D&D, 2024 or not

I’ve been asked on a number of occasions if I planned on switching over to the newest edition. Let me be honest, I have not actually opened a 2024 Player’s Handbook as of today. I have only what little I’ve read about it, snippets, and videos discussing its content to go by. It does not draw my attention.

For me, 5e has been a blessing. It has brought my family back together and I’ve had the opportunity to meet lots of people by sharing a love of tabletop gaming. It is open enough to be creative in my own homebrew adventures, yet has a good structure to run combat and guide me in the rulings I make during the game. On top of this, there are plenty of source books and third party content to garner ideas to throw into a campaign.

So what is wrong with 2024? Perhaps it’s too open. Races are not inherently good at anything anymore, half-races don’t exist, and backgrounds seem to have become more important than classes, these are just a few of the things that I believe are not good. Now, don’t come after me! I know that not every elf is focused on magic, but I believe this should be an exception. I believe that the newest edition is trying too hard to break stereotypes and be super inclusive for a GAME. If you push that hard on character creation and breaking the “norms,” then what can you consider a “bad guy” (they have just been misunderstood).

On the topic of half-races being removed because they believe them to be racist (IN A GAME!) is racist itself. They disguise this decision with the idea that half-races imply that they are inferior to either of their parent races. Since they are putting real world issues into a game of pretend on a mechanical level, then let’s reverse it. They have just implied anyone who is mixed-race is inferior to either of their “parent” races. In a world where diversity and inclusion is applauded, I’m honestly surprised they did this.

That aside, I have access to a lot of the material for 5e (2014). Comparing that with what I’ve heard about 2024, I don’t think I could run a long campaign with the newest rule set. I struggle to make a good, balanced encounter with the OP characters that are present in 2014, I know that 2024 got stronger (or more broken, depending how you look at it). AND, from what I understand, it is not really backwards compatible like they had originally claimed.

Overall, the shift made for 2024 was for the online gamer, in my opinion. With AI game masters a very real thing lately, this new edition is designed to work with that. AI game masters won’t forget monster stats, do not pull punches for story effects, and will not allow players to step out of the box mechanically to do really cool things. Therefore, the mechanics have to include stronger, faster, bigger actions. That’s not really for me, so I’ll stick with 2014.