I need a new RPG, and it isn’t D&D 2024: a wishlist

Here’s a confession I never thought I’d make: I’m not excited about D&D 2024.

In fact, I have serious misgivings about it. And I thought I’d write an article about it.

In a way, it’s two articles: a breakdown of my journey with 5e so far, and a wishlist for the game I want D&D to be.

I should start by saying that I haven’t actually seen the 2024 rules yet. I wasn’t at Gen Con, I haven’t been sent review copies (physical or otherwise), and I only half-followed the playtest while it was going on. But I’ve seen enough in-depth videos and articles on the Player’s Handbook to have a decent grasp of the direction of travel.

And . . . I don’t love it.

The story so far

We should pause for a minute and remind ourselves that the 2014 edition of D&D is the most popular edition there has ever been. It brought thousands of people to the hobby, including people who hadn’t played for years, like me. Yes, Stranger Things and Critical Role have been a big boost, as was the Pandemic, but we shouldn’t overlook the merits of the ruleset itself.

My first experience of D&D was 2nd edition AD&D, and I played 3rd edition extensively. I’ve also played a bit of 4th edition, Pathfinder (sometimes called 3.75), and Old School Essentials, which is essentially a retroclone of 1st edition. When I came back to the hobby in 2015, 5th edition felt familiar, full of flavour, streamlined, but still recognizably D&D. There were lots of features that I really liked, like bounded accuracy, advantage and disadvantage, cantrips at will . . . 5th edition was exactly what I wanted.

At first.

As time’s gone on, I’ve become more and more aware of the problems of 5e. Options fatigue: the ever expanding array of races and feats and spells, and the potential for new rules exploits this creates. How easy it is to break the game: a passive Perception score that sees everything, an Armour Class that means you never get hit, infinite simulacrums, adventuring parties that kerb-stomp surprised enemies before they even get a chance to act. High-level characters who feel like MCU superheroes. And so on.

But I don’t think 2014 5e needs to be completely rewired. There are spells that need tweaking (counterspell, Leomund’s tiny hut, pass without trace), feats that need rebalancing (Great Weapon Master, Sharpshooter), rules that need clarifying (surprise), quality-of-life fixes, that kind of thing. I’m completely on board with some of the changes in language (although I still think ‘kin’ is better than ’species’) and a move away from bioessentialism and colonialist attitudes. I would probably incorporate many of the changes from Tasha’s, especially to the monk and ranger. But so much of what was there ten years ago is still fine.

So why does 2024 worry me?

My concerns

Mainly: power creep. A game that already feels very superheroic, very quickly, is getting even more so. Feats at 1st level? Player’s Handbook species that can fly? Spellcasting for everyone? Weapon mastery? This is already a complex game, a game that requires literal textbooks to play, a game where turns can take a long time. Why are we adding to this? There was even something (disclaimer: can’t find the link) in a recent promo to the effect of ‘DMs will HATE these new options you have!’ You mean, DMs: the ones who buy the most stuff and spend the most time prepping for this game? Why would you intentionally make life harder for them?

And then there’s all the other crap: the digital future, Project Sigil, ever-increasing monetization, and generally just Hasbro acting like an evil megacorp every other week (see, by no means exhaustively: the OGL scandal, sending round the Pinkertons over a Magic the Gathering card, sacking staff two weeks before Christmas, and most recently, pursuing YouTubers for copyright infringements after reviewing books that WotC sent them to review).

D&D is fighting for its soul right now—and it appears to be losing.

My RPG wishlist

All this leads to the other part of this article. If not D&D 2024—what?

What follows is loosely organized around chapters of the Player’s Handbook and the core rulebooks. And just to be clear, these are opinions. I’m not saying ‘I’m right and you’re wrong.’ But do you agree? And if so, what game should we be playing instead?

1. Streamlined ability scores. Maybe just Strength, Agility, and Willpower. And if we’re not actually using ability scores for anything in the game any more, can we just record modifiers, like Nimble 5e?
2. Fewer species/kin/races. PLEASE. I don’t want my fantasy world to look like a Mos Eisley cantina. Human, dwarf, elf are a must, and orcs and goblins deserve to be core. Slightly less common: maybe catfolk, lizardfolk, and something like halflings or gnomes. (And yes, ‘mixed heritage’ options like half-elves, too.)
3. Should we go back to ability score modifiers for kin? I’m not sure. Maybe just for physical differences like Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution? It still feels kind of silly to me that some halflings can lift more than a dwarf. But I also see the positives of a system that lets people play what they want to play.
4. Fewer classes. Maybe even just three or four like the Cypher System. Either that, or clear, distinct archetypes where you choose a lane and stay in it (ie, no multiclassing).
5. Stop making everyone a spellcaster! Magic should be special, not ubiquitous.
6. The name ‘barbarian’ isn’t great. I’m surprised it hasn’t been changed. I can see why some games have changed ‘paladin’ to something like ‘knight’ or ‘champion,’ too.
7. Controversial opinion: clerics are kind of weird. As an archetype, I’m really not sure they are very common in popular fiction. I probably wouldn’t include them (despite being one of my favourite classes!).
8. D&D rangers aren’t what I want to play when I play a ranger. Bob Worldbuilder has a great video on this. More survival skills and herbalism! No spellcasting!
9. Do we really need sorcerers, warlocks, AND wizards? I would maybe just have a single mage class.
10. I’d love to have a more elementalist approach to arcane magic—earth, wind, fire, and water, that kind of thing. And then divine magic (if we even call it that) could be more about mind, body, and spirit.
11. A smoother power curve more generally: less superheroic at high levels, but a touch less deadly at 1st. I’d also like the power increases to feel less ‘lurchy’. For example, going from 4th to 5th feels like a different game, and it’s kind of weird.
12. Does that mean I want something gritty and grimdark? Not necessarily. I like grit and darkness, but I also like variety. And I don’t like frequent, meaningless character death.
13. Do we still want alignment? It’s a useful shorthand, but I dunno. I could live without it.
14. Fewer languages! And I like the Eberron approach where nationality matters more than species. Languages should probably follow cultural boundaries, not racial ones.
15. Backgrounds are great, and if anything should matter more than your species.
16. Equipment: reduce the armour table, maybe just something like ‘gambeson, leather jerkin, brigandine, chainmail, plate’. The weapons table could probably be simplified, too: do we really need three types of hammer, three crossbows, etc? I also have a weird issue with rapiers feeling out of place in a medieval game, but that’s just me. I don’t think the adventuring gear needs to be quite so simulationist.
17. Feats (or something similar): yes! In general, I like the idea of characters levelling ‘out’ rather than ‘up’ (ie, gaining more options without gaining crazy power). I love the design of ability trees like in Diablo 2 and the modern Tomb Raider games for something like this.
18. Skills: UGH. The 5e skill list is weird and badly written (viz: the presence of both ‘Perform’ an individual musical instrument proficiencies). Do we even need skills at all?
19. Adventuring: make journeys fun! And that doesn’t mean more random and more simulationist. See Pointy Hat’s video on this.
20. Rests: long rests should be either a) harder to come by, or b) less powerful. It’s too easy for PCs to recover completely in 5e.
21. Initiative: ugh, simplify it. Draw cards from a deck, go round the table, roll a single unmodified d10, I don’t know. It shouldn’t interrupt combat as much as it does.
22. Loosen up on round length. Let the DM make a round as long as it needs to be.
23. More options than just ‘attacking’. Forbidden Lands does this well: thus, you can parry, shove, feint, dodge, and all of these actions actually mean something.
24. Gridless combat. All the cool kids are doing it these days. Nothing kills the fiction for me like counting 5-ft squares. Zones are great, and theatre of the mind can be, too. But I want to lose the hyper-simulationist, war-game-y feel of combat on a grid.
25. In many ways, hit points are a genius idea. But narratively, they’re kind of weird. Combat becomes two groups beating the tar out of each other, with neither side flagging until they hit zero. I like systems that use wounds and conditions like Fate and Year Zero.
26. Armour Class, too, is a neat, simple mechanic. But I do wish there was some kind of ‘armour as damage reduction’ mechanic. It just feels cool when blows bounce off you.
27. I get it: the Vancian magic system, where spellcasters ‘forget’ spells after casting them, is easier to balance. But it just feels so weird to me. I much prefer the idea of a roll-to-cast system where magic is risky and dangerous.
28. I also think we probably need fewer spells. Like, under 100. And there shouldn’t be shitty trap options like true strike.
29. And while we’re on the subject of magic: I’d love something a bit more low fantasy where anything equivalent to 2nd level or higher is rare, and spells of 6th level or higher are legendary. I’d love magic items to move in a similar direction.
30. Do I want XP? Yes, but probably something simpler than D&D’s model. I don’t want to be adding up numbers in the hundreds or thousands at the end of every session.
31. Do I want stronghold management? Not really. I want the focus to be on the characters and their actions, not their estate.
32. Other worlds (I’m not a fan of the term ‘planes’): I don’t think the multiverse should be the implied setting of the game, and visits to other worlds should be limited, in my view.
33. Fewer monsters, too! Probably something like the bronze or even the silver tier on this spreadsheet. But easier tools for making new monsters. In 5e, this is harder than it needs to be.
34. Simpler monster stat blocks. Most of the time, you just need hit points (or the equivalent), AC (or the equivalent), and attacks. But what I really look for in a monster stat block is complex simplicity, a term I’m borrowing from Matt Spaiser of bondsuits.com (yes, nothing to do with D&D). In essence, enough SIMPLICITY for me to drop in a monster without effort, and enough COMPLEXITY to provide novelty and tactical interest. The 5e goblin stat block is perfect for this.
35. I’m not sure I love how D&D dragons are colour-coded for your convenience. I would prefer to have a smaller number of dragon types, like in Skyrim, with a few themed around specific habitats like ice dragons and sea dragons. I even wonder about dragons being more animalistic, à la Game of Thrones.
36. I’ve sort of mentioned this already, but I would also love a game with fewer humanoids and less bioessentialism. ‘All kobolds are evil’ is kind of boring to me.
37. Players roll all the dice. Or at the very least, players roll more dice. When I’m not DMing, I’m often struck by how little I have to do between in turns—and how boring that can be. I like the idea of rolling to dodge enemy attacks (instead of a static AC), rolling to see if spells land (instead of enemies rolling saves), etc. The Cypher system already does this.
38. No attack rolls. Maybe. I’m not sure about this one, but I’m seeing it work in Nimble 5e and MCDM’s Draw Steel. At the very least, I like the approach in 13th Age where you always do a tiny bit of damage even on a miss.
39. One core rulebook, maybe two, with the key rules and concepts available for free in a format that’s easy to access.
40. Modular adventures, not these massive ‘campaign-adventures’ we’ve grown used to, which feel like they were written by a committee and poorly playtested. Matt Colville has a fantastic video on this.

So, what game do we play if not D&D 2024? I’m still not sure—but I’m interested in hearing your thoughts. Let me know in the comments below.

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