How I learned to stop worrying and love 5e

I’ve been running 5.5e for a couple of months now for my “Szass Tam Stole My Life” campaign. For the first few weeks it was fine, and then it was infuriatingly terrible and filled me with existential dread and the white hot rage of a thousand suns, and now it’s fine again. It’s even fun. Really fun! See, my problem is, I like D&D. But my internal idea of what D&D is and the current superhero-powered Destined Heroes D&D of 5.5e are not the same. I’m always encouraged at low levels when playing 5e – like look, I have travel times, mounts, carrying capacity, gold, goblins, skeletons – in short, all is well. And then I get to level three or four and I’m like, “What in the nine circles of Hell is happening to my game! Why does everything suck! Why is nothing a challenge! My players are already gods! What is even the point!” I confess, I did a bit of ranting. Maybe more than a bit. I considered table-flipping the game and declaring, diva-like, that I could not work under these conditions.…