Tasha (and D&D 5e?) is for experts... and beginners. Is 5e OSRish anymore?

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything is the latest D&D 5e book.

I'm probably skipping this one. And maybe a few more. Here is why.

Hint: it is not the reprinting of material I already own (like the Artificer class, which I kinda like).

By the way, this is a bit of a rant. 

You've been warned...

Tasha's is mostly a book of players options, from what I've seen. And some new DM toys - magic items, group patrons, etc.

Well, certainly. WotC is selling well, and 5e is popular. 

But does anyone NEED more character options?

How? 

There are more than 30 subclasses in the PHB, more than a dozen races and subraces*, and other customization options (feats, spells, items, fighting styles, backgrounds, etc.). My players haven't tried nearly half of that, nor are they willing to change class and race at every game. Books like Xanathar's and Volo's expanded their options significantly, and, to be honest, I let them use whatever race they find on the internet with some adaptations.

(* If you're not familiar with 5e, it is worth mentioning that decent class/race combinations are a lot more numerable nowadays - which I like).

In fact, I have the opposite problem - the amount of choice feels overwhelming for me as a DM, and the players get lost.

Well, more choice is always good. But to require more choice at this point you'd have to be some kind of expert 5e player, haven played dozens of campaigns so far, to at have at least TRIED some of these options for half a dozen levels. None of my players have... nor have I.

The alternative would be someone deep into character optimization and theory-crafting... People who have fun creating mechanically cool characters. 

And that's is fine, but not our cup of tea. 

It is also not role-playing. Role-playing begins when the game starts.

On the other hand... Tasha contains some REALLY basic-level stuff. 

Things like "what is session zero", "you can actually TALK to monsters before killing them", or "you know, if your elf character was raised by dwarves, you could give him proficiency with battleaxes instead of longswords (two nearly identical weapons, BTW)". 

I'm paraphrasing here, of course.

Do you notice something strange?

How can people play through dozens of campaigns without knowing what a "session zero" is... or realizing they can make their own rules and create their own stuff? 

It is in the DMG, after all!

When 5e was released, I thought it had a decent amount of crunch... too much for my taste, but not enough to overwhelm me. I got excited with the idea of having an "OSR inspired" D&D being the most popular RPG around!

But mainstream D&D seems to be going in a strange direction... where people are familiar with dozens of "official" builds but are shy to change the rules.

 Where everyone knows who Volo is, but the idea of a pointcrawl is a complete mystery, hexcrawls are misunderstood, and lots of railroading is acceptable. 

Where beholders are common but the ideas on spells are still catching up to DCC RPG.

I'm not sure how to put that... but 5e has become too "official". It feels like it is written for people who only know and play D&D 5e and nothing else. Something very specialized... maybe comparable to a cofee-afficionado that loves Strabucks but tries nothing else. Or a good boxer calling himself a MMA fighter with no grappling training. Bear in mind that the boxer could beat some actual MMA fighters. But I'm getting lost in the analogy...

There is enough 5e homebrew stuff online for me to know 5e players can be very creative, BTW. Maybe it is a matter of focus. Should we focus on creating new spells, or making magic more interesting? 

And so on.

And I know this sounds like a criticism of 5e, but it is not. D&D 5e is one of my favorite RPGs EVER. Certainly in the top 10. 

Maybe it is just this book that is not for me.

Or maybe it is me - I like lighter systems, rulings over rules, "minimalism", etc. Perhaps I'm a minority among 5e players. I... I have more books than time by this point. Maybe that's just my age speaking.

On the other hand... maybe I should have seen this coming, as many people might have noticed before me.

Anyway, I'm not giving up on 5e yet.

I would buy a new campaign (maybe Icewind Dale...), but please, make it easier to run and less railroad-y. I am tired of having to go to The Alexandrian or to the DM's Guild to fix things.

By the way, that's is WHY I still play a lot of 5e: I know that if I find something I disliked, it is very easy to find someone who "fixed" it online, usually for free. It is just the amount of information I have to deal with that is overwhelming.

Oh, and apparently they fixed the beastmaster ranger. Yay!

Post scriptum (29/11/2020). Someone reminded me that "player's options" books are not that common in 5e, and this is the first one we have since Xanathar's in 2017. Fair enough. If you like creating new characters, I'm happy for you. Maybe it's just my playstyle that is different. 

I'm just saying - if you haven't read Moldvay's Basic, Rules Cyclopedia, DCC, Shadow of the Demon Lord, Pendragon, Call of Cthulhu... you don't know what you're missing. These are some of the best RPGs ever, and if you like RPGs chances are you'll have a great time.