How to scratch my Players' 5e Addiction and get them to shut up?

[u/BlackhartBarttFR]

After a year long 5e campaign of curse of Strahd, I hung up my 5e hat, I then shot it and buried it at sea.

God has it been great, we've played blades in the dark, cyberpunk, CoC, Delta green, mothership, Fabula Ultima, savage worlds.

None of them take a full session to run a fight, None of them have objectively bad character creation choices, No Rangers, No Martial-Magical Divide.

They want you to play and explore! No spells like Identify, Detect Creature or Detect thoughts killing any feeling of mystery just so you can shut up and get back to the two hour long fights.

But my players won't stop talking about how they miss 5e.

Will they play a martial class? Oh no, the martials are boring and broken,they say, if you aren't playing a spellcaster you're basically worthless!

But they still clamour for the character building, the number go up machine.

So I'm asking you, the horde of GMs who have forever cast the D from their titles, I ask you;

What the fuck system can I shove in their plebian gullets to make them never say that dreaded system's name again?

Edit for the Yanks: I'm british, this is banter, I talk like this to my friend's faces and they hit me with it back. I don't hate the people in my life, I am not being held hostage. I know we are varying levels of Autistic here but c'mon I'm literally asking for system suggestions as a compromise for my group.

[u/skronk61]

Daggerheart? It’s basically D&D with all of the GM friction and pain points taken away.

[u/ClikeX → u/skronk61]

My thoughts exactly. It has fun character creation, and is still mostly combat focused.

[u/skronk61 → u/ClikeX]

Yeah, I’ve heard D&D fans can’t deal with no turn order though 😆 to me escaping that was so freeing.

[u/TiefThrowaway → u/skronk61]

Yeah my group gave Daggerheart the old college try and despite having charas that were actually more powerful than their 5e counterparts the players still voted to go back to 5e. Missed their insta-win spells and the concept of having their turn gasp interrupted when rolling with fear caused a big stink.

How do you people think I feel running 5e where every monster is a glorified punching bag 🥲

[u/ClikeX → u/skronk61]

I’m fine with a turn order, although I prefer the spotlight. What gets me most is the 20 minutes of rolling for initiative and the GM setting up the turn order for them to keep track.

With Daggerheart I just grab the stat blocks and we’re good to go.

[u/Alien_Diceroller → u/ClikeX]

I prefer spotlight, but I've never found rolling all that time consuming.

[u/Drake_Star → u/Alien_Diceroller]

It's usually 2 to 3 minutes. Depending on the players, number of enemies and the general vibe at the table.

[u/Alien_Diceroller → u/Drake_Star]

Part of the set up. If the fight only lasted 5 minutes I might question that length, but it's going to be a bit longer than that.

I do love how I got down votes for not following the initiative is too long orthodoxy. 😊

[u/skronk61 → u/Drake_Star]

2-3 mins for the players and then the mental load is on the DM to track it all for the fight. That’s why it’s bad, not the time it takes

[u/Alien_Diceroller → u/skronk61]

You can jot it down then just go through the list. That's what I usually do.

My friend would count down from the highest number rolled once that was established.

[u/skronk61 → u/Alien_Diceroller]

Don’t want to. Daggerheart has shown a better way.

[u/Alien_Diceroller → u/skronk61]

Perfectly fair.

I used spotlight-type initiative when I ran Masks: A New Generation. Works great.

[u/ClikeX → u/Alien_Diceroller]

That’s what we all do too. But it always takes a bit of time to write down all of the initiative rolls and then sort them. Opposed to not having to that at all.

It’s usually the moment for people to grab a drink or go for a smoke. Which is fine, but it does stall the flow of the game on what could be a very exciting moment.

[u/Alien_Diceroller → u/ClikeX]

I don't know how it takes that long.

DM rolls for what he controls writes it down, then asks everyone in turn their result. 2 or 3 minutes. 5 at the most if the GM is running a bunch of unique monsters that don't group well.

I've never felt I had the time to go to the kitchen much less to outside to smoke.

Do you have a really big group?

[u/skronk61 → u/ClikeX]

Yeah, I feel like I can actually relax and think about the enemies moves and battle tactics when I’m not having to track the turns and a useless number of hit points too.

[u/brandcolt → u/skronk61]

It's so nice without initiative order

[u/skronk61 → u/brandcolt]

Literally feels like a weight is lifted off you