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!

 

[TwoSix]

Really?
I respect your personal experience and I'm not going to get worked up on that.
But you actually know someone who frequently and over a long term continuously posts "4E sucks" type comments without knowing anything about the game?

Absolutely, yes. Not on this forum, so much, but several others. The more 4e-positive threads you read, the more likely you are to see it. So there may be some, dare I say, selection bias.

 

[Mercurius]

It may also be difficult to differentiate between intense dislike for an edition vs giving off intense emotion when discussing said edition vs another's interpretation of said feeling.

So if I was extremely passionate about "traditional" D&D, and 4E drew my ire, then I might dislike it to some level of intensity, but actual impressions of "hatred" might only emerge as a by-product of arguing online against those equally but oppositely passionate. (This is not something I personally experience, but I'm just speculating.)

So you're saying, "the internet?" ;-)

But what you say here reminds me that there's also a matter of style. Some people are very passionate, and to them saying "I Hate" isn't really about hating, just feeling strongly about something. Hey, I work with teenagers and some of them say "I hate" to a lot of stuff!

What's wrong with you? I've asked you to let it go and Umbran has told us to drop the discussion. You're discussing something that isn't even posted and dropping a "mention" on top of it. I can't discuss this anymore based on Umbran's moderator request so, please, let it go already.

OK, I misunderstood. I read your post in my email then started to reply, wanted to clarify my word usage which wasn't in any way negative or "edition warry" - if anything, it was meant to defuse not anger! Then your post was gone. Anyhow, no hard feelings - nothing's "wrong" with me, or at least not massively so . Letting go and moving along...

 

[Mark CMG]

OK, I misunderstood. I read your post in my email then started to reply, wanted to clarify my word usage which wasn't in any way negative or "edition warry" - if anything, it was meant to defuse not anger! Then your post was gone. Anyhow, no hard feelings - nothing's "wrong" with me, or at least not massively so . Letting go and moving along...

Fair enough. I had replied to an email from you the same way and only after posting, noticed Umbran's warning was right above mine and so deleted my post immediately lest I be one of the ones he was discussing (it's vague, so I didn't know). Anyway, going forward, leave me out of it.

 

[Mercurius]

Sure, but you are now putting my wife in the "moderate" camp, which isn't perpetuating edition wars. That is the point I was making.
There are people without deep and highly educated opinions on the matter. But these are not the people waging edition wars. The case being made seems to be that there are uneducated people (true) and people waging edition wars (true), therefore the edition wars are being waged by people who are uneducated on the issue (not true)

Yeah, that's not what I mean to be implying.

Anyhow, I think the people waging the edition wars are extremes on either side, with a rotating cast of moderates that get drawn into the fray.

 

[BryonD]

Yeah, that's not what I mean to be implying.

Anyhow, I think the people waging the edition wars are extremes on either side, with a rotating cast of moderates that get drawn into the fray.

Cool

There are people absolutely claiming this, and you didn't really seem to be embracing that point.
I absolutely agree that there are "extremes" and that due to emotion the conversations can become highly irrational regardless of the merits (or lackthereof) for the initial opinion.

 

[TwoSix]

I absolutely agree that there are "extremes" and that due to emotion the conversations can become highly irrational regardless of the merits (or lackthereof) for the initial opinion.

Cookies for everyone!

Some of you will get your cookies recharged in 5 minutes, and some of you in an hour, but that's just the way it goes.

 

[Rejuvenator]

Cookies for everyone!

Some of you will get your cookies recharged in 5 minutes, and some of you in an hour, but that's just the way it goes.

Except all cookies are the same for lava. If you fall into lava, you die. No save.

http://www.livescience.com/34031-person-fell-volcano.html

 

[Lwaxy]

The only part I HATED about 4e was the fact that it split a gaming group I was very fond of. Maybe that's the same for a lot of other people who at first got angry at a game that was not for them to play (I tried, didn't have fun at all).

Of course eventuelly my group, and others, would have split due to different game preferences anyway. But I didn't see it that way at the time.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Just a point about "irrational hatred of 4e"

The truly ironic thing is, so much of 4e appears in 5e without the slightest quibble, despite causing huge outcry in 4e.

That shouldn't be surprising. Many of the things that caused outrage in 4e had already existed in prior editions, as well. Grid dependence, DS mechanics, classes that gained resources in near lock-step, math glitches, etc, etc...

Here's 5 examples:

1. The Battle Master Fighter and Superiority Dice.
2. The Barbarian and Rage.
3. Attunement.
4. Bounded Accuracy.
5. Healing Rates.

To be fair, the healing rates do draw some flack from the usual suspects.

So, yeah, when Mercurous talks about the irrational hatred of 4e, I think he has a pretty strong point. The fact that 5e is getting pats on the back for stuff that got 4e vilified shows just how irrational a lot of the criticisms really were. People didn't hate the mechanics of 4e. They just hated 4e and used the mechanics as a scapegoat.

It's not so much the 'hatred' (rejection) of 4e that was irrational. There are some very rational reasons for a classic D&D fan or a 3.x fan to reject 4e (and, those reasons apply less to 5e in spite of the mild similarities you point out), maybe not reasons to hate it, but rational reasons not to want 4e as the face of D&D and to want to discourage others from playing it. It was the reasons or rationalizations given for that rejection that came off as 'hatred' and didn't necessarily hold together too well.

 

[pemerton]

It wasn't 2nd Edition, although some parts of 2nd Edition were problematic.

You are mostly correct. 2e is not the direct cause of TSR's money problems. It was TSR's bad business decisions during 2e's rang that sunk it. Not how 2e was received and liked by players.

I think there is a possible confusion between reception of a set of RPG rules and commercial viability of pubishing material for an RPG system.

A lot of people liked 2nd ed AD&D. A lot of people liked buying products for 2nd ed AD&D. Nevertheless, as Ryan Dancey said (in the comment that I linked to), it was those products that (among other things) killed TSR. Not because they were poor products (though some of them may have been) but because they were not commercially viable.