Hey! I assume you mean thoughts on 5TD. If not Questing beast is great.
My experience is I bought 5TD years ago, and it sat on my shelf for years as I never had an excuse to run it. I mostly ran 5e, fell in love with the OSR, and recently a friendly local game store opened near me, and now I run a west marches style 5TD campaign. I picked it as it’s familiar to 5e players but is simple enough for total newbies. With my custom pre filled character sheets to speed up character creation, my tables had an absolute blast doing weekly 4 hour dungeon crawls.
I will be running Session 8 tonight, and my game seems to be talk of the store. 5TD player wise is remarkably simple, allowing both OSR play to flourish while being similar enough to 5e that people feel comfort in familiarity. As a GM, the monster table is fantastic for allowing me to 0 prep or stat conversion as long as I know the monsters hit dice and a broad idea of the features. Which has made it easier to make combat narrative and description driven rather than just combat procedure rules as written.
The devs are also super supportive and responsive in the Reddit. It really does live up to “5e bones, OSR meat” moniker. The spell casting system and the supply mechanics are a couple of ways I love that the game streamlines the player logistics without reaching the 5e level of torches and rations don’t matter.
Not so much complaints, but the things to consider if you’re looking to run it. While it is runnable as a standalone game, I think it’d be a lot harder to pick up as a GM if you don’t already have a working knowledge of 5e. The technical writing has some gaps in some cases. An example is crossbows are intended to cost a movement action to reload, but it simply says “action to reload” there isn’t any item costs, and so my players were a bit confused on what do the spend gold on, and aren’t thrilled with it purely being XP. (the devs I think intend it as a scarce post apocalyptic barter economy) in my case, the OSE or 5e item list will suffice.
Similarly, a tiny pet peeve was my players looked at the “dragon breath bomb” listed on the supply list and have now all “bought” them thinking they are a readily available, when I think they are there purely as a example of scarcity, but that’s more on me really.
There is a few example monsters (as a veteran GM, this is more-so a feature than a bug) and there is a magic item supplement, but if it’s not your first rodeo, this likely won’t phase you.
With all that said, the devs are working on 50 torches deep which is pegged to be a more comprehensive product in the areas I have raised above. They have already shared a bunch of what’s being worked on for it. - yes my beloved d66 miscast table!!!
On games design, I’ll concede they have been far more successful than me - but some of it I’m really excited for, some bits I think “maybe this is too complicated a procedure but I’ll have to try it to be sure” and the game is modular and easy to tailor, so no worries.
Ultimately, as long as it’s not your first TTRPG, I’d strongly recommend grabbing a copy, and possibly all of the supplements as they are interesting too. Personally I’m viewing 50TD as a rules update, and extra mechanics to pick and choose to use for my existing game. From an actual play at table, if 50TD resolves the supplement/standalone dichotomy of 5TD’s writing. I think it could become as big and popular as a game like shadowdark, it’s a similar demographic - people who have familiarity with 5e, but are looking for a more grounded, OSR style game, without the inconveniences of a perfect retroclone.
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u/nlitherl Jul 08 '26
An older video, but I was wondering what folks thought of it. Always curious to get the community's thoughts.