So after 3 posts criticizing D&D 5e, here are the reasons why you should choose it over other tabletop games. If you don’t remember my analysis method from the first post in this series, there are 3 key metrics I use to analyses games: range of content, simplicity of systems, and impact of choices. 

1. 5e is winning on content and will continue to do so 

Wizard’s of the Coast has really put the time and work into their products. They have detailed and beautiful books filled with great ideas. I think some of those ideas need to be fleshed out or left out, looking at you tools, but as a whole they consistently put out a very large amount of content for players and DMs to use. 

I truly believe that the Players Handbook is better viewed as a buffet than a rule book.This has always been D&D’s strength. In the old days, magazine articles released new classes and monsters. 2nd edition has the spell compendiums to add a ton of new spells to the game. 3rd and 4th edition featured splat books to add in new classes, feats, and combat options. 5th edition has doubled down on an ever increasing range of races and subclasses. It has never been purely “here is how to play” but more “here are more ways you could play”.

While there are a ton of other tabletop games to choose from, due to the popularity of 5e, more and more content is being made for it. D&D has the longest lineage in this field and there are ways to convert that older material into 5e. The DM’s guild allows independent content makers to publish D&D 5e materials. Wizards of the Coast is making sure they are not just leading in content, but providing content at a scale beyond what others can even attempt to do.  

2. They are tied on simplicity and impact, but that is due more to a weak field of options 

This game is either slightly simpler than others in the field or tied with them. This is less to do with 5e innovations and more to do with how almost all of these games link themselves back to the older versions of D&D. They try not to stray too far ways from that or they seek to recreate that feel which puts them back on that same path. 

Going back to my first critique, all of them do this. Why? There are way simpler ways to handle my first critique and frankly, the original elements of D&D are just an odd design. Everyone is copying the structure of that design because that is the norm for these games. Those table top norms have become so ingrained, become such sacred cow, that no one touches them. In the few cases that they do, they don’t fully reject but instead slightly modify them. This attempt to keep to the gaming tradition has hampered innovation in game design as both developers and players reject systems that are not attributes into modifiers into skills/weapon/spell. 

That said, 5e has worked hard to streamline abilities in a lot of places and leverage as few rules as possible to create as many mechanics as possible. This gives them a small edge on simplicity. Many of the OSR approaches use an older attribute to modifier system which lowers impact, once again giving 5e just a bit of an edge on impact as the other games are moving in the wrong direction. That said these two metrics are not that different when applied to other systems as they each have their own simplifications and special bonuses to give them each a bit more impact or a bit more simplicity. In the end, the race between the options is very close. 

This is why I call this a weak field of options. There are lots of options, they just aren’t that different from each other. D&D 5e is the best version of that game, but that game could use an overhaul. 

3. It is what most people are playing

And here is the real reason, the Schelling Point. Roll20 published a list of their 78 most popular games by accounts. 5e was 55% of all game, Uncategorized was 14%, Call of Cathulu (all editions) was 9%, Pathfinder was 5%, and 4 other games were between 1%-2%, the other 70 games had less than 1% each. Roll20 is mostly 5e and that matters. Most tabletop games, right now, are 5e. This makes 5e the universal language of tabletop games.

Even if you are not going to play in 5e, 5e will serve as your reference points. This is our Rosetta Stone to other systems between random gamers and that counts for something. Frankly, it is easier to modify 5e into whatever you want than to relearn all the other mechanics that a more custom system offers. This makes a cyberpunk mod of 5e a better tool for DM’s than an entirely new cyberpunk specific game or a modern age mod of 5e a better tool than a unique Noir system for that murder mystery you want to run. 

Since D&D is fundamentally a social game, going to the social over the game makes sense and that puts you into playing 5e. It is not a game design or mechanics question, it is popularity question.