Firefly: Friends in Low Places

Another month, another "lost episode".

This was an odd one, actually, in that it ended a whole lot better than it started - I didn't do a terribly good job introducing the setting which meant there was a nasty lag in the middle where the PCs didn't have any clear action to take. However, this then came together a bit later when the were offered (and rejected!) a chance to bring down their would-be employed.

That was actually one of the cleverer bits of the adventure - the Alliance officer was a bit uncaring, but she was not the villain of the piece, or even particularly terrible at all. Still, it was interesting to see the PCs' Browncoat sympathies bounce up against that little detail.

Once again, the adventure featured an "evil mayor" or near surrogate - although Virgil Morningstar wasn't technically the mayor, and indeed was well thought-of by most of the locals, he was the major landowner and general authority figure. Fortunately, though, the adventure also included a secondary villain in the form of Shepherd Wiley Carson. So it was easy enough to switch their two roles somewhat, making Carson the brains of the outfit and recasting Morningstar as a fanatical convert. I daresay Book took some small pleasure in taking down the false preacher.

For the next "Lost Episode" I've decided to hold off on running my first off-book session, for two reasons. The first is simple pressure of time, as the band competition season is about to start, but the big one is that I have one episode left in the "Thrillin' Heroics" book, so it makes some sense to finish that off next. (I also have three, and soon to be five, further episodes available, one of which is the best to date. However, I'm in no rush to use those.)

The Fifth Edition PHB

Meh.

I do actually like 5e. I was very pleasantly surprised by the Basic rules, I like the way the game plays, and I consider the adventure that came with the Starter Set ("Lost Mine of Phandelver") to be one of, if not the, best adventure WotC have published, ever.

And yet, the PHB itself left me cold. Indeed, by the time I'd finished reading it, I was already bored with this new edition.

A large part of the problem is that this book isn't really the core rulebook for this edition any more - thanks to the invention of Basic, the PHB is really a supplement to the rules (albeit one that reprints those Basic rules). And, alas, I've generally found that most supplements tend not to improve a game, and very often make them actively worse. (And yet, in terms of supplements, this would be a "must have" - there's too much that is not in Basic, such that if you're going to play the game for any length of time, you'll want this book.)

The other big issue for me is that this book is basically just a retread - it's a rules-liter rerun of 3e. Now, it's no bad thing to redo 3e, but for one thing: I've now done Fighters and Wizards, elves and dwarves to death. I've been playing D&D for more than a quarter of a century now, and that whole classic vibe has lost a lot of its appeal. And, by focussing on that, this PHB feels very limited, in a way that 3e, or even Basic, did not.

That in itself is not necessarily a problem - after all, the PHB will always give the 'classic' options, and of course is limited in space. But where Basic gave the promise of more to come, and where 2nd Ed, 3e, and 4e were all quickly supported with many supplements and many more options, the startegy with 5e seems to be to very deliberately not provide such things. So when I looked at the sub-classes for each of the 12 classes and thought, "this is an ideal structure for expanding in a splatbook"... that splatbook isn't coming.

And that left me thinking more about all the things this game can't do than about the things it can. With no psionic rules and no magic item creation (and therefore no support for a 'real' Artificer class), it's hard to see how I could run a full-fledged Eberron campaign using this system. Hardly ideal that my setting of choice isn't a comfortable fit. (Worse, it also excludes Dark Sun, which would be my second choice.)

There are, of course, also the nitpicks. Pleasantly, there's nothing in 5e like 4e's absurd "stealth rhinos", which is nice. But every so often I hit upon a rule that I just didn't like, which was a pain. (The game also strikes me as not particularly caring about balance. This is probably a "security through obscurity" thing, in that I suspect the 'builder' players will prefer to stick with either 3e or Pathfinder anyway, meaning 5e won't get hit with the same rigorous workout those other editions faced. If it did, I fear caster supremacy and similar issues would quickly rear their heads again - and the lack of supplements would also be more of a concern.)

Ultimately... yeah, it's nice. Yeah, it's probably my second-favourite version of the game. But... why would I settle for second best?

(Of course, it's entirely possible the DMG and/or MM will change my mind. Watch this space.)