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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imruphel" data-source="post: 7167400" data-attributes="member: 15684">Maybe it's just me - see next comment - but I thought that was sugar-coated. I stuck to facts - he didn't like 4E, he didn't run 4E, and he was the only 4E designer whose 4E design got worse (eg, Heroes of Shadow) - without insulting him or anyone else personally. And my comment should also be read in the context of the fact that he's now believed to be one of those who saved the D&D TTRPG by being a key player in the creation of 5E. Nobody remembers the days of d20 spam or bad 4E design: He's the king of 5E.My maternal grandmother always said of that side of my family: We were all weaned on razor blades.It's sometimes hard to sugar coat facts. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Firstly, we're not talking about Hasbro: We're talking about a subsidiary that pretty much runs itself. But it is accountable to Hasbro. Secondly, this sort of behaviour is not that unusual in the corporate world. They would have needed Hasbro to sign off on a new edition so they do something that appears to be a good faith attempt to revitalise the existing edition (even though it made next to no sense to the fan base, it's an attempt that would have translated well into corporate-speak) while actually putting it to death. But, in the process of putting it to death, they would have "discovered" all this feedback in the post-mortem process about wanting to go back to something closer to D&D of old: Et voila, you have what you need to get 5E approved.Which, of course, was already in progress.Exactly.Essentials was more about playing the corporate game with Hasbro than it was a good faith attempt to resuscitate 4E. If WotC had really wanted 4E revived, they would have kept Rich Baker and put him in charge of the revision.1. Too Machiavellian? Never worked in corporate, eh?2. If Essentials had involved a book called a "Player's Handbook" and published in hardcover in the normal D&D book size then I would have agreed that Essentials was an attempt to reach out to lapsed players. As it involved none of those things, I cannot agree with you.This is a hobby that appeals to people who are - and I will sugar coat this - set in our ways. We don't like too much change. We like our books to be a certain size. We like them to be hardcover. We like them to be called PHB, DMG, and MM etc.... 5E succeeded because it went back in time and delivered on this question, "What would a properly-designed update of 1E and 2E look like?"3. WotC doesn't do anything: People do things. And Mike Mearls had already shut down his own 4E games and was going back to the well of earlier editions when he was in charge of Essentials. That's not a criticism of him; ultimately, the success of 5E proved that he was right from a business point-of-view. But a guy who's not running an edition is not the guy you want in charge of a revision of that edition... unless you don't have high expectations for that revision and you (not MM but someone in management) are using Essentials as a cat's paw for what you really want to do with the brand.That sounds like the sort of feedback I would get back in my consulting days. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Agreed.For me, 5E is AD&D3E. Sure, it's informed by 3.xE and 4E in some respects but it otherwise feels like an attempt to take the raw material of AD&D, deliver a coup de grace to Gygaxian non-sequiturs, and produce an edition of AD&D that works as written rather than as interpreted - while also leaving room for a fair amount of DM interpretation.</blockquote>

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