To appreciate 5E, I had to eliminate all of my Wizards of the Coast books. They sit in my sell boxes, and I have no intention of taking them out before they go out the door (other than to create a packing list for the boxes). Those books fueled my negativity toward the whole system.
That, and nothing I found in them, was good. There were trash classes in the core books. They invented 'tool proficiencies' to patch a broken skill system (a flaw I still feel: tools != skill). Tasha's blew up complexity. Everything had another level of exploits and power-gaming layered on top, likely to sell books. None of it I wanted, nor was it the game I wanted to play.
I deleted a paragraph here. It went over with Wizards last year; everyone knows these things. Repeating all this horrible news just breeds more hate. They made their choices, and I chose to be done with them.
Time to move on.
I could not escape the negativity and stored all my 5E books, which hurt A5E and Kobold Press. YouTube fueled this feeling, and I started unsubscribing from the trash 5E channels specializing in clickbait. Even the endless repetition of the playtest packet information became spam and anger. Likely engineered by marketing to create buzz. I ended up hating 5E.
I did not hate 5E for what it was.
I hated what it had become.
With zero Wizards books, 5E is still a good game. It works. It has a few balance issues. It tends towards too powerful players at high levels and too high survivability, but those can be fixed.
The 5E Hardmode guide is an excellent collection of optional rules that can easily applied to any version of 5E. This book has excellent options for both rests and death saves that turn the game's difficulty up a notch. The book fixes the dark vision problem, adding escape and chase rules to mitigate encounter difficulty. There is also a suggestion of spells that can be removed to increase the challenge of adventures. I could plug these into A5E or ToV and have a game as deadly and challenging as B/X, without changing rule systems.
A few communities have put a fantastic amount of work into creating standalone options, some focused on old-school play, some simple, some the game taken in a new direction, some low magic, some pulp-action, and others as a modern action-movie game.
It is not fair to hate their hard work.
I love Level Up 5E, and I also like Tales of the Valiant. The latter, my final verdict, will come when I have the books, but as a simplified version of 5E, I can see using a B/X style game. I plan on supporting the upcoming Game Master Guide for the game, and I haven't soured on the game like some have.
So I asked myself, could I love the rules and system again if I de-colonized my game? I use that term with a ton of sarcasm, but the hobby has been colonized by greedy tech executives and Wall Street, and you see this in the lock-in strategies many companies use. The over-reliance on computers to create characters. 90% of the books I covered do not have that program data in any online or purchased 5E character creation software or websites, so those products get locked out of the market.
If I do my characters by hand, I have infinite options.
I can use books from other publishers.
There is a diverse and level playing field of creators from every background and income level. Also, players of every income level can play the game when it isn't locked behind a subscription paywall.
Now we are getting walled gardens and books that aren't PDFs locked into those. More colonization efforts to lock in customers and lock out competitors. Yes, it is easy to use, but at what price? I can put all my rules on any device, phone, or tablet and have the PDFs. Even if the store folds and shuts down - I have them. I own them. I am not "renting access." Ownership is freedom and breeds healthy competition.
Free and open rules mean everyone can play.
So, I have my shelves and am still sorting my 5E books. I am saving a few for Tales of the Valiant and will give that game a chance. I discovered the fantastic 5E implementation of Lost Lands and one of my all-time favorite mega-dungeons. Then it hit me: how cool would it be to play through that with 5E characters? I played a little A5E and enjoyed the run. How cool would it be to play that again?
Then, I discovered I loved the 5E system again.
And what I did not like became crystal clear.
Is it sad to toss D&D out? Not really. We get rid of the things we used to love all the time when we outgrow them. 5E is a different game owned by a community that will grow and flourish like the OSR community. People see the OSR, and they don't see Wizards any more. It doesn't even cross their minds. The same will happen with 5E.
We are not at the end of indie 5E.
We are at a point right before the beginning.
Open 5E (O5E) will likely be more significant in ten years than the OSR. Millions of players are ready to create their own things and make that happen. The stigma that 5E is an "easy game" will disappear when people write tabletop games based on 5E they want to see. The demographics of the Open 5E movement will go over the entire OSR community like a tidal wave.
The size and scope of what we have yet to see will likely shock many. The OSR was a trial balloon.
None of it will be Wizards, either. Even if 2024 is popular, it will only delay the inevitable by a year or two. The genie is out of the bottle. The desire for more and "my own version" will become too great for the community to ignore.
Open 5E is the future and the next OSR.
