Dungeons and Dragons: Fifth Edition

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5 Responses

  1. Hi John Michael it’s Tony. Great article and it hits on a lot of points I also feel about 4th edition. Coming from an equally big fan of MMOs and tabletop RPG I did like the role system of 4th, but it never had the mystic quality of past editions.
    Heck, one of my favorite game masters of all time (besides yourself, of course) was a blind man. As you can imagine we didn’t use miniatures, I would keep track with a loosely hand drawn sketch of where we were at the time, made him by him as he went along.

    • Hey, good to see you Tony! We certainly have lost a bit of the mystery in our game. As the game matured, it stopped selling to the Dungeon Master and started selling toward the players. It’s smart business when you think of it… there’s more of them. Unfortunately, the backlash of that attitude is that we lose a lot of mystique that Dungeons and Dragons used to represent.

      I have to admit, as Dungeon Master, there are advantages to this. I don’t want to do all the legwork, and I’ve never been the most organized person among my friends. If some of my players desire to carry some of the load, then, by all means, go for it. But players buy products from Wizards with an eye toward what makes their character better, not what makes the communal storytelling experience better. It’s why we don’t deal with cursed items as much anymore. Players don’t want those things! Why would they publish them in books? The fact that they create funny scenes and intriguing subplots is completely lost.

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