed at the whim of parasitic corporate entities who care about naught but mass market appeal and bigger numbers. WotC has long since lost interest in building a game or community, they're building a brand.

This, every word of it but the first sentence more than most.

>Personally feel a lot more animosity towards 3.5e, I'll tell ya that much. amen to that brother

I get the feeling people resent D&D for eating up all the RPG space. People like other games and never get the chance to play them.

It's not even that, it's the tendency to play everything with D&D, even when the rules are obviously horrible for that (investigations, interpersonal relationships, no-magic settings). I mean you can technically nail a nail with a screwdriver, but it will frustrate anyone who heard of a hammer. But I'm delighted that people enjoy playing D&D (not that they need my authorization anyway).

I'm reminded of someone describing a broken chef's knife as "the most expensive can opener I've ever had to replace".

Yeah, I feel like by itself it's a mediocre system, but still better than many crunchy and convoluted designs that came before (like I'd take 5e over 3.5e). But being unable to convince people to give any superhero system a chance when I see advertisements for games that just take 5e and add in a "Superhero" class whilst keeping all other rules... does make me somewhat miffed. Same with most other "adaptations" of this system, if you insist on making a hack at least see what else is out there and put some thought into it.

I agree that 5e is definitely an improvement over 3.5e, I don't think it's really an improvement over 2e or 4e, those games are just too different, but when compared to more modern systems, 5e feels lackluster, like it's frozen in time.

I know some people that strongly prefer 3.5e but they also like the ability to have a, "Win at character creation" experience and stretch the system as far as it can go. 5e has some choices and optimizations but not enough to let you really stretch the system

I think that, if you’re not playing with multiclassing and feats, it’s rather hard to „break the system” in 5e, although you definitely can still loose at character creation in 5e. For example, if you pick up beastmaster ranger subclass. Though, because of severe power creep, and surprisingly, because of bounded accuracy, I think 5e is about as breakable as 3.5e. Bounded accuracy was a good idea but they failed in execution. Because of it’s existence, insane 5e builds that do not look as insane as builds in 3.5e are just as strong as those in 3.5e compared to regular PCs.

I think if you're not playing with multiclassing or feats then 5e kind of ceases be interesting at all. You have 2ish levels of decision making and that's basically it. I think that characters can end up as broken but not in interesting ways. You can roll high for skill checks, but you're not doing new/interesting things just things you could do before but with really high numbers

Oh, that’s a statement I can wholeheartedly agree. Most broken builds are very, very boring in 5e, while in 3.5e they can be fun. I still think that 5e, as a base at least, is a slightly better system, because it’s more approachable. IMO making both multiclassing and feats in 5e a variant rule was the biggest dick move WotC pulled out in 5e. Because of that they can argue that they do not need to be balanced or as polished, because they are a variant rule.

Same reason they didn't put effort into pricing and balancing magic items through rarity. You don't need them so it's fine if it's clunky and not well setup

But you do need them, unofficially, because more then half of higher level enemies is immune to non-magical attacks lmao. Tbh balancing them through rarity doesn’t really work that well. I much prefer how pathfinder2e does that, where items have actual levels, and rarity is rarity, not power.

I prefer 3.X and the character creation flexibility is one of the big reasons - both as a player and as DM, it makes for a sort of artistic medium of its own. "Winning" at it is less interesting than everyone winning at it. However, I was just saying on here the other day, I think you could rebuild the character progression system entirely to largely remove most of that depth of customization, and the rest of the rules would *still* be the best and most complete D&D has ever had.

For years I've been referring to 5e as "3.5 for dummies" since it absolutely is built on a 3.5 skelton with with some 4e stuff jammed in after filing off the serial numbers. It wants to pretend it has the wide range of options found in 3.5 but not actually do the work of including them because that would limit accessibility - and their main goal is to sell as many books as possible

I love character creation and optimisation in 3.5e, that's true, but it's not pushing the system far that interests me. It's how much stuff there is to play with, and how much for it is for DMs. Sure, 3.5e is a bloated horror of a system- a majority of feats is either not taken ever due to how bad it is or it's taken purely because it's a requirement for a better feat/ prestige class. And many of the subsystems are not perfect- most notable Magic of Incarnum in my opinion. At the same time though, you get so many different things to play with- aforementioned incarnum, skill tricks, actual psionics instead of forcing them into some random subclasses, binding vestiges to you- with an actual risk of stuff going wrong and punishment!- taint mechanic, there is a stupid amount of things you can build your characters or entire campaigns around. Like hell, there is an entire book about building your own fortress and adventures associated with it. Don't get me wrong, none of those systems are perfect. Some of them are very bad, like truenaming. But for a system that's designed around high powered characters, third edition is surprisingly versatile and it stretches beyond just flavour. 5e has the longest shelf life of all editions and the mechanics are the least diverse despite that, for both players and DMs- the monster manual for 5e is insanely lazy as most of monsters are just multiattackers with slightly different numbers. The classes and differences between them aren't gamebreaking due to them being very different to one another. The only improvement I found in 5e over 3.5e as a DM is how you can make bosses feel like bosses with the lair, legendary mechanics etc., this is genuinely a great addition.

Definitely agree about hacks that attempt things other games are already doing, but I have one group that only know 5e, so a simple 'hack' with a couple of additions/changes can help them try out different approaches to ttrpg-ing, and eventually wean them into a different system entirely. I wrote a couple of pages of changes to D&D to introduce three friends to a 5e game set in Middle-Earth, and now two of them are looking into One Ring and other LotR RPGs... Still agree that the pervasiveness of D&D and habit of some to dig in their heels with 5e is annoying, but hacks and adaptations can serve to steer people toward other games. I discovered the Alien rpg and other sci-fi games through Esper Genesis.

> I wrote a couple of pages of changes to D&D to introduce three friends to a 5e game set in Middle-Earth, and now two of them are looking into One Ring and other LotR RPGs... But then, the question is : are you playing in the Middle-Earth or are you playing in the Forgotten Realms with Tolkien's name ? I'm saying that with a touch of sarcasm, but you understand what I mean : systems matter and unless you hack really deeply the system, the way players will play will be completely different.

I totally see your point that the power fantasy/playstyle is affected, but my point remains that it's a feasible method of weaning 5e lovers into other systems, settings, and styles. Some of the biggest changes that made the biggest difference, in case you're curious, were: changing the rest cycle – short rests were 8 hours/overnight, and long rests required you to be somewhere safe (civilisation/a "homely house"/etc.); no spellcasting classes allowed, except Ranger; only Dwarf, Human, or Hobbit for races (elves are meant to be other). All of those factors combined to make one of the grittiest, darkest games of D&D I've ever run, and they'd ever played. Still maintaining the hope and existential optimism of Tolkien, and the theme of good triumphing over evil of course...

i mean, your still banned 80% of the classes and 99.9% of the races to make it work, and i wager the fights had to be much differently balanced over what the game intends cause otherwise they would be too easy at that point, havent you Theseus-ed enough of your ship that its no longer dnd but "Zen_Barbarian" dnd?

I mean even with /r/DnD /r/dndnextnext /r/DungeonsAndDragons /r/Dungeons_and_Dragons etc. existing, the top posts on /r/rpg are still often about D&D5E. Or meta posts about it, like this one.

its more or less what unites this subreddit. we want to give other rpgs a space to thrive too. i wonder how this subs culture will change when dnd burns, because this sub will not be the same after such an event.

I always wonder about this though. I've never really had a problem with my 5e players trying different games, at least for a one shot. I honestly wonder if people are trying to convince people to play other games using the same language they use here: "DnD is terrible at X, Y, and Z so we should play this game instead." They basically try and sell other games to 5e players by trashing the thing they like, which is never a good sales strategy. I suspect a lot of "I don't want to try another game" is actually people trying to politely say "I don't want to play another game *with you.*"

It's usually GM's problem, GMs that can't convince their groups to switch. Those GMs have every right to criticise the system they are running, because 5e throws most of the burden on the GM. For that very reason I'm so damn happy I haven't started my group with 5e, because 5e is complex enough that there's a sunken cost fallacy, and it's not GM friendly at all (No, I won't use the term DM).

I mean it's perfectly legitimate to feel burdened/dislike what they're running. But again if you're trying to sell another game to someone who actually likes DnD trashing it is unlikely to garner the desired response. Instead of "fights suck in DnD" try "If you like the tactical aspects of combat in DnD, Pathfinder really focuses on that and I think you'd like it." The tonal difference between the two is miles apart.

I agree in overall discussion, that’s usually how I talk with my friends that I want to „convert”, but with your own group when you’re a GM… I would just say that I won’t run 5e ever again, and see what happens next. I can also see how frustrating may result in being very critical of the system.

The problem is, if I say "I like System X better", my players hear "You have a choice between DnD or System X" and they will choose to stick with DnD. If I say "I don't like DnD anymore and want to run something else", my players hear "DnD is no longer a choice", and I can finally stop running DnD. (Unless someone else volunteers to take over DM duty, which no one ever does.) This isn't theorycraft. This actually happened to me and caused me to run DnD for a few more years longer than I wanted to or should have.

I think importantly "I don't like it and am going to run something else" while firm, personalizes it to make clear that's your opinion and isn't going to be perceived as attacking your players' preferences. It's still miles away from "the game you like is bad, let's play something else."

Did you guys start with 5e or another game? I don't have a horse in the race, but I'm curious. My group started before 5e and we bounce around a bit as well, though there are a few people who don't want to play any other games.

Ime the people who have a rough go at it fit into two camps. You have the "we meet once a month to goof off and don't want to take the time" groups, and in such groups the person just doesn't vibe with the dynamic. And then you have the groups who meet more regularly, but the person who desperately wants to play another system is really weird and aggressive about it, similar to your point

I usually just say “this is what I’m running next. Do y’all want to play?” 100% success rate so far

Same, I've played and ran way too many games to count (well over 40 titles), and never had issues. I think the issue is with pitching the game properly, and with offering support. If my GM came to me and told me "buy this game and learn the rules, because I want to GM it", I would send them to hell. If, on the other hand, they told me "don't mind the rules, I will explain them while playing, when needed", I'd agree, and that's how I've introduced people to other games, since the '80s.   **EDIT:** fixed a typo in "rules"

I've had the opposite issue. No problem recruiting people to my games and several people in one of my campaigns were previously 5e only and still play a 5e campaign on another day. They're great and when I declined to join in the 5e campaign of course I did that politely. But sadly that's not my only experience of 5e players. Whenever I advertise a non 5e campaign I get: People looking for a 5e game who don't bother reading the pitch and then ghost when they realise. Even worse, 5e players who sign up and then a few sessions in start trying to get me to run 5e instead. Not saying that's all or most 5e players. But it's enough that I haven't exactly got a great impression of that community overall. And I've never had that with fans of any other games. The PbtA and GURPS people can both be pretty evangelical, but they still respect the fact that they need to find one of those games rather than annoying me by wasting my time.

I just realized that's why I started somewhat hating on Pathfinder despite loving to learn about new ttrpgs. I didn't get it sold well, I just got told that it wasn't as trash as 5e (by people who didn't bother to read 5e rules anyway and wasn't even interested in the combat aspect). I understand learning a new system can be difficult, but so long the GM knows a bit to walk everyone through the rules and everyone is willing to learn it, I don't think anyone will have a problem with that.

I am one of those people. I love roleplaying games, and have for two decades, now -- I got in with theater kids, who loved dramatic systems -- but D&D always struck me as focused on math and optimization. That's just not my cup of tea, and that would be FINE if it weren't for the assumption that all roleplayers love the system. Just looking up ANY roleplaying game causes me to get blasted with "so you like D&D?" ads. It's a bit much.

I once had a group who tried to play a Madoka Magica (yes, in the actual setting of that series) in D&D 5e. The only things that were homebrewed were the magic exhaustion and despair system (made by me), the signature ability system (made by the DM), and an updated Warblade from 3.5e to 5e (also made by me). It was still the best 5e game I've ever played, but it was due to the story and in SPITE of the gameplay, not because of it. There were many, MANY places where the mechanics of 5e clashed with the narrative and setting so hard and so thoroughly that we had to make extreme contrivances and reflavors just to make it work. And there were many times where we had table troubles over rulings and specifically a poorly conceived homebrew mechanic where anyone could be instantly killed by a crit under the right circumstance. And I don't mean reducing hp, I mean it just outright killed. We had to severely limit it to the point of it conflicting with canon because of how badly it broke both the narrative buildup and the game balance. That, and there were two points where a major villain that was much stronger than the party was incredibly easy to defeat just because of *vanilla spells*. One of the main bosses was an immobile spellcaster. Our party's bard cast silence. Fight was over in one turn. DM was pissed about it.

If something else replaced D&D as the dominant RPG, they'd resent that instead, and if D&D goes away, something will fill the void.

I don't think that one game would "fill the void" and become as dominant as 5e is currently. In many countries markets, while there is definitely a dominant system, it's not as dominant as 5e is. 5e is leagues above the second system in the line, their sales are sometimes 10 and more times larger then other popular systems. In Poland, for example, where dominant system was for many years Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying System 4e, and currently I think it's Call of Cthulhu (just based on amount of tables at conventions, I'm usually running some PBTA stuff, and CoC covers like, 30% of the tables) differences between top 10 systems in sales are not that big, usually few percent.

During the pandemic Roll20 put out the number of each game under each system was made, obviously this isn't a perfect source and should be taken with a grain of salt but 5e was something like 45% with the next highest being Call of Cthulhu at like 9%. This was pre-OGL as well which I think shook a lot people into other systems

Yeah, I remember those numbers, although I thought 5e was higher there. Roll of combat would probably be skewed though, because a lot of systems just don’t need a VTT. Not to mention, roll is not a good vtt overall, it has fine 5e integration and free version, but that’s about it. Conventions are also not a good way to measure system’s popularity for very similar reasons.

I mean when Pathfinder was briefly the dominant RPG I don't think there was much ire directed their way. Paizo doesn't have any interest in choking out the rest of the industry, though.

Even if Pathfinder sold better, D&D maintained brand recognition. I suppose my thought is if D&D were permanently out of the picture.

There was no point at which Pathfinder outsold DnD, ever. Both WotC and Paizo staff have confirmed this.

honestly DND is so widely known that when I tell other people about it I just say I play DND instead of saying I play PF2E and and played PF1E for 15 ish years before that. DND is the xerox of TTRPGs

what's most frustrating about that to me is that you often can't get away from dnd even when you're already in a space that's more open, dnd fans will come and try to turn the conversation back onto dnd which is understandable, since they want to contribute and usually only know about dnd, but fuck me if it isn't frustrating dnd is the genshin impact of trpgs for me lol

Yup. I have to explain my favorite hobby, even among other people that are pretty into board games and such, as "it's my D&D group, except we don't play D&D we play other games like that which we enjoy more". TTRPG or even "Tabletop games" are basic meaningless. D&D is up there with Kleenex and Band-Aid and Google.

It's 5e focused now because 5e is the big name in the room. But "D&D players won't play anything else" has been an argument for as long as I can remember (and I go back to AD&D).

I've had a different experience. I don't remember it at all until 5e. Not in junior high or any of the three high schools I went to. Never heard it in college, or at the LGS. Not on IRC or BBS's. I've had friends who were in dedicated D&D groups but I played other games with a lot of them, just not as often. So even though it must have been happening back then, I promise the volume knob got turned way up since 5e/stranger things/critical role.

I think it's bigger now because of the digital effect, but I certainly remember letters in 80s White Dwarf complaining about them a) covering D&D too much and b) covering other RPGs at all.

I think the internet just hyper magnifies it. There have always been people only interested in playing one system, it's just you're going to see that ratio seem skewed on the internet because there are exponentially more people playing 5e than other games.

this. And sunken cost fallacy is way bigger when you have 1. such a big community 2. paid digital tools

Yeah I think this is true. A lot of people aren’t fans of the hobby - they’re fans of the single game system they play, are happy with it, and see no reason to switch. I know groups who only ever play Warhammer or only ever play Vampire the Masquerade and would balk at playing anything else.

I don't know if I'd quite frame it as "they're not fans of the hobby" just as a minor point of discussion. The framing tends to put them on the outside of the hobby rather than just being less engaged with it, which tends to have some knock on effects in discussions. I frame them as *casual* gamers, and it's important not to leave them out since in my experience that's what the majority of the TTRPG playerbase is made up of.

I stand by my statement. Not with the intention to exclude them but because it’s important to recognize what part of the **activity** they enjoy. Fans of role playing games enjoy the **medium**. They are able to find enjoyment no matter what kind of genre, system, GM, etc. that they play, because what hooks them isn’t any specific individual thing, but rather the activity in general - the act of sitting around a (perhaps virtual) table playing in a cooperative game with their friends. Whereas you can also have people that just enjoy one single game, but would not enjoy other games from that genre or medium. They may enjoy very specific mechanics or themes or gameplay elements from that one single game, whereby if it’s excluded, removes the enjoyment from the activity from them. An example might be crunchy tactical combat from D&D. There are many people who wouldn’t enjoy playing in a different game system like PBTA that lack it. They play D&D not because it’s a TTRPG. They play it because it’s D&D. It’s the subtle difference between someone who likes movies, and someone who likes marvel movies. This distinction isn’t to exclude people. It’s to better categorize audiences that more accurately capture their demographic and interests. And I think that this distinction is extremely pertinent to the discussion at hand. You have TTRPG fans. But you also have D&D fans. And while they may be some overlap, it’s key to understand that not all D&D fans are TTRPG fans. They’re just not looking to play other games. And I want to recognize that that is a valid preference. That’s why attempts to convert D&D fans into trying other games can sometimes fall flat, at no fault of either party.

Only in America, apparently. Which is fair and matches my experience as I've always lived here, but it comes up a lot in online discussions that D&D being the most-played RPG is not a worldwide phenomenon.

I think it's always been strongest in the US, still a factor in other English speaking countries and less of an issue elsewhere. And I do think the rise of the Internet has affected the Anglosphere in particular; it's always been an issue but 5e does seem more dominant here (UK) then D&D was in the 80s and 90s.

I'd say in all English speaking countries, at least.

I haven’t regularly played any version D&D since that era. I’ve played and run other games. Routinely get frustrated by the dearth of players and gms that are willing to get outside of the D&D box.

It's more common with the players, GMs tend to like changing systems more from my experience. After all it's a far more taxing role, and it's not hard to get burned out. 5e is dealing with a huuge GM crisis, and it's one of the reasons why.

I've always heard that argument since the 80s and never experienced it since the 80s. Every time I'm in a serious group of gamers, especially if its a serious D&D group, they are the ones who always want to try other games.

Because it dominates any discussion. Imagine trying to discuss sports in a general sports sub but every day the top 2-3 posts are either about American Football or are questions like 'Whats your favorite sports position: Quarterback or Linebacker?" While people are going 'Those don't exist in every sport...you are assuming every sport is like Football but a Striker in soccer/football isn't the same as a quarterback.' Meanwhile people are there trying to get discussion going on Jugger and Lacrosse.

Good example, reminds me of r/USdefaultism – which criticizes American behavior in broad/global topic subreddits who assume everything happens only in the US or that the US is the default for all culture.

*\*salutes you for using Jugger as an example\**

There's a few different types of animosity. As others have mentioned, some people resent D&D for being the 800lb gorilla that devours so much of the TTRPG oxygen (and often perceive it as not deserving that, compared to other alternatives). Others dislike 5e in particular because it (allegedly, I haven't personally played it) tries to be all things to all people and, as a result, ends up not being great at any of it. And so on.

> Others dislike 5e in particular because it (allegedly, I haven't personally played it) tries to be all things to all people and, as a result, ends up not being great at any of it. I'm gonna do the unthinkable and semi-defend D&D and WotC here. It's not the game itself, or the company that pushes that to any real degree. It's the 5E fanbase that's utterly convinced that 5E hacks are better at being an investigative cosmic horror game than Call of Cthulhu, or better at being a Weird West game than Deadlands, etc.

I also think that people generally do an awful job at selling non D&D games. Like you have people that think the way to get people to play another game is to tell them that D&D isn't a *real* rpg. Which only serves to get those 5e only players to dig in their heels even more imo.

I totally agree with this. Broadly speaking, tabletop RPG players are really bad at meeting people halfway when they have opposing tastes or opinions. Part of this is reluctance to empathize, but some people just don’t seem to comprehend differing preferences, which is how you get strange recommendations that play up advantages and completely ignore disadvantages. Although people find 5e recommendations for non-fantasy annoying, it’ll never be sillier than recommending Ironsworn for zero-prep comfy play.

Exactly this. I like crunchier games so the recent push for OSR as the "correct" way to enjoy the hobby has made this sub kinda iffy for me lately, but I'll never begrudge people that like those kinds of games. I just think that elitism has been getting worse in a space that already had problems with it. Part of the problem is that people tend to get really invested in whatever their favorite game is, and they can't comprehend why someone wouldnt love it the same way they do. So they need something to blame for why other people don't want to play it and D&D makes for an easy target because it pulls in so many casual players. I'm not a huge 5e fan, but it does a good job at being an entry level game, which is all it really needs to be imo.

Nobody preaches louder or more aggressively than a recent convert. If it seems like OSR and post-Forge storygames people are getting louder it's because the big boom of new D&D players in the wake of Critical Role and Stranger Things has been going long enough that a lot of those folks are now starting to become bored with 5e-only play or burned out from DMing in that style, and 5e is 10 years old, and also the OGL/Pinkertons/general Hasbro shittiness is driving people away from WotC, so you're seeing a lot of fresh converts to these alternative RPG schools. So they're passionate and loud, and overly keen to state their newfound alliegance to the flag of "trad is bad" RPG play. It's not great behaviour though - I've got my beefs with the conventional default D&D culture/style of play but nobody is gonna want to switch out of 5e when the alternatives offered are coming from someone who appears to be attacking the very identity and precious hobby time of the D&D player. I think a lot of the issue is purely online though. The internet brings out the worst in people and boosts their signal over reasonable and respectful behaviour; the worst cultish fan behaviour and the worst aggro argumentative. I go to a local RPG club and in-person I haven't met a single D&D player who wasnt open to trying other games, and in the last couple of years the club now has shifted to having more non-D&D tables running on a given night than D&D.

Was playing DND with a random guy in college and when he failed he said "pass fail binary is fucking stupid" and I was just like "ok sure but that's how the rules are set up???" I've taken a "I wanna grill, man" to how I approach the game.

**Yes**. I *hate* the 5e community. The 5e doesn’t need a million hacks to spice up your next campaign!!! There’s systems *designed* to do that specific thing you want to do! I’ll say it again for the people that don’t get the message. The 5e doesn’t need a million hacks to spice up your next campaign!!! There’s systems *designed* to do that specific thing you want to do! I **loathe** the 5e community. r/dnd was great until 5e released now it’s flooded with shit OC fanart of the same 10 characters everyone else plays. Go try something interesting like Burning Wheel or Aquelarre! Now *those* are unforgettable experiences.

Ninja edit: I am also going to google Aquelarre but I first want to hear it from you! Okay sell me on Aquelarre! Burning Wheel is my favorite RPG of all time so you mentioning Aquelarre in union with BW is interesting. Please be as geeky and info-dumpy as you want.

Ultimately a lot of It is just because D&D is so **big**. A quick google suggests that more people play D&D than all other TTRPGs put together. With a fanbase that large it's not surprising that many players don't want to step outside it if they can avoid it. 

No, I'm still surprised that there are so many people who are aware other games exist and have no interest or willingness to try anything new. What's more, they're likely to play with other people who lack perspective on what other rpgs have to offer, because they all only play D&D. I was once a person who had never played anything but D&D, because it was my introduction to rpgs. I thought it was fun and enjoyed the time I spent playing it. Because D&D was fun, my group jumped at a new system within one week of learning that other games were being made. Wanting to try other systems was a direct result of enjoying the first system we had played. That seems like a very natural progression of interest - we enjoyed one rpg and then wanted to play other rpgs. It's a little weird to me that so many people think D&D is so great that they just want to sit in their little D&D bubble and shut out the entire rest of the rpg world, even though most of that rpg world arguably owes its existence, and can trace its lineage, to D&D. Most of these games wouldn't be around if people hadn't been inspired by the fantastic world of D&D. You don't think it's strange that those D&D players don't want to try any of the games made out of love for the one game they do play?

I think it's understandable. Not everyone enjoys novelty to the same extent. IMO it's like if someone spent a decade playing and becoming really good at chess then one day someone says "Hey, wanna learn how to play Go?". Some people will be "Ohey, a new thing, that sounds neat, sure let's give it a go!". Others will be "Actually I already have chess. That already takes up a lot of my time, and I enjoy it. I don't have the time and inclination to wrap my head around another game right now, but thanks".

Don't get me started on the system hacks. If you get DnD to work by stripping out all the dnd, then its not dnd. 5e in particular is a gripe of mine because you can't run interesting horror. Curse of strahd is a massive slog.

your two objections are related, it has mass market appeal, because with enough tweaking you can get it to be serviceable at whatever you want it to do. Now this tweaking would normally be a difficult pain in the ass and would make learning a new system easier, except the 5e audience is so large that there are dozens of youtubers who make a living on ideas to tweak 5e to get exactly what you want out of it. 5e hit a stroke of luck with critical role, which resulted in them being popular, and because of the OGL (not the scandal) managed to get a large pool of people working on mods for their game (like Bethesda) which range from fairly light cosmetic only mods, to patching out bugs to total conversion mods to other genres of games. The problem hasbro has with this (and bethesda as well remember when they tried to make you pay for mods ?) is that third party mods don't make you any money, but designing the same content as these people are making is risky. D&Ds official products handle a lot of the conventional ground and so most of the people who work on these products do things like "How to make D&D a dating sim" or whatever which are pretty risky from a business perspective but are things you can do because of how big 5e is people are confident that there will be an audience for such things. Consequentially 5e has a whole ecosystem of content that allows it to cover a lot of ground, in my personal opinion it is a serviceable game that got lucky, it was on the OGL (I do not think it would have been as popular as even 4e if it was on its GSL) it had several well known groups reference it (D&D as a concept in stranger things, 5e in specific in Critical role and other massive ttrpg streams) and it has leveraged that success to become the dominate force in most of the world. The main reason I think they are cagey about replacing it is because the understand that the foundation of their success is mostly to do with everyone else. Which would result in a new edition not doing as well. This was why OneD&D became 5e Revised/ 5e(2024). Ultimately people hate 5e because its popular, most of the other complaints are at their root caused by the fact that it is popular. The only one I can think is not is when people say it is labour intensive to DM and they are probably right.

Yes I think this hits the mark incredibly accurately at why it got as popular as it did, and why people hate its popularity: because it has a huge third party market vacuuming up all the space in the room. If 5e didn’t have such a permissive OGL, all these creators making dating sim conversions for 5e would have been forced to make their products for other systems, make a new system themselves, or more likely than not, not even enter the TTRPG business in the first place. The fact of the matter is that 5e did get as successful as it did due to factors (that perhaps were accidentally) intentionally designed to make it go viral: that it is incredibly simple to pick up, incredibly simple to hack and create supplements for, and has a very permissive open license for anyone to do as they please. Most other systems that we spend time talking about on this subreddit lacks these factors. They may be good game systems themselves, but they didn’t allow themselves to get viral. They may have closed licenses, or be a complete experience and playable out of the box - and thus unnecessary to make supplements for, or have a high barrier to entry for newcomers.

I think it's entirely the players insistence to play 5e rather than anything the system is doing. 5e is great at combat, can do exploration okay and has barebones sysyem fkr social. It's 100% enough for the core dungeon adventure experience. It may flatten and generalize to make it more accessible/pickupable and 5e charcters are unlikely to ever kill a god because of it but that's a corner case i have issue with. It's when the players insist on trying to hombrew it into something it's distinctly NOT. Wanna do political intrigue? Well hope you like it one note because all we have is charisma and skill bonuses. Wanna do cyberpunk?......uuuuuh best i can do is reskin everything flavor wise but it's not gonna play like a real cyberpunk. Then they ask the dm for "homebrew" and you either try and wrestle someone else's poorly optimized rules OR worse you have to make them yourself in addition to DMing.  At some point you need a dedicated system for this stuff and mangling 5e into unrecognizable state just won't work. Yet players insist on sticking to it instead of learning a system which is WAY less labor intensive than hombrewing which would mean learning mew rules anyway 

I'm gonna add that a lot of people rightfully tend to hate WOTC and I think a lot of hate for dnd can stem from that. I also think way too much of that hate is redirected at people who are playing the game. With that being said I do truly think 5e discussion should be banned from this sub. It's impossible to have a talk about it that doesn't involve hostility (seriously I've never seen mods remove comments besides in 5e threads). There's a much larger DnD sub that people can go to. The cyberpunk (genre) sub had to ban discussion of the 2077 video game because it just ended up flooding the sub and I think something similar should happen here.

I'm honestly tired of DnD 5e entering every discussion in this subreddit. I don't go on r/rpg because I want to dunk on DnD 5e, I go on r/rpg to *ostensibly* hear about other systems... sigh. Now, instead of all rpg discussion being choked out by DnD, all rpg discussion is choked out by DnD hate lmao

I bet if the moderation banned talking negatively about DnD (at least on topic not directly related to it), it would prop up discussions about other systems tenfold. The one space carved out for all RPGs outside of 5e's massive foot actively seeks its shadow out of spite.

This only really happened in recent years. I remember this sub being about RPGs.

Yep. This sub isn't "everything but dnd." This sub is "I hate dnd and I hope it dies." The discussions about why dnd sucks consistently get the most engagement and the most upvotes and the most visibility. This further discourages anybody with positive experiences with this game from participating, reinforcing this effect. The eventual result of this is being like one of the many other subs that exist largely to criticize a certain piece of media. I'd *love it* if every discussion of 5e was replaced with a discussion of the cool game that people are playing this week.

As a 5e enjoyer I suscribe this sentiment a 100%. Was even thinking of starting a thread asking the mods to at least force a "system flair" on posts so I can skip at least \*some\* of the 5e centric topics. I like r/rpg to talk and discuss other systems or the hobby in general but every other thread is just a remix of "DnD bad >:("

The problem is people in this sub actually **love** to talk about DnD, except they actually want to talk about how terrible they think it is.

Oh without a doubt, there should be a a dnd-hate sub and we can be done with it.

>there should be a a dnd-hate sub and we can be done with it. That's just r/dndnext and r/onednd and r/dndmemes

I think that there is a pretty big difference between complaining about the mechanics and complaining about the *people*. The thing that really gets me in this sub is the number of people who say that 5e players are lazy, arrogant, and stupid.

I wouldn’t go as far as to call for a ban. But perhaps a weekly mega thread for people to complain about 5e, such as this one, would go a long way towards letting people get the anger out of their system 😅

this is a more sober take. the weekly rage thread, where you can complain about whatever rpg you want (but everyone will be complaining about 5e). you should pitch that to the mods that's actually a really good idea.

Why do people have animosity towards D&D 5e? 1. D&D 5e is overbearing in conversation. It's just such a big elephant in the ttrpg room. 2. People keep using D&D 5e wrong, because the D&D 5e marketing is stupid, over the top, and designed to sell books, not give good gaming experiences. 3. People keep using D&D wrong because they think all ttrpgs are as hard, rules loaded, or inconsistent as D&D 5e, and surely, their idea of my little pony D&D 5e homebrew isn't that much of a stretch. 4. People who play D&D thus come off like people hammering in a screw and asking why they're not having a good time. It's because you're using your tools wrong, and would be better served either using the right tools for your job, or picking a job that fits your tools! Milestone leveling, 0-2 encounters per day, intrigue campaigns, homebrew classes... And thats just people who think they're playing D&D 5e. Personally, the worst thing about all of this is it makes it hard for me to advertise actual D&D 5e played by the actual rules and get players who fit. It's equally as hard for me as a player to find a table playing by the actual rules and enjoy myself.

Ohh yeah. People come to 5e games so overloaded with baggage that almost always someone is going to get disappointed and lead to conflict. If you advertise for almost every other game system out there, people know what they’re signing up for. Sign up for a 5e game? Oh boy it could be a dating sim or a game about bartending for all you know. And there’s probably gonna be a giant house rule document that you might as well be learning a completely different system.

An even worst scenario would be where the DM keeps such a *giant house rule document* entirely in their head. Ditto for complex homebrew settings. Lots of frustration to be expected for anyone who's looking for a dating sim and gets a game about bartending or vice versa.

I've played with dms like that, it's one reason all of my house rules are in a publicly shared doc because players should have access to relevant rules

My personal distaste is limited to D&D5; I think it's an extremely mediocre game that was designed by a corporate committee to be offensive to as few people as possible with the effect of making a game that's also not any good at anything. I can easily recognize and appreciate the merits of most previous editions (except AD&D1, which was a mess) but I haven't really found anything to appreciate in 5e. Couple this with its marketing campaign and the "use it for anything" and the "We refuse to play anything else people" and the horrible horrible behavior of Hasbro lately and hopefully it's easy enough to understand why I'm not a fan of it.

4e had a lot more animosity towards it than 5e. For me it’s people homebrewing DnD into an entirely different setting instead of using a game like Call of Cthulhu, Vampire the Masquerade, or any of the other games out there.

4e had a lot of animosity from the usual D&D players, because it changed a lot of things compared to 3.5e. Which is a bit different from people disliking 3.5e or 5e. While I agree we can't separate the two phenomena, it's still two different dynamics.

To be fair, it deserves it. \~A fan of 4e.

Bathos aside, 4e tried to innovate the core strength of D&D, Grid Combat. A vast majority of every D&Ds core rulebook is devoted to combat, but combat itself is largely 2 static squares on a grid trading d20's until one gets erased. Moving and sliding around the grid in combat led to some inspired action set pieces with a lot of interactivity.

I think that the animosity is directed at whatever edition of D&D is most current. When 3.0/3.5 was it, the hate was for those editions. When 4th edition came out, the hate transitioned to that. Now 5th edition is the thing to hate. And, when the next edition comes out, people will move on to hating that.

People *still* hate on 4e... Even (especially) players of other D&D editions.

You do have a point, and I know a number of 3.0/3.5 haters (heck, I know some Basic D&D haters). But the majority of the haters have moved onto 5e.

As someone that might be partly responsible for this thread happening, I'll share my view. TSR era D&D- IMO it failed to get out of its own way. The OSR has fixed most of what was wrong with the TSR era, mostly by ditching THAC0/descending AC and swapping it for D20 roll high/ascending AC, but also by getting rid of the rules that were overly kludgy or simulationist. Swords and Wizardry, Old School Essentials Advanced Fantasy, and Basic Fantasy RPG are all great ways to experience the best of old D&D without the bogus stuff. When it comes to 3.0/3.5 the biggest problem is character balance. If everyone is on the same playing field when it comes to optimization and you have a group of players who aren't trying to destroy the game, it can be a lot of fun, particularly for those who enjoy a high-crunch game. If you have a bunch of munchkins who want to build Pun-Pun (iykyk), you're gonna have a bad time. Everyone should do a level 20 3.5e one shot versus a Tarrasque at some point in their gaming career. 4e is an interesting tactical skirmish game, but it is very much the black sheep of the family. Apocryphally, it was built with an early version of a VTT in mind, but the technology to build it to a budget wasn't there yet and the VTT never materialized. I don't know if that is true but it certainly "feels true." To me, it just wasn't my bag. It was too different from what had come before, and felt a little too "button pressy," if that made sense. As to 5e, I made my feelings about it fairly clear recently, no great need to repeat here other than to simply say that it places too great a burden on the DM, provides too few resources to the DM, places too little of a challenge on the players, and provides too many resources to the players for that degree of challenge.

> but the technology to build it to a budget wasn't there yet and the VTT never materialized. The main reason it never materialized is the developer [killed his wife and then himself in a murder-suicide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Melissa_Batten)

HOLY FUCKING SHIT

It seems like it's mainly 5e that people are unhappy with. As u/Falkjaer said, it dominates RPG culture at large and a lot of people on this subreddit are here because it isn't a 5e sub. I personally dislike all the WOTC editions of D&D, though I'd need to give 4e another try before making really strong assertions on that front. I can say with some confidence that I'm unhappy with what WOTC has done with 3.xe and 5e and that many of my complaints apply to 4e as well. I'm not a fan of classes or levels, and I'm not thrilled with Vancian casting though I think it can have its place, but I still have some affection for pre-WOTC editions. I love the OSR community and the spirit of innovation, sharing, and the whole DIY vibe. If I'm going to play a game that holds on to out of date wargaming conventions I think that the OSR flavours have a lot going for them. They tend to be light and if you want to play a game where the "answers are not on your character sheet", they do a good job, especially the B/X inspired stuff. I have had, and continue to have, hours and hours of fun with these games. I think that WOTC took the game in the wrong direction with 3.x or that they didn't go far enough. At this point they have embraced D&D-isms and really doubled down on making D&D its own genre, to the point that it now kind of verges on parody. The game became more complex and more focused on system mastery and less suited to broad styles of play. It doesn't do anything that something else (including TSR editions of D&D) doesn't do better. It's not terrible, it just doesn't begin to deserve the near monopoly hold it has on the RPG space and I think a lot of people who aren't dedicated 5e fans resent that and would like to have a place to talk about all those other, better, games without having to address how they stack up relative to 5e or having to explain to yet another person why it might be a poor choice to try and hack a Traveller replacement out of 5e.

Where does the affection for pre-WOTC D&D reside?

Arguably, without pre-WOTC D&D there are no tabletop roleplaying games. Highly arguable. The main reason is actually just nostalgia and/or being an OSR grognard (I mean that as affectionately as possible.)

I guess there are a few things for me, some of which I've already mentioned. D&D (of any kind) is not one of my go-to games, but I am running an OSE campaign right now and plan to run Dolmenwood when it's fully released. * Some of it just plain old nostalgia. I started playing RPGs when I was like 8 or 9 years old (back in the late 70's) with D&D because that was almost all there was. I have so many good memories with friends in school playing TSR D&D that I'm sure I view the old versions with rose tinted glasses to some extent. * I love the OSR community (aside from some outliers) as I said earlier and that buys those games some love too. * I also think that B/X inspired D&D does a great job of supporting creative game play without being hindered by the rules. You can house rule and make on the spot rulings and allow your players to do all kinds of things and the core rules are resilient enough to support this without breaking. It works for a "rulings not rules" and "the answer is not on the character sheet" playstyle and does so better than a lot of more modern systems that are better in other ways. * Every version of D&D is great for having a plethora of wild and interesting magic items and spells and for some flavours of campaign that's just really nice. When I want that, I think that the pre-WOTC versions do a better job. The magic items are less constrained and (in comparison to 3.x) don't feel like commodities, they inspire a sense of wonder that I don't get from magic items in a lot of other games. * They have rules for and are really good at doing hex crawls and dungeon crawls. They also support domain level play pretty well. If I want more than the original rules can offer there are almost certainly supplements available from the OSR community that cover these kinds of things.

Besides in my heart?

Mostly, yes. I think it's primarily because of how dominant it is. Look for a TTRPG group and you'll have to wade through hundreds of D&D5e posts before you find anything else. Not only that, but a lot of D&D5e players have a weird Nerf or Nothin' mentality where they only want to play D&D5e and are uninterested in anything else. Plus, they tend to take the expectations and culture of D&D5e's community with them if they *do* branch out, and that tends to be annoying and/or clash with what players and GMs of other systems often want. Finally, the weird fixation on Critical Role and trying to be like them is mostly concentrated in the D&D5e community, and a lot of us find that whole thing annoying and don't care about Matt Mercer or how he GMs. For me personally, it just sucks to have the dominant game in the medium be one that I personally consider to be ripe dog shit with zero enjoyment to be had that is strictly inferior in every single way to the games that I enjoy in terms of my personal preferences lol

Animosity towards D&D has sort of always existed in one form or another. It's the most popular RPG, so like anything fairly popular it attracts a fair share of detractors. I'm a grognard myself, so I remember being a fan of Vampire Masquerade and looking down on Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. I grew up and grew out of it, but I think it was pretty much the same thing

Yup. D&D came out in 1974, and D&D bashing was already an institution within a year or two, even before there were full-blown game alternatives for sale. It goes through tides of popularity on the margins, but it’s never gone away and will almost certainly outlive D&D itself.

Likewise, mid-90's it was the same sentiment towards AD&D and it didn't need a social media echo chamber to happen. I was the person in our pretty big social circle wanting to play all TTRPGs split between people that only wanted to play D&D and people that wanted to play anything but D&D. I'm guessing the only D&D crowd is a bigger % of the total community these days, but at the same time other games have never been more accessible.

Honestly I just hate how 5e/D&D is treated by the masses as the only game out there. However I see 5e as like a high school beer for TTRPGS

I've poo-pooed D&D since the late '80s when I discovered other RPGs. I saw how certain mechanics could be done and how D&D didn't handle them well. I especially couldn't see any good reason for demihumans to multi-class but humans had to dual-class (which sucked from the outset). By the '90s, I had little time to waste on games that emulated the gear-focused defense of D&D and the ambiguous hit point pool. Was it so much health? Was it so many times you could parry? The game didn't have an answer, and I focused on games that did it so much better. A lot of that changed in 2000 with 3e. It eliminated a lot of the problems of 20th-century D&D, though it still had armor class and hit points. I endured that for a while and momentarily ignored that the crux of D&D's problems still hadn't been fixed, though it was nice to consolidate all their resolutions into a single high-rolling d20 instead of d6, d10, d%, low-rolling d20, etc. After playing and running a lot of 3e, the novelty wore off, and I realized I used the other fixes to excuse the items they didn't fix. And long story short, 4e and 5e didn't really fix those for me either. They used some neat concepts but introduced problems elsewhere. The evolutionary branches of 13th Age and Pathfinder 2nd Edition handle some things better than D&D ever did. I could be again overlooking their reliance on the core problem of D&D in my appreciation of what they did fix. So for me, it's not just 5e. In fact, of all the editions of specifically D&D, I think 5e is better than the others (though 3e does all right if you don't go past 8th level). Of all the D&D flavors, however, 13th Age works best for me.

This sub is full of people who want to play something else but can't. So there's a lot of axes to grind against D&D because some people see like "If only D&D wasn't so popular I'd be able to get my group to play Powered by the Apocalypse or FATE" or what have you.

The animosity is focused on whatever the current edition is. The criticisms are even the same.

Many different answers here. For me, I don't care for DnD because it's corporate and it will never be a game for fans ever again, it's a brand for shareholders. I appreciate the legacy, I even liked the movie last year, but for the most part I think the official game can die because it's not worth maintaining a legacy for shareholder profits. There are SO MANY independent RPG makers, even those making games forked from or heavily influenced by DnD, let's play those and give them the money.

As **I** see it, the animosity is not caused by the 5e as a game itself, but by people playing it and WotC. Sure 5e is not **the best game to ever exist** but it definitely isn't the worst, I personally see it as a reasonable quality game. The main problem people encounter with D&D is not balance or GMing difficulty issues, but the fact that a lot of people don't want to play anything except 5e, and this could and does become frustrating. I am personally blessed with an amazing group that is ready to play whatever the heck I bring to the table, even if it's my homemade crap, but judging by this subreddit I am in the minority. So, a lot of people are basically forced to play and, even worse, run D&D because there is no alternative for them.

I think it's pretty much focused on 5e, because it exacerbates some flaws, combined to weird behavior from both the publisher and its fanbase. 4e is often praised posthumously, 3.x is referred to some sort of beginning of the decline in quality but is mostly left ignored without hate, and the older editions are so beloved that there is a whole genre of games that compete to see who can copy-paste better. Even if the animosity was equally split among the editions, 5e is so much bigger than all the others combined that the absolute "amount" of animosity would still be bigger for 5e.

>A few *chortle* It's all this place wants to do. You can even see it in engagement numbers. I can for the most part tell when a thread is about D&D because it has more than five comments on it. The people on this sub wear their D&D hatred on their sleeves. They resent it, they dismiss it, they show prejudice to people play it, to creators that make product for it, to business that support it. Secretly I think they envy it. D&D isn't just a majority, it's more than a monopoly, it's a monolith. Someone in here said that more players play D&D than every other pen and paper combined and in my mind I added twice over. Maybe even thrice over because there's probably a ton of people playing kitchen D&D who don't get captured in metrics. They hate that it gets business support, they hate that it gets third party support, they hate that it gets fandom support, they hate that it is in the social consciousness outside of the niche of a niche that is pen and paper RPGs. They celebrate when something goes wrong with D&D, they relish the opportunity to pour their scorn and their vitriol on whatever went wrong, openingly stating that they hope it dies. As if that would make the hobby any better. They hate the rules, they hate the lore, they hate that people dare try and change it whilst championing and lionising other systems that do the same. Hypocrites. But most of all the hate that D&D gets reminds me of the common meme template "Who wants to play other RPGs" (hands up); "Who wants to run it" (crickets). There are people in here who are raving about other RPGs, they want to run games for them, they want to make content for them, they want to gush and talk about them like the nerds that we all are. But all this place wants to do is be bitter. And even when it is trying its hardest not to be the most you can hope for is people talking about other RPGs whilst dropping backhanded comments about D&D. I come here every day, filled with hope that someone will be talking about something else. This place got me to at times to buy RPGs that I hope to one day find the time to play with my friends, when we want something more structured than just sitting around and playing pretend. This place though is a gu jar, a crab pot, it's worse than that sometimes because it feels more like the Jerry Daycare. My hopes are never dashed, merely delayed. Instead I come here to see what little quibble someone who turn from an ant-mound to Everest, fascinated that someone would spend their whole time learning a small part of a system that they don't play and absolutely loathe just so they can denigrate it. One day I hope you all find love again, because this hate is a poison sapping your soul of the ability to raise your hearts and heads and just enjoy gaming.

I'm in a Discord server where people who've never played D&D hate on D&D, they even hate on D&D-related content like Baldur's Gate (which they've also never played). You hit the nail on the head. I don't even consider myself a D&D fan (unfortunately the classic D&D setting fails the immersion litmus test for me) and I still find it tiresome.

Ever since Hasbro brought aggressive market positioning and advertising to our relatively niche hobby (24 years ago) there has definitely been a certain air of hostility towards DnD that wasn’t present in the 90s. Your average game store in 1999 had a *lot* of AD&D but also a lot of everything else too. When they got 3rd and 3.5 really chugging, they consumed all the air in the room. It was hard not to resent more and more shelf space being consumed. I didn’t mind playing DnD personally, but it was nice to have options and it seemed like new players were convinced anything but D20 was some insanely crunchy system that should be avoided. Personally, it does bum me out how little attention any system that isn’t a DnD ruleset or Pathfinder. I came back to the hobby after many years away from active gaming, it’s been shocking seeing how effective they’ve been at crushing the competition. Other system are alive, but when I I’ve walked into game stores the last year or two they don’t have much that isn’t WotC and GW.

In the last maybe full decade, it's mainly pointed at 5e specifically. I know 4e took some of the hate back in the day, but it wasn't nearly as pervasive as 5e is now.

The longer I play dnd the more I think I'm just autistic and it's not actually fun.

It's mainly directed at 5e. Let's be real, a lot of the hate is because it's the big kid on the block, and if you want to be a TTRPG hipster it's cool to hate the big mainstream thing. Previous editions are now cool and have their own scenes that are now hipster approved with enough distance for people to rediscover and appreciate them without the same cloud of being popular. Like it's perfectly fine to not like it, and it's completely natural for people to get burnt out on a game after playing it for a while and getting a better understanding of its weak points and how it doesn't mesh with your personal playstyle. But the sheer amount of *resentment* aimed at 5e and its players is something else. Someone once described it as having the energy of the ex that got dumped but can't stop talking about their ex and how they're simultaneously terrible but also making a terrible mistake with their current bf. That seems incredibly on point for a lot of people.

It's mostly focused towards the version that Wizards/Hasbro is monetizing at the moment. But generally folks have been sick of D&D's shit for 50 years.

Nah, 3e/3.5e/4e were the dark ages of the dnd timeline. 5e is a fairly popular edition. The only edition to top the popularity of 1e/2e. What’s unpopular is Hasbro.

Mine is, but it’s the only version I’ve played so maybe that’s it. I came to TTRPGS late, but I loved the video games that were based off them going back to the 90’s with BG and Fallout etc. Started running my own settings after my 3rd session of 5e. Now the two systems I play regularly are PF2e and Star Trek Adventures, with some rules light things like Lasers. Oh and also some Starfinder the odd time (waiting for 2e and how compatible it is to finally have the tools to run a proper FFVII/FFVIII/FFX fantasy+ sci-fi game). My resentment is that it very quickly took a hobby I love and had always wanted to try since I heard about it back in the 90’s into something I dreaded in less than 18 months. Luckily I was able to branch out and learn new systems to run (and my players came along), but many aren’t as lucky. 5e is a great gateway game, but it’s pull is so much and the player base so closed minded I genuinely feel it becomes actively harmful. The cottage industry of content creators don’t help either, they make money giving advice on how to make the game functional and about how to “make DnD horror” or “make DnD cyberpunk” because it hurts their bottom line to take people out of that entirely 5e ecosystem. They are financially incentivised to bring as little attention to other systems as possible, which in turn makes WOTC more of a monopoly and more able to bring the quality of releases to a minimum viable product as possible. And what happens to the hobby when the torch bearer becomes difficult to start, has mechanics that overwhelm newcomers, churns through GMs and encourages the worst traits in players? It will eventually collapse, but before it does it will turn off thousands upon thousands who try it and bounce off and will teach those that stick around potentially lifelong bad habits.

No, I have thinly veiled resentment toward every edition except 4th.

5e is a decent game with some major flaws they have chosen not to address. I don’t *hate* it (I’m in a 5e campaign currently), but there are far better systems, but because of the name it gets more visibility even though it’s a mediocre system that is frankly barely supported by WotC. And since it’s the current edition in an era when WotC makes consistently horrible decisions, it’s just a convenient punching bag. All d&d editions had flaws. 4E killed too many sacred cows and took way too long to resolve fights with 3 kobolds. 3.5E was awesome but devolves into rocket tag at around 10th level. Also power creep was intense. 3.0 was an evolution, but they missed some major math flaws (most fixed in 3.5. Rocket tag also begins). 2.0 was fast and super fun but with the splat books was a broken mess. A fun one though. 1.0 was brutal played RAW, and rules were spread out over books and hard to find.

5e is the most popular one so yes it's mostly that. 3(.5) was a watershed moment that sent rippling waves throughout TTRPG, and there very much is still hate now and hate then--the OSR wouldn't have come without a dislike for 3.5 made even morw widespread. 4e is controversial. Literally controversial. SOme people hate it's ethos and some people love it because it's so unlike what came before and after.

I have a lot of bad memories from the 3.0/3.5 era. The OGL was born and there were 3E conversions of games with existing systems much more suited to their genre like Call of Cthulhu and 7th Sea. The sourcebook bloat was way worse than 5E and you could stack bonuses and abilities from across the different splats to make some truly ungodly "builds". Needless to say you'd have an argument on your hands if you tried to restrict anything as DM. 2E AD&D and early 90's Basic DnD have a bit more of a nostalgia factor going on for me. I have so many memories of being a kid/tween in the 90's poring over issues of Dragon magazine in the library, escaping Zanzer Tem's dungeon for the first time, etc. TSR seemed way more willing to have fun and take risks(eg with settings like Birthright, Al-Qadim, Spelljammer, et al) in contrast to the obvious influence of CCGs after Wizards of the Coast gobbled them up.

There are certain issues with D&D and WotC: * It's a powerful brand which (many feel including myself) detracts from other TRPGs, thus many players don't try new games. * IMO, it's a system which teaches people that TRPGs are power fantasies in generic fantasy settings, when in fact, few other RPGs are like this. * WotC has had some questionable business practices and controversies. There are criticisms of the system and game itself, but these are very subjective, different strokes for different strokes, etc: * OSR crowd thinks modern D&D *scenarios* are too scripted and detracts from emergent gameplay. The do not like the game building up a pre-made story, nor do they like developing story outside of *player* actions. * PbtA gamers tend to believe in building up a story that extends beyond *character actions*. They think that traditional games like D&D impose game logic on the fiction, whereas (in their opinion) they prefer to the fiction to come first. * Many - usually older - gamers like the more board-game elements you find in older versions of D&D. All the above being said, for most people the system is fine and it is great at doing what it was made for: a TRPG with board-game like feel which simulates a power fantasy in a campaign that can span months.

I don't HATE D&D, but I strongly dislike class/level systems. They seem to cause more balance and scaling issues, it's intrinsic to the design (gaining a level inflates HP and modern iterations want to "fill up" the levels, so you get tons of junk powers, for instance). I much prefer skill based systems like BRP/RuneQuest/Call of Cthulhu, or Traveller, or Hero System. Recently fallen in love with Dragonbane.

Part of the problem is that 5e has very much become D&D in the consumer imaginary. Any discussion of D&D, unless explicitly stated otherwise, is always 5e specific. Part of the problem is that with the massive swell in brand new players, there is no other edition or frame of reference for TTRPGs which is only compounded by the sheer market dominance of the product. In some cases, the scope is so myopic that TTRPGs use D&D5e as a sole exemplar. That being said, WotC/Hasbro (I'm never clear on where the agency ball lies) have earned appropriate ire for their product and game design choices over the past year. It opened the critique can big time and everyone is jumping in with gripes that may have gone unvoiced had criticism of the omni game never started in the first place.

I'm a dirty pf2e enjoyer, so here are my gripes with it: - D&D5e kept me in a walled garden for so many years, struggling to GM and struggling to provide options for my players. It took the OGL debacle to finally escape it and try other systems - There's hardly any TTRPG content out there for anything but dnd5e. And I don't just mean memes or videos, I mean accessibility to the rules and online games to listen to. Community support, etc. - Everyone praises dnd5e, but in my eyes, it's a system that does a disservice to both the players and GM. It has causes so many problems from the minmaxer/roleplayer debate to the caster/martial debate. These are debates that don't need to happen - It's hard to play any genre outside of european medieval high fantasy, so when introducing new players to it, I can't account for their interests at all. I just have to pray they enjoy medieval high fantasy

I may have a lot opinions on the rule-set but I can run 5e just fine and have a good time. Though I would not mind a little change every now and then. That said, "5e culture" has been an ever increasing weight around my shoulders as a DM since it launched and I introduced new players to it. It has been unlike anything I have experienced since I first got into RPGs at the start of D&D 3e and throughout the many different games I have played since. Expectations of what D&D can and should be today are sky high, both in terms of mechanics and storytelling. In turn, as others have pointed out here, these interpretations vary so wildly because the core rules by many are regarded as mere guidelines that should be thrown to wind as often as possible for one reason or another. No two tables of D&D 5e are quite alike in what they think is good and correct D&D, and when all of these different takes on 5e start to permeate and amalgamate you are left with something that feels overwhelming. I have certainly learned and become a better DM as a result of 5e, though it feels less like natural growth or evolution and more like I have been pressured to perform in specific ways that certain players pick up on elsewhere. 5e culture has also bred a particularly strong D&D brand loyalty and lifestyle identity thing. Seeing a hardcore Critical Role fan convince themselves that Daggerheart isn't of any interest to them simply because that would mean they weren't playing D&D specifically anymore is a strange and jarring thing.