The reason I want a lot of playable races isn't because I play a wide variety of them. It's because it increases the odds of me finding a species I really love. I like fey creatures like Fairies and Dryads, plus I have a thing for cat people like Tabaxi. Rarely are these races found in an RPG's core rulebook, so a game has to be fairly prolific for it to include them.
And the reason I like simplicity... well, that's mostly because the more RPGs I try, the more difficult it gets to keep all the rules separate. When 3.5 was current, I learned it inside and out. Parts of it were more complicated than they needed to be, but that didn't bother me at the time because as far as I was concerned, D&D 3.5 was the world's only RPG. But with each new system I learned, it became harder and harder to keep them all straight.
I liked 4e at the time, because it was easier (for me) to create a character. While 3.5's classes all had their own sets of rules, 4e pretty much just had one set of rules governing all classes. Yes, a 4e fighter was slightly more complicated than a 3.5 fighter. But once you learned to play a 4e fighter, you could play any 4e class with ease. Unfortunately, 4e's drawbacks outweighed its simplicity, and that's when my groups began experimenting with other RPGs.
I glommed right onto 5e. For my money, it's the perfect balance between options and simplicity. My experience may not be as varied as some, but I have played a decent range of games. I've played games with fewer rules, but they didn't have enough character options. I've played more complicated games, and it took over an hour to build a character.
But here we get into the argument of "what even is simple, anyway"? I got into an online discussion a few weeks ago about earlier editions of D&D. I maintain that 5e is easier to learn, mostly because I've tried to learn earlier editions and found them to be about as easy as studying calculus. My opponents kept pointing out the page count of OD&D - instead of a giant PHB, its rules were confined to what was practically a pamphlet.
And you know, that would be fine, except that OD&D wasn't even a complete system. D&D's original release was more of a spin-off. It assumed you already knew the rules of two other games (Chainmail and Outdoor Survival). It didn't set out to create a brand new game, it was just a way to converting a mass combat game into a dungeon delve.
But that's just trivia, and doesn't really prove my case. The truth is, what one person finds simple, someone else finds complicated. As far as I'm concerned, truly enjoyable tabletop RPGs started with the d20 System. Any RPG that uses THAC0, to-hit tables, or any system where having low AC is better, automatically loses all of its simplicity points.
This is how you play an RPG: You roll some dice. You add some modifiers. You try to get a result higher than a target number. Boom, period, that's it, done. This isn't golf, high numbers are always better. I'm not blaming older RPGs for being clunky, I know it took a while to streamline the rules. Older RPGs hold an important place in history, and without them we wouldn't have the games we have now. They should be respected and honored, but I'll be damned if I'm going to agree that they're "simple".
But again, that's just my opinion. Simple is in the eye of the Eye Tyrant. Personally I consider a system simple if it's easy for me to build a character. As long as you're not the DM, then you can learn most of the rules while playing. But building a character is one of the first things you have to do in a game (unless you're using pregens), and the process usually gives you a good idea of how complicated the system is going to be overall.
In D&D 5e, I can build a character in 5-15 minutes, depending on the class. Magic users take the longest, because of spell selection. And sure, you can draw it out if you want to nitpick over your equipment or whatever. But it's still one of the fastest and easiest experiences I've had with character creation. I've played some retroclones that took even less time, but it came at the cost of character options.
I frequent a lot of RPG message boards, and I see a lot of young people who want to start playing D&D, but find the size of the PHB intimidating. Most of them don't realize how little of the PHB you have to read in order to play. Sure, you'll want to glance through the races, classes, and backgrounds, until you know what you want to play. But you only have to really read the the race, class, and background you actually pick. That's probably less than 10 pages. That's enough to get your character started.
You'll want to spend a few minutes in the equipment chapter if you don't like the default gear. If you play a magic user, you'll have to read through some spells and the rules on spellcasting. Personally, I'd just make my first character a fighter and save the more complicated stuff for later. You'll probably want to read up on combat (9 pages) and maybe the chapter on adventuring (6 pages), though you can learn this stuff while playing.
Sure, it's more than you have to read to play Monopoly. But my point is, the majority of the book is stuff you can skip for now. You don't have to read all the classes, races, and backgrounds that you aren't going to play yet. There's nearly 80 pages describing spells alone. Even if you're playing a Wizard, you only need to read the spells you're thinking of taking at level 1.
There's a big push right now to get people to try RPGs other than D&D. Honestly I'd love it if people tried more RPGs, but I find the movement itself to be kind of insulting and gatekeeper-ish. It's all "Only noobs still play D&D" and "Real gamers don't play a game just because it's the most popular" or whatever. Surely there's a better way to convince people to play your favorite RPG. Maybe you could try... I don't know... mentioning the names of the systems you want them to try? And then maybe explaining what's so good about them? You know, stop putting everything down and actually stand up for something?
And every blasted one of them thinks they're putting forth this idea for the first time. "Did you know there's other RPGs besides D&D?" Well, duh, it's the 14th meme you've posted on the subject this week. If I didn't know before, I do now. But did you know that your geekier-than-thou attitude actually makes people less likely to try whatever system you're trying to push? And did you know that it's perfectly possible to try a wide variety of RPGs and still prefer D&D?
Anyway, I'm not claiming D&D 5e is the best tabletop RPG out there, or that it's even the best version of D&D. "Best" is a nonsense word when talking about personal tastes; it's not like there's a best flavor of ice cream that all people can agree on. There are things even I preferred about 3.5, and believe it or not, there's even a couple of things I miss from 4e. And if I were playing a different genre, like sci-fi, there's a few other systems I'd look at first before trying to shoehorn it into 5e (though I do want to try Star Wars 5e sometime).
But personally, for the kind of games I like to play, D&D 5e is my favorite. It's easy to learn and teach, character creation is fast, and it's flexible enough that you can make it crunchier if you choose to do so. Yes I've tried other RPGs. Yes I liked some of them. Yes some of them are better for telling certain kinds of stories. Yes I will continue to try other games.
But when I say "I prefer 5e", it's not because it has the "Dungeons & Dragons" brand name printed on it, or because I'm afraid to try something new. When I say "I prefer 5e", it's because I've tried other systems and found them lacking something I find important, even if others do not. I realized long ago that my priorities are different than most people's.
So sure, if you have any other systems you think I should try, comment below. I can't promise I'll be able to get a group together to try it, but I will at least read through the system with an open mind and give it an honest appraisal. Just don't be surprised if continue to prefer 5e.
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