D&D 5E Will there be such a game as D&D Next?

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'll certainly agree that Paizo is incredibly, wonderfully open. I worked on Ultimate Campaign for Paizo and I was tremendously impressed with the way they took care of me insofar as giving me all the materials I could possibly want to complete my assignment, and paying me extra for the additional design I needed to do to complete the project. My experience working for them was marvelous (and by "them" I truly mean Stephen Radney-Macfarland).

Heroes of the Feywild lost the Best Supplement ENnie to Gurps Horror and Cthulhu by Gaslight. But Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale and Madness at Gardmore Abbey won awards. Great year for stuff I worked on, at any rate.

I understand what you're saying though. I don't disagree, just hope for the best.

Personally, I couldn't tell you what direction is good for D&D right now, and I don't envy the person(s) who has to make that decision. I'm as nostalgic as anyone my age who grew up with the red box and AD&D.
But on the other hand... indie games.

Yeah, I'd certainly not want to be Mike etc right now either. I mean it must be pretty cool to have a job writing D&D, but the idea that people might call you "that guy that killed D&D" for the next 20 years could be a little nerve-wracking.

I really liked HotFW. I think WotC's way of giving you some background stuff and some mechanics, and some ideas, and letting you go with it is great for me. It may not be quite what the general market is looking for. I don't know if they hit on their way of doing things by conscious choice or simply "that's the way it is", but I think they probably need to loosen up and do a more free-wheeling product. Madness is a very nice adventure. I think its hard to say that anyone can put out that kind of stuff every time, I'd just hope that future adventures are as strong because really I haven't seen a lot of good ones from those guys in the last few years. Oddly the best stuff seems to be DM Rewards and LFR stuff. It seems like the more it comes direct out of the WotC studio the less interesting it was.

I hope DDN is good. I am just skeptical. A lot of us feel very burned by WotC's handling of 4e. It ain't real easy to find a lot of enthusiasm for those guys. DDN so far doesn't really cater to my tastes either, which just kind of puts a cork in it. I just don't think Mike ever even vaguely understood what 4e was really about.

 

[El Mahdi]

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[El Mahdi]

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[Ratskinner]

Nope, there aren't whole groups of non-gamers, or even individual non-gamers, that just decide to pick up D&D at the store and then play it for family game night...or when (non-gaming) friends are over...or on a camping trip...or on a rainy day...or even because they've heard about D&D and wanted to try it out. It's almost always about knowing someone who plays and deciding or getting talked into trying it out (and I'd say it's way higher than your 95%, probably more like 99.9999%).

And I think that's something that really needs to be remedied. Why can't there be a version of D&D that sells in Toys-R-Us, right next to the Monopoly games, and people can just pick it up like any other game? Why can't it be a game that's played casually? That's not just for us diehard gamers that play it, but plain old regular joe families also. Why can't D&D have a place in a compact box on the same shelf right next to the family's Sorry!, Chutes-and-Ladders, and Trivial Pursuit games?

That's been the true impediment to expanding the gamer base. Maybe D&D Next can finally change that...

I believe, if I understand the recent developer articles, that this is what they are targeting the Basic version of the game to be. I would totally not be surprised to find that Basic characters are effectively simplest-version-Standard pre-gens (or very close to it.) I would further not be surprised it they came packaged as data sheets with level-up info, rather than a mini-PHB. The DM would get the 16page, mini-DMG. Round it all off with mini-MM, map sheets or tiles, and monster/PC tokens, all coordinated with the included adventure; you've got a game half-way between Eurogame and D&D that is totally playable right off the shelf. (And likely pretty darn fun, too.) Even better, you can sell different versions of the same thing every year, with new PCs and new mega(?) adventure inside. (so you can have a "normal" version, a Dark-Sun version with psionics, etc. etc.)

All of which has me very excited for the game.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Someone brought up toy stores. D&D used to be at toy stores. I remember the stores around here carried the red boxed set and some other boxed sets (for instance red steel) some in the early 90s or so . That was back when bookstores also carried every D&D book and gaming stores were more common (we had one in the mall for example). I think part of it is distribution works very differently now, plus there are fewer boxed sets and those are a lot easier to sell at toy stores than hefty hard back books.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Then tell them.

Provide pointed but courteous feedback to Mike and the other designers, and help make D&D Next a game that works for you as well as for me, other gamers, and the faceless, potential new customers.

The lines of communication for feedback with them is always open; the surveys have no time limit, the blogs are open for comments from anyone, same with their forums, and I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard to figure out how to send individual developers an email. Also, they are reading these forums, and have people that interact with us gamers right here on our forums. Search them out and drop them a PM or send them an email. They want feedback...everybody's feedback.

I can guarantee that if you don't, D&D Next will never be a game that works for you...with 100% certainty.

Participate, and I think you might be very pleasantly surprised by the final product.

Yeah, I don't know what would lead you to believe that I haven't been QUITE vocal. In fact a lot of us who consistently posted on the 4e boards and played online with each other at various points made quite a point to insure that it was well-known we were organized, persistent, and coherently in favor of a certain style of game and desired certain things from DDN. You know what? I have never seen the slightest indication that anything any one of us ever posted, all the surveys we filled out, the feedback we have given on DDN playtest, etc has made the slightest difference. Barely any design decision made since the first DDN playtest package has in any way reflected the tastes of myself or my friends. We are simply clearly not even relevant to Mike and his plans. I'm sure he'd love to have us just change our minds and accept his vision for D&D, but he's not going to budge that vision one millimeter to make that happen. Obviously nobody can cater to everyone, but as one of WotC's best customers over the last 4 years I figured a smart guy would give me half of what I want, or 25%, or something. Obviously that was naive. I'm not alone. We are far from 'hating' DDN or disliking all of it. In fact in the most general sense it isn't a bad game, but it simply doesn't have as its goals the things that are interesting to me in a D&D that would replace 4e.

So, I think your advice is fine, but going by experience it isn't effective, and there's certainly nothing ELSE that would be more effective, so short of waiting to see some major revolution in the design of DDN its hard not to mostly write it off.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Barely any design decision made since the first DDN playtest package has in any way reflected the tastes of myself or my friends. We are simply clearly not even relevant to Mike and his plans.

I do wonder whose feedback they are reading and using.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Oh, its not that hard to sort it out. Go read the back history of the DDN threads going back to when they were first set up. A couple hundred VERY loud people showed up to bash on everything 4e. Of course a giant set of long and mostly kind of pointless debates ensued, but it was always pretty clear in my mind that whomever was actually putting together the DDN material seemed rather congruent in their thinking to some of the less radical "grognards". The logic is basically "D&D was best in 19xx (some number usually between 77 and 92), so it should be just like that pretty much." Not surprisingly that's basically pretty much what DDN is. Clearly Mike and Co didn't quite dare to just go back and say "it is 1992 again, its 2e except with roll high and new saves etc." I get the impression from reading his columns and etc that this would be Mike's choice. Frankly IMHO there isn't anything resembling 4e in DDN in a meaningful way. There are many 3e-isms, but they aren't so far specifically creating a coherent 3.x-like game either. Certainly the design is cognizant of 3.x and 4e, but fundamentally the designers are listening to people who want to go back and play 2e in its heyday. Lots of us are just not interested in going back there. Clearly we're not the target audience for this game, and honestly being thrown a bone like "gosh, but it has hit points" is worse than nothing, lol. I want to just say to WotC/Mike/etc "Look, you WANT TO MAKE 2e, so DO IT! Don't make any excuses or lip service to something else, just SAY IT AND DO IT." I can respect that. DDN as it is just annoys and frustrates many of us.

 

[Obryn]

Frankly IMHO there isn't anything resembling 4e in DDN in a meaningful way.

Yep, and a baffling lack of understanding of why those of us who like 4e, do.

I like other D&D styles, too. For me to become a real proponent, Next needs to be new and interesting, striking out in new directions where D&D hasn't gone before. I think the combination of an extended playtest, the design conservatism of the D&D fanbase, and the focus on being - for lack of a better term - everyone's second-favorite D&D is drawing it in exactly the opposite directions than I, personally, would prefer.

I understand I might be an outlier. But that's fine - I don't need my RPG needs and Next's design goals to overlap, because I'm content with not seriously playing it. I am in for the Core, at least, and I'm hoping it's a tightly-designed OSR-style release. It's the rest that I'm sketchy on, and I'm only getting sketchier on it over time with every new design blog.

-O

 

[Ahnehnois]

Personally, I'd be happy to play 2e again. Anachronistic and complicated, sure, but fun. The current 5e playtest doesn't come close to matching the 2e system in my mind. And I'm a 3e player. Not a good sign for them.