Where I Stand on 5e Now

Having now run most of a campaign under 5e, I think it's a good time to take stock of where I stand on the issue now. Because some of my views now don't match up with my initial impressions, and it's worth considering how things have actually panned out compared with what I expected.

The bottom line is that I'm not overly impressed with 5e. It's okay, and there's a lot that is good about it, but... every time I think of some positive aspect of the game I'm immediately provoked to think, "but...". I don't think there are any unalloyed good aspects of the game, and that's a real shame.

Probably the most damning aspect of the game is the sheer physical quality of the books, or lack thereof - every single one of my 5e books has had a visibly weakened spine before I've even finished a single read-through. Indeed, every one of my 5e books is in noticably worse condition than my 1st Edition "Unearthed Arcana", and that book was notorious for its binding issues - and many of my 5e books have had no at-table use at all. (I find this extremely poor, and especially since 5e saw above-inflation price rises compared to previous editions. I don't begrudge paying the money; I object very strongly to paying more for a less-good product.)

I'm also not terribly impressed with the adventures, which is rather a weakness when those are the core focus of the edition. In fairness, I thought "Lost Mine of Phandelver" was brilliant, as was the first half of "Out of the Abyss". But "Princes of the Apocalypse" and "Curse of Strahd" were only okay, while "Tyranny of Dragons", "Storm King's Thunder", and the second half of "Out of the Abyss" were poor.

I do think that the core game is decent, but it's also very limited. 5e does what it does well, but it's really good for the vanilla D&D experience and that's about it - everything that's unique about Eberron (or, I would presume Dark Sun, Spelljammer, or other "out there" settings") either doesn't exist or falls flat. Which means that a campaign that is anything other than 'normal' D&D, or a repaint of the same, is likely to fall flat.

Certainly, it is not my intention to run another Eberron campaign in 5e unless and until WotC formally support the setting. And I have no expectation that they will do that any time soon (and there's no guarantee that I'll like their 'support', of course). Indeed, if I run the game again, it will be casual games only - either games for less experienced players, or an open tabletop, or something like that. For any more 'serious' play, I'd be inclined to revert to 3e... or just not bother at all.

Additionally, the game is frequently quite poorly presented in places - although the rules for monster building are reasonably decent, they're also poorly explained. A good rewrite, without the need for any real changes, would make these significantly better. Likewise, the guidelines for creating encounters are poor - a huge step back from 4e's fairly robust system.

Tying into that, and despite my initial enthusiasm for the "Monster Manual", I've found that a lot of the 5e monsters are not terribly well designed. Part of this is the return of monsters with 'spellcasting' being presented with a long list of usable spells - something 4e very wisely did away with. But that could be fixed simply by better presentation; harder to fix is that the monsters just don't seem to be very good in the first place - too many seem to oscillate wildly between walkovers or overly deadly, which is possibly the worst of all worlds.

Ultimately, my conclusion is that 5e is better, but more limited than 4e - while 4e very much wasn't for me, I find myself really wanting to like 5e, but constantly stymied by its weaknesses.

(Which means my rating for the editions runs something like: 3.5e, 3e, BECMI, 2nd Ed, 5e, 4e. But that's maybe a little harsh - 5e is better designed than either BECMI or 2nd; it just doesn't 'grab' me in quite the same way.)

Right now, I don't foresee running any more campaigns in 5e. As noted, I'll probably use it for some more casual games, be they for less experienced players or open tabletop games. But I'm hard-pressed to see what they could do, practically speaking, to make me really happy with the edition, especially since some of what I'd like to see would essentially require a "5.5 edition" that I don't think anyone really wants to see.