WotC James Wyatt is on the Dungeons & Dragons Team Again

[JEB]

I mean, at your table you can have your character look cosmetically however they want. I don't see WotC kicking down Laura Bailey's door because her tiefling in Critical Role is blue instead of red!

On the contrary, I have a suspicion that Jester is a large reason tieflings had such a sizable presence in the art in Tasha's, and why they had so many hues...

 

[Mind of tempest]

I prefer my Tieflings looking more like one of the Yandy Sexy Devil costumes, instead of the 4e Tiefling...

I really do not see the difference as they are red and have horns.

 

[Mind of tempest]

On the contrary, I have a suspicion that Jester is a large reason tieflings had such a sizable presence in the art in Tasha's, and why they had so many hues...

so that is the name of the tiefling with the "odd" fan art.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I really do not see the difference as they are red and have horns.

For 4e Tieflings there's no way they're hiding the fact they are Tieflings without the aid of magic. For the "sexy halloween costume" examples, they could hide the fact they are Tieflings with just a cloak with a hood.

 

[Hatmatter]

I expect high backwards compability.
I think it should be more a 1e to 2e shift or 3e to 3.5 shift. Not a bigger upgrade.

Some cleaning up of the PHB mainly.

As you can see here at enworld: there is a desire to clean up the game. It would be fatal to ignore it.
But as you said: it might also be fatal to stray too much away from 5e.

It is probably an option to do an ADnD branch. But this also needs to be done carefully.

Well, I disagree strongly that not investing vital Wizards of the Coasts resources into a 6th edition that could be backward compatible like 2nd edition AD&D "would be fatal." No way.

Right now, there is a vital D&D community within the larger role-playing game community that has been brought together by the 5th edition of D&D. What I have read on the Enworld boards suggests to me the opposite of what you claim here: "a desire to clean up the game." The changes clamored for here fit into one of three categories (in my estimation, it goes without saying):

1. People who want the content of books like Xanathar's and Tasha's incorporated into the three core books. I have not posted when I read these, but I will say it now, this seems unrealistic. The PHB was designed knowing that there would be subsequent rules expansions and new options published later. The reason the content that is in the PHB is in the PHB is because it was deemed to be best for an introduction to the game. Adding the expansion material would inflate and swell the PHB to proportions that would both increase publishing costs and, vitally, render an already large book even more larger and intimidating for relatively new role-players. It is fine for an role-playing games to have expansion books. They are fine as expansion books.

2. Highly contentious views on race and alignment. One of the miraculous elements of the 2014 iteration of D&D is that it managed to cultivate the legacy of the game while innovating with great additions like advantage/disadvantage. Given that the Tasha's rules on lineage are now published, I do not understand why Wizards would risk dividing the community by attempting to produce a new PHB simply to include Tasha's lineage rules or getting rid of alignment (which would actually be more difficult then I think many people may think it would be). The game has expanded, it includes the new optional rules. If there was a proposal to simply revise the race section of the PHB to include the lineage rules as the new default, that would be fine for me...but I am not reading that as the proposal for a sixth edition.

3. A desire for further modification of the game. Some people want the monk revised. Some people want the sorcerer chasis switched with the warlock chasis and vice versa. Yet, (and this may be a failure of imagination on my part) I cannot conceive of a situation where whatever gripes people currently have with X class or X game mechanic will be entirely resolved and there will not be another poster on Enworld in seven years wishing that X 6th edition class or X 6th edition mechanic not be tinkered with and changed. Everything that I have read can be adjusted at the individual game of the person who wants a class or mechanic changed. D&D has always supported that strong Do It Yourself aesthetic. I have read people counter this that "that should be Wizards of the Coast" job. I would simply say there is no ideal version of the game where no one will complain. It is fine for a game to inspire other people to improve it with their version. Authors have been similarly inspired by the stories and poems of others for centuries.

As an AD&D player who switched from 1st edition to 2nd edition, I certainly don't want to live through a change of edition that uses that as a model. 2nd edition brought with it efforts to re-update not only the core books, but Legends and Lore, the Manual of the Planes, the classes that did not make it to 2nd edition with kits.

2nd edition did precisely to TSR what I would not like to see happen to Wizards: a huge amount of its resources went to updating books that had already been published.

I would like to see years worth of new settings and new adventure paths published. I would like to see expansions of D&D to accommodate different genres, large-scale warfare, high-level (over 20th level) play, a full psionicist class, new directions that I have not even thought of. By hitching itself to the train of not being able to go 10, 15, or 20 years without producing an entirely new edition, Wizards would be limiting the D&D game itself to what it is and has been instead of what it could be.

Sorry about being long winded, Ungeheuer Lich...but I really, really dread having to go through a cycle of a new edition with everything I have already read being re-updated again...honestly, it would be enough for me to check out of my present excitement about Wizard's new books. It feels like Groundhog's Day to me...I have lived this day over and over again...can't we push forward the calendar to the next day?

Cheers and happy role-playing!

 

[Mind of tempest]

For 4e Tieflings there's no way they're hiding the fact they are Tieflings without the aid of magic. For the "sexy halloween costume" examples, they could hide the fact they are Tieflings with just a cloak with a hood.

your lack of understanding of horn cutting and loose cloth clothing disturbeds me.

 

[Scribe]

This is how you end up with a book that's 800 pages long.

It really isn't. Have you read SCAG?

 

[Scribe]

It's not just the look, but also the story. While you may not like the "monolithic" backstory of tieflings, it did help generate a story and player hooks for them that amounted to more than plane-touched mutants.

Easily done, without saying 'all' and making it a singular thing.

 

[Hatmatter]

There are a ton of options that have not made it in transition from edition to edition. It's the nature of the game. I wish there was a Warlord, a Shaman, or a Psion in 5e, but there's not.

Aldarc, I remain optimistic that we could eventually see a Psion or Psionicist. I think the way psionics were handled in Tasha's leaves the door wide open...and my hunch is that it was done deliberately so. But, then again, I have been accused of wearing rose-colored glasses at times.

I am with you on the Warlord as well. I don't know about that one, though. But, then again, that is why I would like to see 5th edition as the evergreen edition. If the game continues to develop, I think it would be inevitable that we would get those kinds of expansions, done in a way that work with the whole rest of the game.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Aldarc, I remain optimistic that we could eventually see a Psion or Psionicist. I think the way psionics were handled in Tasha's leaves the door wide open...and my hunch is that it was done deliberately so. But, then again, I have been accused of wearing rose-colored glasses at times.

I am with you on the Warlord as well. I don't know about that one, though. But, then again, that is why I would like to see 5th edition as the evergreen edition. If the game continues to develop, I think it would be inevitable that we would get those kinds of expansions, done in a way that work with the whole rest of the game.

is it possible to buy these glasses that make everything better?