The more I try to make Open 5E and D&D work for me, the more I find myself saying, "Why bother?"
We had the best edition of the game since its inception. We have plenty of first-edition games out there, too. OSRIC and Adventures Dark and Deep are both excellent. Zero Edition games like Swords & Wizardry are amazing. White-box games are plentiful, and many are printed at cost with free PDFs. Old School Essentials is the king of the B/X market. Even Dungeon Crawl Classics and Castles & Crusades are incredible games, full of fun and potential.
Why do I play 5E? The two significant things that the game brings to the table are subclass abilities and infinite-use attack cantrips. In the end, it doesn't matter since your damage is halved from B/X and first edition games, and your character power goes down the higher level you go. Who cares about fancy baubles you get every level if character power is not preserved?
I would rather have that d8+2 longsword work out until 20th level than have a few dozen subclass abilities and all these tricks to keep my damage contribution high, and monster hit points that scale to piles of hundreds. If I get weaker as I level, none of it matters.
The math is all wrong in 5E.
Pick up Nimble 5e and check the math, along with the average damage per level needed. And then look at the boss monsters with a few hundred hit points. My First Edition fighter scales much better with the old-school linear math.
But the First Edition has the crunch. This game will require you to consider the supplies you can carry and their limitations. You need to prepare for a dungeon session with hardcore prepper levels of detail. This feels like going on a camping trip and realizing that you forgot to take matches or something to start a fire with. Games like Shadowdark and others minimize the "prep," but that level of detail is a part of the game. What you can carry, where you carry it, and how you get it out during an emergency is a part of your "character build."
That gear? Those are character abilities, and the more you carry, the slower you move.
And there will be things you take and leave behind, just so you can haul a few more gold coins out. We no longer need the pole, spikes, and rope; leave them behind so we can get out of here alive.
Too many people see gear as "unfun" and "boring paperwork." Gear is a part of your character build, along with the weight you can haul.
Adventures Dark & Deep is a fantastic version of the First Edition game. There is so much in here that I would never really need much else. I told Grok to generate a few hundred fantasy races for me for every game, world, movie, and fantasy setting I would ever need. They are so simple that it all works. Toss a few level limits on them, and we are good to go. Grok can even make classes for you, and all those prompts are on my ADAD House Rules page.
When I am done worrying about character power and abilities, the world and story become more important. I want to strip away all the noise around fantasy gaming and focus on what is essential. We get so distracted by "builds" and "character power" that we lose sight of the story we are trying to tell.
Plus, if I want a character build game, I have the ultimate one with GURPS over there on the shelf.
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