D&D 5E D&D Next Release Date Set -- Summer 2014

[Kramodlog]

A lot has changed since the golds stated 2 years ago.

 

[Mercurius]

It's a bit of a cynical view.

Its more facetious than cynical!

I actually think that WotC have reassessed their business model - away from the new-edition-every-few-years model (we all knew that 4e was in the pipeline years before it was announced, didn't we?) - and into that of a longterm core game brand that is used as the basis of a wide variety of 'multimedia' (whatever that is). 'Tis why there is all that talk about it being a 'unifying edition' and why they want to just call it 'D&D' (without an emphasizing which edition it is), and why they chose to take two and a half years to develop/playtest/market it publicly.

I hear you, but its hard to imagine that there won't be further new editions of D&D. It is part of D&D custom to tinker with, house rule, and change the rules. While its nice to think of a simple core that could remain unchanging, I just don't see it.

Now maybe WotC can get a few more years out of 5e than they did with 4e. If you think about it, 4e was really only active for less than four years (summer, 2008 to winter 2012), about half that of 3e. 1e was 12 years (1977-89), 2e was 11 years (1989-2000), and 3e 8 years (2000-08), with 4e by far the shortest. I'm guessing they hope to get if not 11-12 years, then 7-9 years. But who knows.

The other part of this is if they are able to create a core game that can see minor edition changes, like 1e to 2e. When you played 2e you could still use a lot of 1e product fairly easily. This become more difficult with 3e and 4e being an even further departure. If they are really lucky (or crafty) then they can do minor updates and revisions and still call it "D&D."

As I said before, the actual sales of the new edition is secondary to the ownership of the 'D&D' brand and the public's perception of that brand. They'll make more money through the multimedia. Conversely, they won't be wanting to make new editions every few years anymore, as it dilutes the value of the brand itself.

Yes. This is similar to what I was saying about D&D, as a tabletop RPG, being a loss-leader for the entire franchise. It could be a perfectly viable business decision for the folks at Hasbro to say "We don't need to make a profit on D&D the RPG, as long as we are making a ton on multimedia."

The length of the playtest is completely irrelevent. I'm basing my concern on what we saw in the playtest combined with the information that they have "leaked" concerning what they are doing behind the scenes. While I, of course, can't see the full picture, I can make a few educated guesses based on the tone and content of L&L and Q&A articles, Mike Mearls tweets, etc. For instance: snip

Some good speculations there, but they're just that: speculations. What we do actually know is that the game is being released in 6-8 months or, if we want to be technical about it, 6-9 months as summer ends in late September. But I think it likely that we're talking GenCon or a month or two before.

How close to finished does the game have to be for it be on your FLGS in 6-8 months? Pretty close to done. As I've said before, the bulk of the text, layout, and art could be 95% done even if the rules were 70-80% done. Most of the text is explanatory and fluff.

Where I would speculate tweaking might still be occurring is in the math - a little too loose here, a little too tight there. But again, to make that 6-8 month deadline, the game really has to be off to the printers by February or March - maybe sooner (in another thread I think the low-end numbers were 3-4 months turnaround from off-to-the-printers to on-the-shelves). So we're talking about maybe a couple months of further tweaking.

All that said, I can't help but feel that WotC wouldn't have announced this unless they were absolutely certain they could have a finished - and polished - product to us in the summer. They could have waited another month or so to announce but they must have reached a point where they felt confident enough in their progress to announce. For me this point is "almost done with just a few tweaks" not "a mad scramble to finish the rules."

I just have a really hard time feeling confident that they are going to be able to iron out all of that stuff in a couple of months so they can send it off to the printers. Given that we have people working there who have been there for previous edition releases (at least 4e), hopefully my concerns are uncalled for. But the way I see it, the last couple of months are a time period that should be reserved for adding content and editing, not finishing the rules and adding subsystems. Of course, now that I think of it, it's quite likely that if they did it that way corporate would tell them they don't need those last couple of months because they can always put out more content later, so perhaps it was an intentional good move to make sure nothing is finalized until right before the books head off to the presses so they can put in all the content we need in there. I do believe that the designers and developers love the game and want to make it the best it can be. I think they are trying to make it a game they want to play and they hope will meet the needs of as many players as possible. In short, I actually believe they are being honest with us. I'm not concerned with their intentions, just the uncertainty of the timing.

See above. I rally don't think they would have announced in mid-December unless they were very confident that they could pull it off. This leads me to believe that either 1) They're a lot further along than you think, and/or 2) they're going to hold off on publishing a lot of the sub-systems and modules until "Player's Handbook 2: Gonzo Munchkins & Kewl Powerz."

So this would be my prediction for a main reason that people will be disappointed with the summer release: it doesn't include their modular option of choice. My guess is that we'll get the core rules and maybe some gently implied modules, like "how to play with a battlemat," maybe skills, and options within classes and such. But we won't get 3e-style detailed customization or 4e-style powers and tactical combat. Or maybe we will, but it will be the "basic" version.

This is probably as it should be. Later on they can release Gonzo Munchkins and Kewl Powerz and any other number of modules. To be honest, I want a minimum of that in the core rulebooks; I'd rather see a nice array of a dozen classes with a few sub-classes and half dozen races with sub-races. The core should be core - that is, what is core to the D&D multiverse. I'd love to see a later book cover 4e-style powers and alternate rules, but not in the first Player's Handbook.

But that's just me! But I think the point is that it is easier to go forward into complexity from simplicity, than to start off complex.

 

[Mark CMG]

I think it bodes well for the new edition that we didn't see a round of Christmas layoffs this year at WotC. Excellent for the folks who work there, of course, but also because the more folks they have working on the new edition, the better it is likely to be.

 

[Farscape]

I think it bodes well for the new edition that we didn't see a round of Christmas layoffs this year at WotC. Excellent for the folks who work there, of course, but also because the more folks they have working on the new edition, the better it is likely to be.

I would rather have quality over quantity any day.

 

[Mark CMG]

I would rather have quality over quantity any day.

I'm going from the assumption that those aren't mutually exclusive.

 

[Warunsun]

I think it bodes well for the new edition that we didn't see a round of Christmas layoffs this year at WotC. Excellent for the folks who work there, of course, but also because the more folks they have working on the new edition, the better it is likely to be.

They did get the 2013 layoffs. Check the Enworld forums from last month I believe. They did them a bit early.

 

[Mark CMG]

They did get the 2013 layoffs. Check the Enworld forums from last month I believe. They did them a bit early.

According to the running list, two left voluntarily in 2013 and one layoff occurred -

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showwiki.php?title=Ex-WotC-Employees

 

[sunshadow21]

But I don't think it will fail. And even if the tabletop RPG doesn't go "gangbusters," they've got this whole multi-platform approach, so we're likely to see movies, video games and such, so that the original RPG might end up being the loss-leader to the larger D&D franchise.

That was the overall theory and expectation of 4E as well, though, and we see how well that worked out. The problem with that idea is that while the table top game doesn't have to make tons of money, it does have to generate lots of interest, and 4E never did that. The dryness of the initial books and DDI unintentionally creating a closed system that made collaboration with outside companies difficult at best ended up working against WotC; no one but them and a few fans dedicated to going to their site and subscribing to DDI cared about it enough to do anything with it. The fact it sold so well initially was probably due as much to the initial complaints and the interest and discussion generated by the initial complaints as it was by any genuine interest in the system itself, and that is going to be the big problem they have with Next. Getting people to notice enough to care is going to be a real challenge given the relative dud that was 4E and the now much more crowded marketplace. The system may very well be a solid system, but getting enough people to notice, and more importantly, care, is going to be hard beyond the interest surrounding the initial release. And if the table top game never gets off the ground, none of the "multi-platform" options are going to even be considered because no one else is going to bother with it.

Nor will there likely be a 6th edition. Bad sales that retain a broad interest can be overcome with a new edition; general boredom and disinterest of a brand bred by two "failed" products in a row (at least in terms of public reception and WotC/Hasbro corporate reaction) is a much bigger hurdle, and I frankly don't think WotC has the talent or necessary skillsets to overcome that big of a hurdle. More importantly, I'm not convinced that the corporate suits have enough interest to even try. Add in the fact that Hasbro could care less about D&D if WotC can't get even get it off the ground, and you get the fact that for better or for worse, this is probably the "do or die edition" of the formal D&D brand. It either takes off from here, branching into other platforms, dragging the table top game with it, or it just dies, at least for the foreseeable future.

 

[The Human Target]

The sky is always falling.

 

[PinkRose]

Why is everyone insistent that "monster" is a typo?
Can't that allude to an Encounters type plan to fight the worst D&D Monster of all time?
Myabe Orcus or Asmodeus or the Terrasque or a Gnome Bard?

As for multi-platform, I'm positive they mean "D&D everywhere". Books, novels, e-books, games, apps, movies, spaceships...