D&D 5E Did The Finished 5th Edition Change Anyone's Mind?

[DMZ2112]

I never really abandoned the playtest but I definitely lost a lot of faith at one point. Skill dice just seemed like such a terrible idea. I know I had other concerns but I don't have a firm recollection. The final playtest packet was good enough that I convened a group of old D&D buddies and forced them to sit through a session. We had a great time and only the guy with the perennial bad attitude complained. From that point on I just crossed my fingers and hoped all the changes between the final packet and the PHB were good ones.

Super betrayed by Wizards completely ignoring community feedback on the ridiculous halfling art, though. What a kick in the ioun stones.

 

[jayoungr]

Success story here: My group played one early session of the playtest before the guy running it decided he wasn't interested. The group is lukewarm on D&D at the best of times--they prefer classless, point-buy systems on the whole--so we probably wouldn't have played it again if another group member hadn't bought the finished book and urged us to give it a try. He's been running several sessions of an adventure for us, and it's going great!

 

[MARCVS AVRELIVS]

I skipped the play-test, and was generally planning on skipping 5e. I've been playing D&D in some form or another since '78, and had tried every version from OD&D up to Pathfinder. But I was feeling burned out, and just felt like I could maybe 5e was going to be a good jumping off point. The stuff I had been hearing from the play-test wasn't exciting me, after all.

Then I happened to be on vacation in the summer of 2014, and stopped into an old friend's game store. There was a copy of the Players Handbook on the wall, and I gave it a flip through and kind of liked what I was seeing. Said friend then offered me a 'old friend' discount of 20% off cover, and my son (age 9) said "Buy it, Dad" and I caved.

That night, in a motel room, my son and I whipped up a half-orc barbarian (who, according to my son, recognized violence was the last resort) in under an hour and I was able to run a quickly combat using "made up" goblin stats on the fly.

And I was sold on the game. I started out at the same age my son was, with the Blue Box. This version seemed as easy for him to get as that one did, played about as fast and fun as it did, and best of all, I was able to just fake up goblins using my ancient "AD&D 1e" knowledge that somehow was still lurking in the back of my head and run on the fly.

 

[Uchawi]

I think 4E proved you can innovate your way out of one genre and into another. that is to say, D&D is not just a series of games, it is a genre of game itself and assuch there are a number of tropes and expectations that are inherent in that genre. 4E discarded and/or changed a lot of those tropes and expectations and was a new new genre of game. 5E is indeed partially a response to that, pulling D&D back into the D&D genre, but it is also a response to the high granularity of Pathfinder (by way of 3.x). Pathfinder has shown that there is an appetite for a very detailed D&D, but the rise of the OSR showed that there is also an appetite for a more streamlined version of the game. There are a lot of folks, I think, that would like to see more "crunch" for 5E and that may happen, but so far it seems that the retro flavor and ease of play are 5E's primary selling points versus Pathfinder.

That is not to say I don't think there is a market for a divergent game like 4E. I actually think there is a really interesting game in there, especially a partially competitive one. One could use the hard coded balance of 4E to produce a sort of table top MOBA with relative ease, I think.

I agree 4E delved into new grounds, and discarded some of the old, and Pathfinder held to the status quo of 3E; but gave it a shot of steroids. But even with the simplicity and retro feel of 5E, there were some basic building blocks they missed like adding maneuvers to martial characters. You could still have 5E in its present form, but it would include building blocks to branch out to add that complexity. All the tools were present in the playtest. If 5E is a massive success you may see some supplements address it, or if 5E becomes a relic, there is a smaller chance that may affect change. But I am afraid 5E will be a snapshot in time.

 

[jayoungr]

Super betrayed by Wizards completely ignoring community feedback on the ridiculous halfling art, though. What a kick in the ioun stones.

Wow, there was artwork in the playtest packets? Must have been the later ones that I missed. Anyway, maybe they were committed to it by then?

 

[Tony Vargas]

D&D is not just a series of games, it is a genre of game itself and assuch there are a number of tropes and expectations that are inherent in that genre.

That's a pretty grandiose tautology. Yes, if you take a game that models a genre (not so well), and want to excuse the failure, it's facile enough to say that it's 'defined it's own genre.' If the game was also a fad for a while, /and/ attracted mainstream controversy that raised awareness of it's name, such that it has some ongoing success and notoriety, you can even point to that success as 'proof' that this 'new genre' is exactly what people want (and the only thing they want). Afterall, other similar games that don't fail to model the genre in the same ways don't so well (ignoring the fact they have 0 mainstream name recognition).

the rise of the OSR showed that there is also an appetite for a more streamlined version of the game.

'Streamlined' maybe isn't the most important takeaway. The 'O' in OSR is the critical bit. "Old." OSR is a revival of a fad. The old version of the game was baroque, and maybe even nostalgic fans don't want to deal with that complexity, so 'streamlined' clones do a little better than more faithfully complicated ones, IDK - but I doubt it's the most significant factor.

5e follows that model. It's very suggestive of the classic game, but not as primordial. It'll be hard for it to do poorly, with both the fad-revival, and the official D&D name on its side.

 

[DMZ2112]

Wow, there was artwork in the playtest packets? Must have been the later ones that I missed. Anyway, maybe they were committed to it by then?

No, no, this was a Wizards.com article; the first look at the D&D5 halfling. It was in the very early days of the playtest. We all screamed bloody murder about the Fathead and Creepyhands halfling subraces and Jon Freaking Schindehette *shakes fist* said that we needed to understand the purpose of concept art; this isn't what the halfling would look like in the finished product. Our fury was the great thing about the playtest process, as Wizards was getting such fantastic feedback on these things so early in the process!

Two years pass, no new halfling pitch, PHB halflings end up looking just like concept art.

SCHINDEHETTE!

 

[PnPgamer]

To be honest, WOTC could have done almost anything, and it would have still looked better than 4th ed.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

To be honest, WOTC could have done almost anything, and it would have still looked better than 4th ed.

Unless, of course, you're a 4E fan.

Your edition warring aside (seriously, why bother?), it's clear that WotC learnt some valuable lessons from the 4E years and from watching Paizo make a success of Pathfinder. Part of that is that we are definitely seeing better quality adventures - what few there are - particularly those with Rich Baker's name on the cover. Specifically, compare launching 4E with the almost universally panned Keep on the Shadowfell (including by 4E fans) with the launch of 5E with Lost Mine of Phandelver which is almost universally praised.

 

[pemerton]

I think 4E proved you can innovate your way out of one genre and into another. that is to say, D&D is not just a series of games, it is a genre of game itself and as such there are a number of tropes and expectations that are inherent in that genre. 4E discarded and/or changed a lot of those tropes and expectations and was a new new genre of game.

<snip>

That is not to say I don't think there is a market for a divergent game like 4E. I actually think there is a really interesting game in there, especially a partially competitive one. One could use the hard coded balance of 4E to produce a sort of table top MOBA with relative ease, I think.

How many subscribers does DDI have at the moment?

4e is a roleplaying game, which had and still has a market. Including among people who like the "genre" of D&D (however exactly one wants to define that).