When will D&D 5e be published?

[Hussar]

Hussar! Throwing the first edition war bomb!




If 4E meets expectations, there will be no reason to go to 5E soon.
If 4E fails to meet expectations, there will be reason not to invest in a new edition.

With no true setting support to keep fans of previous settings or to inspire people new to the game, it may cripple the long-term viability of the line. The 3 and done model for settings will, IMO, prove to be incredibly short-sighted.

Having said that, again IMO, any prospective 5e isn't likely going to be done by WotC. I truly don't see them doing it unless the 4e line collapses utterly and they reverse design direction on a great many things. But if that happened, I would expect Hasbro to simply shut down the RPG division and hold onto the IP.

The first one? Really? 4e is going to tank so badly that Hasbro would rather keep D&D on the shelf than do 5e with WOTC? I guess that's just speculation, rather than edition bombing.

 

[Quantum]

There should be another option on the poll:

I DON'T WANT TO SEE ANY NEW EDITIONS PERIOD!

Sorry, but I am really burned out by all these rules changes. I've been playing the game and since the early 1980s and have seen a lot of changes. I'm also frustrated by all the stupid edition war crap.

 

[BryonD]

The first one? Really? 4e is going to tank so badly that Hasbro would rather keep D&D on the shelf than do 5e with WOTC? I guess that's just speculation, rather than edition bombing.

Well, being as Shemeska said "unless the 4e line collapses", yes.
But even with that, there is a difference between debating the merits or flaws of the system, which can be done critically without being "edition war" as Shemeska did, and proclaming that all people with one preference will be jerks no matter what, which is what you did.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Is it me or do these sort of threads always contain a lot of wishful thinking from people who don't like 4E and want to see it fail and be replaced by something they dislike less?

Let's avoid edition wars, please - and of course, that goes for everyone. ~ PCat

 

[Wicht]

Is it me or do these sort of threads always contain a lot of wishful thinking from people who don't like 4E and want to see it fail and be replaced by something they dislike less?

Thats just human nature and the nature of consumerism. You see the same thing in Paizo related thread where people advise Paizo to abandon the OGL and come up with something completely new.

 

[Imaro]

Is it me or do these sort of threads always contain a lot of wishful thinking from people who don't like 4E and want to see it fail and be replaced by something they dislike less?

I think it's you. Threads like these always contain alot of wishful thinking from all camps, since there's not really much fact to debate when it comes to discussing something that hasn't (and may never ) happen.

 

[Umbran]

Folks,

From this point onwards, if you're planning to post with an accusation that someone else is edition warring, or to defend against an accusation, please just don't. Report the post you find is problematic, and then walk away. There's few things less constructive than an edition war, and one of them is a bunch of folks sitting around pointing fingers at each other.

Remember: take part in substantive conversation, don't accuse. Thank you.

 

[Shazman]

I expect 5th edition (or a revised 4th edition labeled as 5th edition) to be announced at GenCon next year and released the following summer or fall. They need to do something to make the game more playable. I witnessed a paragon level 4E combat yesterday that actually took over 4 hours, mainly due to the horrificly broken math of 4E. I suspect, as more people move into the higher levels of 4E and find combat to take too long to be feasible, many players will leave 4E for some other fantasy RPG that actually allows you to finish more than one combat a session after your PC's get some levels on them. I don't think 4E can survive much longer without a significant rewrite.

 

[Wik]

I expect 5th edition (or a revised 4th edition labeled as 5th edition) to be announced at GenCon next year and released the following summer or fall. They need to do something to make the game more playable. I witnessed a paragon level 4E combat yesterday that actually took over 4 hours, mainly due to the horrificly broken math of 4E. I suspect, as more people move into the higher levels of 4E and find combat to take too long to be feasible, many players will leave 4E for some other fantasy RPG that actually allows you to finish more than one combat a session after your PC's get some levels on them. I don't think 4E can survive much longer without a significant rewrite.

Hm. Personally, I haven't seen that, at all. Our paragon level combats take less than an hour in many cases - as Blargney mentions each week in his keeping track of combat length thread. As for "horrifically broken" math of 4e... I have no clue about that, either.

In any case, the same problems (long fights, broken math, crazy high levels) were also problems in 3e, and that game lasted - what? - eight years? So I don't think they're good indicators of an edition ending.

Obviously you don't like 4e, which is fine. A lot of people don't. But I can't imagine this forcing a new edition to come out any time soon. There is definitely the "face" issue, here, as well.

 

[Shazman]

There are many things about 4E that I don't like, but at this point I'm more disappointed in what I see as the wasted potential of 4E than "hating" on it. I see bad math (can't hit the monsters very often so they stick around forever), bad monster design (buckets of hit points, while being insubstantial, regenerating, with an aura that damages and prevents use of healing surges as just one example), and bad encounter design (too much difficult terrain, chokepoints, etc.) as endemic of the system. I think much of this could have been avoided with judicious playtesting, which appears to have not been used sufficiently. It seems that the designers and adventure writers as so concerned with combat not being too "swingy" that they made sure it will last way too long, which creates frustrating, grindy combats that you just want to be over with after beating on a single creature for an hour and it's still up.