Future of D&D Keynote Speech [UPDATE - with video!]

[trancejeremy]

If they released stuff in .mobi or .epub, they would have to reformat everything. Since they're basically talking about decades of products, most of those products wouldn't exist as electronic files, meaning there'd be a lot of work. I can't see that being a profitable enterprise, really.

OTOH, who knows, perhaps they have been slaving away at reformatting every module for months now...

While that's certainly true, at the same time back in the old days (back when pdfs were somewhat new fangled) they released a handful of modules and other things in text and rich text format as free downloads, and on the old core rules cd-rom, they had things in windows help files and IIRC, rich text.

If they actually have things in text or rich text files, it's relatively easy to make mobi/epub files out of them. Then again, those things could be lost.

 

[Piratecat]

It did start late. Remarkably, I think it was the right call - the ballroom is only accessible via elevator, and they were holding non-ticketed people until the ticketed ones got in. A tough decision (I err on the "start on time" side) but in my opinion a reasonable one.

 

[Stacie GmrGrl]

For me, either .mobi (Kindle) or .epub (Nook) would be way better than PDF.

PDFs are pretty and all, but I'd give my right arm to get all my 4e books on my Kindle in a non-PDF format.

-O

I don't think you should give your right arm away... how else could you roll dice while drinking mountain dew at the same time?

 

[Thalain]

A few points of this for once give me hope for the future of D&D which didn't look too good with 4E (no, this is not an edition war - in fact the very existence of edition warring is one of the symptoms that plagued the game since the 4E release because proponents of different styles of play were driven apart by the almost impossible to bridge differences between the editions):

Two years of playtesting sounds excessive at first, but then, how is this a bad thing? In an ideal world, we will be looking for an edition that will last us for several decades and if it takes two years of the community jointly developing it under Wizards' guidance, the result can only be very close to that.

The re-release of all the old stuff is another great sign and hopefully remind many players just how diverse the D&D universe is. And again, having all of this at our fingertips and being able to play with it might well inspire D&D next as well because more great ideas will be created when people with re-kindle-d (pun intended) interest in their old game will be playtesting, bringing fresh memories of the best old features to the tables. Let's just hope they'll be cheap enough for the pros among us to acquire a well-stocked library. (Can I get a 250-title package please?)

The FR adventures? "Living" done right. Striking a difficult but in my opinion perfect balance between casual and organized play.

More playtest material just days after the release of Version 0.2? Two more magic systems, this early? Someone's obviously concerned about character balance this time round. Which means... yep. Better games!

All in all for once a keynote that vastly exceeded my expectations considering how meh the info has sometimes been in the past, both for D&D and Magic.

If I could give Wizards an XP for it, they'd have one now.

 

[Jupp]

The recorded session seems to be up now on justin.tv

wotc_dnd - Broadcasting LIVE on Justin.tv

 

[Plageman]

The recorded session seems to be up now on justin.tv

wotc_dnd - Broadcasting LIVE on Justin.tv

Thank you for the link. I was watching the keynote when a power outage happened just when Ed was going to reveal the Sundering.

I'm quite happy with what has been announced. Let's hope all other seminars will be available too !

 

[Hal G]

I felt it was done "right".
They explained themselves and the intent and direction of D&DNext.
They hinted and teased at art and where that is going.
Ed went through book by book and explained that old and new characters will be in the 6 book, 6 author Sundering Set, I liked how excited Ed seemed as well, that is a good sign.

Kevin (PC) did a great job moderating and plugging ENWorld.

It was one of the few Keynote speeches that actually made me want to hear more of something not walk away sad or confused, I must say after taking a long break from D&D this edition may bring me back to it.

 

[vagabundo]

Damn the feed is unwatchable for me. Keeps stopping and starting..

 

[delericho]

Okay, I've just listened to the video (didn't get to see it, because I was busy with other things).

Fantastic show. Nothing truly surprising, but a whole lot of good stuff in there.

The thing that struck me most was the difference in tenor between this and the 4e announcement of a few years ago - it lacked the triumphalism of that announcement, and instead felt like they were genuinely interested in speaking to the community, rather than just talking at us.

All in all, it left me much more confident as to the future of the game than I was before.

 

[GeorgeFields]

Damn the feed is unwatchable for me. Keeps stopping and starting..

I've got the same issues.

I am excited about the old books being available again. Personally, I'm hoping for pdf as I don't have any kind of e-reader or tablet.