How do you feel about the future of D&D after the official announcements?

Belgos · Jan 11, 2012

How do I feel?

Skepitcal. Prejudicial. And a HUGE feeling of self-entitlement --this is following the feeling of being alienated by Fourth Edition and all the people that ran the project.

Wizards can talk all they want about:

Sacred Cows
Iterations
Universality
Verisimilitude, or
Pick your own wank-word

I do not care. My group does not care. Wizards: Sending Monte Cook over to my house --with your hat in his hands no less, just doesn't cut it I'm afraid. I'll remain negative about this D&D announcement thanks.

El Mahdi · Jan 12, 2012

Positive.

Cautiously Positive, but Positive none the less. I believe some very good things can come of this.

SteveC · Jan 12, 2012

I voted neutral. I'd love to say positive, since I trust the people involved, but it seems that much of the rhetoric that's coming out is about rolling back the things that I like about the current edition. I think those rules already exist in the form of 3X and Pathfinder.

Still, I believe in the people involved, so here's hoping.

jeffh · Jan 12, 2012

Cautiously optimistic. If there were a choice between "positive" and "neutral" I'd pick it, but I defaulted to "positive".

The concerns folks like Kzach have raised (don't know if they're in this thread, but he's mentioned them elsewhere) are valid, but you know what? Despite that, crowdsourcing has often worked well. And if this "iteration" falls flat for me, there are at least two good versions and an acceptable one out there already so I'm pretty much set for life regardless. There's no way this can make my gaming life worse, as far as I can see, and hey, maybe it'll blow me away.

was · Jan 12, 2012

I'm cautiously optimistic as well

Pilgrim · Jan 12, 2012

Proton-ish

Through, seriously, at first I was neutral bordering on negative, but yesterday I realized that this is the one big chance to finally have a new D&D edition as close to what I would like, just by participating and giving feedback. I know in the end it still might have some areas that are iffy, or worst case just isn't something I want to play, but at least I can say I did what I could to help it in that direction.

tuxgeo · Jan 12, 2012

Neutral.

Morrus, I hope you'll do another one of these polls in a few months after the first of the open playtests has finished. Attitudes can, and probably will, change (at least a little bit) when we get some actual, solid information.

IMHO, some fraction of the new-edition discontent stems not from deficiencies in the new rules, but from the feeling on the part of some players that "I've already learned the rules to this game. Why should I spend the time and effort to learn a new set of rules?"
To the extent that this is true (whatever that extent may be), "D&D Next" has next-to-zero chance to appeal to the people having that attitude. (Not exactly zero, because even obduracy can change.)

JoeGKushner · Jan 12, 2012

Neutral.

I think Monte does some fantastic work. I have Dark Space from when it came out from Iron Crown. I have Ptlous when it was first done.

I think Mearls does some fantastic work. I have a lot of his d20 work from various publishers.

Neither of them controls WoTC.

I liked the face that 'the Rouse' put on 4th edition.

I hate a lot of things that WoTC did to the community and the game.

I do not think that Monte and Mearl's will have the control over the new edition that people hope they will but will have things directed to them by corporate.

If they have a good marketing person who can spin gold out of

, they may be able to come out of this smelling like roses.

Harlekin · Jan 12, 2012

Quite Negative

To me this looks like a Hail-Mary Pass to keep Hasbro from mothballing D&D. I don't see how this can succeed. They either maintain most of the modern design in 4ed or they return to the classical design of the older editions. Either way is going to leave one half of the fandom outside.

Having Monte at the helm suggests that they are shooting for the classical design. This is probably the worse choice. Even though there are more gamers playing a classical version of D&D, these players have established themselves as PF or OSR players rather than as D&D players and are therefore harder to win.

My expectation is that 5th will do somewhat worse than 4th edition and that lack of success will cause Hasbro to abandon the D&D TTRPG.

merelycompetent · Jan 12, 2012

Neutral. Too early to tell, not enough information.

A lot is going to depend on the presentation, play, and compatibility (including with different playstyles). Right now, we just don't have that information.

I'm hearing some good things about what the designers *want* to do. Whether they can actually pull it off... we'll see.