I think most of your bad experiences with the game are down to people and not any system or ruleset. Unfortunately their is nothing Mike Mearls and his team can do about that.
What's so cool about 5e?
Not as much as DCC for sure, which is the coolest system around for my money. It is reasonble to say that most games will feel watered down after playing Dungeon Crawl Classics. It is turned up to eleven...it's one louder
But, 5e on paper is a pretty nice game. It's a roleplaying game and we like those right..?
It promotes imagination and interpretation. It doesn't have a rule for everything and plays out quite quickly with freedom to try new and interesting things. It can be played without looking up charts and tables for the most as modifiers are elegantly taken from the equation by the 'advantage' mechanic. It borrows ideas from many d20 simulcrum, cloned and inspired games like DCC or Castles & Crusades. Immitation is the best form of flattery right?
In my first games of it, I had players using skill, coming up with clever solutions to problems through creative use of spells and ability,..and of course a barbarian who liked to hit them wiv axes....I ran my group through the first part of 'Hoard of the Dragon Queen' last night. I ran the adventure as suggested and suffice to say...it has issues! That baby needs tweeking. I wish I had started my players off on the Goodman adventures as they are usually more to my liking. I think HotDQ is a terrible module to demonstrate a new system...unless the message you are trying to send is...BANG, you're dead! It has a couple of real killer moments right from the off that are not really very fair to the players. A difficult challenge is great and deadly combat is exciting but...I like to give the players a fair deal...and this module is heavy handed for sure. Hopefully it gets better as the story unfolds. Interesting ideas but a bit poorly put together. Maybe it was a rush job due to the system launch requirements etc..
Anyway, we are having a go at 5e to see what we make of it. So far we like the way it plays. I think it plays better than it reads actually, if that makes sense. The game will need good adventures for busy DMs and luckily our friends here at Goodman have already made a start for us
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
if I hadn't just laid out a dragon's retirement fund on DCC books and dice then I would have ordered these new modules as well.