D&D (2024) D&D 6th edition - What do you want to see?

[Tony Vargas]

But I'm an oldhat DM running 5e for a newbie group of players and it is crazy easy to teach the game to them.

Compared to teaching them what? ;P
From 2010 through 2017 I ran a /lot/ of intro games, Encounters, conventions, AL, for genuinely-new as well as returning players, or long-time players 'new' to the current ed.
/New/ players picked up 4e much more readily than other eds, 5e included. Long-time & returning players ranged from being bemused for a bit before grokking it, to insurmountable perplexity, to violent rejection. Conversely, 5e sucks returning players right in, and their enthusiasm is infectious to new players. (Honestly, for a lot of us long-time loyal D&Ders, 5e's sometimes a tad 'meh' - not disappointing, not offensive, just not quite everything some past edition was to us - but still evocative enough of those past editions to make us want to see it succeed.)

Any flaws 5th edition has, attracting new players and teaching them the rules is NOT one of them.

It's not two of them (because that's two very different things).

5e has it really good as far as drawing new players in - if it drives some of them away, plenty more where they came from.

The accessibility of the rules once they're sitting down, and the meeting of expectations if they haven't been exposed to the peculiar D&D sub-genre of fantasy through an MMO or something before, not so much. They're not as baroque and unintuitive as 1e (and 1e managed to be hugely successful too, don't forget, so it's can't be that significant a flaw when it comes moving product), but it's exactly clear, concise, or intuitive, either.
Familiarity to returning players, OTOH, more than makes up for that.

(I think one thing that's overlooked when considering 'appeal to new players,' is, however ironically, the importance of nostalgia. With a property that has a history & rep from a decades-ago fad, even new players often are drawn to it wanting that bygone experience - out of curiosity rather than nostalgia, but it demands the design make similar sacrifices. That kind of new player needs to hear the old-timers, however grumpily, acknowledging that, yes, this is the real thing.)

 

[Undrave]

I could see a big marketing push once sales go down, but not a new edition, at least not with their stated goals for the game.

I know that's how it was done in the past, for sure; I just think they are trying to not do as they have done before.

Obviously, I can't know this is true; I am just basing this on what they have stated. A sixth edition would go against their stated goals. They don't even call the current game 5th edition.

I'm very wary of brands pretending to go to an 'Evergreen' style.

Hasbro is pushing this idea with Transformers recently and I think it's a big mistake. They basically nuked the old IDW universe, which had only gotten massively popular the moment they departed from the traditional canon and ENDED THE GREAT WAR. You now had those formers enemies uneasily living together and trying to rebuild a broken Cybertron and all those warriors with no idea what to do with themselves (including some that were built DURING the war and were seen as expendables) and your badge no longer guaranteed you were a good guy or a bad guy (Getaway you BASTARD!)...It was bold and it was brilliant! And now they just backpedaled on it and shat out some milquetoast reboot. Going 'Evergreen' means we'd have never gotten Beast Wars or Animated or even Rescue Bots, all fun incarnations with lots to offer but that departed from the core classic that Genwunners expect.

Going Evergreen is why New Star Wars is just Empire VS Rebel with new Disney-owned branding. Or why nobody takes death seriously in comic books or even can invest in legacy character anymore... and why they have readership in the low 6 digits...

It'll get stale and stiffle creative risks.

 

[R_J_K75]

If D&D were to cut out classes entirely it would probably lose a lot of players who just LIKE class-base mechanic.

I understand, its just a personal preference of mine. I can understand the drawbacks of removing the class system, for one its a way of establishing yourself not only in the gaming community among your peers, i.e., I'm currently playing a 7th lvl human paladin, and but also in the game itself. Counter to that though I just always found that limiting. To use a real world example, (if you consider your class as your occupation), as a Mechanical Design Drafter by trade, Im often asked to do other things outside of that primary role to which Ive picked up other unrelated skills. Outside of my professional life I have other skills, interest and hobbies. I'd just like to see more options like this in the character creation, but I certainly wouldnt expect them to change a major game component on my account. Perhaps a modular template like class system rather than a linear or tree-like one would suit this better. I'd even settle for an optional set of rules, but then again probably more trouble for them than its worth to suit a small segment of the market.

It's just not fun for a random roll of ONE die to just destroy everything you've invested into with little recourse.

I too have felt the pain from one random die roll, and it really sucks when you're on the losing end. Though I cant argue that I haven't felt suspense or thought I had that much to lose since that mechanic has been removed from the game. I suppose it may still be there in the game and Im just not using the mechanics to my advantage but telling a player "make your 2nd save vs. petrifaction" or "go ahead slugger, you've made 2 death saves, 1 more and you'll be up and at 'em" just sometimes doesn't have the same ring as "YOU'RE DEAD"! I can honestly say Ive never killed a PC premeditated. Sometimes the dice just dont go a players way and they need to accept that and move on.

 

[Lord of Nessus]

The Raven Queen, Primordials, and Archons all predate 4e.

They do? If so, that's news to me. Regarding those later two, yes, there were powerful named Elemental lords before 4e, such as Grumbar, Kossuth, Istishia, and Akadi, and the Archomentals of Good and Evil, but to my knowledge they were never called Primordials or credited with the creation of the world - they mostly just ruled over some of the Elemental planes (or tried to, anyway). "Archons" certainly existed in 2e and 3e, but they were heavenly beings living on Mount Celestia, not Elemental soldiers, which again, to my knowledge didn't exist before 4e. Apologies if I'm wrong.

I do vaguely remember Shadar-Kai existing in 3.5e and I assume they were tied to the Raven Queen at that point - anybody know what book/supplement introduced them?

 

[Hurin70]

4e was more accessible than any version of D&D since B/X, but, at the same time, it was 'controversial' and had a whacked 'shelf presence,' and just wasn't timed to the market. It was not innovative, player-focused, accessible D&D that the market was primed for in 2008, it was old-school revival.

Yes, well said.

I found Ranger - strikers in general - a tad boring. DPR just not that engaging. But, /lots/ of players love just throwing out the big numbers, that way.

I find the 5e Fighter much more boring -- at least the 4e version had some interesting powers. Doing basic attacks all day long, like the 5e fighter, gets boring faster for me at least.

As to the Ranger, I liked what 4e did because I like the concept of a purely Martial Ranger, whose power comes from skill at arms, rather than from spells (even if, admittedly, the 4e Ranger had some crazy spell-like abilities).

To me, the Warlord was never about DPR (at least for himself). I liked the fact that I could be an effective healer/buffer as a Martial combatant; I've never really liked playing a healer, but I did like playing a Warlord. And I loved roleplaying as the salty drill sergeant, or the commander who leads from the front. Good times.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I know most people assume there will be a 6e, but...I just don't think there will. The game now is the game as it will be. Maybe some variations (like how Risk has LotR Risk, different themes of Monopoly, etc.) but not a whole new edition; that would go against their stated goals.

I agree with you in broad strokes. I believe WotC when they say there are currently no plans for 6E. All indicators are that they are happy with the way 5E is going, and that they have good financial reason to be.

But...

Never say "never". 6E is pretty definitely not gonna happen in 2020, or in 2022, but who the heck can say what state the D&D scene is going to be in 2030 or 2035? Even now, when there are no plans for 6E, Mearls has been caught a couple of times saying things like "If I were designing 6E, here's how I'd do wizards differently..." He's a designer, it's part of his job to think that way, I would too if I were his position, but... he is thinking that way.

 

[Lanefan]

In that case, I go back to the previous post, about save-or-die being a bad mechanic. Any time that you can lose all of your character investment through a single die roll, without having a chance to avoid that die roll, then it's a bad mechanic. If you always have a chance to fail, and there's no way to avoid those rolls, then probabilities will definitely catch up to you eventually and there's no point in even trying to stay alive.

Exactly. In a large part it's a game of luck (that's why we have dice) - and sooner or later everyone's going to die; and that's why the game has revival-from-death mechanics built into its core.

Now if revival mechanics didn't exist then I'd be closer to agreement with you, though even then I'd posit that random chance and sheer bad luck will every now and then have their say.

And I say this as a player who has a track record of losing more characters than just about anyone else in our crew.

Although, in this case, it might be sufficient to just game the DM. If there's a risk of looking at the medusa, even when you try to not do so, then you need to resort to blindfolds. And if the DM rules even a blindfold has a 5% chance of failure, then you need an actual Blindness spell (which can be trivially reversed with Lesser Restoration). As long as there's some viable way to avoid a save-or-die roll, then the existence of the mechanic can be justified.

All of which make fighting the Medusa that much more difficult, particularly if you're running a game that doesn't have blindfighting as a 'thing'. But yes, I'd say a blindfold is effective until-unless the Medusa does something about it e.g. tries to remove it...though if she does that means she's close enough to stick a sword into...

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The numbers say otherwise. And it's not even close.

Not really. The numbers say dnd is selling better now, and that’s really all they say.

 

[Lanefan]

They do? If so, that's news to me. Regarding those later two, yes, there were powerful named Elemental lords before 4e, such as Grumbar, Kossuth, Istishia, and Akadi, and the Archomentals of Good and Evil, but to my knowledge they were never called Primordials or credited with the creation of the world - they mostly just ruled over some of the Elemental planes (or tried to, anyway). "Archons" certainly existed in 2e and 3e, but they were heavenly beings living on Mount Celestia, not Elemental soldiers, which again, to my knowledge didn't exist before 4e. Apologies if I'm wrong.

I do vaguely remember Shadar-Kai existing in 3.5e and I assume they were tied to the Raven Queen at that point - anybody know what book/supplement introduced them?

I don't know where I saw it but I seem to remember the Raven Queen being a thing way back in 2e or even earlier. I know I'd heard of her many years before 4e was even a blip on the radar.

As for Primordials - OK, the name changed for 4e but the idea of deity-level primordial or elemental creatures goes back, again, to 2e if not earlier.

Ditto Archons - they were redefined for 4e as elemental soldiers (which makes no sense to me whatsoever!). Far better they be divine minions or angel-equivalents from various pantheons.

 

[S'mon]

I could see a big marketing push once sales go down, but not a new edition, at least not with their stated goals for the game.

I know that's how it was done in the past, for sure; I just think they are trying to not do as they have done before.

Obviously, I can't know this is true; I am just basing this on what they have stated. A sixth edition would go against their stated goals. They don't even call the current game 5th edition.

Yeah, I think reissued and updated current ruleset (PHB, MM, & likely DMG) with new art for the 2024 anniversary is probably likeliest, but that they won't call it 6e or 5.5e, and it'll be fully backwards compatible with 5e material, especially the adventures.

The 5e PHB could really do with a do-over considering how hard it is to find stuff - no page bleeds, terrible index, unintuitive layout & ordering. But the actual gameplay is good & very popular. The 5e MM lacks encounter tables (they are in XGTE), lacks listings by CR (they are in DMG), lacks NPC racial adjustments (they are in DMG), and monsters vary wildly within the same CR listing. The 5e DMG does not have big problems, but XGTE generally has better stuff on eg downtime activities. Also I think the DMG should begin with 'running your first adventure' not 'creating the world'!