D&D 5E From what you've seen so far, do you think D&D Next will be a success or a failure?

Can't tell.
It will sell well. But its success will be dependent on ow it handles modules.

If the amount of modules and rules come early as promised, it will dominate. Money out the Wahoo.

If not, it won't look so good. And the reaction won't be pretty. The broken base of D&D can only be fed with options.

Tequila Sunrise said:

It's going to be a success and a 'failure' in the same way that every other edition is. It'll have its fans, it'll have its detractors, the core books will sell like hot cakes, and then sales will slide until WotC decides it's time for 6e in about five years.

Click to expand...

10+ years. Minimum of 8.5. And you can quote me on that. Feel free to bookmark this page and come back to it in 11 years.

I believe people who like 5E will claim it was a success, and people who don't like it will claim it was a failure... everyone using the same fuzzy logic and invented math to support their completely uninformed opinion, moving the goalposts constantly on what constitutes 'success' and 'failure' in order to make themselves feel as though they are in fact right and that they weren't an idiot for liking/disliking the game in the first place.

TerraDave said:

It will return D&D to the position of the number 1 selling RPG, where 5E will remain for years to come.

Click to expand...

The goals seem to be higher than that. After all, 4e was the number 1 selling RPG for it's first couple of years of existence, and it's product line got reduced sharply. Next I suspect needs to shift bigger numbers than all other RPGs combined to be considered a commercial success, and I don't think that's going to happen after the first year when the big releases (the initial PHB, DMG, MM) come out. Being the biggest game in a small niche market is not enough, if your game has been sold to Hasbro on the theory that you can shift WarHammer 40K sort of numbers.

My gut feeling is that the initial offering will sell phenomenally well, it will be the #1 RPG of 2014 by some considerable margin (impressive, given it won't be out until nearly the third quarter), but then it will rapidly drop off. I don't expect it to be actively supported three years from now... and I don't expect 5.5e, "5e Essentials", or 6e to be a thing either. My gut feeling is that 5e is the last edition of the D&D RPG that will be in print, ever, and the last edition for a very, very long time.

I really hope I'm wrong.

Given that success would be defined relative to their stated goal of offering something to all or at least most segments of the fanbase, I think failure is pretty much a given at this point. We haven't seen anything that would suggest that the game has much to offer to people who are still playing and are still satisfied with 3e. It's also bringing a lot less to the table than PF is. I also don't see that the old-school crowd is likely to be converted. So if old school and new school are going to keep on trucking, what does that leave?

People who've left D&D for other rpgs (or who started on other rpgs)? I doubt it. This isn't some great new innovation here.

I really only see that it's going to sell to people who played 4e/people who buy anything with the "D&D" logo on it regardless of what's between the covers. We have seen that this is not a small number of people. However, WotC doesn't have the credibility that it had five years ago, so at this point it seems like it will literally be just people who are buying it on name or because it's widely available or for structured events. I hope there aren't a lot of people like that.

Moreover, in the last five years, gaming stores have died off precipitously and the hobby seems to be waning as a commercial entity. When 3e came out, everyone was talking about it. When 4e came out, it was more of a blip on the radar, something that the mainstream gamer quickly laughed off but at least had some awareness of. With 5e, I think a lot of people are so detached they don't even know it's coming. There isn't the community there used to be, and there isn't the buzz there used to be.

Hopefully one of these days there will be something that's actually worth getting the whole community excited over.

I don't think that 5e is going to end well.

The initial release will, of course, go swimmingly. For whatever reason, gamers like the new shinies, and will almost assuredly buy the core if for no reason other than to simply have it (I bought the 4e core at a midnight release, and I actively disliked the game).

But beyond that? I am seriously dubious.

It just feels like WotC has been screwing this up since the get-go. What I've seen of the game looks fine, I guess, but that's the problem: it just looks fine. There's nothing there that makes me say, "oh man, I totally need to switch to this game, it is just too awesome." I've heard much the same from pretty much everyone in my group.

Add to that the fact that the base seems quite fractured at this point... I just don't think this situation is salvageable, for D&D.

I could be wrong. We'll just have to wait and see.

While the game itself seems solid enough to me, it all depends on how WotC handles it. They really didn't manage 4e very well, and they still don't seem to be doing that good a job with 5e. They really need to get themselves some proper PR.

GnomeWorks said:

I don't think that 5e is going to end well.

The initial release will, of course, go swimmingly. For whatever reason, gamers like the new shinies, and will almost assuredly buy the core if for no reason other than to simply have it (I bought the 4e core at a midnight release, and I actively disliked the game).

But beyond that? I am seriously dubious.

Click to expand...

Here's what I said about 4e before it's release: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?226363-will-4-0-succeed&p=4226525&viewfull=1#post4226525

No, 4e will not succeed in the long run. It may do very well for a few months, a year, but due to declining sales, we'll see 5e just before the Mayan apocalypse.

I foresee history repeating itself here. Well, except for the Mayan Apocalypse.

TarionzCousin said:

It's like you read my mind.

Click to expand...

Well, great minds, and all that.

DEFCON 1 said:

I believe people who like 5E will claim it was a success, and people who don't like it will claim it was a failure... everyone using the same fuzzy logic and invented math to support their completely uninformed opinion, moving the goalposts constantly on what constitutes 'success' and 'failure' in order to make themselves feel as though they are in fact right and that they weren't an idiot for liking/disliking the game in the first place.

Click to expand...

It's almost as if you expect history to repeat itself.

Sword of Spirit said:

10+ years. Minimum of 8.5. And you can quote me on that. Feel free to bookmark this page and come back to it in 11 years.

Click to expand...

If you insist.