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Official D&D 5E Announcement

Started by Telarus, January 09, 2012, 03:44:58 PM

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How do you feel about the announced D&D 5th Edition (SURPRISE!)?

WHAT? I NEED IT NOW!
2 (11.1%)
Ummm... don't I already have 4E, Pathfinder, and nonD&D games to play?
7 (38.9%)
Meh.
0 (0%)
Double Meh.
4 (22.2%)
Fnord.
5 (27.8%)

Total Members Voted: 18

Telarus

Telarus, KSC,
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The Good Reverend Roger

" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Cainad (dec.)

If WotC asks for D&D fan feedback on how to make 5th Edition, all they're going to wind up with is a massive pile of weird crap that was never intended to work as a game. The fanbase will guide them to create The Ultimate Nerd Rage Target, so that they can spend hours, days, grognarding to their heart's content.

And the rest of us will keep playing the games we want to play, be it Pathfinder, 4E, or Uncle Jimmy's Roundabout Rumpus Rodeo.

Cramulus

Interesting. If you've been following the Legends and Lore columns on DDI, you can tell they've been talking about 5e backstage quite a bit.  So I'm not entirely surprised.

I do look forward to seeing what they're cooking up. The R&D team's main task these days is to reunite tabletop RPG consumers, and find out how to make a buck in the new [digital] world of publishing.

I've been playing 4e since its release, and I've loved it. To me, it's different than previous editions in a really good way. It actually annoyed me most that the D&D R&D team is married to the 1970s - a lot of their content and errata is focused on recreating the experiences people had Back In My Day when Mages didn't have to roll to-hit, and you had to save versus death or go back to level 1. (somebody brought a copy of the "classic" adventure White Plume Mountain over to my place last week... now that I've read it ... it doesn't sound fun at all! module quality has come a long way since then)

The rumors we've been hearing is that 5e is a very modular system. Like they'll treat combat, feats, skill challenges, etc, as separate systems that you can choose to include -or not- in your game. For example, if you want that Original D&D experience, you can toss out the social skills like bluff, diplomacy, and intimidate and just roleplay those encounters without the die rolls. Or if you want a nautical themed campaign, there'll be a suite of nautical races and feats in its own publication, rather than having a little of every theme in every publication. Interesting idea.

And you can see why they're approaching it this way --- WotC's publishing strategy in the last two years has been kind of schizophrenic. The Essentials line is aimed squarely at newcomers, and the core product line is getting overwhelming with how many choices they give you. It's kind of cool to have that forked approach though. When a new player joins my campaign, I push them towards an Essentials build if they don't have a lot of RPG experience, or a core build if the already know how things like hit points and armor class works. So we can have newcomers at the table with simple characters, and vets with very complex characters, and neither overpowers the other.

My 4e career have taken me from level 1-10 several times. The group I DM for is level 14, which is the highest level I've seen in D&D 4e. IMO it's WAY easier to write for a 4e party than a 3e party. A fellow D&D grognard told me he recently switched from his epic tier D&D game back to pathfinder. He said, "You know, I kinda thought 4e PCs were overpowered at epic level... until pathfinder made me remember how broken 9th level spells are." I can attest to that!

In 4e's favor, I think it's the easiest version of D&D to learn. I've seen a much shorter learning curve than any other edition I've played. That being said, combat does get really slow at times. PCs have 3 actions per round, and there's a lot of choices for EACH of those actions, which can lead to a sort of deer-in-headlights paralysis when your turn comes up if you're not prepared. (you know how it goes... at my table, 4 of the players can do their turns in two minutes, the others take 5-10 minutes. Take a smoke break, come back, and they're still adding up the dice)

A few of the Legends and Lore columns riff on that note... like Mearls suggests that we might need FEWER actions per turn, then the combat would speed up considerably.

What I don't want to see lost is the emphasis on strategy and tactics. Speaking as a DM, I've found D&D 4e combat way more interesting and exciting than previous editions. Things play out like a chess match - people moving and checking each other, sliding around zones, using the terrain... the dynamic elements of battle are build into the system more smoothly and organically than in 3e.

Another thing I don't want to lose is system-wide balance. all previous editions had a big problem with Linear Fighters Quadratic Wizards. And at high level, you have to really know the system or you can fuck up your character permanently. I recall a mid level 3.5 campaign where the party rogue tried to become a priest of the trickster god, and ended up as both a shitty rogue and a shitty cleric. Or if you stacked the right combo of prestige classes, you could get absurd class features that left everybody else in the dust.

The Good Reverend Roger

Well, Pathfinder works for me, so I'm sticking with it.  Also, I see no need to replace a couple of grand of shit every time Hasbro's sales start slacking off.

@Cram:  Yeah, the 70s/80s modules sucked 99% ass.  No argument there...And yeah, they've DONE the "return to <insert hackneyed adventure> to DEATH.

" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Don Coyote

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 09, 2012, 04:51:11 PM
Well, Pathfinder works for me, so I'm sticking with it.  Also, I see no need to replace a couple of grand of shit every time Hasbro's sales start slacking off.

@Cram:  Yeah, the 70s/80s modules sucked 99% ass.  No argument there...And yeah, they've DONE the "return to <insert hackneyed adventure> to DEATH.

That's how I feel. It wasn't bad when 3rd game out because I only had the core books for 2nd at the time. When 3.5 came out I was more than slightly pissed. When I looked at 4th and noticed the lack of half-orcs and barbarians in the PHB I was put off by that and the "LOL EVERYONE HAS COOLDOWN ABILITIES"(which is actually a good idea), along with the fact that in order to play a half-orc barbarian I would need two more books at $29.95 each.

I see this has a way for them to try to continue milking their dwindling fanbase.

Phox

Well, I just recently started gaming on the regular again, and I've been enjoying 4e so far. Of course this new "modular" system seems like it's just a money-making scheme, but I don't think that surprises anyone.

I am somewhat intrigued by it though, as I've always been a fan of customizing systems, so I'll probably give a look at the very least.

Triple Zero

Quote from: Cramulus on January 09, 2012, 04:45:26 PMAnother thing I don't want to lose is system-wide balance. all previous editions had a big problem with Linear Fighters Quadratic Wizards. And at high level, you have to really know the system or you can fuck up your character permanently. I recall a mid level 3.5 campaign where the party rogue tried to become a priest of the trickster god, and ended up as both a shitty rogue and a shitty cleric. Or if you stacked the right combo of prestige classes, you could get absurd class features that left everybody else in the dust.

I mostly played 3.0 myself, but this is probably one of the things I liked least about the system.

Especially as you play a party for many levels starting at 1, the DM has to pull all sorts of tricks (magic items etc) to keep the party power level somewhat equal, because there's always someone with not as much knowledge of the system that made some bad choices (or perhaps they even dug into the books and chose some things they thought would kick ass but they turn out to be a lot less good in practical situations).
And on the other hand there was the ambidextrous ranger/barbarian that min/maxed all their battle stats, doing massive damage and beware if you let him get near some expansion book (that the DM used to pick some feat to help the unlucky player).

Myself, I played a wizard (what you'd expect?) so while I kinda sucked at early levels, like you say later on I became kickass without much problems. Also during first level, the Sleep spell actually did make me a useful party member. It was more levels 2,3 and maybe 4 that were hard. But at 5th you get Fireball and it just gets better from there :)
Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.

Scribbly

If they make DnD modular I might actually look at it again.

I couldn't convince my regular groups to even consider DnD 4th because of a backlash against the way the entire thing was handled and marketed. We don't do much 'traditional' gaming anyway, so DnD 3rd was always a hard sell over anything else. I briefly flirted with Pathfinder, then got Anima and we pretty much love that system for our style. There's no real reason to look at other games.

But DnD tends to be the first thing people think of when they think RPG, so it is important you are at least aware of what it is like if you want to bring in outside gamers or people who haven't had much experience with the hobby. We've got two kids (16-ish I think) in our regular group at the moment, and I had to look up how DnD 4th works purely so I could explain the Anima system to them in terms of how it isn't that.

I would like DnD to be non-awful again so that I might actually be tempted to use it, but I enjoy systems and comparing/contrasting and modifying and tinkering and seeing where the break points are. I actually loved that in DnD 3rd, the few times I got to play it. 4th needed a lot more cooperation amongst the group, but most of my games tend to have the people at the table working for their own purposes, and as a result sometimes at crossed purposes with other party members. That isn't the kind of story you can really tell easily with 4th, though you could with 3rd.

Plus almost everyone I know is absurdly sick of alignment systems because they tend to turn things into a caricature rather than a character.

'BUT I'M LAWFUL GOOD SO I HAVE TO KILL THE GOBLIN CHILDREN'  :argh!:
I had an existential crisis and all I got was this stupid gender.

Cramulus

Quote from: Demolition_Squid on January 10, 2012, 08:48:18 AM
4th needed a lot more cooperation amongst the group, but most of my games tend to have the people at the table working for their own purposes, and as a result sometimes at crossed purposes with other party members. That isn't the kind of story you can really tell easily with 4th, though you could with 3rd.

That's true, if you follow the DMG to the letter, 4th edition is a game about party cooperation. Without cooperating, there is no way to beat some of the game's challenges.



QuotePlus almost everyone I know is absurdly sick of alignment systems because they tend to turn things into a caricature rather than a character.

'BUT I'M LAWFUL GOOD SO I HAVE TO KILL THE GOBLIN CHILDREN'  :argh!:

A hundred times this!

I was so sick of alignment. I LOVE that the alignments are more vague now. I don't know a single person IRL that acts within one alignment all of the time. Previous incarnations of the alignment system punished you (often in terms of XP) if your character developed beyond his dogma. So it's hard to tell a story about a moral dilemma, or doing something you'll later regret, because the system (as written) slaps your hand if your character violates his code of conduct.

I'm so glad you can be "Unaligned" now. Like, No, I don't think that there needs to be a balance between good and evil, I don't give a shit about good and evil, I just care about protecting my family. Or making money. Or getting my buddy into the throne. Or whatever else the story is about that isn't Light and Darkness.


Cramulus

#10
Grab your +3 pitchforks! The edition wars have begun! 

:angrymob:

Battlefield: The WOTC Future Release subforum


ETA: 5 minutes of reading those threads will underscore how impossible it is to please the community. A modular game that could theoretically include WILDLY different gaming styles is the only way to do it.

Bebek Sincap Ratatosk

I like different systems. Sometimes its based on the kind of story that's being told, sometimes just on changing up the mechanics for variation.

Our group played 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, Vamprie, Shadowrun (old and new), Savage Worlds, Discordia!, Call of Cthulhu (old and d20 edition), Cthulhutech and a couple homegrown ones. They all had drawbacks and some cool features, but it seems to me that the success or failure of the game depends much more on the cohesion of the group playing the game than the rules.

Our group for example, played by the rules until we decided that a rule was dumb, broken or took up too much time to deal with. So we'd agree on a specific house rule, document it and continue the story. If the new system is more modular it might encourage that sort of behavior.

In the end its a business and its trying to make money. I, personally, would have preferred to see them profit from a brand new system, rather than rehashing the old one again.

Anything, though, that encourages imaginative gaming is a plus in my book.

- I don't see race. I just see cars going around in a circle.

"Back in my day, crazy meant something. Now everyone is crazy" - Charlie Manson

Bebek Sincap Ratatosk

QuoteFirst off, it's not 4.5! It's not! It's just a new starting point for new players and a reworking of the core classes in the game to make them easier to manage and allows for a more classical structure to class builds. These products will be evergreen, ie. reprinted as needed. They have a lower cost per book and are a solid ground level to get inexperienced players into the game. They will dominate the 2010/2011 product line up and then we'll get into newer material. They still use the same 4E system we've come to love. Nothing 'mechanically' is different about how they work in the rules, it's just new ways on building the classes.

Well that's an interesting twist.


http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19598650/TLCs_Future_Release_Newbie_GuideFAQ_-_aka._The_what_happened_to_X_thread.
- I don't see race. I just see cars going around in a circle.

"Back in my day, crazy meant something. Now everyone is crazy" - Charlie Manson

Cramulus

Quote from: Bebek Sincap Ratatosk on January 10, 2012, 03:17:59 PM
QuoteFirst off, it's not 4.5! It's not! It's just a new starting point for new players and a reworking of the core classes in the game to make them easier to manage and allows for a more classical structure to class builds. These products will be evergreen, ie. reprinted as needed. They have a lower cost per book and are a solid ground level to get inexperienced players into the game. They will dominate the 2010/2011 product line up and then we'll get into newer material. They still use the same 4E system we've come to love. Nothing 'mechanically' is different about how they work in the rules, it's just new ways on building the classes.

Well that's an interesting twist.


http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19598650/TLCs_Future_Release_Newbie_GuideFAQ_-_aka._The_what_happened_to_X_thread.

They're talking about Essentials, the line of D&D products they released in 2011, not 5th edition.

I think that Essentials will give us some clues about 5th edition, sort of like how the Book of Nine Swords and Dungeonscape, published at the end of D&D 3.5, gave us some clues about what 4th ed would look like.

The idea of Essentials was to give newcomers an entry channel into the game. Essentials characters look a lot more like 3rd edition characters - instead of choosing a new encounter or daily power at (almost) every level like a 4e character, they get a few at-will abilities, and when they level up, those abilities get better, or get more features. It's supposed to be easier to manage, because at high level you only have to worry about like 5 powers instead of 20.

A lot of the Essentials character builds are centered around streamlining speed of play. For example, the "classic" 4e fighter gets to mark an adjacent opponent as a minor action (that means the creature has -2 to hit anybody except for the fighter).

The "essentials" fighter has a similar feature - anybody he's adjacent to gets -2 to hit anybody except the fighter. So it's like a mark, but you don't have to declare it, it's automatically applied to anybody you stand next to. It's just one less thing you have to keep track of.

The real meat of Essentials is that they wanted a "D&D for newcomers"  (like they've done many times in the past) that can be seamlessly integrated into an existing 4e game. So you can have 20-year players playing an epic level campaign (the deep end of complexity) at the same table as a first-timer, and one isn't overpowering the other.

Scribbly

Quote from: Bebek Sincap Ratatosk on January 10, 2012, 03:08:19 PM
I like different systems. Sometimes its based on the kind of story that's being told, sometimes just on changing up the mechanics for variation.

Our group played 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, Vamprie, Shadowrun (old and new), Savage Worlds, Discordia!, Call of Cthulhu (old and d20 edition), Cthulhutech and a couple homegrown ones. They all had drawbacks and some cool features, but it seems to me that the success or failure of the game depends much more on the cohesion of the group playing the game than the rules.

Our group for example, played by the rules until we decided that a rule was dumb, broken or took up too much time to deal with. So we'd agree on a specific house rule, document it and continue the story. If the new system is more modular it might encourage that sort of behavior.

In the end its a business and its trying to make money. I, personally, would have preferred to see them profit from a brand new system, rather than rehashing the old one again.

Anything, though, that encourages imaginative gaming is a plus in my book.

I wonder if there's a place for a 'free to play' model in the games marketplace.

Most MMOs are moving over towards a system where the 'core' game is free and then people pay for addons - equipment, shiny icons, more selections etc etc.

I wonder how porting that over to the RPG market might look. A totally free PHB, DMG and MM but then you need to pay if you want artwork, or the Big Book of Shiny Swords, or non-standard classes...

RPGs are easier to pirate than those MMOs are, though, and the more I think about it the more it is like the old license DnD operated under, where all the core content was basically free so the advantage of buying the book was you got the book and the artwork. I assume that as that model collapsed, it wasn't making them the money they needed.
I had an existential crisis and all I got was this stupid gender.