D&D 5E Reasons Why My Interest in 5e is Waning

[dmccoy1693]

I do find it funny that the one thing I am seeing over and over again is a fear of Rules Bloat. Meanwhile, I am asking for Campaign Setting material, which does not necessarily have any rules in them. I get the Rules Bloat position, but why couldn't there have been a book detailing Greenist and the surrounding area for the Hoarde of the Dragon Queen adventure. Not a single new rule needs to be in there. But it can help fire someone's imagination for making a character. Or it can inspire the GM if the player's wander off the tracks of the adventure. What's wrong with that?

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I'd be happy with campaign settings. My only issues are with endless waves of splats.

 

[Mallus]

All the stuff we're doing online right here? Anticipating, basically. Feeding the metaconstruct of the larger D&D community.

Wouldn't the larger D&D community be better served by threads full of cool DIY content -- particularly in light of the, ahem, light release schedule?

It's fun to talk about new products, and even argue about published rules & builds & such. But isn't it more fun to make shi stuff up?

Presently, I'm trying to decide if I should put a weapon as powerful as the Moon Liquefier in reach of my players as I restart our old 4e-campaign-converted-to-5e. My head says no. My gut says yes. I'm fairly certain I'd find nothing like it in a WotC module, even if they knocked out 20 per year.

 

[Trickster Spirit]

I don't see how telling WotC "Shut up and take my money!" is entitled. It's just pointing out that their lack of communication as to their future products has negative knockoff effects as to the attitude of some of their customer base. Just as publishing a schedule of a book every month would have negative knockoff effects, just to a different constituency.

At this same point for 4e, (not quite apples to apples, I know, since the core books weren't staggered for 4e) we already had the 3 core books, Martial Power was on the way, and we knew that the FR Campaign Setting and Player's Book were coming, and that the Player's Book would have a new class. We also knew that at least 3 new hard covers would be coming out in 2009. For 3e, Sword and Fist was on the way, as well as the FRCS, a Forgotten Realms splat book (Magic of Faerun?), and the understanding that every class would be getting its own splat book. Plus the third party publishing was just beginning to gear up. There's nothing remotely similar to anticipate for 5e.

Right, but they've flat out told us that they aren't going to be the same frequency of releases for 5E, so how is there a "lack of communication as to their future products" on their part? They've announced their upcoming products for the first half of 2015, and we know there'll be another adventure path in the second half of the year but still too many months away to have formally announced it or any other products they might have in the pipeline.

Look, if a "Martial Power" book comes out unexpectedly in May, I'll completely give you "lack of communication". But when everything so far has been announced at least six months out, the real issue you have is just "lack of product", not lack of communication.

 

[TreChriron]

WotC is independently managed. It has its own CEO. Hasbro has it's own products and brands to manage. It's unlikely to be that hands on. At worst there's likeky monthly reports and such.
Brand-wide decisions (like the OGL) likely need approval but the handling of individual priducts is likely internal.

"independently managed" is not how the ex-employee stories read IMHO. There seems to be a lot of influence there especially from the legal department regarding the OGL (as per GSL 4e stories...).

 

[Trickster Spirit]

I do find it funny that the one thing I am seeing over and over again is a fear of Rules Bloat. Meanwhile, I am asking for Campaign Setting material, which does not necessarily have any rules in them. I get the Rules Bloat position, but why couldn't there have been a book detailing Greenist and the surrounding area for the Hoarde of the Dragon Queen adventure. Not a single new rule needs to be in there. But it can help fire someone's imagination for making a character. Or it can inspire the GM if the player's wander off the tracks of the adventure. What's wrong with that?

Sure, there's nothing wrong with that - I'd love to see campaign setting books myself. I do have a question for you though - how many campaign setting books do you expect them to put out with 8 people on staff, and how soon do you realistically expect them to announce one?

I'm sure we'll see campaign setting books come out eventually, no doubt about it. But it'll probably be more along the lines of the 4E model than the 3.X model - a campaign book or two a year, with a different setting focus each year. So late 2015 we might see a FRCS book come out, and in 2016 an Eberron or Greyhawk book, and in 2017 a Planescape or Dragonlance book, etc.

We won't be getting more than that, I think - there's only a small team dedicated to the tabletop game now, and only a fraction of players will even be interested in a given setting, so there's too much of an opportunity cost for them to work on a whole bunch of them.

Basically, they're probably working on one right now, and not far along enough to announce it. What would you have them do?

 

[Sailor Moon]

Rules bloat killed some perfectly fine editions of D&D, so WotC planned to avoid rules bloat in order to create a longer edition cycle, as we have been asking for some years now. As a consequence, people complain for the lack of a full release schedule. It appears that having something to read is more important than having something to play. WotC just can't win.

You know how WoTc would win? By actually listening to it's customers. They could release a perfectly healthy dose of books without going overboard at a gross level.

Which edition did splat kill again?

 

[TwoSix]

Wouldn't the larger D&D community be better served by threads full of cool DIY content -- particularly in light of the, ahem, light release schedule?

It's fun to talk about new products, and even argue about published rules & builds & such. But isn't it more fun to make shi stuff up?

Presently, I'm trying to decide if I should put a weapon as powerful as the Moon Liquefier in reach of my players as I restart our old 4e-campaign-converted-to-5e. My head says no. My gut says yes. I'm fairly certain I'd find nothing like it in a WotC module, even if they knocked out 20 per year.

Sure, I love cool fan content as much as the next guy. Problem is, they rarely make inroads within the community at large. I could mention several fan created D&D derived rulesets right here, but what is the chance that more than one poster in twenty will have heard of them, outside of maybe E6?

Is a Moon Liquifier a weapon that liquefies celestial bodies, BTW?

 

[TwoSix]

Right, but they've flat out told us that they aren't going to be the same frequency of releases for 5E, so how is there a "lack of communication as to their future products" on their part? They've announced their upcoming products for the first half of 2015, and we know there'll be another adventure path in the second half of the year but still too many months away to have formally announced it or any other products they might have in the pipeline.

Look, if a "Martial Power" book comes out unexpectedly in May, I'll completely give you "lack of communication". But when everything so far has been announced at least six months out, the real issue you have is just "lack of product", not lack of communication.

Ok, that's fair. What I primarily mean by lack of communication is that "Will WotC or a licensed third party be releasing new books containing new player character information" and "Will WotC or a licensed third party be releasing new books containing campaign setting information?" are both questions that don't have clear answers right now.

 

[Gecko85]

Meanwhile, I am asking for Campaign Setting material...

They've already started down that road with Eberron material, that will be fleshed out and improved upon with player feedback. And there's absolutely no shortage of other campaign setting material already available, particularly for FR. The nice thing about campaign setting materials is they are largely edition neutral (with a few tweaks).