D&D 5e: For real this time?

[Agita]

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120109

I think I'll just let this article speak for itself.

As you may have read in the New York Times, it’s an exciting time for Dungeons & Dragons. We are happy to announce today that we are developing the next iteration of D&D, and will be looking to the legions of D&D fans to help shape the future of the game along with us.

[...]

That is why we are excited to share with you that starting in Spring 2012, we will be taking this process one step further and conducting ongoing open playtests with the gaming community to gather feedback on the new iteration of the game as we develop it. With your feedback and involvement, we can make D&D better than ever. We seek to build a foundation for the long-term health and growth of D&D, one rooted in the vital traits that make D&D unique and special. We want a game that rises above differences of play styles, campaign settings, and editions, one that takes the fundamental essence of D&D and brings it to the forefront of the game. In short, we want a game that is as simple or complex as you please, its action focused on combat, intrigue, and exploration as you desire. We want a game that is unmistakably D&D, but one that can easily become your D&D, the game that you want to run and play.

[oslecamo]

Hell it was about time.

I see  two possible outcomes:
1-Either they're bluffing and will do most of the decisions themselves, with just allowing the players to do some trimming (kinda like pathfinder).

2-They're being serious, in which case we'll have the biggest, wildest flaming and trolling fests ever seen in the story of D&D net discussions as dozens or even hundreds of sides claim their vision of D&D to be the correct one.

Still, I'm positively intrigued by the whole "game can be adapted to your complexity/play preferences" aproach. If they can pull that one off, it would be amazing.

[Ziegander]

This is a lot sooner than I expected for anything like this to be announced, let alone WotC actually running pre-generated preview adventures at conventions.

In fact... it sounds like they've already got the core rules of the new edition hammered out and that the whole "open playtest" thing is really just an extended preview/beta. Mearls is already talking about putting up monsters, even classes in the near future.

I don't know. I like the modular aspects that he and Monte have been bouncing back and forth, but they should have done a REAL open playtest, not a bunch of fucking polls that they then used to base the design of the game made behind the curtain (like they always do). I HIGHLY doubt that, since it sounds like the game is already mostly made, much consideration will be given to destructive playtesting.

[Agita]

This is a lot sooner than I expected for anything like this to be announced, let alone WotC actually running pre-generated preview adventures at conventions.

In fact... it sounds like they've already got the core rules of the new edition hammered out and that the whole "open playtest" thing is really just an extended preview/beta. Mearls is already talking about putting up monsters, even classes in the near future.

I don't know. I like the modular aspects that he and Monte have been bouncing back and forth, but they should have done a REAL open playtest, not a bunch of fucking polls that they then used to base the design of the game made behind the curtain (like they always do). I HIGHLY doubt that, since it sounds like the game is already mostly made, much consideration will be given to destructive playtesting.

Agreed. I'm also skeptical that they may do the same mistake Pathfinder did - ask for input and then ignore it in favor of sucking grognard dick.

[Ziegander]

Agreed. I'm also skeptical that they may do the same mistake Pathfinder did - ask for input and then ignore it in favor of sucking grognard dick.

Yeeeep. Now to be fair, Paizo used the argument of, "nice suggestion, but it's just not backwards compatible" A LOT, while with a new edition, WotC won't have that excuse. I am worried though that they see Paizo's "open playtest" as some triumph of game design to be emulated at all costs. Sure, it's nice in that it rallied a lot of fans around their "customer service," that's more because WotC customer service was so bad than because of any great conversations or mechanics that came out of it.

[GrandLlamaQ]

I have to admit, this is very disappointing to me. I know WotC revamps every half a decade or so, but to me 4E still feels like it's building momentum. I just really wanted to sit down and enjoy the new edition for a decade or so before the inevitable 5E came out. This seems to be entirely too fast. Please understand, I'm not citing a preference for 4E over other editions just that...I'm freaking poor and so is my gaming group. It's taken forever for my group to get even half the books we wanted. But on every thread I see discussing 5E, no one seems to be commenting on 4E being less than 4 years old right now. Am I the only one? Am I crazy for being disappointed at the rapidity of it all?

[Ryu Hayabusa]

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/01/5th-edition-dungeons-and-dragons/

Can't say I'm surprised, especially based on the following quote in this article.

I think it’s safe to say that this announcement doesn’t come as a major surprise to anyone following the difficulties the Dungeons & Dragons game has experienced as of late. An excellent series of articles (past, present, & future) on The Escapist details several of these.

Not the least of these issues is the fact that Paizo Publishing’s Pathfinder RPG, built on the Open Gaming License (OGL) of D&D 3.5, is now the number-one selling RPG for the past two quarters.

Emphasis mine. If Pathfinder is outselling 4th edition, I imagine some people are losing jobs and others are freaking the hell out.

[Keldar]

I'm not surprised.  4E was clearly a base breaker kind of game change.  I guess Monte Cook being rehired really was harbinger of 5e. 

Interesting, while Game Console generations are lasting longer, D&D generations are shortening.

[VennDygrem]

Well, we have yet to find out how vast a departure 5E will be from 4E. Keep in mind how little time elapsed between 3.0 and 3.5 (and while the core gameplay is largely the same, the tweaks and outright changes make the two versions notably different).

Also, this is just an announcement- It's not being released now. 3.5 was released in 2003, and 4E was announced in 2007 (about the same amount of time as this). While I'm not trying to stick up for them, 4E has not been nearly as successful as WotC was hoping, and from what I've read, sales have been in decline with other systems picking up steam in their stead. It makes sense for them to begin developing the next phase, and at least they seem to be trying to figure out what went wrong and what went right, and are trying to involve the fanbase in development at least more than they did before. I don't necessarily think it'll work out, but it seems like an honorable enough intention.

I happen to be a fan of both 3.5 and 4E, so I'll likely continue playing both even as 5E starts releasing. I am, however, eager to see what changes the revision will bring, and how fun the gameplay might or might not be.

[Thurbane]

I really feel sorry for 4E fans - even though I never adopted it myself, they must be feeling more than a little cheated right now. Sure, if you look at 3.0 and 3.5 as seperate editions, the timeline for 4E doesn't look as appalling, but since 3.0 & 3.5 are so compatible, I really do consider them part of the same edition.

1E and 2E were also quite compaible. 3.0 was a fairly radical departure from 2E, however, just as 4E was a radical departure from 3.5. It wasn't particularly easy to port character between 2E and 3E, or 3E and 4E. Porting characters from 1E to 2E was quite easy, and from 3.0 to 3.5 even more so.

I can only imagine that 5E will be a similarly large departure from 4E (and earlier editions, too).

P.S. Mark me down as "extremely sceptical" about just how much WotC will listen to fan feedback regarding suggestions for the new system.

I found this to be a good article, that mirrors most of my own opinions about 5E: http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/01/5th-edition-dungeons-and-dragons/

[edit]I see this article has already been linked above[/edit]

[Shadowhunter]

Anyone else hoping that Endarires endless question topics is related to this so that 5e can get some good feedback?

Anyway, I'm not holding my breath for a good system, but I'm hoping for one. Hopefully something good can come out of this, even though I'm at the moment dubious about buying anything marked WotC.

[RobbyPants]

This is a lot sooner than I expected for anything like this to be announced, let alone WotC actually running pre-generated preview adventures at conventions.

In fact... it sounds like they've already got the core rules of the new edition hammered out and that the whole "open playtest" thing is really just an extended preview/beta. Mearls is already talking about putting up monsters, even classes in the near future.

I don't know. I like the modular aspects that he and Monte have been bouncing back and forth, but they should have done a REAL open playtest, not a bunch of fucking polls that they then used to base the design of the game made behind the curtain (like they always do). I HIGHLY doubt that, since it sounds like the game is already mostly made, much consideration will be given to destructive playtesting.

Agreed. I'm also skeptical that they may do the same mistake Pathfinder did - ask for input and then ignore it in favor of sucking grognard dick.

Open playtest is just a market gimmick. They will have way too much the game developed to want to spend any real time rewriting anything by the time playtesting starts. And there's a very good chance someone will uncover some deep seeded problem that will require a full rewrite, and there's no way that will happen. At all.

And even if they were sincere, they're gonna get shitty feedback. We'd have to trust them to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to be able to tell the difference in the first place.

[Childe]

Anyone else hoping that Endarires endless question topics is related to this so that 5e can get some good feedback?

Funniest pay-off ever.

[linklord231]

The author of the escapist article mentioned that he got to play a mini adventure, which tells me that they already have a basic rule set.  Which in turn tells me that even if someone notices something huge in the "open playtest", they won't do anything about it.  In fact, they're probably less likely to fix a big problem than a small problem, because it requires a more significant rewrite. 

On the other hand, I really do hope they are able to pull off the whole "anybody who's ever seen D&D will recognize this" thing.  Maybe I'm a fool, but I'll probably buy the new "core" books whenever they come out, just to see what they're like.  Or at least the PHB.  But for the love of all that is holy, they had better bring back real multiclassing. 

[GMarshal]

As someone who was really, really excited for 4.0 color me extremely skeptic. I really hope we get a good, deep, complex game with fun mechanics and enough sophistication to be interesting. But I doubt it, more likely than not it will try to appeal to "gamers" again, rather than trying to be fun because it is.

Oh well, we'll see when the playtests start rolling in, I guess.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

... Open playtest is just a market gimmick ...

Yep.
The C.O. guys that were brought in at the end of 4e pretesting
... weren't really talking about how productive that experience was.


Anybody drinking at work for 4e ... 

[Keldar]

That is mentioned over at the Escapist. 

revious editions of the game had play testing periods, but Wizards restricted access to freelancers or those connected to the company and those tests were ineffectual at best. I was in a play testing group for 4th edition back in 2007, and we submitted a 30 page annotated document of what we felt worked and what didn't work with the rules we played. Other than my name among the hundreds of play testers in the back of the 4th edition Player's Handbook, nothing I submitted made it into print. Our feedback was summarily ignored, and Mearls admitted that was essentially true of all the feedback Wizards received from the 4th edition play test.

This time it will be different. Starting in the next few months, Wizards of the Coast will open the new rules up to gamers and actively solicit feedback to shape the game. They plan to leverage the relative popularity of the Encounters program - an organized event in game stores where players across the country participate in the same adventure each week - to offer adventures written for the new iteration of D&D using the new rules. Wizards plans to set up a website survey to track players' feedback and get it quickly into the hands of Mearls and the team designing the rules.

"We want to give the community enough time to thoroughly digest each play test package," he said. "Then, we need to make sure we have time to integrate player feedback into each play test cycle so their needs and desires are captured in the final product. This will take time."

How true this proves to be remains to be seen.  But presuming its just a stunt does no good.  Better to participate and be ignored than to not and find they do listen after it is too late.

[oslecamo]

Indeed. This is, people are always complaining about this and that in D&D. May as well do so in the place where there's actualy a chance the designers are listening, even if you think it's a slim one.

[Solo]

Pfft. It's called Legend.

[SorO_Lost]

I'm happy.
I've had enough of 4th enthusiasts droning on and on about 4E vs 3E no matter the subject.

To me it's an elitism stemming not form the subject or source but more from the desire to conform. Like when .NET 2.2 came out every point on the compiler taking ten times the time as the 1.0 was met with USE GENERICS!. Or how 7zip is literally the biggest peace of crap you can install on your computer next to setting up FTP/http to share your tax folder but you mention that and holy bird poo do you get told 7zip compresses text files better than Winrar.

Now they'll move onto 5th and complain about 4th, letting us 3ers skip by like we ignore those 2e guys now.