After DDXP, how are you feeling about D&En?

[Ahnehnois]

I voted ugh. I was initially pretty positive, but it seems like a lot of what they're discussing seems to be a return to ideas that were changed in 4E for a real reason.

.... But, the concepts of greater lethality, the return of spellslots, the removal of the AEDU system, the return of saving throws, and the likely return of less interesting combat environments are nothing I'm looking for.

It's still too early to see, but I heard nothing about the game that sounds anything like 4E. (Did you like any of the changes you made? Anything?) That may make a lot of people happy, but it leaves me as a sad panda.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but is this a surprise? The AEDU power system alone is a non-starter for a large portion of the gaming community. Given the stated goal of 5e to appeal to D&D players past, present, and future, they'd be crazy to build off of divisive concepts like that. It seems to me that their at-will feats for mages are an attempt to appeal to the 4e crowd, and there are plenty of other such attempts in there. It looks like there will be plenty of options for 4e flavor, but that they'll take the core assumptions of the game back to what they were in other editions.

Frankly, it's a lot easier to build a 4e character off of the 3e spine than vice versa (Bo9S, reserve feats, etc.). As to the larger systemic changes, if you're counting on a D&D without spell slots or saving throws or where characters have triple hit points at level 1, I suspect you'll be disappointed. Hopefully when all is said and done you'll be able to create the play experience you want with the 5e rules; I think you may be pleasantly surprised, but only time will tell.

Please do not encourage people to violate contracts made in good faith.

News about information that is ostensibly supposed to be confidential is often spread this way. Happens all the time in sports, entertainment, and politics. Sometimes it's advantageous for the body that's keeping the secret as it generates buzz. Frankly I don't see the incentive for WotC to keep their rules secret now that 5e has been announced.

 

[ferratus]

I mean, when you find a treasure chest, it's much exciting to find it full of golden doubloons, rather than silver reales.

Yeah, but if you are always finding gold, what's to look forward to?

In my games, players get the excitement that should come from finding golden doubloons when they find platinum pieces or gemstones.

If you want the players to react to gold as if it is valuable, you have to add some rarity and scarcity. (Ditto for magic items).

 

[Raith5]

Most of the time the game stayed afloat because I, as DM, put so much effort into breaching the gap for the players.

The DM always has the sell the system in a sense, but despite my liking of 4th ed, I agree that 4th ed did make this gap hard to sell for many people. Modularity and an acceptance of a wider range of play styles is something good to aim for (despite my misgivings about DDN)

 

[Aldarc]

Too early to tell really, but it looks much more like a regression that a synthesis.

This is now my biggest worry with D&D Next.

 

[am181d]

News about information that is ostensibly supposed to be confidential is often spread this way. Happens all the time in sports, entertainment, and politics. Sometimes it's advantageous for the body that's keeping the secret as it generates buzz. Frankly I don't see the incentive for WotC to keep their rules secret now that 5e has been announced.

I think the safe money is that 5e will debut at Gen Con next year. That's over a year away. In the meantime, they're saying they'll be doing some kind of massive playtest. So three good reasons are: (a) they want to control the roll-out of new concepts so that they're presented in the right context; (b) they don't want players to get pre-conceived notions about the rules before the playtests; and (c) they want to make sure they've got enough held back that they'll have enough to talk about through launch.

 

[The Human Target]

Its way too early to get a good read on it, even after DDXP (which gave us a lot of ideas but very little actual meat.)

But I'm feeling meh right now.

A lot of people thought 4E threw out the baby with the bathwater.

I'm starting to feel like 5E will drown the baby in the rush to put the dirty water back in the tub.

 

[Incenjucar]

I think the safe money is that 5e will debut at Gen Con next year. That's over a year away. In the meantime, they're saying they'll be doing some kind of massive playtest. So three good reasons are: (a) they want to control the roll-out of new concepts so that they're presented in the right context; (b) they don't want players to get pre-conceived notions about the rules before the playtests; and (c) they want to make sure they've got enough held back that they'll have enough to talk about through launch.

Yep.

As I've mentioned before, broken NDAs can have very negative effects on how a game is received. PR control is important - that's why they DO it. One major thing is that many major games, while being designed, had a bunch of experimental features that were discarded or changed. The anticipation for or dread of these features will drive consumer expectations, and people will either be disappointed that a feature is not included or is changed, or will treat the beta as the release and not purchase the game because of a feature that never actually showed up.

 

[Invisible Stalker]

The 1e side of me is really encouraged, the 4e side...

No Coffee! - YouTube

 

[Raith5]

I'm starting to feel like 5E will drown the baby in the rush to put the dirty water back in the tub.

As [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] says this is great analogy. I just hope we clearly remember the problems of pre 4th edition D&D when we are constructing this edition. We need to be critical of 4th ed and previous editions to develop an interesting game that suits a wide range of play styles. Nostalgia alone will not develop a game worth playing.

 

[SteveC]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but is this a surprise? The AEDU power system alone is a non-starter for a large portion of the gaming community. Given the stated goal of 5e to appeal to D&D players past, present, and future, they'd be crazy to build off of divisive concepts like that. It seems to me that their at-will feats for mages are an attempt to appeal to the 4e crowd, and there are plenty of other such attempts in there. It looks like there will be plenty of options for 4e flavor, but that they'll take the core assumptions of the game back to what they were in other editions.

Frankly, it's a lot easier to build a 4e character off of the 3e spine than vice versa (Bo9S, reserve feats, etc.). As to the larger systemic changes, if you're counting on a D&D without spell slots or saving throws or where characters have triple hit points at level 1, I suspect you'll be disappointed. Hopefully when all is said and done you'll be able to create the play experience you want with the 5e rules; I think you may be pleasantly surprised, but only time will tell.

News about information that is ostensibly supposed to be confidential is often spread this way. Happens all the time in sports, entertainment, and politics. Sometimes it's advantageous for the body that's keeping the secret as it generates buzz. Frankly I don't see the incentive for WotC to keep their rules secret now that 5e has been announced.

I think you completely misunderstand the kind of game I'd like to play and have thrown it more than a little hyperbole. The thing is, the issues 4E was designed to address were real issues... the developers didn't just make changes at random.

I'm not interested in playing Fantasy Vietnam. I'm not interested in classes that can only be their archetype a few times a day. I'm not interested in 15 minutes of fun in five hours of play. I'm not interested in dedicated healbots. The list goes on and on...

But the important thing is: if nothing is learned in this edition, you'll get to hear all these complaints all over again, because we'll be going back to a system that had some fundamental design issues. I hope that doesn't happen, but I'd say you'll know a lot more about these complaints since they'll be just as loud in the next edition. As they were back a few years ago.

I HOPE they can address these issues, I have FAITH in most of the design team, and I'd LOVE to keep playing D&D and to see it thrive. If having it thrive means it's a game I have no interest in playing, that will make me sad, but there are a lot of great games out there. I can move on and happy gaming to everyone.

What I am going to do, however, is playtest, and report my results regularly. Will they be listened to? Will anybody care? Hopefully yes!