Serious question - are you going to invest in D&DNext?

[TrippyHippy]

I've been casually involved in the play test - as I am sure most of this site's community have - and I care about the direction of D&D. I enjoy playing it too - again casually - but it's not my first choice game these days. I guess I care about it due to a sense of nostalgia, but also because it's a flagship game for the hobby and I want it to do well. However, the question is would I actually choose to buy it, support it and play it as my main game in the future?

I ask this in the light of having 'bought into' a couple of rpgs in recent years that largely fulfill all my fantasy gaming needs (RuneQuest and The One Ring) in one way or another and I regard them both as outstanding games. Other gamers have been enthused about alternative forms of D&D with increasingly strong production values and support. There still seems to a huge need for a D&D-style fix amongst most gamers, but there are now lots of D&D-style games out there to compete with the brand.

Now for me, the most likely event is that I will buy the pdf, play it at conferences most likely, and see how it goes from there - but my gut feeling is that I don't need another fantasy RPG. How do other people feel?

 

[Savage Wombat]

I'm pretty sure I'll buy it, but whether I use it will depend on how it looks in its final form. I may wind up waiting until the advanced character building module is released, too.

 

[fjw70]

I'll buy it but I won't consider it an investment.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I doubt I'll buy it. I already have 4e, and it is already hit with bloat, so in a way I'm glad WotC isn't publishing it anymore. The only thing missing are more adventures, but there's a giant backlog of Dungeon Magazine adventures I haven't even looked at, and making monsters and NPCs is so easy that converting d20 adventures is pretty easy too. (My experience with converting 2e and older adventures is "don't" unless you want to rewrite everything other than the plot.)

I don't think WotC remembers how to design games anymore. I'm seriously wondering if they just lucked into making 4e work. (I could say the same thing about marketing; I think they lucked into selling 3.0 so well simply because people were so tired of TSR. Using those same tactics for 4e and 5e isn't working.)

One of the worst examples of D&D forgetting how to design is the nonsense around ghoul saving throws. Bad enough they left core math till "the end", but why even be surprised? They fixed that, but only after being publicly embarrassed. More recently is the tale of wildshaping, bringing back a 3.0-style ability score-switching wildshaping with weird hit point mechanics. Both Paizo and WotC (in 4e) fixed it, in different ways as different companies do, but WotC seems to have willfully forgotten those lessons. They'll have to learn all over again, possibly with some fan outrage tossed in, but with less pressure as there's no public playtest...

Or not. I've done a little playtesting for WotC, and have no confidence in their internal playtesting procedures. If they design something broken and nobody outside sees it, the broken product will get published. So unless we all scream something problematic like that will be published, and I don't think there's enough fan energy left for us to holler at them.

 

[Manbearcat]

I will purchase it just to support the hard work of fellow gamer dorks and to support the industry in general. However, the likelihood of me playing it is slim to none given the design ethos and the system that follows. I have 3 systems that cater to my interests, all of which I can play a long term campaign with. 5e won't supplant them or even contend with them. And I have 1e for Pawn Stance dungeoncrawl, one-offs of which I don't, at this point, see 5e doing better.

That being said, I reserve the right to be wrong and eat crow if the finished product is not any of the iterations I've playtested.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'll buy at least the DMG, PHB and MM- or however the initial release is broken up- and decide from there.

 

[Darth Illithid]

I may purchase it at some point. I'll probably wait until there are fairly comprehensive reviews on the game, though. Chances are, I won't be buying it on Day One.

 

[delericho]

Maybe. I won't be buying it on day one, and I won't be buying it sight unseen - I'll wait for some significant reviews of the finished product, and then make a decision.

My gut feeling is that I'll buy the core rules (in whatever form they're presented), and probably nothing else.

 

[Blackbrrd]

5e looks very interesting at the moment. I will probably hold off for a bit and see how good the published adventure support is. If they publish the same garbage dungeon crawls as they did in 4e I will quite possibly drop it.

Some might ask why I think published adventures are so important? Well, it's because I don't have the time or imagination to come up with everything myself. I can elaborate and wing it if I have a adventure that's fundamentally well made (Red Hand of Doom). I get fed up running adventures like Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil.

To me 5e looks interesting because of the relatively flat math for to-hit/defense. I think I can run an adventure style without houserules in 5e much easier than in 4e and 3e.

Now, I am not much of a book collector, so I really hope they have a good digital alternative that can be read on a tablet (with layout and pictures optimized for that type of use).

 

[GX.Sigma]

Yes. The playtest rules are pretty close to what I want, and I could see myself playing a much more polished version (if only because I don't think I could really convince anyone around here to play Labyrinth Lord or whatever).