Why You Don’t Need D&D 5.5 / D&D Next Evolution
It’s partly because Wizards of the Coast are not that good
They really should make better tools and content
D&D 5e is a pretty darn good set of rules. Of course, almost every DM has his or her own interpretations and house rules, because there’s always going to be one thing that just doesn’t jive with their sensibilities. But it’s a popular set or rules for a reason. In my estimation, it provides enough depth to become tactical, but the core principles are easy to understand (‘D20+modifiers’ goes a long way in explaining much of the game). This create a strong foundation on which people can build.
And all that building of house rules, adaptations and other additions, leads to discussion. Classes that are considered OP or weak. Feats that are considered “must-have”. Gameplay systems that are considered missing. You name something, there’s been a discussion about it, or someone has built it already. So what do the creators of the D&D 5e rule set do? That’s right: create books with lore-specific content that’s filled with prose and reads like someone’s homebrew. Yay!
D&D 5.5 will be WotC’s Bad Homebrew
More options =/= improvement
Think about it. Once Wizards of the Coast created the rules for 5e (meaning: the three core books), any addition to it is basically creating a split between audiences with optional rules that differ from DM to DM. I’m not talking about the awful, horrible, truly bad adventure books they publish. I mean any addition or change to the core rules. For example: in one of the books, they add the option that players can choose a race without any of the race-specific stat changes. Okay, great. We DMs can already do that ourselves. I can just allow a player to make an elf with orc stats. But we can also choose to ignore this optional rule. This adds no value, yet you pay for it. It’s just Wizards of the Coast acting like a coked-up Hollywood producer, saying “hey, you know what you could also do? How about making all the dwarves in your setting reptilian?”
Yep.
We could.
Thanks for that.
“If Wizards of the Coast were a good company, they would teach their fans about the meta design and expand on that.”
Create more ‘D&D Creation’, not D&D 5.5
You know what Wizards of the Coast could also do, instead of creating D&D 5.5, were they not such an awful bad horrible company? Lay out all the ground rules for creation. Show the math behind damage progression per level. Create tools for monster creation. Create templates for adventure production. Create virtual tools that help with the DM’ing process. But they won’t do this, because they think this means giving away their goose that lays the golden eggs. If DMs can do everything they can do, then what are they good for? The ‘hidden in plain sight secret’ is that each DM already has the goose, they just need to realize it.
“Rangers need some love in 5e.” Might be. But I hope you are giving rangers the needed love in your game, since you have full control over that. Right? RIGHT? The strength of D&D 5e is not its classes, its setting, or its monsters. The real strength are the rules and math behind it, the ‘meta design’, if you will. And this is something you can distill from the core mechanics, and build upon yourself, though it doesn’t come easy. The central idea around building challenging encounters, is a matter of mathematics and tactical thinking. If Wizards of the Coast were a good company that actually tried to help players and DMs as much as they could, they would teach their fans about the meta design, and expand on that. Instead, they pump out a bunch of optional rules with flavor text (which isn’t going to be relevant in 55 percent of the games D&D groups play since their worlds are homebrew). How about teaching people how to make classes and subclasses themselves?
The grift of the license
And the lack of meta knowledge
No, instead of teaching a man to fish, they want to sell a fish each and every day. And people buy it because they crave more D&D content, in the same manner that Skyrim players will always crave more mods. I only blame them partly for buying the content instead of making it. In the first place, people don’t have the time to create everything, so they want ready-made content, understandable. Secondly, Wizards of the Coast hardly ever teaches about the meta design, so there’s a good chance the thought of meta design never entered your mind. You really have to sit down and ponder about it, or watch a ton of YouTube videos from other DMs who think about this.
On the other hand, the cynic in me thinks: “Come on, you must realize by now the grift behind Wizards of the Coast, right? Just because they hold the official D&D license, doesn’t mean their content holds any more value than yours.”
The core will remain, so why bother with D&D 5.5?
The core rules are all you need anyway
Which brings us to whatever D&D 5.5 will be. Unless me and every DM on the internet I’ve read or seen from are wrong, WotC will not drastically alter the core, because it makes them so much money. And that’s good. But it also (most likely) means they’ll do what they’ve done so far. They’ll adapt some things, move some numbers around, change some rules, keep others; great. This doesn’t help anybody. “This once optional rule now is part of the official rules!” And if it’s a dumb rule, I’ll happily ignore it. Each and every 5e book is a buffet with a hundred options, of which I ignore ninety-eight. Even if you ignore half of it, or a quarter: it’s a bad business model that’s not intended to maximally help the end user. It’s meant to create different iterations of the same formula. Look at how their books are put together: they’re partly player handbook expansion, partly dungeon master guide expansion. Why? To maximize audience.
And I am not against businesses making money. This a far cry from criticizing capitalism. I just want businesses to provide as much value as possible. Had Wizards of the Coast created tools to work with their math, sold additions to this tool, then I would happily pay. If they made running the game easier, if they did all they could to remove as much hassle as possible, so DMs and players can focus on the narrative or the tactical combat, then I would be interested in D&D 5.5. But now, I already have the next iteration in my hands. It’s just an interpretation of the same rules and meta design.
