Hot Take: 5e is too bloated with unnecessary rules and should be simplified

5e has both too many rules and not enough rules.

It has very specific rules in some places. Item interactions, many spell specifics, grapple, holding your breath, etc.

It has very lackluster rules in other places. Social conflict, item and spell crafting, metagame stuff like making your own class or species.

I think a lot of people playing DND would be happier playing a different system. Just not the same system for everyone.

Calling 5e and pf2e bloated with unnecessary rules, meanwhile Pathfinder and 3.5e are quite literally full of a couple decade's worth of volumes and modules, in comparison to OSR?

I don't know if you're a boomer, a troll, or both

If you got to look up rules and nobody cares or wants to, skip it. Its my advice. Use rules only if its necessary and soemwhat contributing to a fun experience.

This is universal.

5e isn't just needlessly complex, it is an unreferencable mess that has very poor general rules with lots of exceptions and poor standardization. The rules for traveling are so misplaced that most players don't know they exist, not that it's possible to find them when needed. And when there are general rules, they tend to be unfun. Stuff like crafting has no depth in 5e, it's just time + gold = item. It might "work", but it's just bookkeeping there is no hidden fun.

For fantasy, I prefer Hackmaster 5e, because it keeps the complexity and detail without dumping special case rules onto players. It's not perfect, but it's way more engaging and characters feel way more interesting. WFRP 4e is also nice, but not as deep (it does suffer from rules being scattered everywhere). I'll likely end up playing OSE ot some point.

5e is pretty light though, and in most cases too light so the DM has no idea what to do and has to resort to "Rulings".

PF2e on the otherhand is crunchy AF and its awesome like that. It doesn´t have extra rules for everything, its all based on the same framework, which is pretty awesome.

The extremely simplified version of these systems being called complex is... Not what I thought I'd ever see.

Depends on the game the group likes. More narrative driven game it can conflict and have issues

However, there is something nice about knowing a balanced way to do x or y across the board and at different tables.

A good gm should be able to make a note of something or make a quick call especially in pf2e case were generic difficulty dc per level is given

5e has too many rules? If anything it seems to be lacking rules. D&D in general has too many options, but 5e often has nothing if you want rules to handle specific non-combat situations,

When systems go even lighter, it stops even feeling like we are playing a Game, and it starts feeling like annotated improv, which is very much not what I want to play. It never feels right to me as a player to be making sweeping declarations without knowledge of what the GM and the other players are planning.

Me and OSR are a complete mismatch in execution. But we work in theory and design. Where we clash is where the meme is. Simple basic rules that are to be used in pretty much every situation. Where the GM is empowered to make those rulings. Where the GM is King.

I have tried running them and constantly kept asking myself "according to the rules what am I supposed to do?" as I want to run systems as they want to be ran. What is a failure? How does the outcome space look like? And when I get to play I feel I get to relinquish so much control to the GM that I feel almost powerless. The GMs rulings and fiat rules. Sure these are my experiences and I can love OSRs and their designs while not wanting to acctually play them.

Simple rules that can describe almost every situation are also rules that over-generalize characters to the detriment of options (everyone's noticing the same things, instead of perception allowing more observant characters to do what they could do), over-include the player's capabilities in place of the character's. (Players conversational skills failing to match with those of the character they intend to play), overly abstract what they describe (a monster's "power" or a character's actual abilities meaning something in adjudication but nothing consistent/concrete enough in-world), or demand a DM adjudicate without reinforcement or restriction (In the absence of rules every corner case ruling risks the danger of turning the table into a debate between PCs and the DM, inviting rapid ends and either producing embittered DMs or embittered players* - especially under the "pack it up" approach the video suggests - and helping to increase combative tables in the future.)

The games that OSR takes inspiration from did a lot right in their mortal power-level, reasonable growth, real risk of danger, and humanistic tones but if you're trying to sell me that the growth of rules that followed aren't a direct result of weaknesses in those games? I don't think we'll agree.

*The "Dorkness Rising" problem, for a slightly more light-hearted allusion.

Meh, don't play it, then. Why turn everything into a competiton?

I hereby grant everyone permission to make up whatever rules they want for their rule sets.

Having rules for more situations is a feature, not a bug. You can always choose not to look up the rule and make something up, but if you ever want something that a designer spent some time on instead of making it up on the fly, you have the option

If we simplify 5e any more it’s gonna turn into Snakes & Ladders. And clearly OSR already exists, so there’s no need to change other systems.

I disagree for 5e about that. In fact many 5e players complain about the lack of specific rules (but IMO they merely want to play pf2e without admitting it).

To me, the problem of 5e is the community first, and lack of specialty second. 5e does a bot of everything. So when you're looking for osr, you will miss many osr feature and many things are too specific or bloated. If you're looking for rule heavy ruleset, it'll be way too light and dm dependent.

5e is the worst of both worlds. It is both far too convoluted while offering almost nothing to play with.

I don't know who needs to hear this, but you can try games Powered by the Apocalypse!

I don't find 5e bloated exactly. But I do think it has a few too many systems in place, sometimes with overlapping use-cases.

Like attacks, skill checks, saves... They're all basically the same thing, an opposed check, but they have slightly different rules. Sometimes the player is rolling against a target, but sometimes the target is rolling to save against? It's a little strange, and adds a bit of extra complexity where I don't really think it's necessary.

A lot of it is just legacy systems that are kept because it wouldn't be D&D without them.

I dunno. Every time I try to make a fighter. I have problems with the rules. Like, I wanna suplex an orc. What do I even roll?

I'm really looking forward to 'Project: Black Flag' aka 'Tales of the Valiant' aka 'CORE Ruleset', which a like-like to 5e (compatible in regard to power-scaling and adventures) that's in development right now. My community plans to switch to it as soon as it's out as they are cleaning up a lot of rules and pushing for a world-agnostic system that feels a lot better from both a player and a DM.

5e is already too simple, playing anything simpler makes me want to vomit.

Plus, OSR games are generally made by the most absolute vicious racists and general bigots imaginable. Genuinely awful in every way possible.

This is why I play Shadowdark. It’s amazing. All the best bits of 5e design, none of the cruft. Ruleslite is the way to go.

Take a look at Knave. It is a parring down of 5e.

To be honest, I found 5e is so massively oversimplified it's boring. Maybe I didn't play enough to comb through books of niche rules or something.

Hello! So I’m not trying to stir the pot or anything.

Have you looked at Shadowdark?

https://www.enworld.org/threads/plenty-of-time-to-die-a-shadowdark-review.697134/

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/413713

It was very highly anticipated, had a very successful Kickstarter, and he’s been very well reviewed.

The author has written several well reviewed fifth edition adventures.

Shorthand way to describe it I’ve seen is, modern rules, old school style.

I’m throwing this out there, because it has been described as an old-school variant of fifth edition.

It is so old school that you have to do three d6 down the line.

Also, there is a very interesting real Times Torch mechanic.

A lot of Osr games, put attention on things like scarcity and time this phone put a lot of attention on light.

I haven’t read it so I don’t know for sure but to me that sounds like possibly inspired by dark dungeons. Although I know that wasn’t the first game to have a very prominent darkness mechanic either.

Just wanted to throw this out here I never want anybody to change game systems. I just thought it might be interesting for people who hadn’t heard of it.

I think 5e is simple enough the issue is that its become ridiculously sprawling as WotC endlessly add more and more classes to the point that its eroding balance pretty badly.

Absolutely. When I read the way a round is handled in 5e my first impression was: How many movie and book heroes signature move do they want to cover with this jungle of rules? "Oh, I've seen X in movie Y doing Z! That was awesome, and I want my character doing that move in D&D, too!"

I'd say it's more of a 5e & PF problem, PF2e is much better about general rules that apply to most cases, with player abilities adding additional things on top.

But yeah, generally if you want to play 5e OSR is a better choice.

It's true; 5E and most versions of D&D are just too heavy and get in the way of actually having fun.