D&D 5E D&DN going down the wrong path for everyone.

[Chris_Nightwing]

I think it's an over-simplification to divide D&D fans into two, or even three groups. Just read through the playtester profile articles that have gone up over the last few months - note especially those from the guys we know and love over here on ENWorld. There's a large range of opinion - it isn't as simple as loving or hating one system. I loved 3E, and I thought it was headed in more of a class-light, customisation-heavy direction, only like many I was tired of the system by its end - it just took too much effort to patch over the cracks that it was worth starting again. That's why I don't particularly like PF, because it's the same framework and I don't see solutions for many of the problems I had with that framework. 4E sounded great - exciting really, and from previews it felt like it was going to be great fun, and it was for a while - it was good, but it wasn't great.

I suggested when D&DN was announced that a better solution might be to branch D&D into multiple editions. You maintain/update 4E and focus on it being a serious tactical edition. You produce a more open game spun out of 3E, reducing class emphasis and uniting mechanics, but not doing so rigidly. You republish your old editions because that's the best way by far to please those fans. You could even produce a serious metagame version, it could add on to the tactical game or stand alone, but would focus on story and appeal to an indie crowd. What they're doing at the moment is sort of all of the above. They republished their old stuff. Their idea of a basic game is as an introduction, not a retroclone, though it can act as that if you want it to. Their main game will be open and modular, and is clearly 3E inspired, and then all the tactical and tight elements of 4E will become options in the advanced game. It might just work.

 

[Herobizkit]

What I love about Pathfinder is the vast range of customization within each of the classes. This is what I currently DISlike about PF as well - if I choose to take advantage of all the options offered, my character feels 'heavy' with information bloat. As a DM, the bloat is even less manageable with all of the monsters and their complexity as character levels increase past level 7.

What I love about 4e is the ease in which a DM can throw together a combat, largely due to the (still kinda buggy and inaccurate) Campaign Tools made available through WotC's website but ALSO largely through the elegance with the 'math' all throughout the system. This is also what I DISlike about 4e; in the effort of creating total balance between characters and monsters, 4e has thrown away all of the available treats usable outside of combat and games seem to devolve to "stuff to do in between fights".

4e math, 3e modularity, with a focus on making classes with variable options (like Pathfinder) and a return to the world that exists outside of the grid... this is what I want for 5e.


Also, I hope that Paizo follows suit with an application suite like the one that WotC offers.

 

[Kalontas]

It's axiomatic that if you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one.

I've been saying this ever since 5E's goals were first announced. People who conservatively stick to 3.5/PF will still have no reason to change edition and will still stick to 3.5/PF, because it still makes changes that crowd doesn't want to see. 4E people will either find themselves a new game or just drop it completely due to lack of support (and impossibility of a 4E's "Pathfinder"). There will be hardly anyone switching to 5E and those who will try it will mostly say "still too much changes/not enough changes".

With that I have this weird feeling 5E is gonna be the final nail in D&D's coffin.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I absolutely understand that... however, the numbers are such that the early edition crowd isn't a significant enough demo to have a voice of their own, and in most cases, they'll agree conceptually with the 3rd edition fan over the 4th edition fan.
P).

I think the demographics have become quite interesting. If you look at therpgnow countdown (http://www.rpgnow.com/) it is an interesting mix of old school and indie on the top ten (and the top three items, are old school I believe). If you look at the full top 100 still a good mix but also lots of d20 material there.

Shameless plug. Check out our old school epic india RPG if you have a chance while you are there: (http://www.rpgnow.com/product/112198/Arrows-of-Indra).

 

[Celebrim]

Totally agree.

I absolutely think they're better off making a better 4e, than they are trying to make a "kinda, sorta" anything else.

4e was a clear move to section off a new "space" outside of the long-standing "traditional" D&D.

I got all but driven from these boards when 4e was coming out for even suggesting this. Every one excited about 4e angrily told me that 4e was more true to the spirit of D&D than 3e was, and there was nothing radical or revolutionary about (often though, this was the same group of people convinced that WotC was making a rules-light heavily nar game). I'm somewhat gratified to hear this stated now, and not see a fierce flamewar erupt as a result.

Anyway, the only reason not keep moving down the 4e track is if WotC is absolutely convinced, based on sales knowledge that none of us has, that 4e is basically a sunk cost at this point. If they're truly better off with the current D&DN strategy, then more power to them. In all likelihood, this may be the most cogent reasoning. If 4e really was that toxic to ongoing profitability to the D&D product line, then as a company they'd want to move past it as quickly as possible.

This. The problem is I'm not sure it is a recoverable position. The OGL was created by a group of people whose loyalty was to the game of D&D, the people who played it, and what they considered to be the true vision of it (the design of 3e). They argued for something as being for the corporate good honestly, because it was, but they also had what you might consider an (openly) ulterior motive. They wanted to create a situation in which D&D could survive any corporate decision up to and including complete economic collapse, because they wanted to make it impossible for a corporation to take the game away from its fans. And they achieved that. However, what this means is that if the company ever leaves 'traditional D&D space', then they immediately put themselves into competition with a subset of their own fans.

My position now is probably even worse from a corporate perspective than that of the average 'traditionalist'. I was thrilled by 3e, returning to D&D after having abandoned it in roughly 1995 having never having even fully embraced 2e, but having instead began working on my own house rules branched from 1e and finally giving up at the daunting task of recording and developing my own system. Third edition brought be back, made me a customer again, because I felt it basically was the cleaner, crunchier, more coherent system I had wanted to create. There were direct parallels between 3e and changes I'd made. But by 3.5 I knew that they weren't moving the game forward in the direction I wanted (rules bloat, player centric rules set, PrCs, power creep, reduced simulation, proto-4e, etc.), and so once again I was branching out into my own house rules. Only this time, I had a SRD as a starting place and a word processor, and frankly I've never been so happy with a rules set as what I've built. (It's not surprisingly, 'perfect for me', to the extent that its gotten hard to look at any rules document and not think, "I'd have done it differently".) To bring me back, the 5e team now has to make a game that basically accords with the direction of my current house rules, which can be described as, "3.0e basically got it right, but has a few issues with balance, chargen flexibility, and high level play which could have been addressed in more elegant ways than they actually did." That is I would think unlikely in the extreme. What 4e did to me was fully force me to go off on my own and settle my own design space without any recourse to what WoTC was publishing, and now I feircely defend that terrain and consider myself a sovereign, self-sufficient little game nation. Worse, from WoTC's perspective, I'm 'breeding' a whole gaming people whose expectations about playing are being set by me and who aren't customers because they are relying on me as their source of gaming material.

With that I have this weird feeling 5E is gonna be the final nail in D&D's coffin.

I said that a year ago and got a warning from a mod for edition warring. I didn't post again for months.

I really really want 5e to succeed, because as much as I enjoy ruling my own sovereign rules kingdom, not having professional support at all increasingly sucks. Pathfinder continues to diverge from where I want to go and the longer it goes the less immediately useful Pathfinder compatible rules expansions tend to be. New 3e stuff of high quality and depth is increasingly rare as it just isn't profitable (probably because too much of the 3e community is like me, less a unified nation than a bunch of petty princedoms with a common cultural heritage sitting in well fortified castles). I want to have an excuse to give people money. I just don't think 5e is going to be able to make me happy for reasons that are as much my fault as anything else.

 

[Umbran]

That would be incorrect. There is also the pre-3e crowd, which is actually larger than either of the other two. It's just that large chunks of that group are not on the internet, and so we don't hear much from them.

So, if we don't hear from them, how on earth do *you* know they are larger than either of the other two? You in a special psychic link with them, or something? Data source, or it's just another unsupported assertion like the OP.

Personally, I think this business of telling each other what the gaming community really needs/wants/contains ("Because I'm the wise one, darnit, and you should all listen to ME! I know better than EVERYONE ELSE!!!!1!") is pretty darned silly. While punditry generates lively argument, it doesn't actually produce much in the way of useful output.

 

[TerraDave]

I have been pretty happy with where things have been going with it lately, so I must be the one.

I am glad they are putting in so much effort just for me!

As someone who is (or at least was) a fan of various editions of D&D...I feel that it will always be impossible to get all fans of those past editions on board, no matter what. If you have the best D&D already, why change?

But I bet you can get some of them.

 

[DEFCON 1]

D&DN is going down the right path. It will be a new game that people will buy. In much greater quantity than a 4E DMG3 all about the Epic Tier or another Heroes of the Friendless Wastes player's essentials book would have.

That's all that matters. They write books, people buy books, they make money, they spend money to write more books. The cycle continues.

And I have no sympathy for the player-base. Because if all this incessant complaining about the 4E rules by the 3E crowd and the D&DN rules by the 4E crowd about every single stinking little rule is any indication... is tells me that the player-base is fractured NOT because really of the games themselves... but because of each player's complete uncompromising unwillingness to make concessions to how they play their game. If it includes X they aren't play it! If it doesn't have Y, then they're not switching! Really, it's no wonder players can't find groups to play with... because they've gone so over the bend about every single nitpicky little thing that every single player has become an island unto themselves.

Player in Nebraska today: "If Next doesn't include the Warlord as a class, then I'm not switching to the game when it comes out!!! They've lost me as a customer!"

Cut to same player 3 years from now: "I can't find anyone to play non-Essentials 4E with me in my area!"

 

[TerraDave]

[MENTION=7006]DEFCON 1[/MENTION] ...thats a harsher way of saying it. (but that doesn't mean your wrong).

 

[Obryn]

Really, it's no wonder players can't find groups to play with... because they've gone so over the bend about every single nitpicky little thing that every single player has become an island unto themselves.

The nerve of some people, playing a game that suits their needs better! It's an outrage!

We're in a great new age of RPGs, and D&D isn't the only game in town. As gamers, we're spoiled for choice; between 6+ major branches of D&D which continue to "work", retro/OSR games, modern rpgs like Savage Worlds and FATE, etc... Well, why NOT pick a game that suits your table?

If you're in a position to run or play games that suit you, why wouldn't you?