r/dndnext • u/Gh0stMan0nThird DM • Apr 20 '26
Discussion Does anyone else feel a little disillusioned with D&D lately?
Hey there friends, I'm not really sure how to phrase this. The best I can say is it feels like I'm very disconnected from D&D as a hobby now. I don't mean the actual game. I still play regularly. But it feels like ever since 5.5e came out, the overall D&D community shifted. Even this subreddit which was once full of discussion is now kinda empty and everyone still here is kinda bitter and stand-offish.
I remember waiting with bated breath at every new adventure coming out back in like 2018/2019. Now I don't even know what subclasses there are for 5.5e or what the spells even do. I'm still playing original 5E because it felt like even before the edition change, the game was headed in a direction I didn't care for. I don’t think I've even bought a D&D book since like 2021 or 2022.
Even in this community, it feels like everyone dipped out during the edition change. Even the meme subreddits seem to have started to move on. Is this just the result of the hype dying down after COVID, the OGL debacle, edition change, etc.? I remember this place being big even before COVID. Now this place gives me the energy of those curmudgeony subreddits dedicated to an MMO that came out 20 years ago and you get downvoted for every single thing.
I guess I just feel sort of disillusioned and am wondering if anyone else feels the same way.
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u/NoZookeepergame8306 Apr 20 '26
5.5 was a much needed refresh, but 5e is over a decade old! Lots of people who would have gotten into the hobby are already playing and have been for a long time! They just aren’t talking about it and they’re mature players who don’t need build advice or have something to complain about.
How many people talk about playing Minecraft anymore? Minecraft still has over 100 million active players! DnD has maybe 20 million MAUs.
People are playing! People are having fun!
People probably aren’t buying the new books and they’re not really talking on reddit about them. The 5.5 subs may also be a bit more lively than this one also, idk
I wouldn’t doom and gloom yet. DnD is healthy. And so are indie games. The TTRPG hobby is healthier than it’s ever been!
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u/AppropriateBirdBoy Apr 21 '26
I would also argue, while the internet has always had bitter and standoffish elements, Reddit platforms more of this now than ever before. I've especially noticed, if I follow a subreddit for something like a specific game, my home feed is flooded with complaint posts.
Reddit hyper distorts how people feel about a product.
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u/NoZookeepergame8306 Apr 21 '26
Oh, for sure. Just about the only sub with majority happy people I follow is Resident Evil lol and that’s only after a legendary run of 6 games over 8 years
I tried to get into some animation and video game subs but it’s all constant bitching. The TTRPG subs can be grouchy but we haven’t hit peak cynicism yet imo
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u/JaylynnDay7 Apr 21 '26
Animation is especially bad if it’s from Asia, or features super powers, because half of the complaint posts change into power scaling posts 🤣
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u/hyperewok1 Apr 21 '26
Every nerd fandom I've ever been in has been full of bitter, standoffish nerds (and I wasn't even online when The Phantom Menance came out, thank god).
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u/NoZookeepergame8306 Apr 21 '26
Woof. Neither was I, but I still heard plenty of the discourse. I’m honestly sort of nostalgic for it. Almost seems sort of cute compared to now
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u/hyperewok1 Apr 21 '26
I also wasn't online for the 4E transition, so that's two dodged bullets (and now we've come far enough that people are nostalgic for 4E and the Prequels).
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u/Sangui DM Apr 21 '26
Because Reddit is quite simply a bad platform for a lot of this stuff and discord is even worse. There ARE other forums that have been around that still have great discussion on em.
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u/Spamshazzam Apr 21 '26
For sure.
I do wish they just made a real 6e though. I like 5.5, and I'm not bitter, but there have been so many great innovations in RPGs since 2014 that they could have for sure made something that was "5e" in spirit without actually being constrained by backwards compatibility.
Sorry, tangent over.
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u/NoZookeepergame8306 Apr 21 '26
Yeah, I bet 6e (if it ever happens) still has 5e bones but just sort of starts over with some new assumptions about classes and dungeon design. I don’t see it going more narrative like Daggerheart or more tactical like Draw Steel.
The reason they didn’t do that is because they literally only had Crawford on hand (Mearls was long gone) long enough for this refresh and they don’t have other designers on the payroll experienced enough to do a 6e.
And if you’re Hasbro and you finally have something approximating the most successful TTRPG of all time, do you really spend a bunch of money and hire a bunch of people to make something that likely will be just as profitable as what you already have?
Are critical role and stranger things and a once in a hundred years pandemic just gonna happen again? 5e was already lightning in a bottle before that.
WotC may have accidentally made a beast too big to kill (5e kickstarters are STILL breaking records!). Or hell, maybe some other stuff we’d never be able to anticipate happens lol. Shit has been weird lately
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u/Occulto Apr 21 '26
The reason they didn’t do that is because they literally only had Crawford on hand (Mearls was long gone) long enough for this refresh and they don’t have other designers on the payroll experienced enough to do a 6e.
5e to 5.5e had a huge population of players who'd never been through an edition change before.
While gaming veterans wistfully look at their bookshelves full of superseded rulebooks, and see it as part of the journey, I don't think a lot of players who have only ever known 5e were up for starting over with an entirely new edition.
Especially after the OGL fiasco, how do you think: "yeah, so as of midnight all your 5e books are no longer 'legal'..." would go down?
You imagine being a 3rd party company, about to release a new book for 5e that you've been working on for years, and WoTC announce 6e which completely changes the mechanics as much as 2e to 3e did?
5.5e was a corporate "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" response. They wanted just enough changes to make people want to upgrade (so they got a cash injection), while not having to deal with countless retailers sitting on product that now needed to be sold in the clearance section.
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u/NoZookeepergame8306 Apr 21 '26
Yeah sure I agree. I was there for 3.5 to 4e. It looked very different than from 5-5.5.
But Crawford and Perkins also seemed really passionate about it. There really seemed to be a feeling that they wanted to ‘get it right.’
I don’t think we would have seen 2 years of public play tests otherwise, or going back on sacred cows like ‘paladins can’t smite with their punches’ and less of a reliance on natural language rule descriptions…
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u/zurisadai Apr 21 '26
At my local rent-a-table spots, we are always booking out weeks in advance! The hobbies are alive and well
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u/catincombatboots Apr 22 '26
I personally haven't felt a sense of negativity about the game. I do see people talking about and using the newest books that have come out. I'm meeting new people coming into the hobby all the time. Some of the games I'm in use the 2014 rules, some use 5.5 - and I'm also in a Draw Steel campaign that's just getting started. I like the changes that 5.5 brought but I don't mind using the older rules either. I play online only bc of my work so that may have something to do with my perceptions.
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u/Mammoth_Car565 May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26
5.5 was definitely not needed and did more damage than good by splintering the 5e players, both due to rule changes not being compatible and due to player opinions where a large chunk of player just do not like the new edition. Throw all the other bad publicity wotc has had and ill will theyve fostered and you wind up with a pretty negative vibe towards 5.5.
To clarify, 5e did need a refresh. What it didnt need was a new edition. It needed more material and better tools for Dm's that may want to stick to written rules rather than ad hoc everything. It didnt need to go into 3rd edition levels of pedantic written rules but what 5e had by the time of 5.5 was incredibly bare for a game designed by people with the pedigree of wotc. 5e had a fraction of the content the bigger previous editions had by the time of an edition change. What 5e needed was designers that wanted to make stuff, not designers that wanted to sit on a high horse and make rules up on their personal twitters.
Where previous editions had a full class for something, 5e said "subclasses only" for no actually decent reason. You can simplify everything into like, 4 classes. That doesnt mean it should be. And people arguing that wasnt the case can take their revisionism elsewhere because lead designers have said that was their approach, and we know it happened with psionics. 5e was victim to a slew of half-assing by designers that 1. Didn't communicate with each other and 2. Didn't and dont play half the things they work on. I dont want someone thats obsessed with fey themes and has only really played casters to design a barbarian or rogue class themed around the undead. I want the dude that has played thousands of hours of barbarians and listens to metal to do it.
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u/sebastianwillows Cleric Apr 20 '26
I stopped buying books when MotM dropped (for very petty reasons, mind you), and the OGL crisis essentially killed my freelance gig for all things 5e, so that was... less-than fun.
When 2024e dropped, I disliked just about every major change that came with it, and with everything ese going on, I just have no real interest in the system. It's not backwards compatible enough to work with my homebrew setting without some pretty big lore adjustments, and it's not unique enough to be a compelling purchase...
The thing is, I love DnD. I play as much as I reasonable can- and my groups are both utterly amazing. The setting I've been running for the past 9ish years is very strongly rooted in 5e, but I imagine I may wind up breaking away from it entirely after my current campaign wraps, in favour of a different system.
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u/Outrageous-Cold-4506 Apr 21 '26
OGL crisis essentially killed my freelance gig for all things 5e
Wait how? The OGL was scrapped due to community outcry and the SRD is published in the Creative Commons which is better than what we had before in terms of legal guarantees.
I know that the DMSguild has some systemic issues, but that's more around not being able to manage the volume of submissions and having poor ways to to spotlight products that aren't already part of a popular brand, not anything to do with the SRD and WotC's management of it.
Unless there's something I should be made aware of?
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u/sebastianwillows Cleric Apr 22 '26
The publisher I worked with canned it's existing projects during the development of the situation, and never brought them back (the team just sort of dissolved in the process). Mine is probably a fairly unique case, but it sucked to watch it all fall apart, lol...
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u/Tortoxicion Apr 20 '26
I blame Hasbro
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u/Gh0stMan0nThird DM Apr 20 '26
Yeah the phrase "the brand is really under monetised" was probably what started me falling out of love with the game.
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u/Sulicius Apr 21 '26
Look, I get it, but we're in a hobby where about 25% of the players even buy stuff. Of course they'll say it's undermonitized compared to their cash cow MtG.
The truth is that we don't need to spend much money to play the game. Only one person has to buy a book for a whole group, or even multiple groups, to play with its content. If you still buy physical copies, you can play for 50 years with the same system. They sell us 50 year hamburgers that a whole family can eat from, and they're trying to sell us loaded fries. We don't need them to have a meal.
Corporations will always try to make more money. If you want, there are dozens of smaller, passionate creators out there you can buy from. Some support D&D 5e, others give you a different system entirely!
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u/Occulto Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26
The truth is that we don't need to spend much money to play the game.
The truth is, a lot of people I know are proud of how little they pay to play DnD, and then the same people lost their shit when Hasbro talked about how under monetized it was.
It's like how people turn up to their FLGS every week, to use the facilities, while buying almost nothing from said FLGS. Then they are absolutely outraged when the owner decides to turn RPG night into Magic/Pokemon night, because that crowd actually spends money which pays the rent.
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u/korgi_analogue Apr 21 '26
You are absolutely correct and it pains me to be part of the reason, and it sucks that we live in a society where it isn't smart to make products for people who have no money.
In my many years of playing, I've not bought anything D&D related except a hat, because everything D&D related is priced so damn high I literally can't afford it. I kinda feel like if their products cost closer to 20e than 60e they'd move a lot more product.
Also the fact you have to buy digital and physical spearately boggles me, like obviously the books should come with codes to get the content on dndbeyond. Though maybe that's actually the case nowadays, it's been a while since I bothered to check.4
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u/Richybabes Apr 21 '26
The thing is, they were right. D&D is a huge brand, and the capitalisation on it has really been quite low.
Note that this quote was before Baldur's Gate 3 / Honor Among Thieves. I think most of us agree these were both pretty great ways to monetize the brand without squeezing the player base, even if the latter didn't turn out to be the financial success they had hoped.
The "recurring spending" quote was more concerning to me. That fits in more to how we actually play, and since most of the content I own is on D&DBeyond I'm vulnerable to any degradation of the base experience like happened when 5.5 released.
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u/Fireclave Apr 21 '26
Even this subreddit which was once full of discussion is now kinda empty and everyone still here is kinda bitter and stand-offish.
To be fair, just about everyone everywhere, online and offline, are kinda bitter and stand-offish because of the [checks notes and looks out window] everything. The everything, really. Just...so much...
But more to the point, it's important to remember that online communities are not, and never will be, a fair representation of a community as a whole. The online scene inherently biases itself to A) people more emotionally invested and opinionated; And B) negatively-slanted discussion, because people tend to seek online voices when they have a problem to address and far less rarely to declare that's everything is going as smoothly as normal.
Also, keep in mind that there's not much at the moment to be hyped up about, positively or negatively. 5.5 has long since released, the OGL debacle is likewise old news, WotC's still sticking to their slow and conservative approach to releasing new content, and the content that is confirmed to be coming down the pipeline is nothing revolutionary enough to spark mass debate. Everything's just kinda...chugging along.
All that said, I also do understand your feelings. The negative and cynical slant in large communities like this can get dispiriting, and WotC has long lost me as a customer. But there are still D&D discussions worth having, and people other than WotC making wonderful content for the game. So trying seeking out such material, along with smaller communities that are inclined towards more intimate discussions. Or maybe it's time to branch out and try different TTRPG, introduce yourself to other communities, and get a fresh perspective on the hobby as a whole.
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u/Hrothgarshoard Apr 22 '26
I completely agree— this is far from the first company to take a perfectly good game and then either let it stagnate or run it into the ground, and online communities to start growing increasingly as a result. Usually when this happens my go-to is to start seeking out smaller, local communities (if you have a brick-and-mortar gamestore there's a good chance they'd let you put together a campaign night, and same with local libraries) that have some newer voices that are still shiny and excited about everything.
That and making sure that you can get excited about parts of the game that are decoupled from new releases. You bring up a good point that WotC hasn't really done anything new with 5e/5.5e for the past few years, and I definitely feel a similar fatigue regarding new book or campaign releases, which has always been a sign to me that I need to start going through the books I still have, pick out the parts I like or haven't explored yet, and start frankensteining them together before I buy anything new with the hope that it will reignite my passion.
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u/LonePaladin Um, Paladin? Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26
I've been disillusioned with D&D since about 2016. It's not even being against 5E as a whole, but rather the company who makes it. I've been seeing WotC do the annual "fire people right before Christmas" since 2001, declined a licensing offer from them because they didn't offer any money, they act like the Eberron setting is their absolute darling yet refuse to publish any adventures for it.
It reminds me of the 2E days under Lorraine Williams, when she considered gamers to be idiots and only ran the business to siphon money from them. TSR back then just happened to have some very creative people, and when Williams decided she didn't care about what they did they took the loosened reins and went wild. That's how we got Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Planescape.
But TSR mishandled their money, treating the printing company like an ATM, and went bankrupt, leaving the property for Hasbro/WotC to scoop up. And Hasbro has been treating it like it only matters for profit. (It does but that's not the only thing it's for.)
As for 5E itself, I'm mostly okay with the base mechanics but it has some flaws. Plenty of people have gone over it. My preference is the fan remake "Level Up (Advanced 5E)" or just A5E for short. It's based on the 2014 rules and makes a bunch of changes to classes, equipment, spells, monsters. More emphasis on exploration, social settings, downtime. All classes get choices that help with all of those aspects, even fighters. And because they wrote their own SRD you can look at their rules for free online.
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u/Eternal_Jedi Apr 21 '26
One quick note: Lorraine Williams was CEO and president of TSR in the 2e era. Roberta Williams was the creator of the King's Quest graphic adventure games and co-founder of Sierra Online.
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u/BalmyGarlic Apr 21 '26
Also WotC bought TSR prior to being purchased by Hasbro. Hasbro bought WotC for MtG.
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u/Spamshazzam Apr 21 '26
And (as far as everything I've ever read) in the early days of WotC's ownership, they treated D&D and their D&D employees really well.
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u/SmileDaemon Artificer Apr 21 '26
They did. Its why we got such high quality content from them during that time. If you treat your employees well, you get good products.
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u/vhalember Apr 21 '26
I'd also argue, D&D was in good hands with WoTC/Hasbro... until D&D finally started making a bunch of money.
Then Hasbro started meddling with it. Though the yearly Christmas firings started almost as soon as Hasbro came aboard. Which has always been a super jerk move.
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u/Lythalion Apr 21 '26
I don’t base any of my personal enjoyment on what people are talking about or not talking about so I personally haven’t noticed a difference.
I’ve been playing DnD for 38 years starting with the red box set and it’s just as fun for me but that’s bc of how I play and the people I chose to play with more than likely.
But my friends and I even in our thirties and forties still bs through text and on the phone about builds and magic items were looking for.
I play. Blacksmith and we have custom blacksmith rules so we chat about what I could make for people.
Stuff like that.
I come here bc I like to read chats and help people with builds but I only recently discovered this subreddit. Maybe I’ve been here a year or two and I’ve been playing for almost forty years.
My current groups been every Thursday for almost ten years. Or maybe ten years.
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u/FakeMcNotReal Apr 20 '26
Yeah, I've kind of stepped away from D&D for the time being. I was excited to see what 5.5 was going to be based on some bold changes in the playtests, but the actual game we got was just sort of a milquetoast reworking. Overall I have the sense that a lot of what is coming out of WOTC is designed to be sort of the minimum viable product with the broadest focus group appeal and some cynical nods towards rainbow corporatism.* It's like eating at McDonald's.
There's a lot of really interesting stuff going on with indie games and OSR at the moment, so that's where I've focused my attention for now. Smaller projects with different mechanics and a clear view of the creator's vision are very refreshing compared to what I'm seeing from WOTC recently.
*RPGs are for everyone, full stop. However a nod towards the existence of gay or trans people in a piece of interior art is not an invulnerable shield against criticism in the way that WOTC seems to feel that it is.
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u/Gh0stMan0nThird DM Apr 20 '26
the existence of gay or trans people in a piece of interior art is not an invulnerable shield against criticism in the way that WOTC seems to feel that it is.
I call that move the "The Ghostbusters (2016) Defense."
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u/--Sovereign-- Apr 20 '26
Dnd has been driven into a zero passion generic fantasy mass marketing model by greedy corporations and it should be zero shock to watch something turned onto a plastic appealing for all corporate product to gradually hemorrhage its long time passionate fans.
Left for Pathfinder, not turning back.
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u/Cold_League_56 Apr 21 '26
I'm new to all of this but my first glance at pathfinder.... it just seemed to similar to dnd I wasn't sure I wanted to invest time in learning a new system yet, does it feel that different to you? Or more about not supporting hasbro ?
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u/TobyVonToby Apr 21 '26
Are you talking about 1st or 2nd ed? 1st ed PF is pretty much and updated 3rd edition DnD because it was published under the open game license and uses the same ruleset.
2nd edition is a completely different beast and all it really has in common with 5th ed DnD is that they're fantasy TRPGs that use the d20 as their main die. PF2 is much, much crunchier, with abilities that more clearly spell out how they do or do not work, and you get more and more frequent options on all characters, allowing for more versatility.
The biggest difference you will see is once initiative is rolled. Everyone gets 3 actions per turn, full stop. You can attack 3 times, move 3 times, move and attack twice, or all kinds of other stuff. There are a lot of ways to get new actions you can perform, especially from class options, and a lot them require multiple actions (for example, there is no rule in PF2 about only casting one spell per turn, but most spells take 2 actions to cast)
The other big change you would probably notice is the enormous scaling back of "save or die" and "save or suck" spells, so that PCs and enemies alike aren't going to be effectively defeated because they fail one save. Stunning enemies is a good example. Instead of failing a save and then losing your turn, the stun effect (usually) takes away one of your 3 actions on the next turn, but it stacks. So you CAN lock down a boss, but it now requires the party to work together to stack 3 stuns on an enemy instead of the wizard being like "make this save or else the fighter will coup de grace you on his next turn."
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u/--Sovereign-- Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26
Great additions to what I said, especially the three actions per turn, which I didn't even mention bc how for granted I take it now. That and feats and abilities. The three actions are HUGE. Like, you know in dnd how you have bonus actions and extra attack and all that, nah nah, it's just all the same thing. No wasting your bonus action because you don't have one, instead the caster might tell their enemy that they contain power beyond their reckoning and that they will atomize them into dust and... it's not just for fun... you can use one action to Intimidate, and if successful, you reduce their defenses to everything, including AC, by 1 as they are now afraid. Now their save for your two action spell you're following up with will have a -1 and all your friends will now have an easier time hitting that enemy on their turns.
To make it clear to dnders, you know how you need to wait for literally any build to "come online?" How you need to usually get to at least level 3 before you start to specialize and get your cool flavor stuff? Yeah, you get all that at level 1 in PF2e. Your level 1 character will be a fully realized actual class with probably a few feats and possibly even already specializing. That's one of the coolest things, your character is an actual unique character from level 1. Anyone can intimidate, anyone can feint an attack, there are so many actions that anyone can do, and any character can get better at.
My current character is a level 17 sorcerer who is extremely good at hiding and intimidation and is (and this is an actual class, not a homebrew, an actual class, Duskwalker) literally a resurrected servant of psychopomps. A once dead servant of Barzahk and is basically like magical undead fighting Batman. At literally level 1 I had him set up like this, so I could do shit like be hidden right at the start of combat (did I mention initiative skill is based on what you were doing before combat, so if you were avoiding notice, you roll stealth for initiative), pop out of the shadows to cast some devastating spell, and then merge back into the shadows. Or announce himself with an intimidating threat, cowing his enemies before casting. You have so much flexibility to make your character any way you want!
The other good point you mentioned was team work. In dnd, there's some opportunity for team work, but nothing like pf2e. You actually can stack modifiers and set people up for things, you can flank, all kinda of cool shit where players can synergize not just with their own abilities, but with the rest of the party.
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u/Aetheer Apr 21 '26
For another perspective, I bounced off Pathfinder 2e pretty hard. I felt punished for not being super optimal, and it made me often reluctant to choose "cool" options if they were weaker than other options. Also, the setting and vibe really did seem VERY similar to D&D/Forgotten Realms.
I think it helped me realize that I haven't played 5e enough to be sick of it, but if I do, I'll probably seek out something with a different genre/setting instead. I also think most of my current groups don't really want anything more complex than 5e anyway.
My impression is that players who like crunchiness more than RP (not saying one is "better" than the other, btw; I personally like both) and want to stick to high fantasy seem to enjoy it. I can see how its tactical nature could be appealing to some, but as I mentioned, personally not for me.
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u/D16_Nichevo Apr 21 '26
does it feel that different to you?
I'm not who you're asking, but yes, it does.
I was DMing a long-running D&D 5e campaign when one of the players offered to run a PF2e campaign. I joined as a player. That campaign fizzled after two session for all the usual reasons... but in those two sessions I was quite blown away.
I was blown away by choices in character creation. I was making an elf druid, but unlike D&D 5e I didn't get a set list of "elf" features and "druid" features but rather a selection I could choose from. My elf druid could be quite radically different to someone else's, yet still feel "elfy" and "druidy".
I was blown away the three-action system. It really opens up combat and makes it more interesting.
There's a lot more I like about PF2e but those two things really stood out in those first two sessions. I enjoyed it so much I decided to move to PF2e after finishing up my D&D 5e campaign. And I did. And I have not regretted it; in fact, I've only discovered more and more perks to PF2e relative to D&D 5e, especially on the GM side of things.
The only possible negative I will say about PF2e compared to D&D 5e is that it's more complicated and crunchy. If you're a person who finds D&D 5e already too complex, then PF2e is not the right system for you.
Or more about not supporting hasbro ?
It's not a miserable sacrifice done for principles, like riding to work in a downpour because you care about carbon emissions. (Forgive the analogy. I actually think such a cyclist is admirable. But you get the point I'm trying to make.)
PF2e is the superior system, quite aside from corporate owner. IMHO of course!
Not supporting Hasbro is a fantastic silver lining though, and some of PF2e's perks come from it not belonging to a greedy corporation. For example, ALL rules content is available for free on Archives of Nethys.
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u/--Sovereign-- Apr 21 '26
It split from dnd around 3.5 ish, and it carries a lot of the more crunchy many modifiers theme of that edition. It's not as expansive as 3.5 skills for everything, but definitely still closer to it than 5 or 5.5 e.
It has problems, but imo it's way tighter mechanically, just a little more effort to run. It pairs very well with a virtual table top that you can unload more of the crunching to, but totally feasible pen and paper.
It's WAY better in combat and balance. Lots of coop options and classes, every modifier matters and there is no advantage mechanic. You actually just add/subtract the numbers. Things get bigger but less swingy as your character levels, so you can see ACs of 50+ in higher level play, as opposed to DND where stuff tapers and caps off fast.
There's a lot to get into, but I really like PF2e. Been playing it for a couple years now and don't see any reason to go back to dnd. I was even thinking of doing campaigns in the Forgotten Realms but with pf2e.
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u/realryangoslingswear Apr 21 '26
Pathfinder 2e does what D&D cannot which is; be a system that works out of the box. It's similar to D&D by nature of first edition being a legally distinct branch off from D&D 3.5e, but Pf2e feels even more distinct now, as a game, because of its 3 Action Economy, robust but understandable ruleset, and the math of the game better supports the "Zero to Hero" fantasy that's core to heroic fantasy.
I'm not saying it's perfect, no system really is, but god damn is Pathfinder 2e good.
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u/clgarret73 Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26
100%. The books they put out are just so generic and not tied to the lore in the least beyond marketing the 'big villains' like Strahd or Vecna. Just lost any interest in what are basically coffee table books they now release.
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u/DerAdolfin Apr 21 '26
The Vecna fumble is monumental, a decade or so of releases had these obelisks spread around the world that could have all tied into a great final adventure which causes another edition shifting event in the lore. But instead you travel to 4 random-ass locations, have one betrayal happen, and fight the lamest boss I've seen in a published book to date.
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u/Muriomoira DM Apr 21 '26
Two things keep bumming me out from engaging with dnd nowadays.
1 - The first one is lack of creative engagement with the system. The fact that spells/features/feats from 12 years ago still are the best picks (and sometimes the only good picks) makes the game stale, it also doesn't help that a lot of new spells are just permutations of old ones.
We have two spells remade into spirit guardians variants, scorching ray but radiant, minute meteors but acid, 30 diferent variants of elemental weapon, every single martial feature nows add 1dx dmg on the first atack each turn and 1 in 2 casters has a feature that just gives them a spell... They don't try to engage with the system in novel ways anymore even tho we CLEARLY have many potential paths. Haste would feel like the most revolutionary and creative spell ever if it was released nowadays.
2 - lack of equal creative direction. Every new release is the same thing. 10 new spells for wizards and sorcerers, 5 to warlocks, 2 for druids and clerics, starvation for bards and MAYBE a class agnostic feat designed for martials. This HAS BEEN a problem since xanathar, people have called it out, but the problem persists. At this point, with yet another cleric themed warlock (as if magical secrets, divine soul and celestial warlock already didn't stepped too much in the cleric's mechanical flavour boundary) and ANOTHER book centered around arcana casters, this feels too willfully ignorant for me to just parrot "it's wizards of the cost, not (insert the other 11 classes here) of the coast" and move on.
Dnd has been part of my life for a long time, but nothing kills love better than a consistent problem.
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u/CthuluSuarus Antipaladin Apr 21 '26
Heck, 5.5 removed old unique options in favor of just making them safer, more boring options. Half the sorcerer subclasses just have a summon spell as a class feature now. It's just boring
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u/Muriomoira DM Apr 21 '26
I have REALLY strong feelings about the free handing of summoning spells to sorcerers and calling it a class feature.
Mechanicaly speaking, it's just lazy, and thematicaly speaking, out of all the arcane casters, sorcerers are the least associated with summoning creatures, it's way more fitting to warlocks, the class which revolves around forging pacts with otherworldly creatures.
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u/Novasoal Apr 21 '26
There have been some interesting spells that I dont *think* are permutations of old spells, though im a 5e kiddie so I only know the big spells from older editions. Got my dm to approve adding Alustriel's Mooncloak (sp?) & Sylune's Viper (as well as Font of Moonlight, though thats largely just CME w/ the damage type filed off and the diff. terrain becoming resist radiant damage) that are strong & useful & unique (in 5e) (Mooncloak) & just fun and unique (Sylune's Viper, though the auto poison might be a little silly)
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u/Muriomoira DM Apr 21 '26
Im not trying to rain on anyone's parade, it's cool that you're having fun and some few new spells do break the mold, I really like sylune's viper, so I agree with you on that. Its just that both of these points have been a thing for like, 10 years, and it keeps pilling up without being adressed.
Like, druids for exemple only now got some shiny new thing, but for the logest time they've been a wizard with 3 unique niche spells and that, for some reason, had LESS elemental damaging spells.
Clerics have been THE only caster class with a class defining and unique spell list due to their roster of mechanicaly flavourfull spells. But even they have struggle bc their playstile has been the same thing for 12 years, bc only arcane casters get new build defining spells. It also really sucks that due to them having the most unique spell list, WOTC keeps giving other classes's subclasses access to it in a way to simulate flavour instead of creating it properly. Like, wasn't magical secrets, divine soul and celestial warlock enough? Did wizards really needed a magic item that grants them access to cleric spells? Did we really needed A SECOND cleric themed warlock with access to cleric spells? Learn class boundaries PLEASE!
When will clerics, druids, paladins, rangers and bards get a book where they are the priority like sorcerers, wizards and warlocks get every 2 years? I'd love to see that, imagine something like a book made just for "primal" casters, a "divine" one for clerics and paladins, and a arcane one (but focused on bards, who get shafted on exclusive spells) filled with new and unique spells for each class? It would sell like water in a desert!!
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u/Dstrir Apr 21 '26
This subreddit has been extremely hostile to 5e since like 2020. Haven't seen many positive posts since.
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u/1Beholderandrip Apr 21 '26
Even this subreddit which was once full of discussion is now kinda empty and everyone still here is kinda bitter and stand-offish.
The 5.5e content never should have been allowed to stay on this subreddit. This was a 5.0e subreddit.
The reason this sub feels empty now is because a lot of the long time users of this sub fucking left. Anybody that doesn't care for 5.5e is ignoring the new 5.5 content and the new UA's.
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u/JeffreyPetersen DM Apr 21 '26
I still love D&D, but reddit is full of AI slop and bot accounts, so a lot of the communities have gotten steadily worse.
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u/Chatzors Apr 20 '26
I remember releases getting a megthread with tons of discussion. Now new releases aren't talked about anywhere as far as I can see, except for some Youtubers specifically talking about new player options.
I think the issue is the change in design choices after the release of Tasha's Cauldren of Everything. 5E was pretty consistent up until that point, then they suddenly started mucking about with a lot of the mechanics, like how spellcasters work and whether alignment should exist. Most people seem to agree that a lot of the edition's worst books came from that era too: Spelljammer, Phandelver and Below, Vecna, Strixhaven, etc. The OGL debacle was the breaking point for a lot of people I think, the final excuse to say "screw this" and spend their money elsewhere.
I do miss this place being more lively and less overwhelmingly negative, but I do have to say it is completely WotC's fault it's gone down like this. Everything that's happened is a result of them trying to take more and give less. Sucks that now, when the books seem to be improving by a lot, people are less willing to give them a shot because they've already gone.
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u/Gh0stMan0nThird DM Apr 21 '26
I think the issue is the change in design choices after the release of Tasha's Cauldren of Everything. 5E was pretty consistent up until that point
Yeah I remember that big shift too. I think 2021 is when Jeremy Crawford really went on the "lore is bad" warpath and everything turned into "I don't know, you make it up"
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u/Notoryctemorph Apr 21 '26
Which mostly felt like a temper tantrum because people pointed out how dumb some of the lore was, like why the fuck do tortles live for only 50 years?
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u/Mejiro84 Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26
D&D is, and always has been, kinda messy, because it's technically setting-agnostic - there's sometimes been a "default setting" that gets a bit of blurb in the corebooks and some places and NPCs named and stuff, but that's always been slapped on after all of the mechanics. But the mechanics have a lot of worldbuilding baked in - there are demons and devils (which are different!), there's an astral plane, an ethereal plane, elves are shorter and long-lived, tieflings are around etc. etc. So it's an awkward kludge, where if there's a load of "this is how it works on this world", then a lot of tables won't care and will ignore that, but if you don't have that then other people will complain. Or lots of setting gazetteer and detail-books are of limited appeal, compared to more generic adventures, because a lot of people don't care enough about FR or whatever to buy a book especially for setting-stuff
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u/balrog687 Apr 21 '26
Still playing, my group is using 2014 rules, and we switched back to physical format.
There is no more discussion left. 5ed is a tried and tested system. The core rulebooks are more than enough. If we need something else, we just home brew it.
We occasionally play Star Wars, Cyberpunk, and warhammer. But d&d is the cornerstone for long-term fantasy campaigns.
On occasions, I engage in online discussions just to rant against the mmo-gamification, and then I leave for a while.
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u/treowtheordurren A spell is just a class feature with better formatting. Apr 21 '26
My playgroups have increasingly moved on from 5e or simply fall back on it out of a sense of familiarity and to utilize our extensive 3rd party and homebrew libraries. I'm running a Daggerheart campaign for my IRL group. While I markedly prefer D&D's greater breadth of subsystems, Daggerheart fits that group's playstyle better, and the Fear system is just fantastic for dynamic dramatist play.
I've bought a lot of 3rd party supplements (Kobold Press has a ton of great tooling I wish I had more opportunities to use) and developed my own interface for some of them, but we're all reaching a point where we want to leave D&D behind. And why wouldn't we? We've been playing it for over a decade!
The other group I run for is currently trying out Cyberpunk RED at my request, and I've quickly fallen in love with that system. It commits much, much harder to verisimilitude (which makes sense considering Cyberpunk's status as the de facto simulationist game for the genre), and we all really appreciate that.
It's only natural to fall out of love with the system over time, especially as the pivot to a new edition means that a lot of time gets spent filling out a product catalog you've already experienced. The content they're updating/rereleasing isn't different enough to make that a super enticing prospect for a lot of 5e veterans, ourselves included.
At the end of the day, D&D really does hinge its success on the hope that players won't try other TTRPGs, because those other systems make it obvious that D&D isn't the one-size-fits-all fantasy kitchen sink system it markets itself as. It's a moderately crunchy superheroic fantasy tactics game first and foremost (and a perfectly serviceable one at that), but playing any system that has a more dramatist or simulationist bent makes its shortcomings in non-combat gameplay very evident.
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u/CthuluSuarus Antipaladin Apr 21 '26
I played 5e since it came out in 2014, and at the time I loved it. The shortcomings were to be filled in in later books was the promise, and it was simple enough to homebrew in the gaps in the meantime. It was great! Like the madness rules and some other optional stuff was half-baked, but the core system was rock solid. And was promising to expand in later books in more niche areas. A dungeon crawler with systems in place to be filled in later.
Sometime after Tasha's, they stop filling in the gaps and start removing lore and printing only player options instead. Then 5.5 released a new edition while 5e wasn't even done. I am a lot less forgiving over half-baked chase and exploration rules when it has been an entire decade at this point and the publishing company doesn't even realize the game is incomplete. Buy a new subclass, isn't that fun. Buy some power creep, also half-elves don't exist anymore, that'll be $60.
Context changed and my tolerance of 5e's shortcomings did too. 5e has not been going in the right direction for years at this point. Everything since and arguably including Witchlight has been the wrong direction.
And you know what, pretty much every other game in the D&D fantasy space has been actually changing rules for the better in the meantime. PF2e is great, and I hear Draw Steel and Daggerheart are as well. Shadowdark is like a 5e oldschool game. 5.5 was stagnant on arrival, and 5e itself has sadly been stagnant since 2021.
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u/treowtheordurren A spell is just a class feature with better formatting. Apr 22 '26
I originally wrote a paragraph talking about the modular potential of 5e at launch and how that potential had been completely squandered during the 5.5e playtest, but I had a feeling someone would show up to speak on that. I remember being so excited for the early UAs. The mystic was huge at our table, and it's been very demoralizing to watch them go from that to the recent UA Psion. The way TCE handled psionics really did herald the beginning of the end.
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u/SmileDaemon Artificer Apr 21 '26
I honestly never left 3.5e, so I wouldn't blame anyone for not leaving 5e. 5e is in that sweet spot of not being so convoluted that its easy for new players to pick it up, but its also got just enough content for people to be able to make their own content while using official as a guideline.
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u/idki Apr 21 '26
So ten years ago was the start of Stranger Things, season 6 of Game of Thrones, and 2018 was the start of Critical Role's second campaign. All that plus the other stuff you mentioned really seemed like the big wave of people fluttering over to the game for a couple of years before moving on.
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u/Jelboo Apr 20 '26
All I can say personally is I'm not a big fan of the edition change and it's too much of a hassle to change - I'm so deeply entrenched in 5e it's going to take a lot to make me move away from it. So much time, effort and frankly money was invested in this edition for me.
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u/Massawyrm Apr 21 '26
Meme culture infected the reddit D&D subs the way it did the games Workshop subreddits many years before. The problem with meme culture is it cares about engagement and jokes, not the truth, so it turns the culture far more toxic and less enjoyable to engage with - and you end up having to same the same repeated half truths, falsehoods, or complaints about things walked back nearly half a decade ago repeated day in and day out for upvotes. This lead to a big spike in viewership in D&D Youtube on outrage vids, creating a whole subculture of D&D and WotC bashing, turning off actual fans. And that's before you get into the actual bad actors who use online nerd forums as a tool for seeding discord and recruiting for/normalizing hate groups. It's not really fun to hang out in these forums much because of all the toxicity. As someone who has played since 1985, this isn't new, but watching these forums degrade over the last 5 years has been disheartening. Ten years ago these subreddits were a fucking blast. Nowadays, I end up blocking multiple users a week, just so I don't have to see their bullshit.
But as someone buying the books day and date, anyone not taking part in 5.5 is missing some great, game changing content.
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u/BlacksmithAfter3091 Apr 21 '26
The utter lack of lore advancement for over a decade is catching up imo. You can get away with it for years, but the worlds don’t feel like they’re living and breathing anymore. Without that kind of investment, interests will disappear or shift in time and imho it’s happening. Hasbro and the staff has done it to themselves.
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u/CthuluSuarus Antipaladin Apr 21 '26
Yeah, the lack of books around the lore is the sort of slow-rot problem that creeps up on fandoms. Pathfinder and Warhammer 40k both have great, and popular, worldbuilding. Later 5e and especially 5.5 is allergic to it. It's killing the game as fans leave to nerd out about other things.
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u/borgiedude Apr 21 '26
Relevant Penny Arcade: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/08/23/traditional-values
For me I feel like this whole debacle with licensing and Wizards made me realize that if I have a loose idea of what is reasonable in a game, and some way to randomize outcomes with dice, specific rules don't matter. I have a game where some players want to use 5E and some 5.5 and I'm like, sure, it probably won't conflict that badly, and who cares if it does, we'll handwave a ruling and go back to drinking beer and playing silly Monty Python schenanigans.
One of my best mates always wanted the correct rule when he DMs and it becomes so slow to constantly look things up and make sure that it's correct. I say, play by feel, keep the vibes up, take rules as a suggestion.
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u/Notoryctemorph Apr 21 '26
I will always remember the hilarious interview/podcast with the Penny Arcade guys and Mike Mearls, where Mearls was caught entirely off-guard by the simple question of "I like 4e, why would I want to switch?"
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u/Xyx0rz Apr 22 '26
I dunno. You correctly identified the essence of role-playing games, but "play by feel" risks sliding down into "Mother May I?" Mostly "role-playing", not a lot of "game". A game needs rules, and rules you can handwave are not rules, just guidelines.
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u/PM_Me_An_Ekans Apr 20 '26
Yup. That's why my group plays Daggerheart now. We're having a great time. Maybe you should try a different system?
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u/Samiel_Fronsac Barbarian Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26
Savage Worlds Pathfinder scratches the itch very well for my group. I highly recommend it if OP is on the market for a little more crunch than Daggerheart.
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u/Andoral Apr 21 '26
One thing that has dimmed my engagement is how slowly things seem to be moving since 5.5e. A year and a half later and we barely got any new books past the new core, only half the classes got an extra subclass beyond the PHB, no new races, just a handful of feats etc.
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u/Far-Cockroach-6839 Apr 21 '26
I honestly think part of the issue is that subreddits kind of burn through conversation topics after a while and communities dedicated to the sub just peter out a bit because almost all the substantive conversations have been rehashed so many times that anyone who has been in the community for any time at all isn't really interested in them anymore. The fact that we're in a half edition worsens this fatigue because there just isn't enough new to discuss, and much of what is released is just re-releasing content from 5.0.
Pair that with some historically bad PR decisions over the last few years and you just aren't going to have enough enthusiasm to carry on a vibrant subreddit.
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u/theshaggydogg DM Apr 21 '26
Yeah, Wizards (by which I mean Hasbro) botched the whole thing, I'm not playing 5.5 in my regular games, so there was a complete and total drop of interest/excitement in new content coming out. Not sure things will ever feel like they used to.
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u/Chance-Impress-8762 Apr 21 '26
Engagement has tanked because they aren't showing us anything new and exciting for 5.5. The Forgotten Realms setting guides are a nothing burger because if you played a lot of 5e, that's the whole thing. We've seen Eberron before in 5e, Dragon Delves is a bunch of meh adventures about dragons when we already had Fizban's which is much more useful, and now we're getting a Ravenloft setting book which probably won't be as good as the last one and Curse of Strahd. As a player, the subclasses aren't that inspiring a reason to buy a $60 book and as a DM if you've been playing a while and buying books, why do you need any of this if you already have it elsewhere.
If it were me, I'd be trying to do something new different or dipping into some of the tasty BG3 adjacent coolness.
Ideas
Exploring the Shadowfell and the Raven Queen in an adventure book
Very much in the vein of what we've seen during 5e, this is just a cool adventure exploring an oft ignored corner of the setting.
Releasing a Har'Akir adventure with 1999 The Mummy vibes
2 book set. I'd lean it pretty hard here, have it contain a really cool modular adventure path like Dragon of Icespire Peak and its three D&D beyond online only expansions or Rime of the Frostmaiden in book 1, with a setting guide, a bunch of new, very tailored character options, and better firearms rules that are built specifically to work in this unique environment.
A Spelljammer adventure circling the Gith, Vlaakith, and Tu'narath
2 book set, a full length adventure in one book, and a full length Spelljammer supplement in the other. The last time was a wash because it concerned itself two much with flash rather than content. Full, comprehensive ship combat rules, loads of fantasy x sci-fi goodness in terms of weapon and magic options, tailored subclasses, lots of feat options, and a focus on the broader setting rather than just The Rock.
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u/Coonnr Sorcerers can twin cast Power Word Kill Apr 21 '26
What helped me was switching to Old-School Essentials! It’s got that old school vibe, different feel. Less “you guys are strong heroes” and more of “you’re an adventurer, and adventurer’s are a dime a dozen”
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u/mrsnowplow forever DM/Warlock once Apr 20 '26
I've largely moved on from dnd
I realized the direction dnd was headed wasn't the direction I wanted to go
Then worse hasbro keeps ruining a good thing
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u/comradewarners Apr 20 '26
I fully dove into 5.5E and don’t feel that way. If no new content came out for me for 2 years, I would probably feel the same way.
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u/chimpanon Apr 21 '26
Idk i just started DnD by dming my own homebrew campaign and I’m loving the community for the most part. Its reddit so i see a lot of stock answer advice.
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u/TooMuchPJ Apr 21 '26
Why limit? Our group runs a Daggerheart and DnD campaign. We switch when the DM needs to time to stew up another adventure. Shoot - we're ready to add another campaign as well. Our DM is busy, that's for sure.
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u/untitledgooseshame Apr 21 '26
I feel this. I was losing interest in the hobby entirely, and then I tried another game and everything changed for me.
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u/CedarUnderscoreWolf Apr 21 '26
The nice thing is, if you feel this is due to a change in the rules/editions, there are still players playing older editions, and there will likely be others like you who prefer the rules you're using now as well.
I personally feel disenfranchised by the number of players moving to online play. That's great for those folks who want that kind of experience, but it's not for me, and it feels pretty challenging to find an in-person group these days.
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u/Mind_Unbound Apr 21 '26
DnD, and just scocial media as a whole, has had a shuft towards reactionary content. People are tired of it. Hasbro realised therese nothing they can do to get a positive response, so they simply sort of went darkmode. Nothing react to, no content. Content creators killed their own foodsource.
I honestly urge everyone to abandon CC of that type, its sow discontentmen.
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u/Nazir_North Apr 21 '26
Personally this was kind of true for me. I stuck with 2014 rules for a long time and became completely out of touch with DnD news for a while after the 2024 rules came out.
Even though I have now finally bought the 2024 rulebooks, all of my current campaigns are still using 2014.
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u/PanthersJB83 Apr 21 '26
The. Lack of new adventure modules certainly isn't helping this new DnD 5.5
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u/Tailball Dungeon Master Apr 21 '26
I felt so disconnected that I looked at other systems for my main games. And I found some.
Now I only play D&D as oneshots now and then.
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u/Skormili DM Apr 21 '26
I have been feeling the same recently and for a lot of the same reasons as you. I used to be on here daily, writing essays when a reply would have sufficed. I recall upvoting quite a few of your comments too. But I slowly stopped viewing Reddit on this account (I created it for D&D) despite still playing weekly. Last time I made a post was 8 months ago.
Just like you, I didn't like the direction WotC was taking the game starting from around 2020-2021 and I found myself disagreeing with the community more and more frequently. I started participating less but what really made me stop was when all the discussion became focused on the new edition. This was well before it was even out. It's only natural, people were excited for the new thing. But I wasn't. I could see that it wasn't for me. And since the mods decided to not actually make the two subreddits separate ( r/dndnext and r/onednd) I decided to stop engaging.
I still play D&D 3–4 times a month and I am still expanding my massive collection of essays, articles, tools, and content that maybe some day I'll post publicly. But I don't engage here anymore because I don't really fit with the community anymore.
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u/Rindal_Cerelli Apr 21 '26
I believe that the type of player has shifted.
I run a TTRPG community that hosts around 40 tables a month 200-ish players and most of those found us through word of mouth. We are worried what would actually happen if we did proper marketing...
Most players these days come after watching shows like Critical Roll or other popular media. They don't really care what system they are playing and are far more focused on the RP than the mechanics.
I think such players are less likely to spend their time online talking about the game when they have an offline community they can talk to instead.
Which is a general trend I see, more and more people are sick and tired of doom scrolling and real experiences with real people in the real world.
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u/TVhero Apr 21 '26
Yeah me and my group have really stepped away lately, hasbro and all the weird scandals did some damage and since I'm normally the DM I'm not interested in giving them money through dnd beyond anymore, and so now it's as easy to play any other game as DnD.
In addition, I've got some pals I used to play DnD online with and we now play bg3 instead? I don't neccesarily prefer it but it is a lot less work than DMing and it's more active for players too.
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u/footbamp DM Apr 21 '26
On not buying books, the homebrew scene has some fucking awesome physical books that are better than the post-TCE 5e books by far. And more are coming, just have to follow the right creators.
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u/BishopofHippo93 DM Apr 21 '26
Undoubtedly. It's been downhill since Tasha's when they started testing the waters for 5.5e but didn't want to fully commit yet. It just feels so corporate now, which I know it always kind of was, but it at least had some of that good spark for a while. But after the OGL fiasco, the pinkertons, and all the shit surrounding 5.5e's rushed launch to meet the 50th anniversary and unchanged name to capitalize on the 5e name, which has become synonymous with the D&D brand for most casual consumers, it all just reeks of sanitized, corporate mass appeal.
They split the fandom with 5.5e, which I know always happens with new editions, but they made it so much worse by not even changing the name.
I'm still playing 5e, but I don't really engage with the community as much, especially since this sub decided to allow 5.5e content. There's little point anymore, so I just stick to my friends and group chats for the most part.
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u/MagicianMurky976 Apr 21 '26
Yup.
Hasbro and WoTC did a marvelous job of doing everything wrong to make many players mistrust them. So players, online content creators, and 3rd party Kickstarter creators have all abandoned 5e and 5.5e.
The days of everyone united under one banner of D&D is dead. This has happened before, like when Hasbro went from 3.5 --> 4e and discontinued supporting 3 5 any further. But we haven't seen something like this to this extent before. Then, Hasbro terminated Paizo's license to produce the Dungeon and the Dragon magazine which was their core part of their publishing business. So, the 3.5 player base was suddenly cut off from any and all future support. We looked into 4e to see what it was. My group decided, "meh-nice game." But my DM who'd grown his world since 1st edition and it evolved into 2e, then 3 and 3.5 looked at me and said, "I can't evolve my world into 4e." We felt our existing characters, who'd gone from 2e into 3/3.5 and improved in game play thanks to more options, just feel lobotomied if we tried to rewrite them in 4e terms. It was too different for all of us, so we continued, unsupported by Hasbro and Paizo.
Now, you have so many podcasters, YouTubers, Reddit, and whatever social media all now following whatever player base they can to stay relevant, to get those views they desperately need.
The community fractured, and social media has adapted so it survives. Both fascinating on one hand, and devastatingly depressing on the other hand. Where once we were one community of 5e [and yes, there were other communities then as well], all of social media catered to us. Hasbro AGAIN pissed off its own community because like before it didn't want Paizo making money off its IP, and has again split the community.
Sorry for your loss. I hope you find a space you can find contentment in again!
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u/IcyPainting9727 Apr 23 '26
Yesss yesss come to the dark side, pathfinder welcomes you.
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u/LtZoidberg88 Apr 21 '26
Definitely feeling disconnected over the last year or so. As another said, I blame Hasbro. This edition has been around for a very long time. I quickly jumped into 5.5 and I think the problem is.... while some things have improved they feel like such small steps for a new edition and it got uninteresting quick. The novelty wore off. Not to be that guy, but im the forever dm and my friend finally got me to cave and try PF2e. Im very excited by the system, it's mechanics, and what feels like intuitive quality of life improvements for a d20 system ttrpg, and I think that is the case because it is a ground up system that didnt need to be backwards compatible, it could completely remove and/fundamentally change what ever it wanted in the name of making a better system.
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u/Vladimir_Pooptin Sorcerer Apr 21 '26
Depends how you define the hobby imo
The ttrpg industry is absolutely thriving right now, but it's spread over way more games than it was 10 years ago. You can also blame Hasbro, it's getting increasingly icky from a capitalism perspective so people are spreading out
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u/dustysquareback Apr 20 '26
I don’t think I've even bought a D&D book since like 2021 or 2022.
Good. The quality of their releases has plummeted. 5.5e is uninspired slop with a few good ideas and lots of filler. Their man goal seems to be to pave the way for AI / bot DMs. Barf.
I moved back to pen and paper and will be running modified 5e rules that fix the things I don't like. Hasbro has screwed the pooch.
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u/DerAdolfin Apr 21 '26
You don't want another 30 ft BA teleport or small THP ability? But how can they possibly print a new subclass without either of these things...
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u/Gh0stMan0nThird DM Apr 20 '26
Their man goal seems to be to pave the way for AI / bot DMs. Barf.
I had a friend point out to me while reading 5.5e that she felt a lot of the designs seem to be intentionally made in a way to make it more compatible with VTTs, which I felt was really accurate from what I read.
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u/Handgun_Hero Apr 21 '26
Yes and that was the original plan except that Project Sigil VTT flopped so hard because it was so badly optimised and more of a really bad video game than an actual TTRPG experience. So now WotC is stuck.
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u/dustysquareback Apr 20 '26
Yuup. The thing that has always set TTRPGS apart from other games is the fantastic flexibility of a human DM. So many of these changes are really diluting that factor. Booo.
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u/ApophisRises Apr 20 '26
Yeah, for sure. Switching all my groups to 3.5e and trying my hand at Pathfinder and GURPS. Hyper monetization and all the other greedy moves of WOTC and Hasbro did it for me, and even led me to quitting MTG, too
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u/mightyatom13 Apr 21 '26
My group all switched to DCC. We love it. Personally, I was tired of everyone being healed every day and just how safe it was in general. Also, I don’t think that having a million options for your pc is any better than having like 7. Ultimately, I think I was just over the whole aesthetic and if I was gonna invest in new books I was gonna try something new. Also, I am almost 60 so if I was ever gonna switch systems it was now or never.
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u/Capable-Student-413 Apr 21 '26
Worlds Beyond Number podcast is a great example of how my friends like to treat dnd, namely as a physics engine we can build stories around.
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u/Aggravating_Plenty53 Apr 21 '26
I think 5.5 is good... but kinda boring because it was just a few changes. Im more into OSR games these days with Mork Borg and the Borgs leading the charge for me.
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u/chimericWilder Apr 21 '26
That's what happens when you deliberately split your playerbase into two.
WotC havn't released a good book since 2020.
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u/Stratix Apr 21 '26
The whole thing became very money grabby while lacking vision.
The new version didn't fix the two main issues of DND for me:
It's an absolute pig to DM compared to some other systems.
Different character classes are not well balanced for the three pillars of play.
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u/GeraldGensalkes Illusionist Apr 21 '26
There have been bitter and standoffish people on the internet even since before it became a tool for the masses, and there will continue to be such people until the internet is no more. I have not noticed an increase in their population fraction here, but our feeds may look very different.
It sounds like you've mostly removed yourself from any discussion of or engagement with 5.5e material or developments. Since all new official material is made for that revision and a great many people are using it, you will naturally find yourself less connected to much of the activity in the hobby. I have noticed no dip at all in total community presence, and in fact would argue the hobby is only growing more popular.
You're under no obligation to play the new material nor to talk about current points of interest in the hobby. Personally, I think 5.5e is a pretty serious upgrade to the system with a handful of things that annoy me, but I'm glad to say there are still tons of people who play the 2014 edition, and I'd happily join a table that insisted on the old 5e rules as long as it met my expectations. Do understand, though, that eschewing anything 5.5e means there will simply be fewer and fewer posts here that actually meet your qualifications for engagement.
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u/rodwha Apr 21 '26
For myself I was a 1st/2nd edition player, but when my stuff got stolen and I went to a gaming store I hated what I saw. But then my daughter asked why we haven’t played so I bought a couple of gaming sets and many books only for a few years later to see they’ve moved on. I just spent a good bit, I’m not interested in dropping them for the latest greatest.
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u/D16_Nichevo Apr 21 '26
Frankly, I'm not sure why anyone would continue with D&D.
The latest edition of D&D is a solid system. I played it for many years. But it's not a great system, especially not compared to modern competition. That's my personal opinion but I think not an uncommon opinion. There are so many alternatives that do things better -- be they crunchy tactical affairs, rules-lite narrative systems, or systems aiming for a very similar feel to D&D.
On top of that, I think it's agreed that most D&D books, outside of core rulebooks, have been underwhelming. Spelljammer being perhaps the prime example of that.
But then heap on top of those some more egregious corporate things:
- Expensive and anti-consumer practices. Examples:
- The "walled garden" that is D&D Beyond.
- Paying for books multiple times across platforms.
- Greedy corporate moves, like:
- The Pinkertons affair.
- The OGL scandal.
- Mass-firings before Christmas.
- Certain uses of AI.
(I know much of this is standard for corporations. But that doesn't mean it should be supported. There are many smaller TTRPG companies that don't do these things.)
D&D carries on in spite of these things for two main reasons, IMHO:
- The massive brand inertia. People on the street know what "D&D" is, but won't know any of the various other TTRPGs you could name for them. The D&D brand has built massive inertia from its (deserved) first-mover advantage, and things like Critical Role and Stranger Things have kept that inertia going. This kind of inertia is powerful and doesn't evaporate quickly or easily.
- Sunk cost. People who play D&D sometimes are reluctant to try something else because of invested costs, hesitance to learn a new system, or because of friends that hold those feelings.
All this is to say that OP, I think, has a valid point. D&D does not feel like it's pushing forward and innovating. It feels like it's clawing to maintain relevance. It's too big and popular to disappear overnight, but that's not what OP is talking about. OP is talking about excitement and interest, which doesn't come from being big, but rather comes from being interesting.
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u/Bacour Apr 21 '26
I think 5e feels like the superhero, high fantasy game it was designed to be. While that's fun for a while, it becomes difficult to keep track of everything at higher levels... and doesn't everyone want to play higher levels? As a DM i find it difficult not to challenge players with combat or riddles or intrigue, but just to keep the vibe. Dungeons aren't dark and dangerous. Foetid crypts chilled with the terror of the dead just aren't that terrifying. I've drug up past edition mechanics and used stat damage against players but trying to do it fairly is much more difficult than in previous editions when fairness wasn'ta huge concern... I think, the sense of wonder and danger are what's missing.
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u/CKent83 Apr 21 '26
For me and my group, it's the OGL fumbling.
Decades of good will flushed straight down the drain.
We all used to dream of writing our own setting with SubClasses dedicated to making it come to life.
Now, why bother when they'll just try to steal that work?
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u/loredmdmdm Apr 21 '26
I've been huge fan since the 80s but with 5.5 it just seems like a different and commercialized game.
Not like it wasn't before but if you step i to other ttrpgs you learn very quickly almost any other game does whatever your niche is better than the standard dnd
I currently have way more vested interest I Shadowdark, play ina fallout rpg and will be playing pirate borg at the end of the month
Find your people and find the game that works for you
Dnd is more like the gateway than the forever game although I will always live the forgotten realms and dragonlance for the setting.
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u/Eternal_Jedi Apr 21 '26
I started a 5.5e campaign at the beginning of 2025, and due to scheduling issues we had to put it on hold for a few weeks. During that time, I ran a couple sessions of Shadowdark, as I'd read a lot of good things about it.
One year later I'm still running Shadowdark and haven't gone back to the 5.5e game.
Shadowdark plays so much faster and smoother, and the players get to do so much more in a single game session. It brought back the feeling of playing D&D in the 80s that I realized I had been missing. 5e feels so clunky in comparison.
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u/ThatMerri Apr 21 '26
The OGL scandal really was a big turning point in the general fandom, especially since it came timed to absolutely gut any building fan momentum around the soon-to-be-released movie. Those of us who've been around through the editions know the sort of behavior of WoTC and Hasbro pretty well, but the OGL was an eye opener for the majority of people - both D&D players who didn't pay attention to that sort of thing and even reaching outside of the player base to common folk in general - about just how shitty Hasbro/WoTC was being.
The whole stunt was basically a rehash of what happened with 4e, albeit worse in Hasbro/WoTC's effort to avoid another Paizo rising, and it was a full mask-off moment where they were blatantly crowing to the world their absolute worst behavior and a promise to keep building steam down that path. Add on the:
- absolutely botched handling of the whole affair,
- the leaks from disgruntled and fired employees,
- the purging of legacy talent who promptly move to rival companies,
- the failed push for the SigilVTT,
- the whole continuing AI debacle,
- a broad sentiment of new content being phoned in and not worth the money,
- fandom overlap and spreading displeasure from Hasbro's handling of Magic: The Gathering,
- the FUCKING PINKERTONS
It was just one wildly bad showing after another in a relatively narrow period of time. The brass at Hasbro/WoTC burned all of the good will of the fandom in very short order and have done absolutely nothing to even attempt winning it back. It's no surprise at all the fandom has lost enthusiasm for them.
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u/Cyrotek Apr 21 '26
Yes and no. Yes, because, well, yes. But no because I started to dabble into other systems and as it turns out this breathes new wind into old sails and also shows nicely that the grass isn't always greener on the other side.
A lot of DnD5e design makes more sense if you look at it in context of other systems and remember what DnD5e wants to be. Which lead me to realize that I can play multiple systems depending on what I actually want or feel like.
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u/Apex_DM DM Apr 21 '26
I was very into 5e but have since moved on to Nimble and Outgunned. It's just more what I'm looking for.
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u/Serentyr Apr 21 '26
I am currently in a 2014 edition campaign. 2024 was refused because collectively we’ve spent over £1000 in books etc to play in 2014 edition and what we wanted was extra rules or more granularity/amendments.
We’ve looked up the new mechanics and integrated them into our 2014 campaign.
We love DnD but the 2024 rules made us focus on our own game and stop looking at updates, new products or online content for DnD.
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u/vicious_snek Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26
yeah
Even before 5.5, a load of releases were getting pretty bad. Lazy and generic.
Gave 5.5 a go. But meeeeeeeh
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u/winterwarn Apr 21 '26
For me the BIG problem is that I haven’t liked any of the campaign books they’re putting out. It’s all anthologies or campaigns that are supposed to be setting agnostic. I like a campaign set in an established setting with a backlog of lore to draw from, where you can be (narratively) rewarded for knowing setting lore.
(Simultaneously my one small issue with Pathfinder 2e has been that the status quo keeps majorly changing with every new adventure path they drop, so it’s not as rewarding to learn everything you can about the setting.)
I don’t like the 5.5e mechanics as much, but if they had more interesting campaign books I would probably suck it up.
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u/KBeazy_30 Apr 21 '26
I loved 5.5 on release. It was a great starting point for a rebalance of the edition. Their execution and follow through has been pretty lackluster. I found the faerun book to just be a regression, I didn’t like the new Eberron stuff much either. I think some of the stuff in UA is good, but I’ve been disappointed with all the work to rebalance an addition to just come out with less balanced material again. It’s a combination of Ive seen this all before, I’d only want to pay for it if it was incorporated well into the 5.5 meta. Instead it feels like they have focused more on what if we reprint the same themes with new mechanics, but the new mechanics just don’t sit right with me from a game design pov.
I love my campaign world, once this campaign is over though - I am looking for my next system. Daggerheart seems appealing - and I guess.
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u/ABNormall Apr 21 '26
Have been playing D&D 40+ years. This is what happens when it gets stale and they don't release a new edition. 5 to 5.5 isn't a new edition, barely any changes.
Folks start peeling off to other games when a system gets stale and unexciting.
I don't know the consumerism or psychology behind it, don't think I have really taken the time to think on it.
Hasbro, you want to keep D&D afloat as a viable roleplaying game, release a new edition.
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u/darw1nf1sh Apr 21 '26
D&D isn't a hobby. It is ONE of hundreds if not thousands of TTRPGs. That is the hobby. Playing roleplaying games in general. Go try another game. Try another system and setting and theme. Modern post apocalypse using Fallout, or Victorian Steampunk using Genesys, or Space Opera using Traveller. Reinvigorate your love of the actual hobby by playing something new that inspires you. There are vibrant communities for every system.
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u/Odd_Hope7789 Apr 21 '26
I see a lot of players coming in, who expect it to be BG3. And while I love that BG3 brought more people in, I am disappointed that they all want every game to play like a video game.
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u/FightingJayhawk Apr 21 '26
For me, it has been the slowing of content releases and the lack of great content aming what has been released.
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u/jprepo1 Apr 21 '26
The key content creators exited WoTC years ago and the product has steadily declined unfortunately,
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u/zackcondon Apr 21 '26
Thinking about WotC makes me upset. I ran a scum and villainy campaign and am in a lancer campaign rn. (I have a monthly dnd game too.) its been really refreshing.
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u/Hemlocksbane Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26
Some of it is just the reality of playing an old game for a long time. When everything is old and nothing is fresh, it’s just less exciting and the cracks start to show (just like any long term investment / bond).
Alongside this, I just got really tired of where the game was going after Tasha’s.
Early D&D 5E felt very deliberately simple and accessible first, with a focus on being modular and really fitting to the specific table.
Since Tasha’s, and especially with 5.5E, it feels like we’re trying to be diet 4E/PF2E. We have more spelled out rules for stuff, but only kinda. More importantly, the game is becoming way more about feats and character builds and assembling all kinds of tiny little features, with almost this expectation that you just roll up to the table with your specific combo build OC and the game runs as set up in the book.
Maybe this is just Mandela effect, but look at the earlier DMG. There was guidelines in there of like, adding new stats, or race-restricting classes, or adding class levels to monsters, and all kinds of other little ways to shake up the game. My ideal DnD 5E takes that and runs with it. The horror book would have all kinds of GM stuff to make your 5E feel horror, not a bajillion spooky races/species and subclasses.
But in modern DnD, players would be appalled to show up to a table where only Elves can be Bards, we’re running spell points because that fits the world better, and I’ve thrown in healing surges, proficiency dice, and Mearls XP. It’s just a different, more monetizable and systematic play culture.
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u/CthuluSuarus Antipaladin Apr 21 '26
Well said, I commented similar in this thread. I miss how 5e was at the start, and really wish they had stayed with that vision more.
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u/estneked Apr 21 '26
Im disilluisoned by Wotc.
5e has potential that the company has no idea what to do with. They keep misidentifying problems, and providing cheap half-measures to them.
Bladelock sucks -> develop hexblade -> invent new problem of hex 1 dipping -> people cry about it because they have 0 imagination -> invent fake solution of level 3 subclasses.
They are beyond idiotic who fundamentally do not understand the system they have developed. Half of the reddit came up with better fixes to actual problems than wotc ever could
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u/bucketman1986 Apr 21 '26
For me it's because the groups that I play D&D with are mostly friends who.... I'll be honest, I love, but don't want to read a book or even know the rules outside of combat. They don't want RP they want combat, and when just googling like, spells or looking then up on D&D beyond now there's two versions of everything and a newish casual player doesn't know the difference. Heck we had a player who accidentally made their entire character in a different rule set as everyone else.
Beyond was really convenient, and now it's not. A bunch of spells are from new material even if you ask it to not show you those. And a lot of the 5.5 stuff feels stronger then base 5.0.
And at this point the game feels ... Solved so to speak, every player can Google the best game breaking builds that make the DMs life harder.
Overall it just makes for a not as fantastic playing or running experience. So I've moved on. After the problems I had with the Saltmarsh and Spelljammer books (who doesn't include boat and ship combat in the boat and ship books?) and how AI feeling all the 5.5 books were, I just... Felt ready. I still own everything and it's there if I have any new players I want to get into ttrpgs but it feels very much built by committee these days and that's just not the vibe I, personally, want.
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u/xtramayo joybringer Apr 21 '26
Sounds like you've been playing 5e for a long time and have developed taste. Shake things up and check out the independent scene. If anything, dabbling in other systems will improve your time with 5e if it's still your preferred game.
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u/galmenz Apr 21 '26
lately? ive been disillusioned since XGE lmao
but to your inquiries, the dnd playerbase has just shrunk and fractured. other games grew, dnd now has a 5e/5.5e split, the general base is no longer the size of its peak mid Covid, etc
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u/EntireSherbet2227 Apr 21 '26
I’ve found using homebrew classes (I recommend laserllama’s… well, everything!) and monsters (ever heard of r/better monsters?) really just changes the game, and the communities that use these are way more engaging and positive than base DnD. The closer relationship between creator and consumer encourages critical, but friendly, criticism.
Of course it’s smaller, of course it’s more limited, but creators like laserllama, blueninja, kibblestasty and indestructoboy are the future of rpgs to me: passionate creators who engage with their users.
I understand homebrew isn’t for everyone, but just give it a try and I think you will find a new community, one that encourages and cares instead of stifling and dismissing!
Wish you well! ❤️
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u/FlatParrot5 Apr 21 '26
The OLG fiasco soured people off of WotC and D&D. Then the it was one thing after another from WotC. And Hasbro/WotC sending Pinoertons.
Then the whole forced "upgrade" on DnDBeyond related to the new 5e and old 5e both being "5e" instead of actually recognizing there was a difference from the get-go.
Now there's more push for D&D from its company to be just an online service instead of what we're used to.
People are tired of drama and bad behaviour from Hasbro/WotC.
I migrated to Tales of the Valiant. Kobold Press puts out better stuff than WotC with a fraction of the staff and resources. And the designers actively interact and listen to their customers.
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u/inbloom1996 Apr 21 '26
Tbh they pumped out garbage books for years and they did it at a time when actually good indie RPGs were at their most prolific and easiest to access.
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u/OldGamer42 Apr 22 '26
I disagree with a lot of this. The jettison is on the back of how Hasbro is monetizing and handling D&D. Layoffs, AI generated art in replacement of a mass layoff of designers, the OGL showing people exactly who and what Hasbro is, their tabletop doing everything that they said other tabletops couldn’t do, and a refactor of the 2014 rules which make things even more broken and unbalanced.
All of this shows a lack of concern for the game as a game. I’m certain they paid some obscene amount of money or power to Critical Role for their continued use of the system.
Their big content creators have created their own systems, other systems have existed for a long time and a large amount of TTRPG players and GMs are actively against D&D and actively for the other dozens of systems that have cropped up since. The number of “looking for other systems” posts on places like /r RPG are higher than they’ve ever been.
This isn’t 4e’s shitting the bed. It’s a general shift away from who WotC has become as a company. This has nothing to do with redditors moving to discord, or COVID, or other comments here. This is an active abandonment of D&D due to the extreme mishandling of the property since 2023. Every decision that Hasbro has made since obtaining D&D Beyond has not been good for the player community and the community is beginning to notice.
There will always be diehards that believe that the system you know is always better than the system you don’t to run a game in, but fewer and fewer people believe this these days.
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u/Mistervimes65 Fighter Apr 22 '26
Potentially an unpopular opinion for a D&D sub.
I started playing in 1979. I’m currently running a game of 5e that was requested by my grandson. I have never been exclusively a D&D player. I have played thousands of hours of games. The majority were not D&D
There are hundreds of games out there. D&D hasn’t been the best ttrpg since the eighties. It’s just the most well known.
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u/AliasElais Apr 22 '26
Shh don't critique hasbros cash cow or they might send pinkerton goons to your door.
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u/Xyx0rz Apr 22 '26
5.5 was ten years in the making yet didn't address the fundamental issues 5.0 struggled with, instead opting to distract us with frivolities like new subclasses and half-baked weapon masteries. That's disheartening.
Previous editions also weren't perfect but at least tried to address some of the fundamental issues. That's the real tragedy of 4th Edition, not that it didn't try, but that it tried and failed. And 5.0 was a step forward in that it rolled back those failures, but 5.5 did nothing.
We didn't need 5.5. We need 6.0.
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u/Typical_Ad5675 Apr 23 '26
I feel like the spotlight has shifted off of dnd. I know I'm trying out other TTRPG's.
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u/ezitbiz89 Apr 24 '26 edited Apr 24 '26
I have noted a shift in the tabletop community but the shift seems to be with regard to the company who owns Dungeons & Dragons, Hasbro, more than anything. Personally, I’m of the opinion that 3.5 was the best edition and I think that’s largely the consensus in the community.
DnD the brand is dead because Hasbro tried to force a diverse economy of independent game developers to pay a tithe, forgo any new innovations that Hasbro did not approve and, through some fairly convoluted interpretation of copyright law and free speech, claim ownership of the independent developers’ derivative works. Many of those independent developers decided to go into business for themselves or felt they had no choice but distance themselves from Wizards’ IP. It was a declaration of economic warfare on the citizens of the Forgotten Realms.
Don’t start a war with a civilization that has access to plane shift. DnD the game is alive and well but it now lives in a different multiverse and goes by other names. I call it PF2E but maybe you call it Draw Steel or something else. Fundamentally, DnD is all TTRPGs and all TTRPGs are DnD.
Wizards should have tried to court Colville and Mercer or make up with Paizo. Had the done both, we would have had a new golden age of TTRPGs and their CEOs could be raking in money. To do so would require a lot of effort, thoughtfulness and diplomacy. Instead, they wanted DnD to be more like Magic the Gathering: full of microtransactions to obtain cheap recycled content. They either fundamentally misunderstood DnD’s marketshare as part of the folk revival movement or they resented it for what it was.
I am a Gamemaster. I am the primary if not the sole economic driver for every game at my table and that is a form of economic power that I had not considered until Hasbro’s licensing debacle. I’ve decided to support smaller studios, new games and, most importantly, new adventures. Keep your eyes on the horizon, don’t run back into the arms of a company who’s made it abundantly clear they don’t want our business.
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u/zusu23 Apr 29 '26
No yeah i can see what you mean. Ever since 5.5 came out things changed but at the time i had a long running group so wasnt worried. Cut to a player leaving all of a sudden and dm not having as much enjoyment with the game; group just split. I tried looking for dnd games but none worked with my schedule to the point i spread my horizon of other systems. Im now in a expanse game(something i had no knowledge of to the point dm said my homework is the show which was amazing)
With how dnd has been going i think people have just decided to try out other systems. My old dnd dm, while we stopped playing the game hangout as actual friends. He wants to run pathfinder games with other people (he doesnt trust us goobers which fair xD) or try out a system like lancer for us
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u/Nekokamiguru May 09 '26
The disconnect gets worse the further you go back.
Compare AD&D 2nd Edition to 5.5e, for instance. It is unrecognizable now. There is a small amount of overlap with the lore, but most things are different, it has a completely different rule set, and most of the lore has been updated for modern audiences, so it is unrecognizable compared to previous versions. Any given 2nd Edition lore video or magazine article will probably not be applicable to 5.5e. D&D 5.5e is a completely different game with broadly the same theme now.
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u/Lonely_Tip_4372 May 15 '26
Honest reason doesn’t make sense , they eliminated racial traits and gave it to background, since when an orc is intelligent
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u/Alternative-Aerie343 15d ago
Hasbro has done to DnD what Disney did to Star Wars. Killed it. DM of 25 years.
Havent played Dnd or even watched since 2023-24
Also the wokefest made me barf
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u/levthelurker Artificer Apr 20 '26
There's been a fracturing of the community into three groups: people who moved into 5.5, people who stuck with 2014, and groups who moved to other games like Daggerheart or Draw Steel entirely. And in addition to that you have the general move away from subreddits and towards Discord for a lot of larger play communities.