You’re lucky this is a PG forum, or I could trauma-dump the adventures of my Players and 20 years of them being irrepressibly horny for nearly every entry in the Monster Manuals and finding out new and horrifying ways to successfully apply the Harkness Test to everything.
I literally had to get ‘T’ to swear a blood-pledge to me so that she would not roll a Kobold, Draconic-blooded Sorcerer, Paladin, Cleric or worshipper of any Dragon God or any race with even the slightest hint of Draconic ancestry so she would have no in-character reason to call Tiamat ‘Mommy’.
I had to come up with a fertility table and STD table to punish the players for being unreasonably horny for NPCs, because nothing else was working, and having to pay for child support or wait out the time-table for the medication to deal with an STD normally common to Treants before they could ‘try again’.
And that was just them being estupido for the libido. That’s not even touching the whole loot gremlin nonsense or the Meme Wars.
I’m currently playing in a game that’s using some of the new rules, but I don’t think we’ve included the entire list of changes? There are some rule changes that I like, some that I don’t.
I haven’t DM’d a game with the new ruleset, though. I’m between games at the moment, my last campaign was actually a WoW-themed table that used the 5e conversion that’s been going around. My players really enjoyed that and it was fun to be the Dungeon Master.
Currently between campaigns right now as well. Was in a D&D 5E campaign for a good part of a year and a Pathfinder first edition campaign for two after that.
I miss it, but I also like having those days back in the week. I’ll meander back that way at some point again, though.
I started playing DnD again during covid. During that time, I ran a campaign, and have participated in two others, one of which is wrapping up sometime eventually. While I haven’t looked at the new rules, I can say I’m probably good with DnD for a little while. It’s a fun game but I need a break before I’m burnt out on it forever.
We also started an in-person thing on a monthly basis (our DnD game is virtual and weekly) playing a new game called Fabula Ultima, which we are enjoying immensely. Some of the players in our group are also checking out Shadowdark.
I used to play in a 3.5 game that ran like GTA. We were sent on missions against dwarven dr*g cartels and elven mafias. Demonic possession figured heavily into the campaign. I got to play a semi-charismatic skillmonkey rogue with a 20 int and not much else going for him. It was a lot of fun.
I wouldn’t mind giving Pathfinder another chance and play something else. My DM tried to make the class fun for me, we’re both good friends and know what kinda dumb stuff I like to do.
They are working on setting up a new game for us, using the old Star Wars table top game but with the serial numbers filed off and it’s some Conan/Barbarian fantasy world. Anyway the idea is magic exists (the force) but it’s rare and we are all angry barbarians that don’t trust that wizard nerd crap.
I like the idea of having a magic sensitive barbarian that occasionally wills stuff into existence by believing really hard. So a bit anime and a bit warhammy orks.
As someone whose played a ton of 5e since it came out, a good bit of Pathfinder 1e and 2e, some 3.5e, some 4e, and quite a bit of 2e (we play once a month for that one)… I… mostly like the new rules? There are some questionable stuff, like they somehow got Ranger more wrong? They somehow made Paladins less appealing? But they got the casters, Monk, Fighter, and Barbarian all so right (beyond the limited Rages still, thats lame, I like Pathfinder 1e/2e for that lol)… its crazy how Ranger and Paladin feel worse off.
I’m not a huge fan of Background changes, or Feat changes, the game itself feels a lot less power build focused with how it used to be, with Great Weapon Master and Multi-classing, but its just shifted in other ways. I’ve been DMing a long running Curse of Strahd game now, and once they beat Strahd, the halfway point of the actual Campaign I have cooked up for em, we’ll shift into 2e, homebrewing what we have to so their characters remain unchanged, but updated.
Otherwise I love D&D, grew up with it. My father had a part in Dorkness Rising, he’s gamed with people up high as Gary Gygax (long before his fall), played the first game of… 4e I think at a convention where it was available for the first time to the public (hence first), and I was just raised on such epic stories! I even got a signed copy of R.A. Salvatore’s son’s first book they wrote together, cause they were friends and when I was a LOT younger I guess I interacted with them (his work place had a daycare, this is over 20 years ago now)? Otherwise, I’m getting off topic… other thoughts were… I really need to see the Monster Manual, and why are the Deluxe covers worse than the normal covers?
I miss 3.5 but I don’t miss 15 minute turns of “uhm … uhm …” from the casters agonizing over using a high level spell slot.
For all the muck I can toss at WotC’s rancid face for 5th edition and their AI/Hyper-Predatory takes, making Cantrips scale with level made the game so much easier for casters because you don’t need to 4th Dimensional Chess your spell-list to cover as many scenarios as possible because if you just need to melt something, you have a cantrip for that and can save your spell-slots for utility and QoL spells to help the rest of the party without feeling useless in combat.
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I even got a signed copy of R.A. Salvatore’s son’s first book they wrote together, cause they were friends and when I was a LOT younger I guess I interacted with them (his work place had a daycare, this is over 20 years ago now)? Otherwise, I’m getting off topic… other thoughts were… I really need to see the Monster Manual, and why are the Deluxe covers worse than the normal covers?