Before creating the 2014 version of Dungeon & Dragons, lead designer Mike Mearls set goals for the new, fifth edition. He wanted the update to play fast. “You should be able to play a complete adventure in an hour. Not a single encounter, not a character creation session, but a complete scenario that would strike any reasonable player as an adventure with a beginning, middle, and end.”
Whether fifth edition landed the 1-hour goal depends on how slight an adventure can count as complete. Designer Shawn Merwin gained a reputation for writing 1-hour “mini-adventures” or “episodes” for Adventurers League. Typically, these scenarios featured a single obstacle such as a fight. Whether or not fifth edition reached the high bar for speed of play, gamers switching from fourth edition loved how much faster the new game played. Only the original game played faster.
However, at least since Mearls left the D&D team in 2019, the game’s designers stopped emphasizing speed of play in their D&D design work.
A quick speed of play stems from countless tough choices to avoid mechanics that seem fun and only slow play a little. Starting with the release of Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything in 2020, the designers began welcoming character abilities that slowed play. For evidence, compare two similar abilities: The Bardic Inspiration feature from the 2014 Player’s Handbook and Flash of Genius from Tasha’s.
Bardic Inspiration lets a bard give a creature a Bardic Inspiration die. When the inspired player needs a boost to a D20 test, they can roll the die and “add the number rolled to the d20, potentially turning the failure into a success.” The person making the test controls when to roll the die. No discussion needed.
The design of Bardic Inspiration seems a bit awkward. Why not just let the bard interrupt with a word of encouragement when someone rolls a near miss? Because the feature’s designer considered speed of play and opted to avoid interruptions.
The artificer’s Flash of Genius feature offers a similar boost to a roll. “When you or another creature you can see within 30 feet of you makes an ability check or a saving throw, you can use your reaction to add your Intelligence modifier to the roll.” The difference seems slight, but now many rolls become a topic for discussion. Every time a player makes a roll that seems almost good enough, they share the number with the artificer and jointly consider whether the roll merits using Flash of Genius. One such interruption hardly slows play, but add a few and the wait between your turns lengthens a couple of minutes.
Now add a cleric using Tasha’s twilight domain to the turn order. While using the Twilight Sanctuary domain feature, the cleric can give creatures who end their turn within 30 feet temporary hit points equal to 1d6 plus cleric level. Now every character’s turn ends with a reminder to add temps and with an extra die roll. If the ability just skipped the roll, then it would play a little faster, but the designer ignored speed of play.
Taken alone, these class features just add minor delays, but they show a key point: Small delays that occur frequently add up to a significantly slower game. Taken alone, a d6 roll to add hit points takes a few seconds. Multiplied by every turn, it takes minutes.![Thicket of Blades Fighter Daily 9 You sting and hinder nearby foes with a savage flurry of strikes aimed at their legs. Daily martial, reliable, weapon Standard Action Close burst 1 Target: Each enemy in burst you can see Attack: Strength vs. AC Hit: 3[W] + Strength modifier damage, and the target is slowed (save ends).](https://i0.wp.com/dmdavid.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/thicket_o_blades.jpg)
Although the fourth edition earned a reputation for slow play, the team tried to streamline play. For example, they noticed that characters who make multiple attacks in series tended to slow the game. Each attack started with a choice of target followed by its own to-hit and damage rolls. Instead of attacks made in series, fourth edition favored powers like Thicket of Blades where players could roll every attack at once along with one damage roll. These powers skipped saving throws too. Fast!
In a typical D&D game, no game mechanic happens more frequently than the process of making an attack, so faster attacks mean shorter waits between turns. This led the 2014 design team to make average damage the standard for monster attacks. Fewer damage rolls means a faster game. Designer Monte Cook once said, “If you can look at something that happens 20, 30, 50 times during a game session, and eliminate that or decrease it hugely, you’re going to make the game run faster, more smoothly. That idea is now a big part of my game designer toolbox.”
Clearly, the designers of D&D 2024 update ignored such considerations when they created Weapon Mastery. Now with Weapon Mastery, push starts a discussion of where foes should land, nick means choosing a second target and tallying their damage, topple adds another saving throw, and so on. Alone, none of these steps take long. Together, every turn drags a bit longer until players start pulling out their phones to pass the time between turns.
As a goal for fifth edition, Mike Mearls aimed for a game where “character complexity doesn’t spill on to the table and slow the game down. It’s OK for someone to have a complex character. It’s irritating if that character takes significantly longer to resolve typical actions.”
Some gamers defend the extra time devoted to making Weapon Mastery attacks by arguing that many spells take even more time to resolve. While many spells take time, many spellcasting turns go faster than the fighter’s. I favor wizards and spend most of my turns concentrating and rolling a single cantrip attack. Even when a wizard launches a fireball that affects an average of 3 targets, the player rolls damage as the DM rolls three saves at once. The process goes faster than a fighter who targets three foes with an extra attack and a bonus action attack. The player makes three separate attack rolls, three damage rolls, and perhaps forces a couple saves. Every step requires more discussion than, “Take 8 damage.”
The challenge of creating a fast game matches the challenge of eating healthy at the buffet. Designers face countless tempting, flavorful design ideas that just add a few seconds to an attack, no more than 30 seconds to a turn. Just one treat can’t hurt. The team behind D&D 2024 faced an extra challenge because management insisted on an update with enough new character features to entice players to replace their old books. No one sells cauliflower at a carnival.
Is the candy worth the slower game?
I wonder if the complexity creep is unavoidable…and from a publisher POv it’s maybe desirable. The next edition fixes the perceived problems of the previous edition. So selling simplicity might be a marketing choice. After 15-17 years of 5e becoming increasingly complicated they will drop a 6e that will feel simple and fast again.
Good. I like to take things nice an slow. It’s much more enjoyable than way!
And I LOVE complexity. That why love DND. If I want fast I can just play ANY other games at all. Even solitaire. But don’t ruin my game.
If you want complexity and slow play in an RPG, why stop at D&D? D&D’s a lightweight compared to many other options.
I’ve been playing since AD&D. I’ll say my players actually enjoy slower play, and given the choice between slower play with more complexity, or faster play and less complexity of characters, they’re going to choose slower play almost to the last.
Sometimes, simplicity can cause problems if edge cases and contradictions aren’t properly answered.
Also, rolling bonus dice for damage should be automatic. It could even be done alongside the main damage. The question is if it counts for other rider effects or being increased for a critical hit. (I bet most players just double it all.)
A one hour D&D adventure… I don’t think that makes sense outside of Basic D&D, and even then, its going to be a pretty minimal adventure. The very act of role playing tends to need an hour just to gel and get folks in the right frame of mind and have a sense of everyone’s characters.
I do think keeping play smooth and quick is a worthy goal. Its not the most important goal, but it is a significant consideration. When I’m adding mechanics to a d20 system, I think very carefully about how to get the job done in the least moving parts or how to have those moving parts happen once and then have lasting impact.
But I think most D&D players know that its not a fast game, and even most TTRPG players know that crunchy systems are going to take some time. More pure storyteller games don’t have that, but they tend to have their own ways of eating time by having everyone provide robust descriptions of their speech and actions.
All said, I think TTRPGs are a “slow” hobby the way BBQ is a “slow” food and while you don’t want to waste time, you also don’t want to rush things.
I’ve been playing a lot of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 recently, and it has really driven home how you can have a complex, interlocking system AND have it play quickly… when a lot of the complexity is handled by the computer. Some complexity lives in the decision making at the table, some in the character design choices, but the resolution goes by very fast.
The trouble I have with complexity generally comes down to “does it make the game more interesting?” Weapon masteries *don’t* feel more interesting for the most part. And that’s because they’re the same round after round after round. The paladin using Vex is just attacking the same monster with his multiple attacks – and until it dies, he has advantage on every one after the first. It’s not really an interesting addition, because focusing fire is almost always correct in D&D.
I like having one significant decision point: the initial action for a character. Every decision point after that slows down the game. (Consider 3E, where the fighter was choosing what Power Attack penalty/bonus to apply on EVERY attack, where the attack bonuses also were changing due to the design).
Complexity isn’t necessarily bad, but every extra layer also starts turning people off the game. There is a sweet spot, which I suspect 5E/2014 got very close too. (People did not flock to Pathfinder upon seeing the “moderate” complexity level of 5E – it went the other way). So, while individual players may enjoy more complex games, or more simple games, the designers have to look more broadly than that.
And seeing the reactions of my players and the broader D&D community – it seems a lot more mixed reaction to the 2024 upgrades than I expected.
Honestly? I think the 1-hour complete story is not a realistic D&D goal, but mostly because D&D is at heart a skirmish-level war-game. We are still playing Chainmail, even if 90% of players have never heard of it.
If I want to tell a compelling story in an hour, something with a beginning, a middle, an end, emotions, passions, joys and despair, then I would be looking at other systems which worry less about the minute details of which sword you use and what numbers you can add to make marginal differences to your DCs.
Blades in the Dark can do it; you are meant to start in media res, add in what detail you need, and get bogged down in storytelling instead of mechanics. So can a whole list of systems starting with F; Fate, FAE, Fudge…
D&D is a great system, arguably the most popular system, but it’s not the only system and not even the best system.
I can’t help but feel that someone who focuses so much on getting through the game as quickly as possible *might* be getting into the wrong game with Dungeons and Dragons…
D&D has never been a game meant for fast play or speed running dungeons. The game would definitely go faster if you didn’t have to make those pesky dice rolls; just have flat values for damage and flip a coin for success or failure! There’s quite a few games like that, but that’s never been the point of D&D.
Speed of combat play is exceptionally important. The TTRPG I currently run uses HERO 6e rules and though it’s great fun to build your own powers just as you want them, it makes combat VERY crunchy! I had to write a full combat-engine into my Deity tool (https://deity-online.com/ — think: “Google Maps for Fantasy Worlds”) just to be able to run combat at a speed that didn’t drag things down.
Speed of combat has always been a question of with the experience level of the players at the table. Experienced players plan out their actions before any combat round begins. Then adjust what they do next based off what the other players do after the first player finishes rolling his/her damage. It’s kinda like chess the planning your course 10 to 15 moves in advance. So have your attack total, damage total and saves ready for when it’s your turn. Of course this demands honesty and trust amongst players and gm.
Even with a young inexperienced player in the group we cleared three major combats in three hours in a 3.5 d&d session. Granted one of us has been playing since before dnd was dnd. Back in the days of Chainmail and Arduin. And I’ve played every edition of dnd since I started playing 37 years ago along with 20 or 30 other TTRPG systems thrown in the mix. Back in my college days our group played 6 different game systems every weekend. Sessions lasting 6 or more hours each. Mechanics are just a question of somantics and whether you want more role-playing or more roll-playing. The biggest key to ease of mechanics is know your character inside and out and know what it will do based on any given scenario. When in doubt read a book. Use maps and miniatures to keep track of the action. Get into it and just let it flow and eb with the mood of the room. And just have fun and remember the GM is the law of the game.
Cooking on the grill takes longer but leeds way to more enjoyment, or you could just microwave it! Have fun chewing your microwave steak and lobster😜! No contest for me. Faster with less technicality is not better, just faster and less realistic in most cases.I like gritty realism, you don’t get that by averaging damage, we like rolling our click clack math rocks thanks, that’s what adds suspense and opportunities for descriptive narrative. Otherwise you could just microwave it and go home early and hungry 😉.
Can you even finish a round of Candyland in a hour? Is that going to be the next genius edition the has-bros give us?
Their vision for a quick and uncomplicated session of D&D sounds like they don’t really understand why people enjoy sitting down at the table and playing D&D.
It sounds like the most corporate boardroom decision-by-committee way of designing a tabletop rpg. It also almost sounds word for word like what happened to MMORPGs after WoW hit it big. Easier, faster, no challenge or thought required outside of raids, no complex classes, instant but shallow gratification.
Like I’m sure the ideal is done with good intentions. But that doesn’t sound like something I would want to set an hour aside to do. It sounds like, hey why wait half an hour or longer for a great meal at a restaurant when you can just go to McDonald’s?
Also 99% of game slowdown has nothing to do with the rules and everything to do with players not being ready when their turn comes up, not even knowing what spells they have ready, etc. Fix that, and I have never had a problem with turn speed.
I will never sacrifice player agency at the altar of microwave dinner tabletop. My problem with weapon mastery is just that it feels kind of boring. There’s no decision making. It’s always available.
The Ren faire by me actually sells a lovely cauliflower dish that sells quite well
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