D&D 5.5E: New Coke

D&D 5.5E, taken on its own, is New Coke.

I tried to immerse myself in this game. I slammed into the bottom of the swimming pool here, and it wasn't the Player's Handbook or DMG that was at fault here. Those are okay, with occasionally cringe-worthy art that I can ignore. The rules updates are workable and do their job.

The 2024 Monster Manual takes this game into New Coke territory.

I get the feeling most are still using the 2014 Monster Manual with the 2024 PHB and DMG. If this were all a brand-new system, it would die on the vine. They took what we love about the D&D monsters and erased most of the conflict, savage nature, and villainy from almost every one of them.

Without the classic D&D monsters, this is not D&D anymore.

This was D&D's "secret sauce": the monsters everyone kept coming back to battle. This is what other games lacked. This was the essential difference between a generic fantasy heartbreaker game and D&D. Without the classic D&D monsters, the game is just like any other fantasy slop game, and it needs a lot more going for it to attract attention and remain compelling.

So, D&D cut its own arm off like a terrible Rolemaster fumble chart result.

They reimagined the monsters as progressive fan fiction.

And this is not me being anti-progressive; I support the smart use of safety tools. I love Cypher System, FATE, and Tales of the Valiant. I support Paizo. I play GURPS. I love Goodman Games. I am not one of these culture war gamers. I am pretty much well in the middle of the road on most things. If you make a good game, I am there to play. I also love old-school games, BX, ACKS, and a bunch of other games that pay tribute to classic gaming.

But Wizards messed up so many classic monsters, and they butchered creatures inspired by the classic Appendix N authors. They made almost every monster into a kinder, gentler reimagining.

When I play a fantasy game, I can suspend my everyday expectations of reality. I do not need to superimpose today's values onto a fantasy world. I have a clear idea of what fantasy is and what reality is.

And progressive companies, like EN World, Goodman Games, and Kobold Press, can deliver savage, brutal, evil, and monstrous monsters without watering them down or changing the formula. None of those companies felt the need to change what makes things fun, yet they can deliver a compelling, dangerous, and clearly old-school-inspired experience. They can keep their values separate from the game while maintaining their strong core values and ensuring players feel safe during play, even when their characters are in danger.

If you are still using a 2014 Monster Manual, you don't even see this.

If all you have is a 2024 Monster Manual, the magic is gone. You can ignore a lot of the silly parts of the Monster Manual's rewrites, but nothing in this book feels right. The monsters feel like the monsters in any other slop-fantasy game. They are all fan fiction, not D&D, and feel like off-model animation where Scooby Doo is drawn all funny and doesn't look right.

So, my problem is, if I were using 2014 monsters anyway, why am I playing 5.5E? What is the point of this, to say I am "in 5.5E" and ignoring a third of the game?

I might as well play a game with a unified and consistent presentation that preserves the D&D magic and formula. Where the D&D 2014 monster descriptions were left intact. Where I play something with the version of the rules I like, have fun, and not worry about 2014 vs. 2024.

That game is Tales of the Valiant. It is also Level Up Advanced 5E.

I don't need to drink New Coke.

What few monsters don't exist in ToV can be ported in with a 2014 Monster Manual, if I choose to. The ToV monsters are, however, far better designed, and the fights are built to be short and intense. The D&D 2014 and 2024 monsters are slogs to fight, and I am often better off using ToV monsters.

What really matters, though, are the ecology and descriptions of the 2014 monsters. This is the secret sauce. This is what D&D 5.5E lacks. Tales of the Valiant, of all the things the game did, preserved everything perfectly and locked it into a version of the game we can enjoy forever.

This feels exactly like the Pathfinder 1e and D&D 4E split, where the legacy of D&D 3.5E was passed on to Pathfinder 1e, and that game and world exploded with interest. If the 2014 books were incompatible with 2024, that is where I feel we would be today, with ToV taking over the game's identity. Just like D&D 4E, Wizards has walked away from their lore. It will be a slow, boiling pot from here as 2014 is slowly phased out, and the new lore will take over. The 2014 books will go out of print, and the edition will be harder and harder to play as it was.

And frankly, replacing D&D with ToV is what should happen.

The message needs to be sent.

I'm not doing this New Coke thing.