The Fake World

There is this notion of the fake fantasy world, the reality that game designers live in, where an adventurer class is a sustainable part of the world. The world exists to support the adventurer. Yes, this is fantasy, but the extent to which this artificial "adventurer class" has been elevated reaches the level of gross oversaturation and parody, especially in many artwork pieces that ship with these games.

They act like cities with grand shopping bazaars, hundreds of magical weapons, items, and spells, and streets devoted to selling adventure equipment and magical items. We ran that type of campaign in Greyhawk, where we assumed the entire city was filled with rich, high-level, adventurer-class people sitting on millions of gold pieces, primarily idle and bored, as they tried to justify their pointless and worthless societal roles.

They were the overpowered, selfish, greedy, entitled, magic in everything, and snobby, entitled rich.

And they were the worst villains you could ever imagine.

Even the gods hated them because they kept killing the gods and taking their stuff (thank you, DDG). The gods would reincarnate and get more and more fed up. Greyhawk City became a festering sore of overpowered jerks. They did not want to conquer land or rule the world; they were too rich and lazy to lift a finger. They grew inward, collecting magic trinkets, worrying more about their appearance and stuff, and evil and good lived side-by-side - their alignments were all "entitled-rich" instead of lawful or chaotic anything.

After a while, alignment did not matter.

Faith did not matter.

Wealth and power won.

They were the new gods, and they acted like it.

Taken to its logical extreme, this is how D&D always ends up: people who can't be killed by repeated dagger thrusts, people who are constantly brought back to life, and magic that teleports and contingencies everyone out of certain death situations. Unlimited wishes.

Was this lousy gamemastering? Hey, we were kids. If it was in the game, it was allowed, right?

Many today have this attitude toward 5E: If it is in a book, we can use it, and it is legal.

I know this was our mistake back in the day, and it doesn't apply to everyone and everything today - fair point. But I still get that feeling in 5E. These aren't adventurers but superheroes who can't die.

There is such a thing as too much power, and today's D&D defines it.