joseph wrote:

I recall some hints about revisiting old settings, so keep your fingers crossed. Al Qadim was one of my favorite 2E settings and would love to see it revamped!

I'm glad to hear that. I haven't really seen what they've rereleased for the 3rd and 4th but settings, old or new (anything but Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance), would be so much better than the usual monsters or class manuals.


 

I've been a player in some playtest sessions of Next for around a year and a half now, and have run a couple sessions using the rules. Overall, it seems to be a solid rules set with options to go minimal or to go extreme. In my home game the rule is that the GM gets to decide what to run, and this is pretty much the only way I can see Next working for a lot of groups.

One problem I have found in discussing D&D Next is that Next has been changing along the line based on playtest feedback, so when a person says "I played it and hated XX" it's possible that XX has been tweaked or deleted since then. The designers have adjusted monster hit points and AC values several times, adjusted spell damage and effects several times (even adding and deleting spells), tried using extra skill dice and removing them, and other features of the game that aren't coming to mind at the moment. Our GM was very careful most of the time to use the most recent playtest packets and we constantly had to go re-work our characters to fit the current rules. And I'll say that many of our playtests were done using classic AD&D modules and there seemed to be minimal conversion needed overall.

In short, I have high hopes for 5E. My friend who owns a game store says he's tired of Pathfinder being the only "big company" option when new players ask about "Dungeons and Dragons." I think that WotC's biggest blunder is actually the timing of the release -- it should have been early in the summer so that kids could play it over vacation, and there should have been some sort of "Free RPG Day" thing to help draw attention to the product.

I think we can expect rules bloat starting pretty much on day one. With the basic rulebooks mostly done, I wouldn't be suprised if the first splatbooks are already in work.

Chainsaw wrote:

Who knows, 5E might be a great game, but I'm very happy with O/AD&D and AS&SH, so I'm simply not that interested in another fantasy RPG and especially not what's basically another set of house rules for what I already own. Just being the current owner of the D&D brand doesn't give WotC's latest fantasy RPG any special significance for me. If someone competent who could highlight its strengths wants to run it for me sometime, maybe at a convention, sure, I'll play for a few hours. It would have to be an earthshattering, mindblowing experience to pull me away from what I already have, know well and enjoy. For people still searching for a fantasy RPG that suits them (or who just like fantasy RPGs in general), I hope it meets your expectations.

I'm hoping their marketing efforts will go toward growing the pie.  Moving the fans of entrenched versions of the game maybe very difficult as evidenced by some of the above responses.  Its new and shiny so there will be take but a long life span, who knows.
 

I am working on a system independent campaign setting. If D&D will be open to independent creators releasing their own materials, trying to surf in their wake could be quite helpful. A short booklet for custom races and monsters for the rules system is quickly done. Package it together with the system-genric world description and you got yourself a 3rd party campaign setting.

D&D 5e is win-win for all of us, whatever the outcome. 

If tons of people like it and play it, it introduces tons of new gamers into the hobby, gamers who will, sooner or later, want to try our settings and variant rules and whatnot. So sooner or later, it trickles down towards growing the pie of OGL publishers.

If it bombs, we still have all our variants and rules to play with, can publish whatever under the OGL, and our offerings will only become that much more contrasted against an official game that would share little to nothing with what we do. 

So either way, whether 5e succeeds or fails, I think OGL publishers win. At WORSE, the reception is lukewarm, and nothing changes either way.

I agree: the best outcome is that this new version of D&D is widely successful, whatever the actual play style. Since it is for many the entry to the hobby, it can only serve in introducing new people to the gameS, and thereby, maybe, pushing them to explore further and find alternate ways of playing. 

Of course, it would greatly help if this new version of D&D was ALSO friendly to the way we enjoy running games, because then it'd make it all the easier to say "hey I have this HSD thing/this AS&SH thing, and it's totally usable with the D&D you know without much fuss at all." 

I'm skeptical on this particular point, but if D&D comes through on that intent (the "big tent" thing), then that'll be cool. If not, we'll just keep on trucking and promote our stuff as an alternate yet just as enjoyable way to play. Variety is the spice of life, right?

Right on, Benoist. For those that have not followed the upcoming releases, they will in fact be $50 each (much cheaper on Amazon), while the starter set is around $20 and geared toward new DMs. However, BASIC D&D will be released as a pdf for FREE (!), will run a little less than 100 pages and will be a complete game. The hardcovers will add classes and other options to this, while probably incorporating all of the same material.

Can't go wrong with free.

EDIT: Tenkar reports a pdf release for July 3rd...but according to Mearls, the pdf will include character creation and will be updated later with other material.
http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2014/06/d-basic-5e-releases-july-3rd-download.html?m=1

Last edited by joseph (6/30/2014 9:36 am)

Download is now available.
http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/basicrules

I went over it once and as a longtime 3rd edition player and GM, I can say with confidence that 5th edition is 3rd editions with many of the small modfiers of combat removed.
My biggest complaint with 3rd edition was the wide gap of attack bonuses and saving throws over the levels, and this aspect has been adressed.
However, a very close second is it's reliance on new class abilities at every level, which now in retrospective is a much more significant problem and antithesis to the oldschool style of playing RPGs. And in this regard Wizards remains true to itself and makes this the centerpiece of the game. Problems are solved by searching for the right special ability on the character sheet. And with this the whole business is completed. I don't have any interest in running this game.

There are a few good ideas here and there, which should have been there 14 years ago, but it doesn't affect the main structural problem I mentioned. I'll probably keep an eye out for campaign sourcebooks, as in this regard 3rd edition did have a couple of gems. But the rules system is of no concern to me.

Last edited by Yora (7/03/2014 12:39 pm)