I was not involved in the playtest rounds of D&D's fifth edition. Too busy playing Magic the Gathering to check in on what those nerds with the books were getting up to. because of this I missed out on what would turn out to be an important milestone in modern gaming (for better or for worse). With the release of 5.5e I've been seeing more and more references to the playtests, so in the spirit of learning I thought I'd take a look.
The first D&DNext playtest, released May 24th 2012, is by Mike Mearl’s own words, very compact. The intent was to identify the “key components to playing D&D”. They were trying to make something new with D&D, while capturing the feel of the previous editions. reading this I felt like I'd heard it before. And I had, on Shadowdark's Kickstarter page.
Familiar and nostalgic. A modernized old-school experience. While Shadowdark's campaign had a stronger pitch, it feels very similar to the hopes of the design team 11 years ago. And considering that 5e is explicitly what Shadowdark is comparing itself to, it seems appropriate to stand it up against this first offering from the yonder days of 2012.
It’s perhaps not totally fair to compare a complete product to an early playtest, but my goal here is not to mock Packet 1 as outdated or a failure. The playtest is a great opportunity to see what the D&D designers believed was important to D&D.
In this first packet were 5 pre-generated characters (Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, and two different clerics), a how to play document, a short DM's advice, and an updated version of the Caves of Chaos. Shadowdark's Quickstart comes with two character sheets each for the same four classes, for a total of eight, A Player quickstart, and a DM quickstart which includes an adventure, Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur.
Character Sheets
- Fighter Pregens - Shadowdark one half page, D&D packet 1 one full page. Much of the additional page space on the D&D sheet is a large open area for more gear, and notes for features at levels 2 and 3.
- Right away we're met with the biggest similarity, the 5e three part character (Class / Race / Background) has a fourth piece, the Theme. While this may seem different from Shadowdark, small font on each character sheet notes that the Background and Theme can be set aside "for a more old school experience". So both our fighters are dwarves with a fluff-only soldier background.
- (Interestingly, the slayer Theme ability did make a word for word return in the 5.5e weapon mastery “Graze”)
- Skills are also nowhere to be seen in this first playtest, with the exception of the optional background. (Though a version of them would appear in packet 2 and never leave)
- Quick numbers rundown. Shadowdark fighter has half the HP (10 compared to 20) but both have AC 15 with chainmail. Shadowdark has +6 across all attributes, D&D has +7. (D20 gonna D20)
- The biggest difference that jumps out to me is (perhaps unsurprisingly) the design philosophy around light and encumbrance. The Shadowdark sheet has a very small gear area, which is mostly already filled out. It makes clear that some items can be larger than others mechanically, and that items like torches and spears don’t stack. D&D on the other hand is even at this early stage visibly undercutting these mechanics. A massive, mostly empty gear section provides no tactile means of identifying encumbrance, and the combination of low light vision and 10 torches all but removes light as a concern for most players, if the DM even remembers to make it important.
- Cleric Pregens - Shadowdark still manages half a page while D&D is now 2 full pages
- The majority of that increased space is taken up by spells, while Shadowdark manages to get all the spell casting information (including what the spells actually do) into the same space as the fighter features.
- This is also a good time to note that all the Shadowdark character sheets have space for an associated deity, so the cleric sheet isn't overtly more religious than any other.
- Thief Pregens - Shadowdark still half a page, D&D still needs two pages
- This is probably the strangest one, while the skill system has been effectively optional for the other classes, it seems they couldn’t stop themselves from rebuilding it for the thief. Shadowdark remains skill-free by simply giving advantage to certain actions, while D&D gives a +3 to named skills, as well as allowing thieves to take 10 on skills their trained in, effectively giving a roll of attribute +13 to trained skills. Incidentally, the average roll for a d20 with advantage is 13.8.
DM and players Quickstarts
These can't easily be split apart because some of what D&D considers privileged information (DC's, Light and darkness, etc) are open to the players in Shadowdark.
- Shadowdark’s advice on when to roll for checks is much more cleanly written and straightforward, as well as being visible to both players and DMs. While this might be a late player advantage, it’s pretty telling that the advice and examples from this first playtest packet are word for word the same in the release version of the 5e DMG.
- Recommended DC’s are very similar (again, d20 can only change so much) not surprising that the two games are very mechanically close.
Now into the meat of the differences, while much has been said about the real-time torch timer in Shadowdark, the more mechanically valuable difference between the two is that there are no consequences to darkness in Playtest 1. In Shadowdark losing the light puts you at Disadvantage for most tasks, and causes a random encounter every Crawling Round, which is Shadowdarks term for non-combat rounds. In D&D Packet 1 Darkness causes blindness, which mechanically gives you disadvantage on attacks and a half speed movement cap. This seems like a very casual problem compared to Shadowdark, and in fairness to 5e, Blindness is much more dangerous in the release version. However nowhere in either the playtest or release version are there any world-facing consequences for darkness. No monsters, no timers, no tension. Random encounters are a largely handwaved and neutrally toned suggestion in the 5e DMG and are totally absent from the playtest packet.
Speaking of neutrally toned, the playtest is already written in 5e’s gas and brakes style, filled with “consider”s , “might”s, and “if the situation warrant”s. In contrast Shadowdark takes a paragraph to let DMs know that the world is their oyster and then provides strong, direct advice. The first three pages of Shadowdarks running the game section are more than worth the whole 9 of the playtest packet.
Overall Thoughts
It’s interesting how close the two are mechanically, Of course the similarities are intentional on Shadowdark’s part, but it’s still interesting that many of the features Shadowdark removed from release 5e (Skills, Mechanically important backgrounds, subclasses) are all things that the playtest developers didn’t include, and implicitly didn’t think were core to the D&D experience.
The true difference is a philosophical one. With more direct advice (and more effort put into tools for the DM) I think the original playtest rules would be a pretty close analogue to Shadowdark, and certainly closer to the OSR than the 5e release.
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I Don't think I'll do a write-up about the adventures, it's pretty clear that Shadowdark's is leaps ahead. A friend I was speaking to noted that some of the features in the early playtest packets are very similar to pathfinder 2e, which might be interesting to look into. Otherwise I'll likely make another post collecting some of the more interesting features which were dropped from the playtests. I think there's lots of good to be found on the cutting room floor here.
