Obligatory 5E D&D Thread

[Xeviat]

I suppose I'm just one of those "liburals" who like change (spelling to emphasize pronunciation). I don't fault a game company for releasing a new edition. L5R is on its 4th Edition, M&M is on its 3rd Edition, and Hero and GURPs are on I-don't-want-to-google-it editions. Yes, 4-5 years is a short lifespan for a game, but this is the age of the internet and things are moving faster. Input can be gathered quicker.

It's simply easier to clean off the table and start from scratch than it would be to patch things up. 4E's a playable game, but something fundamentally feels off for some players (1 in my own group). I guess someone has decided that they want to appease those people.

I'm a terminal optimist, so for now all I can do is hope I get in the playtest and hope for the best. D&D was my first tabletop game, and no matter how I try to get away from it I find myself drawn back just the same.

[Ninja D!]

GURPS is on 4th, since the mid-80s. That's not terrible. D&D wasn't bad, either, until it went to WotC. Ai, ai, Hasbro!

[Hibou]

I guess the biggest concern for me is whether or not it actually is as diverse a system as they have claimed to be working on in recent statements. If it is, I might actually be interested in grabbing the books. I would like to see them put a little more effort into adventures that people might look at and say "Hey I might buy that so I can run it 30 times" - I very much felt this way about Expedition to Undermountain and Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, both of which were released very late in the 3.5 cycle. I think it'd be really cool if that were the case and the only book collection you'd need for a while would be the PHB, DMG and MM along with a large module of your choice like the Expeditions were.

[Superfluous Crow]

Are there any details whatsoever on the elements, mechanics or design considerations of 5e so far?

[Weave]

Are there any details whatsoever on the elements, mechanics or design considerations of 5e so far?

Don't believe so. Check this article out, it has some interesting tidbits (nothing to really sink your teeth into, but it at least gives us a look inside the thoughts of the people in charge). However, it's easy to really hype something up when they haven't chosen to reveal any of the actual crunch behind it.

If there's ever been a time I've wanted to stay away from the D20 system, it's now, but I'm not so stubborn as to turn a blind eye to 5E. I sincerely hope for the best, and if they turn out with a great, new system, then awesome! :)

[Steerpike]

Xev, I like change too.  That's why I'm annoyed by the continuous tinkering with editions: all they're really changing are a few mechanics, but the core idea, the worlds, the essential game isn't new at all.

I would assume that. I wouldn't blame them for it though. smile They need to make a profit.

Agreed.  But that's exactly what sucks. Mass-market consumerism is often pretty inimical to art.

Eberron was also a very new setting- a risk.

Any business decision is, of course, a risk in a sense, in that it's either going to make money or not.  It's true Eberron was a substantial risk - and Eberron is one of the things I totally give Wizards mad props for.  Eberron is awesome.  But if you look at the number of settings that TSR put out for 2nd edition AD&D - Planescape, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, the Forgotten Realms, Spelljammer, Mystara/Hollow World, Dragonlance, Birthright, Al-Qadim, Wilderlands, etc etc - and then compare it to the number that WotC put out for 3rd edition - Eberron, Ghostwalk (barely), Rokugon (except not really, since that was taken from Legend of the Five Rings) - you can see a disturbing pattern emerging.  There were some great settings produced by inventive 3rd party publishers for 3e due to the OGL (also one of the decisions I give them props for), which helped a lot, but the trend from WotC seems to be to stop genuinely creating new, cool, unique stuff and instead repackage the old, generic stuff with some tweaked mechanics.

As you point out, putting out so many settings probably contributed to TSR's financial troubles, while it seems that holding onto product identity like a crusty safety blanket and re-releasing the same old stuff time and time again is keeping WotC in the black.  TSR died a noble death; WotC will strike any Mephistophelean bargain to ensure its immortality.  That's exactly what I find so sad about the entire situation.  It's also why I won't spend any money on D&D again, short of some earth-shatteringly awesome creative rejuvenation.  Ultimately these decisions come down to what sells, and I know what my dollar is voting for.

EDIT:

I don't fault a game company for releasing a new edition.

Me neither.  The truer fault lies with consumers.

Gamers of the world unite!  :P

[O Senhor Leetz]

I thought the great thing about 3rd, and to an extant 2nd/ADnd, was that it was a fairly ambiguous setting, able to accommodate practically anything fantasy setting you could think of and any other genre with just a little work. The idea of the d20 was easy enough, and everything made sense, but I'll admit at times it wasn't the most exciting of systems.

I also thought 4th did the exact opposite, as it seemed to me the core rules where adapted to the "Points of Light" Forgotten Realms they came up with. The introduction of the tiefling and the dragonborn (or whatever they were called) and all the other WoW jazz totally threw off the "generic fantasty" vibe that a core rule set SHOULD have.

[Xeviat]

I'm not sure how tiefling and dragonborn were WoWie, but perhaps that sentence is more compound than I'm reading it. Many settings, from Elder Scrolls to Everquest, have races outside of the traditional mammalian standard bearers. Perhaps those should be left to supplements, though, and ensure that D&D's tropes are hit first.

Here I was all ready to start retooling L5R for my setting, and now I'm going to end up waiting and seeing what D&D5 is all about. My storytelling really suits D&D, since it started there. Lets just hope that 5E is still D&D.

One bit of information we are being fed is that 5E is going to try to encompass all of the editions, and be somehow modular. Someone on the WotC boards made the following hypothesis: certain elements of the game could be removed without affecting the rest. For example:

1st Edition style: Class abilities, that's it.
2nd Edition style: Add skills and proficiencies.
3rd Edition style: Add professional skills and feats.
4th Edition style: Remove professional skills, trade some feats for powers.

If skills aren't required to play the game, and if feats aren't required to patch the basic math of the game, then all of these elements can become optional ways to diversify characters. It's an idea that I greatly like, as it would allow a quick game to be played 1st Edition style by just picking your race and your class, all the way up to complex 3E and 4E styles.

That's if that's the direction they're actually going in.

[Elemental_Elf]

Eberron was also a very new setting- a risk.

Any business decision is, of course, a risk in a sense, in that it's either going to make money or not.  It's true Eberron was a substantial risk - and Eberron is one of the things I totally give Wizards mad props for.  Eberron is awesome.  But if you look at the number of settings that TSR put out for 2nd edition AD&D - Planescape, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, the Forgotten Realms, Spelljammer, Mystara/Hollow World, Dragonlance, Birthright, Al-Qadim, Wilderlands, etc etc - and then compare it to the number that WotC put out for 3rd edition - Eberron, Ghostwalk (barely), Rokugon (except not really, since that was taken from Legend of the Five Rings) - you can see a disturbing pattern emerging.  There were some great settings produced by inventive 3rd party publishers for 3e due to the OGL (also one of the decisions I give them props for), which helped a lot, but the trend from WotC seems to be to stop genuinely creating new, cool, unique stuff and instead repackage the old, generic stuff with some tweaked mechanics.

Outside of Eberron and Forgotten Realms, WotC did not publish any settings in 3.x that were not either stand alone products (Ghostwalk) or were settings WotC created specifically to whore out to 3rd party companies so they could shoulder the burden (and risk) of create supplements (Rokugan, Dragonlance). The problem with Setting books is that it targets a niche population of a niche population of a niche population. First off you need to be a DM (1/5th of the population), second off you need to DM in that setting (very tiny), thirdly you need to have a desire to explore the regions/issues/people/etc. covered in the setting splat book (even tinier). There just isn't a big market for such books, which is why WoTC was forced to do away with them when 4E came along. They have to make money and you can do that with much more ease by creating generalized splat books targeted towards players. :(

[Steerpike]

Of course, when a campaign setting takes off, it can be really, really profitable and reach a market beyond GMs.  Think about how much money Forgotten Realms has brought in for the gaming industry - not just dozens (I'm guessing hundreds at this point) of roleplaying books and expansions but multiple video-game franchises (Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, Pool of Radiance), novel franchises (Salvatore and many, many others), and even a comics series.  The world originated the first graphical MMORPG ever (the original Neverwinter Nights) and many of its novels were best-sellers and remain in print today.  Whether or not you like the world, it's had an enormous impact, had an effect on the industry as a whole, and made a ton of money at the same time.

Eberron certainly hasn't reached the same dizzy heights, but it's already got a computer game, several novels, and a graphic novel, plus dozens of books and accessories.

Though it didn't originate as a roleplaying setting, think about how many products Middle Earth has produced.  Games, films, cartoons, memorabilia, costumes, dozens of editions of the novel, etc.

So there is money to be made in settings.  Settings, more than rules-expansions or character splatbooks, can acquire strong fan-bases and followings.  They can fire the imagination and produce more creative works - a lot more.  It seems to me that it's just easier and safer not to introduce new ones.

[Llum]

They should tap in to some novels to make settings from. The Shadows of the Apt series would be a ridiculously good gaming setting (as I'm sure the author has done). Things like that.

That being said, I'm looking forward to the mechanics of 5e, see what has changed and what hasn't.

[sparkletwist]

I think D&D tried to seem a whole more "generic" than it was. Maybe in some ways it was, but only because D&D tropes had gotten so fully integrated into popular culture's definition of fantasy. I still think a lot of what the OGL would call "Product Identity" was still all over the place; you can see this in settings like Eberron where they seemingly have to bend over backwards to accommodate old D&D standbys like elves, alignment, and a bunch of high level spells that would probably destroy the society that Eberron is trying to portray but still have to be in there anyway because they're part of D&D*. Of course, that's largely because it was the winner of a "take all of the standard D&D crap and cram it into a unique setting" contest.

*I do want to point out, to its credit, Eberron does handle the ramifications of what having various powerful magic available on a large scale would really do to a setting far better than most "traditional fantasy" type settings.

[Elemental_Elf]

Of course, when a campaign setting takes off, it can be really, really profitable and reach a market beyond GMs.  Think about how much money Forgotten Realms has brought in for the gaming industry - not just dozens (I'm guessing hundreds at this point) of roleplaying books and expansions but multiple video-game franchises (Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, Pool of Radiance), novel franchises (Salvatore and many, many others), and even a comics series.  The world originated the first graphical MMORPG ever (the original Neverwinter Nights) and many of its novels were best-sellers and remain in print today.  Whether or not you like the world, it's had an enormous impact, had an effect on the industry as a whole, and made a ton of money at the same time.

Eberron certainly hasn't reached the same dizzy heights, but it's already got a computer game, several novels, and a graphic novel, plus dozens of books and accessories.

Though it didn't originate as a roleplaying setting, think about how many products Middle Earth has produced.  Games, films, cartoons, memorabilia, costumes, dozens of editions of the novel, etc.

So there is money to be made in settings.  Settings, more than rules-expansions or character splatbooks, can acquire strong fan-bases and followings.  They can fire the imagination and produce more creative works - a lot more.  It seems to me that it's just easier and safer not to introduce new ones.

Peripherals, like books and games, make Settings profitable but the setting splat books themselves are very poor money makers. If they made a ton of money, the cash-strapped WotC would not have cut the production of all Splat books when 4E was created. As we have seen since 2008, the profitability of the Forgotten Realms peripherals were not diminished by the loss of splat books because, typically, they target a different (though some what related) audience. Most people do not enjoy digging into what are, essentially, History books (remember, kids these days often claim history is the most difficult subject in school).

Of course, we, the denizens of this site, are total oddballs in that we spend our free time writing imaginary histories for make believe worlds.  :D

Having said that, FR would not be popular if it did not begin with splat books, which energized a small core of creative people to generate thousands of pages of content for the setting (through splat books, novels, games, comics, etc.).

The danger I see for Wizards is that FR is very much old hat. Eberron was their new poster child setting but, over the course of 4E's life, it has received very little new content (hardly any DDI articles, only a handful of books, no splats, no comics). In fact, no setting (besides FR) is really generating a large amounts of content (and even that has been drastically curtailed since 3.x). WotC really needs to either push a new setting to the forefront or refocus on FR because, right now, I (and many gamers I know) have lost a lot of interest in all D&D settings.

They should tap in to some novels to make settings from. The Shadows of the Apt series would be a ridiculously good gaming setting (as I'm sure the author has done). Things like that.

That being said, I'm looking forward to the mechanics of 5e, see what has changed and what hasn't.

Licensees are almost always profitable and short term.

[LD]

Xeviat- Thanks! :)

---

compare it to the number that WotC put out for 3rd edition - Eberron, Ghostwalk (barely), Rokugon (except not really, since that was taken from Legend of the Five Rings) - you can see a disturbing pattern emerging.  There were some great settings produced by inventive 3rd party publishers for 3e due to the OGL (also one of the decisions I give them props for), which helped a lot, but the trend from WotC seems to be to stop genuinely creating new, cool, unique stuff and instead repackage the old, generic stuff with some tweaked mechanics.

I agree that they focused on mechanics. I wonder though if your criticism is that they didn't express enough creativity in the mechanics or just that focusing on mechanics is inherently lazier than focusing on the vibrant settings.

Before Paizo started incorporating its APG extra classes into later books and adventures, I would have thought WoTC did a decent job with inventing LOTS of new mechanics and classes and features... but now I think they made a poor business decision. Paizo has managed, without alienating customers, to increase the value of its APG by making large parts of it open content and then placing references to it everywhere- but in adventures where they reprint some things without being so overbearing as to destroy value in the new products. Still, back in 2004 the internet wasn't as accessible at the gaming table as it is in 2009/2012, so WoTC open sourcing some classes and prestige classes may not have worked...especially since they didn't make their money from adventures... which was a business decision- just focus on mechanics books and nothing else... it was an odd decision, but they let the 3PP cover the adventures because of the lower margins.

As you point out, putting out so many settings probably contributed to TSR's financial troubles, while it seems that holding onto product identity like a crusty safety blanket and re-releasing the same old stuff time and time again is keeping WotC in the black.  TSR died a noble death; WotC will strike any Mephistophelean bargain to ensure its immortality.  That's exactly what I find so sad about the entire situation.  It's also why I won't spend any money on D&D again, short of some earth-shatteringly awesome creative rejuvenation.  Ultimately these decisions come down to what sells, and I know what my dollar is voting for.

That's fair. I'm more interested in settings generally.

Speaking of settings- let us not forget the Wheel of Time setting book and special edition in Dragon magazine. :)

>>  It seems to me that it's just easier and safer not to introduce new ones.

Well... people also have setting fatigue and a barrier to get into each new setting? Once you're playing in one setting, most people won't want to play in another. They've already 'found' a setting, so to speak- so the market is really tiny. Elemental Elf and Sparkletwist generally have been expressing my opinions. I know I only play in one setting at a time in DnD world- my own- which sadly needed to incorporate boring Golarion so I could better use the Adventure Paths. :p and I didn't want to have to convert all the lore on the fly.

[Xeviat]

Light Dragon, were you the one who posted that thought on WotC's boards?