D&D 5E WotC Delays New D&D Book Announcement

This from WotC — “Get the quasits out of our office! Our plan to make a D&D book announcement on Thursday has been changed. Adventurers, mark your calendars for Monday, January 13.”

The book was due to be announced on Thursday 9th January after a mysterious entry appeared on Amazon with a product title of "Dungeons & Dragons March Release Book (Title announced January 9th)" and a release date of March 17th, 2020. See the original news item here:

D&D 5E - March's D&D Book To Be Announced On January 9th

A mysterious entry has appeared on Amazon! With a product title of "Dungeons & Dragons March Release Book (Title announced January 9th)" and a release date of March 17th, 2020, this $49.95 hardcover release will be revealed in under a week! The description reads "Your first look at the next...

www.enworld.org

They haven't given a reason; back in November WotC delayed the launch of the sapphire D&D anniversary dice at the last minute, too.

D&D General - $300 D&D Dice Delayed

WotC has delayed the sale of the $300 dice. They haven’t said why.

www.enworld.org

 

[Undrave]

Unless the new book is the Pokemon Campaign Setting.

I've seen many homebrews using 5e mechanics to play as a Pokemon catcher, but none of the type of Pokémon games I'd like: the ones where you play as a Pokémon against the catcher (which are monsters)! Bring back the old Races-as-classes design and there's endless possibilities of splatbooks with more ''classes'' and new islands.

ALL the Pokémon homebrew I've seen all fall in the same pittrap: "We'll just take the numbers from the game" and I personally think that's just WAAAAY off. It's needlessly complicated and lacks elegence. Slavishly reusing the exact same stats as in the game and trying to squeeze humans into it or some other things.

It's easy to develop an algorythm to just crawl Serebii.net and grab data, which is why it's so easy to fall into it. But the math in Pokémon is complicated as heck with tons of variables that create the deeper aspect of the mechanics. Then there's the truck-load of moves with basically no rhyme or reason why some Pokémon gets them and others don't (Lucario and Heliolisk can learn Dragon Pulse but not Inteleon?) leading to a need for MASSIVE movepool lists for every single Pokémon. And don't forget you need to keep the type charts in mind, grant STAB bonuses and you better nclude the Choice Specs in there or Timmy won't be able to reproduce his OU team!

My ideal Pokémon RPG would simplify the stats and try to replicate the feel of the anime instead of the mathematical insanity that is the mechanics behind Pokémon games. I wouldn't be so slavishly copying it either, trying to come up with a simpler way to assign moves. I'd probably not include ALL 1000 Pokémon in a starting release either, making a selection geared toward variety as much as possible and then adding the others through additional region expensions.

Of course, you still run into the issue that the standard Pokémon experience is, at its core, a single player experience. YOU alone versus a Gym Leader. Why do you think the anime only has one character take on the gym challenge at once?

I spent way too much time contemplating the issue recently, sorry for the tamble...

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The D&D/Pathfinder version of Pokemon/Digimon is "Mystical: Kingdom of Monsters" published by Northwinter Press.

It is possible, but WotC would need a lot of time.

 

[Hutchimus Prime]

Darn it Amazon...not spoiling it yet.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[R_J_K75]

So I'm looking at the cover ....

Could it be .... the BIG BOOK OF AMPERSANDS?

I'm stoked. Big fan of all sands. Desert sands. Gypsum sands. Beach sands. Amper sands.

You forgot the best one... Quicksand.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[R_J_K75]

Heck, if I was a minor character, in a jungle, I wouldn't bother waiting to die by quicksand. Kind of inevitable.

Id just dive right in head first.

Theres a pretty famous movie scene involving quicksand. I cant remember what movie or whos in it but I can picture it in my ead. Its bugging me since reading this post. It'll come to me out of the blue a week from now.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[werecorpse]

Id just dive right in head first.

Theres a pretty famous movie scene involving quicksand. I cant remember what movie or whos in it but I can picture it in my ead. Its bugging me since reading this post. It'll come to me out of the blue a week from now.

The Princess Bride?

Although it was actually lightning sand. One of the three dangers of the fire swamp

 

[R_J_K75]

Romancing the Stone (famous, but think it was mud?)

I was thinking that too but could've been the Beast Master. The 80s were great and terrible all at once. I wish someone wouldve thrown me in quicksand for the clothes alone.

Instead of huge sandbox adventures, they should start making 16 page quicksand adventures, successfully complete the quest in "X" amount of time or everyone dies. This includes PCs and NPCs.