D&D 5E Monte Cook Leaves WotC - No Longer working on D&D Next [updated]

[Perspicacity]

Hmm. I could never make 4e work for me ... and yet I surely don't think 4e should be "purged."

Too many gamers like what 4e brings to the table. I can't believe the designers working on 5e will turn their back on 4e.

They absolutely should purge it. It is reasonable to assume that a significant portion of 4e players really don't care and are just playing current edition D&D. There is no way in hell that D&D4.5 is actually going to get back anyone that left D&D during 4e. They should make 5e a retro-clone D&D, and reboot the fluff to before these guys screwed with it.

There just is no way that you can please both those that enjoy playing D&D, and those that enjoy making Pixie wizard Fey-beast tamers riding around on a displacer beast characters and then running them through scenario after scenario of D&D minis with half-baked role-playing rules pasted on.

Someone must be sacrificed. I vote for those guys.

Admin note: This sort of edition war and troll is exactly the sort of post we don't want to see on the site. Avoid this in the future, please. It's absolutely possible to state your opinion without being insulting or trying to start a fight. -- Piratecat

 

[carmachu]

And you are definitely right about the 80s; IIRC, D&D had 13 print runs during that era.

From his blog, you may have to expand some of the comments to find it:
mearls: Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!


Edit: For number of printings (at the time), see Leeds quote, question 7:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/254134-exclusive-interview-wizards-coast-president-greg-leeds.html

Again, none of that contradicts what I've said:

The two greatest times were a high point in the 80's, and the release of 3.0

If, as you and mearls have said, 4e has a bigger print run then 3.5(and 3.5 had a bigger run then 3.0 ), why isnt another high point 4e sales? Print run doesnt equate to high numbers/profitablility.

 

[rounser]

There is no way in hell that D&D4.5 is actually going to get back anyone that left D&D during 4e. They should make 5e a retro-clone D&D, and reboot the fluff to before these guys screwed with it.

Yep. They made a mistake, thinking they could reinvent and retcon D&D at will, and now don't seem willing to retract it. Removing gnomes was a mistake too - they just don't seem to have understood that D&D is a universe of it's own with a past, and not one they can ignore by slapping the D&D or Forgotten Realms name on the cover and saying people will buy it because of that. That's been proved to only work on some of the people, some of the the time.

Let's face it - with D&D's name, I could have released a 4E with a core Yeti race, and some people would buy it. People would be playing yetis, talking about their big furry guys who they roleplay like Chewbacca etc. It would still be a mistake to re-include them for 5E. That's roughly where WOTC is at with their dragonborn.

 

[DaveMage]

I would expect a large amount of the 4E rules will manifest in 5E - if for no other reason that 4E is not open, and editions 0e - 3.5e are easily creatable using the OGL.

WotC certainly doesn't want open clones popping up when they release 5E.

 

[Redbadge]

Again, none of that contradicts what I've said:

The two greatest times were a high point in the 80's, and the release of 3.0

If, as you and mearls have said, 4e has a bigger print run then 3.5(and 3.5 had a bigger run then 3.0 ), why isnt another high point 4e sales? Print run doesnt equate to high numbers/profitablility.

Well, I guess we could debate the sale margins on each book sold, but I wouldn't even know where to begin with that one. Otherwise, I would think that selling out their large print runs would equate to profitability.

If you won't take the word of the president of Wizards of the Coast that a high point of the edition was it's sales numbers, I don't know if you'll even care about my other links (primarily best sellers lists).

Also, I would be more than happy to take a look at anyone else's links.

Listen, just so everyone knows, I don't care if healing surges, martial dailies, or dragonborn are in 5e. I liked AD&D; I loved 3.x when it came out; and I'll admit I'm most partial to 4e (not the least because the person who would become my wife joined our 4e group when it first came out in 2008). No matter what happens in 5e, I'll always have these old editions and people that will play them with me.

What *I* want is the sleekness of the system and prep speed from 4e, and the intertwined fluff and crunch from 3.x that was largely missing from the subsequent edition. I hope 5e has the fast and sharp combat that neither of these systems really had. But as long as 5e looks closely like 3.x or 4e (or earlier editions), I'll still probably buy and play it, because no matter how much we argue, each of these editions really aren't that different from each other. I'm still rolling funny shaped dice while making funny voices.

Sincerely yours,
Redbadge

 

[jsaving]

Here's an analogy, and honestly what many "arguments" I've heard sound like:

Nintendo has lost a lot of money recently (very few people have been buying the Wii recently). They also announced a new system recently to replace the one that wasn't selling.

But to call the Wii a flop would be ridiculous.

I both agree and disagree -- how's that for clarity?

If Nintendo insiders akin to The Rouse were telling us that the proprietary sales information they've seen paint a dire picture for Wii sales, and if surveys posted on ENWorld and elsewhere said a competitor was overtaking the Wii using technology gleaned from the previous Wii model, and if Nintendo hurriedly scrapped the current Wii model years ahead of schedule because of those factors, then the Nintendo situation would be an apt analogy -- both the Wii and 4e would simply be ending a normal production run. I don't see that any of those things apply to 4e, though, and hence don't think 4e can be described as the kind of unqualified success the Wii was for a fairly substained period.

That said, I agree completely that it would be ridiculous to call 4e a flop. It sold exceptionally well at the beginning of its production cycle, even if sales subsequently lagged expectations; it contained advances like themes and at-wills that will likely be a part of any future edition, even if it too readily disregarded similarly strong 3e features; and it demonstrated that rigid balance across classes was possible, even if it perhaps took away too much class distinctiveness in so doing. It's also important to remember that 3.5 was faltering sales-wise toward the end of its life, so as not to mistakenly conclude (as some 3e-philes do) that everything in the world of D&D would have been fine if only 3.5 had remained in place forever.

Is it fair to say 4e's record is mixed overall? I think so. Can there be legitimate differences of opinion about just how successful it was/wasn't? Sure. But it simply isn't defensible to call 4e a flop with no redeeming features whatsoever, no matter how strongly any one of us might prefer 3e/Pathfinder or any other system.

 

[Redbadge]

...even if it too readily disregarded similarly strong 3e features;

Which strong 3e game elements do you think were readily discarded? Some flavor stuff was altered for sure, such as cosmology and the alignment system, but we pretty much retained these things in all our 4e games.

It seems to me that that 4e retained most of the core 3e elements, but you could easily change my opinion on this. Things like healing surges and the power system were mostly additions.

 

[ren1999]

I'm sure that many designers love the game. I'm from Seattle but moved away 7 years ago. I have friends who work for Wizards. But having said all that, I can tell from the writing, who has tested the encounter or power and who was either too busy or not interested enough to test the encounter or power -- or at least get it tested.

The subject seems to have switched from Monte to book sales. The book sales suffer when people buy a book and discover it to be not well thought out. They are reluctant to buy further books. Now if you want to judge just how well book sales have been between competing groups, count the total number of books published in every group.

 

[Hussar]

I'm sure that many designers love the game. I'm from Seattle but moved away 7 years ago. I have friends who work for Wizards. But having said all that, I can tell from the writing, who has tested the encounter or power and who was either too busy or not interested enough to test the encounter or power -- or at least get it tested.

The subject seems to have switched from Monte to book sales. The book sales suffer when people buy a book and discover it to be not well thought out. They are reluctant to buy further books. Now if you want to judge just how well book sales have been between competing groups, count the total number of books published in every group.

By this metric, 2e was the most successful, most well thought out, and had the best sales by a huge margin over any other version of D&D.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Again, none of that contradicts what I've said:

The two greatest times were a high point in the 80's, and the release of 3.0

If, as you and mearls have said, 4e has a bigger print run then 3.5(and 3.5 had a bigger run then 3.0 ), why isnt another high point 4e sales? Print run doesnt equate to high numbers/profitablility.

Also i think lots of people bought the first three core 4e books(i know i did). But a large chunk ended up not liking it and playing just a few sessions. So it wouldn't surprise me if they did pretty okay out of the gate only to hit a steep decline soon after.