New Edition of D&D is announced

I was at this meeting and it was a lot of fun. If you want to know a bit more from a gamer perspective check out http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/31...h-edition.html That is one of the EN World articles I did. I have a whole lot more info but can't spill it at the moment. I do a blog based on what I saw and what I want on my own site. Not to be a self promoting whore but here is the link. http://gamingtonic.com/blog/2012/01/...n-5th-edition/

On a side not I would like to say thank you to Matt James for all his help directly and indirectly and making a gamer with a positive attitudes dreams come a little bit true. Matt really helped me get the gig at EN World which led me to getting to playtest this five weeks ago. I appreciate it.

You deserved it and were well qualified. I'm glad good things are coming from it!

(FYI: I would have linked to your articles directly, but ENworld was slow to get them up)

I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of nerdrage voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

Search your feelings Mearls, you know this to be true...


I always like hearing about developments in the game. I'm sure this will be fun too.

excuse me if I'm going to be pessimistic about it.

despite what 4e got right, it got stuff wrong too.

I could rant about it, but it would be a waist of time.

I do wonder though if they will support the previous not main books like the 4e underdark book and the player options books.


well.... I'll see I suppose... and gripe then... I wonder if the 5e reset button will be Mystra's back.... hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

well really they cant kill mystra this time

I think DDNext (I will cave to popular demand) was a great idea. I had a good time playing the small sample that I did play. Five people who had never seen any of it sat down and played for several hours without any hassle. I am excited about what will happen with the Forgotten Realms but unfortunately I can't divulge what I know at this time. I am sure that Matt is excited as well since he is a huge fan. In fact I might be the most excited about the Realms.

Sorry, but I can't say I'm very optimistic about the announcement. 4E has really struck the creative, energetic, and gamists chords with me. It's what I now define as pure characterization. At 4E launch, there was a lot that kept me skeptic. Classes reduced to 8, new races, new mechanics, new ways of looking at things. And after playing for a long time, with tweaking my own ideas and seeing what came out through the months, it only got better.

Now, I feel 4E got a horrible rep right from the start. With a lot of mistakes on the marketing end and the promises WotC made (and still haven't really kept *cough*VTT*cough*) in additon to something that wasn't D&D: Saga or D&D: v3.75 there was a lot of nerd rage. But really, keeping with it through the end, I've seen this system grow so much and cover more character ideas than I could play in a lifetime. In what other system could a player be a werewolf (or in my case, werebear) Berserker, polymorph into said creature and still be equally powerful and useful to your other players at 1st level?! It just can't happen without Level Adjustments, DM approval, and a build that doesn't hit that potential until well into 7th or 8th level.

Having signed up for the Playtest, I'm hoping to keep a lof of these aspect still going strong in 5E. But as I delve deeper and deeper into the Legends and Lore columns, I'm fearing that this sort of creativity will be suppressed for simplicity. Keeping everything basic (5 races, 4 classes, possibly some skills, some feats, no tactical movement or abilities) with a heavier focus on customization at later levels or with future supplements. Personally, I can't get behind this mentality. I like options, lots of options. I like being able to play "Off-the-Wall" base characters. I like things being relatively balanced so that there doesn't need to be an arms race for magical items JUST to keep on-par with classes that can do that automatically.

If these are aspects D&D is going back to, I can't follow. I won't follow. I won't go back to Thac0 or Base Attack Bonuses with iterative attacks with varying modifiers and varying damage rolls with varying effects that target each one for some semi-believe that this better illustrates verisimilitude. Where mages run out of spells 2nd battle in and resort to crossbows or having 4 HP to get them through 1st level. Having clerics spend whole turns just to facilitate what their job is. No, if I want that I'll go play v3.5 or Pathfinder or d20 Modern. I don't want 5E to fall into these traps.

Sorry if this craps in people's Cheerios or puts a downer on some hope that 5E will be the miraculous edition that bind everyone together but here's the problem. Someone else made something that binds people "And he does not Share Power!"

There just simply isn't enough known about 5e to make a judgement. If I had to guess, it will remain modular like 4e, while expanding upon areas of the game that were neglected (skills, non-combat abilities, etc.)

I'll kind of repeat the comments that I made to my regular game group.

The changing of games really doesn't bother me much at all. If I like a game I buy it, and if I don't like it, then I don't buy it. Gaming, to me, is more about sitting around a table with a bunch of friends than about what particular game we're playing. Besides I get a lot of freebies from running games so I spend less, and less over time. When a new game gets announced is also a great time to get some "bargain bin" deals on the previous game if you liked the previous books, and are a cheapskate like me.

How often they update games is a commercial decision for WotC, so I don't let my emotions get the best of me when WotC announces their new business goals. By the same token I don't let their business goals affect my gaming. If I had liked Pathfinder better than D&D I would have migrated in that direction. I didn't, mostly because all of the niggling details that bothered me about 3.x were not really taken care of in PF, IMO. I just didn't see a whole lot of reason to support something that I personally did not enjoy running. That doesn't make PF a bad game, it's just one that I don't prefer to run. D&D scratched that itch, and PF didn't. Had it been the other way around I would be running PF instead of D&D.

We took our sweet time enjoying other games before jumping to 4e, so we've never really been on a path to jump to the new shiny. So I don't think we'll be in a hurry to jump to the new shiny whenever it comes out.

The fact that they are using an open playtest is both a marketing gimmick, and a good way of finding out what seems to "please" more people. They will never be able to produce a game that pleases all. So I'm not even bothered by that. But if it pleases me enough I'll probably buy it. If it doesn't then I'll skip purchasing it.

When 4e was announced my 3.x books didn't spontaneously combust. As a matter of fact, I still use quite a bit of them for reference material. Which is a good thing because my wife keeps wondering why I keep buying more books... LOL

The open playtest lets people look at several iterations of the game as it goes through development and let's them provide comments if something seriously bothers them. It's a good idea from a design standpoint and from a marketing standpoint. You start to see how much "buy in" people are having in your game.

I wish WotC the very best of luck with this game. I've enjoyed D&D in all its forms since 1979, so I want the game to grow and be relevant to my children too. I'm sure the "ink" won't be dry on my comments before someone, somewhere is already complaining that WotC made them buy more books, that it's a money grab, that Publisher X Rules and WotC sucks, or that they (WotC) shot their dog. It's simply the noise of the internet. I plug my ears and go, "la, la, la" all the way to a great time playing games with my friends.