Could Wizards ACTUALLY make MOST people happy with a new edition?

[Gundark]

These Legends and Lore articles by Mearls has a lot of people talking. There are people (like myself) who wonder if he is talking about a new edition of D&D, or at least some kind of rules and options/unearthed arcana for 4e. There are others that think that he is just blabbing about game theory with no other motive. I can imagine one of the more asked questions that Mike will be asked is "Where are you going with these articles?"

Anyhow after reading page after page of discussion about these articles I've been surprised at the number of people who are say"This won't work!!!!" or who say something like "If this is 5e then count me out!!!!" without any sort of sense of how this would even actually look beyond discussion about theory.

So this makes me wonder, could WotC actually make the majority of people happy with a new edition? Are WotC just the hated big guy that draws a lot of fire from people (granted they've made unpopular choices)? I imagine if say Paizo came out with with these articles as the possible new direction that Pathfinder would be taking the response would definitely be more positive. Is WotC in a no win situation?

 

[prosfilaes]

So this makes me wonder, could WotC actually make the majority of people happy with a new edition?

Doubtful. Once people have left a system, they don't have the built-in incentive to keep up with new editions. To bring most people back, it would have to be too amazing for me to believe probable.

I imagine if say Paizo came out with with these articles as the possible new direction that Pathfinder would be taking the response would definitely be more positive.

I don't think so. Pathfinder sells as 3.75; any serious movement from that position would make their audience unhappy.

Is WotC in a no win situation?

If by win, you mean recover the players they lost with 4e, then yes.

 

[tuxgeo]

Dagnabbit, must "spread XP before giving it to Gundark again."

"Ren E. Who," my answer would have to be "NO": nobody on earth would be able to make MOST people happy; therefore, Wizards of the Coast coudn't do that, as they are composed exclusively of "bodies on earth."

"Harrumph." (<-- always looked for an excuse to use that interjection. Finally found one.)

 

[MerricB]

I'm pretty sure the answer is "no", although I'd love to be surprised.

3e managed to be very well received due in no small part due to the neglect of 2e by TSR (and the self-destruction of TSR in the preceding years). However, as the lifespan of 3e went on, the split between the different audiences for D&D became more and more pronounced.

If you compare 1E, Pathfinder and 4E, you get three thoroughly different approaches to D&D. There are areas of each system which you can point to and say, "that's closer to 1E than Pathfinder is", or "that's closer to 4E than 1E is" and suchlike.

If you'd imagine a lot of dials like "Character Complexity", "Monster Complexity", "Combat Complexity", "Speed of Combat", you get different values for each system.

Mike's thought-experiment D&D, which allows each group to set where the dials are, sounds like a nice idea, but I am sceptical, to say the least, about how achievable it is. (Even if it is achievable, how user-friendly would the system be? And does it just fragment everything even more?)

Cheers!

 

[Herremann the Wise]

So this makes me wonder, could WotC actually make the majority of people happy with a new edition?

Immediately or short term: unlikely; eventually: possibly. The D&D scene is fairly fractured at this point and it might be difficult to get all (or even just some) of those pieces together again. A new edition might be able to do it.

Are WotC just the hated big guy that draws a lot of fire from people (granted they've made unpopular choices)?

Just? Not entirely. They've made a lot of decisions that have alienated their customer base, not just been unpopular.

I imagine if say Paizo came out with with these articles as the possible new direction that Pathfinder would be taking the response would definitely be more positive.

Paizo have a lot of good will with their customer base. They have already said that eventually, there will be a Pathfinder 2, but chances are it will be an update rather than a completely new thing. If nothing else, they are guided by their customers and so can be guaranteed not to do something silly. I think the open tests they do for most things (which would include any Pathfinder 2 update or revision) is the key for them doing stuff that their customers want.

Is WotC in a no win situation?

They are in a difficult situation of their own making. I dare say however, that they have the talent to turn things around if such they choose to do.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Aberzanzorax]

With a new edition? No. It would further split any fanbase they currently have.

With some other offering? Yes. There are one or two ways they could make most people happy, and it's not yet another edition.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

You can never please everyone, but I'll be the lone voice in the wilderness and say that a Universal D&D core system with supplements that support all the most popular flavors of D&D, could be successful and win over a lot of folks.

Would it win over everyone? No, of course not.

Would some of the people it didn't win over bitch so loudly that it seems less successful? You betcha.

But I remember all of the skepticism about the D20 license and then the skepticism about 3.5 and then all the skepticism about 4E and then all the skepticism about Paizo striking out on their own (as crazy as it seems now, there were people who thought they were going to be out of business within six months). Put together a product that even appeals to a large plurality of (past, present, future) *D&D gamers and you've got a hit.

In the RP world, there's *D&D and then there's everything else.

 

[humble minion]

I'm inclined to go with the majority and say 'no' here. Even if WotC do come up with a brilliant and awesome 5e, then there will be people who'll despise it, and they'll be the people making the most noise.

And the same goes for Paizo. The thing with D&D being the 600lb gorilla in the fantasy RPG market for so long is that basically everyone played it, even if they preferred different game styles or emphasised different aspects of the whole deal. Your D&D experience != my D&D experience, basically.

4e took a step in a particular direction, favouring one play style over others. This is not a bad thing - 3e did this too. But the difference was that when 4e came along, the OGL meant Pathfinder was able to come along, favouring a different play style but still recognisably being D&D. I think we've seen the last of a unified D&D audience, to be honest.

I still reckon Paizo will need to bring out Pathfinder 2nd ed at some point in time, making some deep changes to the system to really address the fundamentally broken bits of high level d20 play (it's a bit revealing imho that even Paizo doesn't try to get PCs to 20th level in their adventure paths as a matter of course). When they do, I think they'll cop a fair bit of the same heat that WotC are copping with the 5e recon they're doing at the moment. Though probably not QUITE as much - WotC is still (for a number of reasons, of which not all are rubbish) the company a lot of gamers love to hate, and Paizo has a lot of community goodwill stored up.

And I play 3.5e and buy Pathfinder stuff, for what it's worth.

 

[Ahnehnois]

So this makes me wonder, could WotC actually make the majority of people happy with a new edition?

No.

A significant number of people wouldn't buy anything from WotC even if it was good quality. Beyond that, the 4e release and the edition war mess didn't create a schism in the gaming community from nothing. 4e and 3e are radically different, as are the people who play them. It's very unlikely that the same game could satisfy both groups of people (and many others) now that they have been separated. Above and beyond that, WotC has lost so many staff and is in such a bad place as a company I can't see them designing much of anything.

Are WotC just the hated big guy that draws a lot of fire from people (granted they've made unpopular choices)?

No.

Most of the fire has been from people who thought 3e and 3.5 were great, bought tons of WotC products, and liked the company (myself included). That's why they dislike it so strongly now.

I imagine if say Paizo came out with with these articles as the possible new direction that Pathfinder would be taking the response would definitely be more positive.

I seriously doubt that.

PF revised 3.5, but was fairly conservative in the way it was done. The differences between 3.5 and 3.0 are much bigger than the differences between 3.5 & PF (ruleswise, anyway). Could they have made bigger changes? Yes. But they didn't feel it was worth the risk of alienating people. For better or for worse, they were probably right; a substantially different game from Paizo would not likely be embraced by the many fans who look to PF as being the current version of D&D.

That being said, now that Paizo has hired so many of the best people in the gaming industry, including a lot of former WotC employees (many since the original PF core rules were designed) and has become well established as a brand, they would have as good a chance as anyone to break new ground successfully.

 

[Stormonu]

Nope, I don't imagine a new edition would win many over, only further fracture the fanbase. Even were Paizo, Green Ronin or some other entity to pull the D&D rabbit out of the hat.

However, I don't think WotC could "win" if they were to resurrect an old version of the game either. There'd be 4Eers who'd whine WotC had abandoned their edition, and everyone else would complain Mike Mearls ruined their edition of the game.*

Would that stop me from looking at a 5th edition? Nope, I'd still check it out. But it would definitely have a hard job of convincing me to drop what I'm playing now and actually play it after my not-so-thrilling encounter with 4E.

Would I like to see older edition support? Sure, especially if it could be 1E/2E material**. Or perhaps best of all, material that would work with whatever version of D&D I'm playing. Sadly, all "fluff" books - like the FR player's guide from 2E or the World and Monsters book of 4E - I don't really fancy, and I don't imagine it'd be possible to do a multi-edition mechanics book without a lot of space wasted converting the material between editions.

* With tongue firmly planted in cheek about the meme "Mike Mearls ruined ..."
** Even though I'm not playing right now, it might inspire me to