The more I get into 5E, the better my older OSR games look. My problem with 5E is the game makes a lot of basic game design mistakes, adding complexity where the game doesn't need it. Some of the systems they built, like the skill system and advantage-disadvantage system, seem simple on the surface, but to make these works requires hundreds of particular cases and secondary rules to be written and tracked.
The game they want does not support the mechanics they implemented.
For example, look at Traveller's core mechanic, roll 2d6, and beat an 8+ number. Simple. The whole game works off that one mechanic. What modifies this mechanic? Die roll modifiers, or DRMs for short. That is it. You don't need to go deeper into the book to understand how the system works. Maybe a range chart or suggested modifiers is about it. Maybe a few rules for opposed checks and long-term tasks.
You look at 5E, and everything modifies everything. Something here will modify that something over there. Advantage happens here but not there. This gives you an advantage, but that doesn't. This skill is rolled at times and has passive uses at other times. The rules are a mesh of interlocking modifiers and supporting rules everywhere, and the design is just a mess. Interrupt mechanics are tossed in everywhere, and these are often layered in, with players stopping play and announcing, "Nuh-uh, my player has X, so it counters Y!" They had great intentions when they started with a universal target number for difficulty and a proficiency bonus, and the advantage/disadvantage system - and that is where it should have stopped.
Instead, many inexperienced game designers were brought in and tacked on systems to this core simplicity and built a mesh of messy connections and interdependencies as time progressed and books were released. What should be simple - isn't. What should be "the referee makes a ruling" - isn't. As time passed, many terrible ideas and added complexity were tossed onto the system. Every game this happens to, no matter how simple and streamlined, breaks.
5E core is an entirely different game than "5E end of the edition."
And they started off writing a game where "most of it is up to you" and ended up with "we had to publish many rules clarifications because nothing was that clear in the first place."
The design they created was not even the design they wanted to support.
In this regard, Pathfinder 2 is a better game since nothing is left up to you. Pathfinder 2 is the logical progression of 5E; with more rules, nothing is left up to interpretation, and if you have a question, the book answers it without ambiguity. I can see why many 5E players go to Pathfinder 2; they want a game with rules for everything and get tired of the "having to make it up or look it up" dissonance of the 5E design.
5E is the game that wanted to be the OSR but was dragged by its players into wargame rules.
The OSR runs in the other direction than both of these games - "making it up" even supersedes the rules as written. Most games work the same and run on a single-core mechanic. You never have to look up a rule, and you can even pull in rules from other games.
This isn't to say 5E is a bad game; it is just Wizards has made a mess of the rules in the newer books, and the direction One D&D is taking the game is perpetuating terrible game design decisions. Sometimes you need to break backward compatibility because what you have - and supporting all of it - will create a bigger mess than revising the rules entirely.
Backward compatibility becomes backwards compatibility.
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