7 Years of D&D Stories? And a "Big Reveal" Coming?

When asked what he was working on, WotC's Chris Perkins revealed a couple of juicy tidbits. They're not much, but they're certainly tantalizing. Initially, he said that "Our marketing team has a big reveal in the works", and followed that up separately with "Right now I'm working on the next seven years of D&D stories". What all that might mean is anybody's guess, but it sounds like there are plans for D&D stretching into the foreseeable future! Thanks to Barantor for the scoop!

 

[Nellisir]

End of/Start of Next Turn.

Really?? Honest to god, no sarcasm, I never ever would have guessed that.

Huh.

I learned me somethin' new today.

 

[pemerton]

I learned me somethin' new today.

Always happy to contribute to your education!

 

[Nellisir]

Always happy to contribute to your education!

I take checks.

Edit for our special snowflake kangaroo brethren of the Utter South...I take checks 20. Also, cheques, cheks, checks, and Czechs.

 

[pemerton]

I take checks.

I actually had to read this twice - I'm in Australia ("cheques").

At first I thought it was some strange d20-rolling allusion.

 

[Mercurius]

I think 4e was a great game, and its "failure" (ie that it is no longer being published) is obviously due to the "intransigence" of a segment of the playerbase (ie they didn't buy it).

You seem quite intransigent about this viewpoint, pemerton, which implies that the reason people didn't buy into 4E was out of intransigence, which implies wilfullness, rather than the possibility that they simply didn't jive with the rather specific and historically-divergent approach to D&D that 4E offered.

With regards to 4E, I've seen three general camps:

Camp One loved it and thought it was the creme-de-la-creme of D&D, or at least the best thing so far.
Camp Two hated it and thought it was an affront to "Real D&D."
Camp Three was somewhere between ambivalent and liking it, enjoying it as an interesting variation of D&D but also feeling that it lacked something that other editions had.

Presumably you are in Camp One, and I am in Camp Three. Your view seems based upon the idea that only Camps One and Two exist, when in truth I think that Camp Two was simply a vocal minority and that most non-Camp Oneists actually liked the game or, at worst, were ambivalent. The simple fact of the matter is that a lot of Camp Three folks played 4E for a year or three but lost interest and moved on to something else. For whatever reason 4E didn't seem to capture this large segment of the community--which may even be a majority--like previous editions did.

So my question is, can you see reasons for 4E's publishing demise that wasn't simply the ire of Camp Two and the supposed intransigence of Camp Three? Or do you think that Camp Three's lack of adoration is also due to intransigence?

EDIT: I think Camp Two was rather large in the first year, but that many moved on to Pathfinder or retro games and didn't look back. So I do think that there is intransigence there, but that Camp Three folks (such as myself) actually played 4E for several years but tired of it. I'm asking you why you think that might be other than intransigence, because playing for two or three years implies that there wasn't intransigence. Not-adopting implies intransigence.

(Now I'm tired of using the word intransigence, which I've used more in this post than in my previous four decades of existence)

Firstly, I am upfront that this is my experience and that the experience of other people may vary.

Secondly, I think it fair to distinguish here between the conversations of char-op types (or any other small subset of the larger community which develop their own jargon not actually found in the game) and your more regular gamer.

But here is my take, and its just my opinion on the matter from an outsider's perspective (outsider to 4e)....

4e lent itself to a more mechanically oriented talk than other editions of Dungeons and Dragons. Board Games of a certain type often have this problem, where learning the game involves learning a particular shorthand for how to talk about the game. But while such jargon is useful to players of the game, it does tend to isolate the conversations from those not playing the game. All games have this to some extent, but my observation was that 4e had it far more than BX, ADnD or 3e. I think, and this is just my opinion again, that this was largely due to how the rules were presented in the rule books.

My second observation was that there was a difference in how 4e players tended to describe their games. I know, and you don't have to convince me that it is so, that it is possible for 4e players to talk about the game from a story aspect. I have seen it done and believe it can be done. But my personal observation was that this was not the typical way for 4e players to discuss the game. Most often they seemed to me to be discussing it from a more mechanical or gamist perspective. Again, I think this is simply the nature of the system lending itself to a particular sort of viewpoint and I see it all the time with boardgames. Its not a bad thing, it merely is what it is.

But I am still glad I have an easier time talking with 5e players about their game.

This is all very well said, or at least resonates with my thoughts and experience. Actually, I found this thread because I was going to start a thread about my own first impressions of running 5E, which in many ways are similar to yours. Will get to that in a bit.

 

[pemerton]

You seem quite intransigent about this viewpoint, pemerton, which implies that the reason people didn't buy into 4E was out of intransigence, which implies wilfullness

I think you missed my point.

The comment was slightly ironic, and was meant to reinforce the absurdity of normative language in this whole discussion.

All that "intransigence" can mean in this context is that people chose not to buy the game. Which is true. They did not, and wilfully so. (Eg it's not as if they hadn't heard of it, and so simply failed to choose it out of ignorance.)

 

[Mercurius]

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], I guess I did miss your point. "Intransigent" means unwilling to change one's mind. Your use of the word with regards to why 4E didn't last implies that people didn't like it because of stubborn ignorance, which I was saying isn't correct, at least in many cases - although in some, I think. From what I saw, quite a few people wrote 4E off without really giving it a shot, which is a kind of intrasigence.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION], another way to come to my point is that these are luxury consumption goods. (Although a cunning part of the marketing is to present/disguise them as fee-to-participate activities.)

People buy or don't buy for all the reasons people buy or don't buy any sort of luxury item. They can do it on a whim! They can do it for a considered reason! They can do it out of bloody-mindedness ("WotC's not getting one more red cent out of me!").

None of this is more or less reasonable than any of the rest of it. My purchasing 4e because I like it is no more or less reasonable than my not purchasing PF because I have zero interest in playing it and only very mild interest in talking about it. I bought Savage Species when it came out because I had a spare $30 (or whatever) on me and was curious about how the mechanical aspects had been tackled - that's not more or less reasonable either.

I own a copy of Fate (which I will probably never play, but I wanted to see how it works) but no copy of Savage Worlds (just not that interested, sorry!). Is that intransigence? Unreasonableness? The questions make no sense! In this domain, of luxury consumption of leisure items, there is not basis of right or need or duty that would ground such judgments.

All that follows from the market record of 4e is that not enough people wanted to keep purchasing 4e books to make it worth WotC's while writing and printing more of them. Hence they wrote and printed some different books - the 5e ones. In due course they might write even more new ones, using the same or different ruleset. Good luck to them!

 

[Hussar]

/snip

EDIT: I think Camp Two was rather large in the first year, but that many moved on to Pathfinder or retro games and didn't look back. So I do think that there is intransigence there, but that Camp Three folks (such as myself) actually played 4E for several years but tired of it. I'm asking you why you think that might be other than intransigence, because playing for two or three years implies that there wasn't intransigence. Not-adopting implies intransigence.

And, had those in Camp Two simply moved on and never looked back, the history of 4e would have been very different. But, they didn't move on and never look back. They constantly attacked 4e in every single place they could find. You could see edition wars starting in the comments sections of Time Magazine articles about D&D. "Don't play 4e, 4e is teh suxxorz!" was a pretty common thing to see, even if the article was about the history of the game, rather than 4e specifically.

What I never saw was a constant and never ending diatribe of vitriol on every single forum about Pathfinder. At worst you might see some shots about Pathfinder on the 4e boards, but, that was about it. It wasn't really commented on at all.

The campaign of vitriol didn't really stop until 4e finally went out of production and the crowing from the rooftops died down.

 

[BryonD]

And, had those in Camp Two simply moved on and never looked back, the history of 4e would have been very different.

Unless the people that bruned out on 4E burned out on 4E because of *4E*. (just maybe)

But, they didn't move on and never look back. They constantly attacked 4e in every single place they could find. You could see edition wars starting in the comments sections of Time Magazine articles about D&D. "Don't play 4e, 4e is teh suxxorz!" was a pretty common thing to see, even if the article was about the history of the game, rather than 4e specifically.

This is like the whole "Nobody goes there because it is too crowded" argument.

Nobody would have been unhappy with 4E if it wasn't for the people everywhere who didn't like it. (Go ahead and tell me it was 6 people tracking down every post on every non-gaming site anywhere).
To be clear, I am AGREEING with you that this happened. I've said before that I was constantly amazed at the attitudes I ran into in meatspace. I would meet total strangers, D&D would come up and "4E sucks" was very typical. But when the world is crowded with people who strongly dislike something, it isn't their words that is the problem. It is that there are so many unhappy people in the first place.

And then others burned out. I've seen a lot of comments on these very boards from calm and rational people who liked 4E when it started and got to a "been there done that" place. I truly do not know of anyone who gave into peer pressure and ran away. I think that is purely wishful thinking. There is certainly no evidence to support that it was remotely widespread.

There was also PLENTY of serious and legitimate complaints about the way the game worked. But still acting like that didn't happen here in 2015 is juts par for the course.

What I never saw was a constant and never ending diatribe of vitriol on every single forum about Pathfinder. At worst you might see some shots about Pathfinder on the 4e boards, but, that was about it. It wasn't really commented on at all.

This is called "confirmation bias". There was a constant droning about the horrors that was 3E.
Now, granted, the number of people feeling that was was much smaller......
But "never" and "at worst" is just silly.

The campaign of vitriol didn't really stop until 4e finally went out of production and the crowing from the rooftops died down.

Who knows, if the 4E fans had ever once acted like they cared about why people felt that way, maybe the history of 4e would have been very different.