D&D 5th Edition Announced

[assault]

IBM Compatibility.

[Ian Mackinder]

I'm someone who actually LIKES D&D4. A lot. I accept that it isn't to everybody's liking, but I am mystified by the vehemence of the dislike.

If sales hasn't been good lately, a big reason is probably that very little D&D4-specific product has been released for over a year. What has been released is solely for the questionable (IMO) 'Essentials' line. Pretty certain that, with this announcement, what little D&D4 / Essentials product is due to come will not do well at all.

On the upside, suggests that a lot of D&D4 product will become very cheap. For those of us who like the system, maybe not so bad.

D&D5? I'm fairly open-minded, so will wait and see. When it does arrive, I am sure it will be treated by trufans with the same logic, fairness and thoughtfulness that was brought to 4.

[Tasha]

Also remember that the OGL saved WotC/Hasbro a ton of money. Suddenly they didn't/couldn't sue half the publishers out there for creating comparable products for D&D. TSR's sue happyness in the 80's didn't do much to help the company move forward. Supplements allowed publishers to release products that TSR couldn't or wouldn't publish (ie Supplements adding back the Demons and Devils after they were removed in 2nd ed). TSR really hurt the publishing industry during this period. Also what did TSR really gain but a ton of customer dislike when favorite companies were forced to remove product or go out of business. OGL allowed WoTC to basically ignore those supplements as they had a framework to build their business on.

Hell I bought a Pathfinder Supplement called "The Tome of Horrors Complete" which collects all of the monsters, demons etc that were in 1st Ed D&D and other monsters created by the authors into a huge tome of a hard cover book(converted for Pathfinder). Such a thing would have been impossible prior to OGL. Now the 1st ed TSR monsters are licenced from WotC, but in the 80's companies were sued for creating monster tomes of their own work.

[Michael Hopcroft]

IBM Compatibility.

And look how well that turned out for IBM (even though it did everyone else and the end users a huge favor by enforcing basic compatibility so that you didn't always have to write new code for every model someone came up with).

[Nolgroth]

Ironically, I like the Beginner Box rules way more than the full Pathfinder rules. I also like the D&D Essentials line. Go figure.

I actually signed up to see the playtest rules. Not sure that I will have anything constructive to say, but I figure it won't hurt anything to look.

EDIT: And I really hope the best for WotC. Maybe D&D can one day be the top dog again.

[Ninja-Bear]

I got to make a character (a Dragonkin thief, I think) and died on a sample game. I liked the new Race Dragonkin (well dragon something). What I don't get is the hate that D&D4 is mmoish, I thought hey, this is very similar to Hero. You can move and attack, attack and move, you had actions and half actions and no time actions. I really liked that you could attack and then move! I had cards made up with powers (feats). I really am confused. (Though that isn't hard for me!)

[Murrkon5]

D&D is the "gateway game" for roleplaying. This is all right. For folks who've seen "Lord of the Rings", "Clash of the Titans" and a Harry Potter or two, it introduces them to a bigger world of fantasy imagination. It's like a colouring book. All the heavy lifting is already done and all the user has to do is choose the right crayons. It lets the user practice motor skills, hand-eye coordination and colour theory. Eventually, many (I couldn't guess at a percentage) players/DMs get frustrated at the rigid confines of D&D and say "Give me a blank canvas/system! Give me paints and pastels! I have my own ideas of what a barbarian prince should be!"

It is those players that confuse me. In person and from reading forums like this, I see people who are being creative and independent with Hero, or GURPS or Savage Worlds or (Fill in the blank). But any announcement for a new D&D and they toss away their oil paint and brushes to dig out their crayons. Personally, with the advent of D&D 3, 3.5 and then 4 (in different cities with different groups), perfectly good and entertaining campaigns were put on hold/hiatus/killed to try the new D&D system! Those of us not in any way interested were sadly in the minority and sat for a few months colouring with our eight crayons.... Baffling. Just baffling.

The short period between 4e and this new 5e has one advantage for me. My memory is still fresh and sharp. If there is a general "squee of glee" next year and a push to try a campaign of the new D&D, I will just gracefully bow out for the duration.

[Ian Mackinder]

I got to make a character (a Dragonkin thief, I think) and died on a sample game. I liked the new Race Dragonkin (well dragon something). What I don't get is the hate that D&D4 is mmoish, I thought hey, this is very similar to Hero. You can move and attack, attack and move, you had actions and half actions and no time actions. I really liked that you could attack and then move! I had cards made up with powers (feats). I really am confused. (Though that isn't hard for me!)

Yeah, I never got that whole shrill "D&D4 is just a MMORPG" thing either. Just one of those things that people started saying because other people were saying it, IMO.

Anyhow, while there is always SOMETHING that could be added to the D&D4 system, it is basically complete as is. There will probably be groups and individuals who continue to make unofficial additions and so forth online. And it certainly is not the first time a game company has pumped out a new edition RPG in a hurry because things looked bad. Yeah, we old timers know how well THAT move works.

I HOPE that D&D5 is a huge success, I really do - but I am not very optimistic, to be honest.

[Susano]

[Derek Hiemforth]

I HOPE that D&D5 is a huge success, I really do - but I am not very optimistic, to be honest.

Yeah, the more I think about this, the more I see it as essentially a desperation move. WotC is in kind of a no-win situation. They've tried various things to get folks to embrace D&D4, and the result has been Pathfinder outselling it 2-to-1 in some places, with that margin apparently continuing to grow. So they really can't just keep hoping D&D4 will catch on; they have to do something. But given how much many people seem to be happy with Pathfinder and other OGL products, and how soon it is after D&D4, I think D&D5 will just have to be an absolute game-changer in order to succeed. In other words, there are plenty of reasons for people to refuse to move to D&D5. If it's going to work, it'll have to be so compelling that it outweighs all of them...

[megaplayboy]

I think a large number of long-time gamers are a fairly conservative(in the open to change sense, not the political sense) bunch. The problem is, Pathfinder has essentially grabbed a big chunk of WOTC' customer base, and releasing a D&D 3.6(but we'll call it 5) probably won't do much to change the game. People happy with Pathfinder are likely to stick with it. They tried a radical rules revamp with 4.0, and it was not as successful as they would have liked. I think they'd have to make significant changes, but in a direction that their long-time fan base would want/like.
What I would want would be likely different from what a long-time fan might want--a single experience progression chart for all classes(do they have that already?), simplifying and reducing the number of classes rather than having 50 million of them(just introduce the others as options/variants/add-ons, rather than classes in their own right), meta-gaming the magic system a bit(allowing players to more easily build their own spells), making experience awards completely independent of which specific monsters you fight, and emphasizing roleplaying rather than wargaming/boardgaming.

[Lord Mhoram]

Yeah, I never got that whole shrill "D&D4 is just a MMORPG" thing either. Just one of those things that people started saying because other people were saying it, IMO.

While I don't feel that way, I've had conversations with people, and one guy in our Hero group didn't play 4E (he grew up with D&D - Dad has played since before AD&D) but he kept playing 3.5. He said he was playing WoW at the time and didn't need to play it in the group - and he didn't mean this dismissivly, but as a explination.

It got me thinking - different people get different things out of RPGing - and if you have multiple systems you play, those can be very specific. If you play MMOs to fufill a desire for a certain type of gameplay, and play RPGs for another reason, having an RPG that structurally is similar to an MMO could very well be a turn off (and while I love the elegance of the 4E rules, it does have things in common with MMOs).

For people in that situation, but don't analyze themselves, have that happen but don't know why they don't like D&D 4E "It's just WoW" would be their actually feelings, not just a dismissive statement (now many do use it to be dismissive). Part of the reason that I think 5E may be better. 4E focused on very specific gameplay approach, and many didn't like that approach. Now they are going about trying to make a game that appeals to multiple gamestyles.

Some of the early stuff I am hearing in design structure of the game has got me really excited. This from Mike Mearls

"The new edition is being conceived of as a modular, flexible system, easily customized to individual preferences. Just like a player makes his character, the Dungeon Master can make his ruleset. He might say ‘I’m going to run a military campaign, it’s going to be a lot of fighting’… so he’d use the combat chapter, drop in miniatures rules, and include the martial arts optional rules.” - Mike Mearls.

Being a Hero gaming and liking to tinker, I am really excited about this approach. Dunno how much other will. And it makes supplements easier - more modules in design to put in, more chance of new ideas and support.

[Lord Mhoram]

What I would want would be likely different from what a long-time fan might want--a single experience progression chart for all classes(do they have that already?),

Third and 4th both do.

[Michael Hopcroft]

From a beginner's perspective, D&D's inflexibility is actually an advantage. When you take a published spell or feat, you know exactly what it does and how it's supposed to be used. You may still be able to find a creative use for it, but otherwise you don't have to think too hard about what you've got. You only have to choose the right pre-existing spell for the situation and hope you chose right.

More experienced player will relish the opportunity games like Hero offer to customize your spell or power to be exactly what you want it to be, but from someone just coming out of World of Warcraft the overload can be overwhelming. GURPS takes a compromise between the two approaches: you can customize your power or ability in many different ways, but you can also just play with the power as written if you so choose. (Whether GURPS works at all for games with a lot of powers as opposed to skills is a question for another thread).

[Revenant]

There's plenty I hope they keep from 4e moving into 5e. I hope they keep At Wills, Encounters, and Dailys. They make the combat fresh no matter what class you play. It's not "I swing my sword" if you're a fighter or "Ok I've run out of spells, time to break out the pom poms and root the real heroes on!" if you're a low level mage.

I do hope they expand the skills list, as that was always limited in 4e. I hope they also do a better job of balancing the classes against each other, Harrier Battleminds didn't seem to be comparable to Wardens for example.