5E on the horizon?

[Lhorgrim]

Really? Where are they?

How many people are currently in the RPGA compared to say, 2005? That would be an excellent indicator of the "fracture" and "not as successful" as it could have been.

Considering that as I look on the front page of En World, a site that has grown by about 30% since the release of 4e, I see that the 4e boards are about 10 times the size of the Pathfinder boards. On a site where you'd think that the "fracture" would be very visible, you'd think that there'd be a bit more chatter on the Pathfinder boards.

All of the "evidence" of the fracture pretty much only exists in the minds of those that want there to be this massive split. I have no idea why people insist there is this massive split when there is almost no evidence to support it. I blame Lanefan.*

* Someone has to take the blame.

I don't have statistics so I don't claim that my experiences are representative of the hobby as a whole, but I experience the fracture in my small (very small) corner of the gaming world.

I have been trying to get a gaming group together since the release of 3.5, with almost no success. The thing I've run into while recruiting at my FLGS is that all the other gaming options have grabbed a portion of potential candidates. I ran the Keep on the Borderlands Encounters season at the store, and had trouble getting 4 people at the table each session. I was the only person who had purchased the 4E rulebooks (Essentials for this campaign) but everybody had played some edition of D&D before. Most of the guys that sat in the game had abandoned D&D by the time 4E came out, but they play Magic the Gathering religiously.

When I go to a larger city in my area and search the "gamers wanted" bulletin boards in their shops, the index cards are looking for gamers for 1E through 4E and include Pathfinder. I'm not mad at WotC for this. None of those game systems are obsolete, so people will continue to enjoy them when 8E is released (in 2027 you heard it here first).

If there are something like 5+ existing editions of D&D plus Pathfinder, how could the one "in production" edition not suffer from dilution? I know that the idea is to bring in new gamers to board the train with 4E, but how many gamers get introduced to role playing games by joining an existing group? How many existing groups dropped the games they were playing and moved up to 4E? As I said, I don't have the numbers and I know that my area is not likely representative, but you would be hard pressed to join a 4E group here. I also know that when 5E comes, some will hate it and stay with 4E. I think that is unavoidable.

I like 4E well enough, though I do miss making PCs with pencil and paper. I want 5E to come as soon as it can, because it's one more "lottery ticket" to try to win the jackpot that is a game that will attract new players and convince 3.5 and Pathfinder players to move to the new edition. My reasons are selfish. I want to play. I need gamers to play. I desperately hope that 5E will attract gamers.

 

[Hussar]

I don't have statistics so I don't claim that my experiences are representative of the hobby as a whole, but I experience the fracture in my small (very small) corner of the gaming world.

I have been trying to get a gaming group together since the release of 3.5, with almost no success. The thing I've run into while recruiting at my FLGS is that all the other gaming options have grabbed a portion of potential candidates. I ran the Keep on the Borderlands Encounters season at the store, and had trouble getting 4 people at the table each session. I was the only person who had purchased the 4E rulebooks (Essentials for this campaign) but everybody had played some edition of D&D before. Most of the guys that sat in the game had abandoned D&D by the time 4E came out, but they play Magic the Gathering religiously.

When I go to a larger city in my area and search the "gamers wanted" bulletin boards in their shops, the index cards are looking for gamers for 1E through 4E and include Pathfinder. I'm not mad at WotC for this. None of those game systems are obsolete, so people will continue to enjoy them when 8E is released (in 2027 you heard it here first).

If there are something like 5+ existing editions of D&D plus Pathfinder, how could the one "in production" edition not suffer from dilution? I know that the idea is to bring in new gamers to board the train with 4E, but how many gamers get introduced to role playing games by joining an existing group? How many existing groups dropped the games they were playing and moved up to 4E? As I said, I don't have the numbers and I know that my area is not likely representative, but you would be hard pressed to join a 4E group here. I also know that when 5E comes, some will hate it and stay with 4E. I think that is unavoidable.

I like 4E well enough, though I do miss making PCs with pencil and paper. I want 5E to come as soon as it can, because it's one more "lottery ticket" to try to win the jackpot that is a game that will attract new players and convince 3.5 and Pathfinder players to move to the new edition. My reasons are selfish. I want to play. I need gamers to play. I desperately hope that 5E will attract gamers.

See, this is where I have such a problem with these conversations. Your experience is pretty much the complete opposite of mine. Working in Korea, I had a 3e game together in a matter of a couple of days. When I came to Japan, my situation meant that I had to move to online VTT gaming and again, I had zero problems filling the table.

In fact, I know right now that I can post an ad for a new 4e game and have players in a week or two. Probably the same for a 3.5 game to be honest. I'm certainly not going to say that there aren't still lots of people playing 3e (or various iterations).

If I tried that with earlier editions, it would be an uphill battle, but, the joys of online play mean that I probably could hammer together a group eventually.

But, that's the point. We're only seeing our own personal experiences. Some people then try to paint that as a larger picture and make sweeping statements like the "massive divide" in the player base and things like that. If someone wants to make broader claims, I'd think that a bit more evidence should be in order.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

So, you're claiming there is not a massive divide in the player base, Hussar (or that we can't know whether or not there is?)?

Really?


I mean, there's our own experiences, but there's a lot more info to draw upon than just that.

Heck, the continued existence of Pathfinder ALONE shows that there's a massive number of players who didn't switch to 4e.


Whether or not 4e was "as big a success as they hoped" we'll never know, though...that I agree with. There's not really a way to know their projected hopes.

 

[Mercurius]

Really? Where are they?

You really don't see the fracture, Hussar? Let's leave aside the online squabbling that Plane Sailing mentioned, the very simple fact that the player base is more differentiated into various versions of D&D, that a large percentage of current players don't even play the current edition of the came.

From the point of view of "cultural diversity," this isn't a bad thing at all - in terms of variations of D&D, my view is viva la difference! The more variations the better; in fact, one can argue that there are now fewer versions of the game because people are less likely to house rule 4E because of DDI, whereas in the Good Old Days of AD&D we all had house rules.

But from the perspective of economics, the fracturing is a bad thing. WotC finds themselves in a bit of a double-bind: the current edition of the game no longer holds the huge share of the player base that 3.x did, yet coming out with a new edition to try to "bring people home" runs the risk of further fracturing the player base. I am completely making these numbers up, but my guess is that of active players, 4E only has about 50-60%, whereas 3.x/Pathfinder has about 30-40% and pre-3.x and retro-clones have about 10%. Dial back five years and the then current version, 3.x, probably had 80-90% of the player base.

So when I say that 4E is "not as successful" as WotC hoped, I'm talking about not only the total number of players but the percentage of active players. I don't think they predicted that they would lose so many folks to Pathfinder, 3.x, and retro-clones.

All of the "evidence" of the fracture pretty much only exists in the minds of those that want there to be this massive split. I have no idea why people insist there is this massive split when there is almost no evidence to support it. I blame Lanefan.*

* Someone has to take the blame.

This is such BS, Hussar, that I'm wondering if you are deliberately trolling. OK, I realize that some people really hate 4E and see it as the Antigygax. But let me make something very clear: Believing that 4E is not as popular as WotC hoped/expected it to be, or that 4E may be in its wind-down phase as an edition, or that the D&D community is more fractured than it has ever been, or even that 4E is not the Perfect Game does NOT mean that one "hates" 4E.

To be clear, my views on 4E's popularity, impact on the community, and overall economic health, has nothing to do with my personal feelings about it as a game. In fact, 4E is my preferred version of D&D and my favorite to date; if and when 5E comes out, I hope that it will be more like Firefox 5.0 - which is really just an update and fixing of the extremely buggy 4.0 that came out just a few months later, but is basically the same browser.

I have to say 3.5 being released just afew years out was irritating to me as a consumer. I didn't get involved in the online flame wars but suddenly you felt pressured to repurchase every book you already owned because 3.5 was just different enough to creat problems when people used different books. Don't get me wrong it is their company and they can release what they want-i don't feel like i have special ownership of the game as a player. But 3.5 was just a headache and i really didn't feel the changes warranted new books.

See, I'm of a different mind. First of all, three years is a long time. I don't mind buying a new version of the same book, if it has been revised and includes new material. In fact, I've been calling for a revised version of the 4E Player's Handbook for sometime now. Secondly, while 3.5 had some differences a lot stayed the same; the 3E stuff wasn't instantly invalidated, it just required some eyeball tweaking.

My view is that 3.5 was only a headache to the degree to which people were (overly, imo) attached to rules minutiae, that is to what degree they view the rules as Absolute Law versus "recommended guidelines." I've always taken them to be the latter so don't have a problem with revisions, especially if they improve the game.

 

[TarionzCousin]

5E? It won't be out for many years. It has been five long years since WotC promised us this awesome RPG and it hasn't hit the shelves yet.

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[UngainlyTitan]

[MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION]: While i would be of the view that we have no real idea of the size of the fracture brought about by advent of 4e but it strikes me that hte bigger the fracture the less viable 5e becomes.

If there is a significant frature (of the order of 40% or more) then the only way (it would seem to me) to make 5e viable is for the D&D division to shut up shop for 10 years or so and then bring out the new editions.

The other alternative is to change the business model where the edition threadmill is irrelevant.

 

[Dausuul]

Hum. Paizo certainly didn't "Care" enough about the legacy of D&D to fix the crippling flaws in 3.X. They didn't even bother to do something simple and critically important like fix the saving throw ratios, much less repair the crippling of the warrior types and the overpowering of spellcasters. They did nothing to fix the fact that half the classes in the game become useless before 10th level. And of course they couldn't do anything about the overcomplicated, optimization-based building of characters that resembles nothing so much as making a Magic deck. Oh, but they had nice art, and they formatted their products SO well (meanwhile, we are happy to report that even though there was a little trouble with an iceberg, we've revarnished the decks of the Titanic!). If that's caring, I'd prefer if they cared a little less, in favor of fixing the broken aspects of 3.X.

Be fair to Paizo; one of the explicit goals of Pathfinder was to be compatible with all your old 3.X material. That meant there were limits to how far they could go to fix the broken aspects of the game. I share your lack of enthusiasm for the result--I'd take Pathfinder over 3.X, but I'd take any other D&D edition over either of them. (Well, except OD&D where the combat rules referred you to Chainmail. That'd be a bit much.) But if I were a 3E enthusiast, I'd probably feel differently.

 

[M.L. Martin]

5E? It won't be out for many years. It has been five long years since WotC promised us this awesome RPG and it hasn't hit the shelves yet.

You know, given the unexpected response My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic has received from older audiences, I have to wonder if WotC isn't giving an updated version of this serious consideration right now.

 

[Mercurius]

@Mercurius : While i would be of the view that we have no real idea of the size of the fracture brought about by advent of 4e but it strikes me that hte bigger the fracture the less viable 5e becomes.

If there is a significant frature (of the order of 40% or more) then the only way (it would seem to me) to make 5e viable is for the D&D division to shut up shop for 10 years or so and then bring out the new editions.

The other alternative is to change the business model where the edition threadmill is irrelevant.

I don't really agree with your assertion here, ardoughter. Rather, they could go that route - and it might be safer, but it would be potentially less rewarding, a conservative "survive but not thrive" approach. Downsize and focus on DDI...play a wait and see approach and see what the hobby industry and economy looks like in five or six years.

But I think we're already past that point, that we're going to either see a sooner-than-we-think publication of 5E in 2012 or 2013 that "fixes" 4E and tries to appeal to those lost along the way, or we're going to see a longer period of gradual build-up, with Mearls' fishing becoming more and more obvious, and then eventually beta material coming through DDI - "Playtest 5E material - only available to Insiders!" They could even make a "Platinum" subscription for $20 a month that gives you access to playtesting. In this scenario we're looking at a 2014 release, maybe 2015, but I think they would try to correlate it with the 40th anniversary.

I could be wrong. Maybe WotC hasn't yet decided. But I don't think so. D&D is too hot of a commodity to just circle in a waiting pattern for 5-10 years.

In all honesty I think Mearls' recent articles is a sign that WotC realizes they screwed the pooch by distancing the old-timers in a (failed, imo) attempt to bring in the WoW and XBox generation. This was misplaced from the beginning - they lost sight of what makes tabletops special, and what should be emphasized: the imagination. That coupled with a move away from the core, classic, archetypal D&D world that the diehard base grew up with. This distanced many of the diehard fan base; at best, people like myself that like the game system but don't like dragonborn and "elfier elves" just tolerate the more WoWish of the 4E tropes.In my view, the real key is to publish a game that is A) at least close to being mechanically compatible with 4E material so that it doesn't distance yet another generation of D&D players; B) appeals to 3.x/Pathfinder fans; C) appeals to grognards and retro-cloners; and D) Is both simple enough to be accessible to newbies, and complex enough to appeal to the diehards.

This isn't as impossible as it sounds. The core game for 3.x and 4E is virtually the same; where things start to diverge is with the secondary elements. So you tease out the core game and call that Basic or Core D&D and then you make a modular Advanced D&D, with a pick-and-choose approach, which can look similar to 4E as it currently is. Basic D&D would be "classic" in terms of tropes: you've got elves, dwarves, halflings, humans, maybe gnomes; you've got fighters, rogues, wizards, clerics, bards, druids, rangers, paladins, maybe monks. Then you can add in as many modular options and flavors as you like, but none of the non-classic stuff is part of the core game, the first PHB.
I could be wrong on this - I'm sure I'm wrong on some of this. Only time will tell...

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I don't really agree with your assertion here, ardoughter. Rather, they could go that route - and it might be safer, but it would be potentially less rewarding, a conservative "survive but not thrive" approach. Downsize and focus on DDI...play a wait and see approach and see what the hobby industry and economy looks like in five or six years.

But I think we're already past that point, that we're going to either see a sooner-than-we-think publication of 5E in 2012 or 2013 that "fixes" 4E and tries to appeal to those lost along the way, or we're going to see a longer period of gradual build-up, with Mearls' fishing becoming more and more obvious, and then eventually beta material coming through DDI - "Playtest 5E material - only available to Insiders!" They could even make a "Platinum" subscription for $20 a month that gives you access to playtesting. In this scenario we're looking at a 2014 release, maybe 2015, but I think they would try to correlate it with the 40th anniversary.

I could be wrong. Maybe WotC hasn't yet decided. But I don't think so. D&D is too hot of a commodity to just circle in a waiting pattern for 5-10 years.

Is it?

I do not believe that they will go dormant, to be honest, but when I was listing options I felt that that one should be included for completeness.

However, I believe that at the current rate it will be 2 to 3 years before the online tools for 4e stabilise in to their final form.

I do not see 5e in that timeframe.

In all honesty I think Mearls' recent articles is a sign that WotC realizes they screwed the pooch by distancing the old-timers in a (failed, imo) attempt to bring in the WoW and XBox generation. This was misplaced from the beginning - they lost sight of what makes tabletops special, and what should be emphasized: the imagination. That coupled with a move away from the core, classic, archetypal D&D world that the diehard base grew up with. This distanced many of the diehard fan base; at best, people like myself that like the game system but don't like dragonborn and "elfier elves" just tolerate the more WoWish of the 4E tropes.In my view, the real key is to publish a game that is A) at least close to being mechanically compatible with 4E material so that it doesn't distance yet another generation of D&D players; B) appeals to 3.x/Pathfinder fans; C) appeals to grognards and retro-cloners; and D) Is both simple enough to be accessible to newbies, and complex enough to appeal to the diehards.

This isn't as impossible as it sounds. The core game for 3.x and 4E is virtually the same; where things start to diverge is with the secondary elements. So you tease out the core game and call that Basic or Core D&D and then you make a modular Advanced D&D, with a pick-and-choose approach, which can look similar to 4E as it currently is. Basic D&D would be "classic" in terms of tropes: you've got elves, dwarves, halflings, humans, maybe gnomes; you've got fighters, rogues, wizards, clerics, bards, druids, rangers, paladins, maybe monks. Then you can add in as many modular options and flavors as you like, but none of the non-classic stuff is part of the core game, the first PHB.
I could be wrong on this - I'm sure I'm wrong on some of this. Only time will tell...

I can see a simplified take on the core 3e/4e machanics appealing to the Old School crowd to some extent I cannot see it making an impact in the people who stuck with 3.x/Pathfinder.

If they like that game then they like high crunch, just not 4e crunch and are not going to switch to any 4e compatible game.

The thing is, I do not see any 5e being released that will cause WoTC to walk away from Online Tools and DDI. That seems to be a very strong strategic decision. So not D&D edition changes are governed by softeware developement cycles.
These things take longer to complete than creating a new edition of D&D.
Een being optimistic and saying that the online tools come out of beta withing a year, do you really see WoTC abbandoning that sortware investment to support different edition of D&D?
I do not see them re-tooling the software in less than 3 years.

That pushed any new edition of D&D out to 2015 at the earliest.

Of course, all this is pure speculation on my part. I could be wrong also.