D&D 5e: For real this time?

[Agita]

Well, it looks like the 5E team (which I suspect they will avoid calling it for PR reasons - I would bet on D&D 2012)  [...]

I've seen "D&D Next" being thrown around.

[Ziegander]

Well, it looks like the 5E team (which I suspect they will avoid calling it for PR reasons - I would bet on D&D 2012)  [...]

I've seen "D&D Next" being thrown around.

That would be a fucking terrible, 80s-sounding, name. I hope they don't go that route...

[SolEiji]

Well, it looks like the 5E team (which I suspect they will avoid calling it for PR reasons - I would bet on D&D 2012)  [...]

I've seen "D&D Next" being thrown around.

That would be a fucking terrible, 80s-sounding, name. I hope they don't go that route...

Yo bro, don't be a bonus square dude!  Get ready for the next gen ultra tubular adventurers in fantasy awesomeness with XD&D TURBO EDITION!!! (WHOOOOOAAAAAA!!!!)  That means EXTREME Dungeoning and EXTREME Dragons, totally ripping out some new funky fresh beats!  Check out our new weapons, like the Hammer of Time Stop and spells such as Vanilla Ice Storm.  Flip out over the NPC Druid Organization known as the Planeteers in their quest to clean up polution and save the rainforest... BY KICKING BUTT!  Groovetacular!!!!

Are you ready to R-R-R-R-ROLL SOME EXTREME DICE?!

Xtreme Dungeons & Dragons: Turbo Edition!  Coming soon!  And check out our latest line of fashionable minis!  The style will never grow old!

[oslecamo]

Now?  There's a chunk playing fourth edition, a chunk playing third edition, a chunk playing Pathfinder, and there are STILL people playing first and second edition.  In fact, the last group may well have grown as the result of the OSR.

Oh, give that one a break. For all intent and purposes, pathfinder is third edition. The basic rules are pratically identical, and you can easily use material from one on the other, something you cannot say from any other two diferent editions.

If you look closer, you'll notice most "Pathfinder" groups have little problem bringing in stuff from their other third edition books, and many third edition players borrow some ideas they liked from pathfinder like their skill system.

That's Pathfinder's main selling point I believe. All the 3e players that didn't want to switch to 4e, but wanted new splatbooks and adventures, could spice up their 3e games with pathfinder. Paizo took a brand that was popular and kept developing it.

[RobbyPants]

Yo bro, don't be a bonus square dude!  Get ready for the next gen ultra tubular adventurers in fantasy awesomeness with XD&D TURBO EDITION!!! (WHOOOOOAAAAAA!!!!)  That means EXTREME Dungeoning and EXTREME Dragons, totally ripping out some new funky fresh beats!  Check out our new weapons, like the Hammer of Time Stop and spells such as Vanilla Ice Storm.  Flip out over the NPC Druid Organization known as the Planeteers in their quest to clean up polution and save the rainforest... BY KICKING BUTT!  Groovetacular!!!!

Are you ready to R-R-R-R-ROLL SOME EXTREME DICE?!

Xtreme Dungeons & Dragons: Turbo Edition!  Coming soon!  And check out our latest line of fashionable minis!  The style will never grow old!

They've got to get the Power Thirst/Brondo guy to do the commercial.


"D&D is made with REAL LIGHTNING! REAL LIGHTNING!"

"With new races like Sun Elf, Robot Orc, and GUN!"

"If your DM kills your character, you FIND A NEW DM!"


I have to watch those again.

[Prime32]

"With new races like Sun Elf, Robot Orc, and GUN!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBlweHRITsA#t=3m30s

[kurashu]

Well, it looks like the 5E team (which I suspect they will avoid calling it for PR reasons - I would bet on D&D 2012)  [...]

I've seen "D&D Next" being thrown around.

To be fair, they have said it's a place holder name.

[phaedrusxy]

Well, it looks like the 5E team (which I suspect they will avoid calling it for PR reasons - I would bet on D&D 2012)  [...]

I've seen "D&D Next" being thrown around.

That would be a fucking terrible, 80s-sounding, name. I hope they don't go that route...

Having New Coke flashbacks?

[kurashu]

I've begun signing any #dndnext tweets with a #www.minmaxboards.com tag as well. Maybe they'll eventually check us out.

[Risada]

Well, it looks like the 5E team (which I suspect they will avoid calling it for PR reasons - I would bet on D&D 2012)  [...]

I've seen "D&D Next" being thrown around.

That would be a fucking terrible, 80s-sounding, name. I hope they don't go that route...

Well... WotC reserved a forum specifically for it.

Check it out: http://community.wizards.com/go/forum/view/75882/135766/future_releases

It has some interesting topics... including a 21 page long discussion on alignments...

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Ha.
That is completely ridiculous ; but it's happened before and on going.
Technically you want that level of attention to thingy X.

 
I wonder if they'll use a metacrawler / keyword -type tracker,
just to sort through all the muck that new board will generate.
The pre release 4e board was so much nonsense.

10 000 people !@$# about Lawful Good alignment
52 people talk about linear math mechanics.
That kind of thing.

[caelic]

Remember that they tried this in fourth edition, with the D&D Essentials line and the whole "Yes, we changed things, but you can run your D&D Essentials character right alongside existing 4e characters with no problems!"

In practice, I can't say for sure that it didn't work, but I can say that I met a lot of 4e players who didn't like the idea.

[caelic]

Oh, give that one a break. For all intent and purposes, pathfinder is third edition. The basic rules are pratically identical, and you can easily use material from one on the other, something you cannot say from any other two diferent editions.

Maybe at first, but now?  More and more Pathfinder groups seem to be moving to "pure Pathfinder" as more PF support material comes out.  I don't deny that there's a lot of overlap, but the player bases are differentiating.

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

or it's going to have to do the things Pathfinder does do so much better that people will be willing to shell out money for it.

Like fixing 3.5?

If they wanted to they could. Hell if they paid one of us around here, a single one of us who does that sort of thing (I do, but most of us around here do too), that one person could probably fix half of if not the entire system given enough motivation.

I'm confident that a team of the top minds here could simply rip through the legal source books, 'importing' everything to a single edition. Its a lot of work yes, but its not impossible for a group. While they are at it that can even keep accurate 100% entirety feat compendiums and spell compendiums and ritual options and variant rules and ACFs and...

[Dragon Snack]

It went over pretty meh at Encounters tonight, even though only one of them knew about it beforehand.  Did have one kid claim he would "stay with 4E", but then I don't know who is going to play it with him...

You playtested it, then? Anything you're allowed to tell us about it?

Sorry, I was talking about the reaction to the announcement.  I do know people who have playtested it and they were still under NDAs the last I knew...

It went over pretty meh at Encounters tonight, even though only one of them knew about it beforehand.  Did have one kid claim he would "stay with 4E", but then I don't know who is going to play it with him...

Didn't know they were doing playtests of 5th yet. Wow, that was fast. Where were you that you got a chance to play it?

Again, I haven't actually playtested it, but they are already playtesting it.  There is a good chance that I will see a playtest of it at Running GAGG or at the latest Queen City Conquest though.  I'll let you know what I can...

Food for thought.

I read it, but all I got out of it was "Whaaaa!"...

Ironic, huh?

Now fourth is rolling over to fifth after only four years.  How many people are just going to decide that they're unwilling to keep repurchasing their entire library of D&D books twice a decade or more?

I already know of a group of 4E players who are planning to switch to PF due to this announcement...

They're going to have to try to craft a game that appeals to as many of those factions as possible, and appeals strongly enough to get them to switch.  Catering to only one portion of the playerbase is not going to get them back to the top of the heap.

I wish Mr. Cook and his cohorts the very best of luck--because, to be honest, I think they've been handed the most daunting task in the history of the RPG industry.

And with the open playtest you will have people from all editions and more arguing for their versions core conceit, making their job even harder.  Or have they chased away enough customers that older edition players will care?

Remember that they tried this in fourth edition, with the D&D Essentials line and the whole "Yes, we changed things, but you can run your D&D Essentials character right alongside existing 4e characters with no problems!"

They used that line in the 3.0->3.5 transition as well.  "You could be playing at the same table using 3.0 and 3.5 rules and never know".  Except you could, ESPECIALLY if the 3.0 player was a spellcaster...

EDIT: finished reading the thread...

[oslecamo]

Oh, give that one a break. For all intent and purposes, pathfinder is third edition. The basic rules are pratically identical, and you can easily use material from one on the other, something you cannot say from any other two diferent editions.

Maybe at first, but now?  More and more Pathfinder groups seem to be moving to "pure Pathfinder" as more PF support material comes out.  I don't deny that there's a lot of overlap, but the player bases are differentiating.

No more diferent than those players that stick to "core only", or "ToB+Psionics", or "core+complete+one setting splats", or "Anything but ToB and Psionics", or "everything but dragon magazine".

They're all still playing with the same base rules, the only thing they change it's the add-ons.

5e could make true to their promises if it worked like that. You have the core rules that base everything, and then you have a billion splatbooks. You have simple classes like the warlock and extra complicated stuff like Incarnum. Those classes may bend  the core rules for themselves. The trick will be making all choices equally balanced.

This is, it would be piece of cake to make a 3e class that worked like 4e. At will, per ecounter powers, dailies, learns one power per level from his own list, passive bonus to everything based on level, can't multiclass, not that hard at all.

[Ziegander]

Interview with Mike Mearls up. Not a lot of new information up, but sometimes his silence is just as telling.

I have to say, his constant repetition that the game will be "slim" and "focused" on the "absolutely essential elements" has me optimistic. I've been wanting a much more simplified core rules set for a long while now, and the idea for 5th seems to be to design the simplest D&D rules as possible and then offer all manner of optional layers. I really like this idea.

Something they need to keep in mind, however, is that for each "layer" they should focus a "Core" book on it. If they publish a bunch of subsystems together in an Unearthed Arcana book, people are going to look at it like it's not supposed to be used with the game. They have to market each subsystem as a real, Core part of the game.

[sirpercival]

I think they should bring in more fan-created campaign settings, like what they did with Eberron.  I found Eberron to be interesting and awesome, and I'd love more rich campaign worlds to play with.

[ksbsnowowl]

I think they should bring in more fan-created campaign settings, like what they did with Eberron.  I found Eberron to be interesting and awesome, and I'd love more rich campaign worlds to play with.

You know what would be interesting?  If they could have maybe 3 or 5 different settings representing different "magic level" play-styles.  Eberron would be a good example of a High/Prevalent Magic setting, while Greyhawk could be the "standard" D&D magic level setting where you might be able to find a few magic shops, and can fairly easily commission items.

What they really need is a good example of a "Low-Magic" setting.  That type of world seems relatively popular with DM's (and even some groups), but because there are no good examples to emulate within D&D, most DM's screw it up and you end up with 15th level fighters begging for +1 swords, and some of the players end up getting screwed in the process.

There are ways to pull off such a thing without screwing the players or their fun, but many DM's seem oblivious to their need to do anything other than remove most magic items.  I know there are home-made settings out there that can do this concept well, but I think it would help a lot of gaming groups if there were such a setting in print, that they could at least point to as the example of the way such a setting can be pulled off without unbalancing casters vs. non-casters even worse than it already is.

[Agita]

Interview with Mike Mearls up. Not a lot of new information up, but sometimes his silence is just as telling.

I have to say, his constant repetition that the game will be "slim" and "focused" on the "absolutely essential elements" has me optimistic. I've been wanting a much more simplified core rules set for a long while now, and the idea for 5th seems to be to design the simplest D&D rules as possible and then offer all manner of optional layers. I really like this idea.

I don't know... I'm not convinced. It's a good concept, but it sounds to me like he's trying to sell it, not talk about it, and the constant repetition smacks of marketing buzzwords.