D&D General Ch-Ch-Changes

[Argyle King]

I expect microtransactions to be added, as the game becomes more digital.

 

[Jack Daniel]

I predict that I will still be playing OD&D and AD&D.

 

[Charlaquin]

20 years is likely to mean 3-4 edition changes (minimum!).

An edition change every 5-7 years as a minimim? That seems like an extremely aggressive estimate. I would more likely say 2-3 edition changes in that time, tops.

 

[Minigiant]

What will remain
Classes
Subclasses
Races
Subraces

What will change
Classes, Subclasses, Races, and Subraces will have official Gritty, Herioc, Mythic tags and be deisigned and balanced based on it.

Basically, there will still be a fighter. However the Slayer subclass would be the Gritty Fighter and have Expanded Cirtical hits. Herioc fighters will have access to the Battlemaster and Eldritch Knight subclass and have Action points, manuevers and spells. And the Mythic Fighter gets access to Psionic Warriors, Echo Knights, and Legendary Swordsmans and can teleport behind the dragon and slash him/her/them with bonus 5d12 thunder damage

 

[tetrasodium]

Actually Christmas tree PCs was more a multi edition thing. 2e presented the idea of someone possibly being a Christmas Tree. 3e promoted the idea of a Christmas Tree being an ideal and gave players and DMs the tools to made them. And 4e codified it into the rules as a base part of the game. 5e just makes them not required and says it's just a style of play.

So by 7e, D&D will likely formally make and name "High Magic D&D" and have Christmas Trees be the base assumption in "High Magic D&D".

I don't deny that a GM could make their players into that in earlier editions, just that 4e did things to shift control to the PCs with residuum ,disenchant magic item & other rituals to dial it up to 11.

 

[DeviousQuail]

I predict Race and Background will become more intertwined. Race will grant you physical characteristics like size, darkvision, ability scores, fey ancestry, resistances, etc. Background will cover things you've learned like skill proficiency, weapons training, cantrip, stonecunning, etc. Each will probably have some non optional traits as well as a few a la carte options with the freedom to pick more from Race than Background or vice versa. It will be seen as a way to maintain themes while giving the players freedom to make their Elf Outlander different from other Elves, Outlanders, and Elf Outlanders.

 

[R_J_K75]

it is my hope I will still be playing some form of P&P RPG

I'm pretty confident paper will be outlawed in 2041 by decree of King Sting Sumner and President Donald Henley.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Things that will be gone (except for optional or house rules to capture old timey flavor):

XP
Rolling for HP
Character death (unless the players wants it to happen)
Traps and the expectation of having a "rogue" in the party to deal with them
Taking your entire turn to drink a potion or use a healing item

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I don't see Hasbro giving it up unless they have some serious hard times ahead, but that presumes they can't make money off of any of their many brands.

I definitely could imagine Hasbro buying a video game company or vice versa, since they'd love to get into that industry, but that's how the merger would happen.

Mate, try to keep up.

Wizards of the Coast - specifically, not Hasbro generally - have bought one gaming studio, and upscaled it to make AAA games, and they've started from scratch another gaming studio, and are staffing it up - the leadership is all ex-Bioware, and apparently they're making a space CRPG as their first game. So that's two gaming studios they have right now.

I could very easily see Hasbro selling off D&D, or Wizards of the Coast entirely. I mean, they're Hasbro, they buy stuff (they bought Wizards in the first place), and sometimes they sell stuff. This is a company so lacking in savvy that they licenced D&D out to Atari, of all people, for basically perpetuity (I mean not quite but...) so long as they made like one game every several years. The same Hasbro who then had to fight a lawsuit to get the D&D video game licence off those people. There's like 1 super-obscure 4E game, despite it being potentially ideal for video games, because this squabbling was going on. Again, this is Hasbro, not Wizards, who did this. And then Wizards, rather surprisingly, managed to give their first 5E licence to a company who were very obviously incapable of making a decent game, but it seems like after that, Wizards have wised up a bit.

But Hasbro are Hasbro and if say, 6E doesn't do as well as 5E, isn't as much of a phenom, and MtG maybe dips a bit around the same time, I could very easily see Hasbro "offloading" Wizards to someone - could be anyone from Disney to EA (honestly both would be terrible fates, but some others might be okay).

 

[TiwazTyrsfist]

20 years?

I expect within that time-frame the license will get sold again. How or why who can say, but I predict the rights leaving Hasbro, whose main goal is to have the broadest appeal possible so that they can have the largest possible sales base, and entering the hands of someone with 3.X or even 2nd ed nostalgia.

I therefore predict a return to stricter class/race combo options, a return to an older form of multi-classing, and probably an emphasis on stat rolling. No more point buys or basic arrays. For organized play you roll your stats in front of a certified DM and they register them.

I know not what stats with which 6e will be played, but I know 7e will be 3d6 rolled in order.