D&D 4th Edition Next Year?

[The_Universe]

At Gen Con, I was talking to Elvis, the Loch Ness Monster, and Bigfoot - and they all know a guy in the industry, and (this is not a joke) they say he says that 4E is coming out at Gen Con next year! Seriously!

 

[francisca]

Something to file away in the back of your minds is this little factoid. Hasbro owns Wotc and if Hasbro becomes disenfranchised with the sales numbers of 3.5 they will likely force the 4th edition to appear sooner than Wotc may have originally intended. Hasbro makes the ultimate call here, not Wotc.

Those who are genuinely concerned about 4e should look to Hasbro for indicators of the apocalypse, not Wotc.

Just a random data point:

It's often been proposed that the Hasbro brass don't even know what D&D is. I picked up a free copy of Games Quarterly at GenCon, which contained an interview with Alan Hassenfeld, chairman of the board of Hasbro. He was asked, "How would you characterize the general public's interest level in games throughout your career?"

The last sentence of his answer is: "Whether it's a three thousand year old game like Mancala, a 70 year old game like Monopoly, or the 30 year old Dungeons and Dragons, games are here to stay!"

Also, in college, he was a Tactics II player.

So, D&D is, in fact, on the map at Hasbro.

 

[Kunimatyu]

I must say, I really hope that Mearls is working on 4E as we speak. Iron Heroes was good, but would have been great with some better editing/playtesting. If I was redesigning D&D for 4E (and I'm not, so these opinions don't actually matter), here's what I'd do:

-- Use tokens instead of some of the X/day abilities. Much more fun for players, and easier to justify.

-- For the love of Pete, MP not spell slots. D&D newbies don't get the whole spell slot comcept, but thanks to World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy, nearly everyone gets the concept of spending MP to cast spells. Then WotC could hire Wickett to make an EOM-like book that helps DMs and players make their own spells.

-- Balance, balance, balance. Balanced classes, feats, spells will go a long way towards making WotC's Living campaigns more playable. And they certainly won't hurt homegames, either.

-- Powergaming should have less of an impact. Try to set things up so the guy who plans out his character from 1-20 using lots of splatbook feats isn't worlds above Joe who thinks swords are neat. You can never completely eliminate the benefits of thoughtful choices, but reducing the huge gap between a powergamer and a casual gamer would be nice.

-- Less save-or-die mechanics, despite their sacred cowness. Introduce more monsters with gaze attacks that cause your character to fall to the ground puking their guts out, as opposed to killing you dead.

 

[philreed]

Introduce more monsters with gaze attacks that cause your character to fall to the ground puking their guts out, as opposed to killing you dead.

Okay, I may have to steal that idea. That sounds like a lot of fun. (Well, not fun. You know what I mean.)

 

[Crothian]

At Gen Con, I was talking to Elvis, the Loch Ness Monster, and Bigfoot - and they all know a guy in the industry, and (this is not a joke) they say he says that 4E is coming out at Gen Con next year! Seriously!

I talked to Peter Pan and he said the same thing!!

 

[ColonelHardisson]

I am merely pointing out that there is more than $100 tied up in the game.

No, there isn't. No one has to buy any of those ancillary products - the core 3 are all you need.

 

[Buttercup]

Look, another week, another "4e Rumor" thread.

You know, I needed a new sig. Thanks for providing it!

 

[JVisgaitis]

Hasbro owns Wotc and if Hasbro becomes disenfranchised with the sales numbers of 3.5 they will likely force the 4th edition to appear sooner than Wotc may have originally intended. Hasbro makes the ultimate call here, not WotC.

Ya know, I know people are annoyed with all of the 4e threads, but since I never participated in any of them, I will here. And if you don't like it, don't open the thread!

Anyway, another thing to keep in mind is when sales started to decline in Hasbro's eyes they dropped 3.5 on us and everyone complained that it was way too soon. I can't remember the exact date, but Monte said it was planned for a set period out of the gate and it ended up coming out a heck of a lot sooner. Its so true here that Hasbro calls the shots, not WotC.

 

[Truth Seeker]

You know, I needed a new sig. Thanks for providing it!

LOL

 

[atom crash]

I didn't believe a word of any of these 4E rumors until I went to my FLGS today and the store owner told me he heard a rumor that 4E would be a Christmas release this year.

Now I'm a believer. Two people who are completley unconnected to each other heard the same rumor, so it must be absolutely true.

I'm going to hide under my bed now until the sky has fallen.

But seriously, I told him I hear at least 1 such rumor a week and I won't believe it until I see it. And after talking to this guy a few minutes, I realized how utterly uninformed he is about the d20 market.

Here's a series of honest questions: How many people are on staff at WotC, and how many 3.5 books are currently in development? Is it really all that feasible that someone is devoting a lot of time to actively developing 4E right now? It seems like if 4E was in full development right now (such as it would have to be if a release was less than a year away, in order to give adequate time to playtest), there'd be 3 or 4 guys working fulltime on it and not much else. Does WotC have that kind of manpower?