Do you want/are you ready for a D&D 5th edition?

[TheAuldGrump]

1e and 2e had no third party support, and lasted much longer (though a 3e -- if not the one WotC published -- likely would have been out sooner if TSR had the resources to publish it).

Not quite true - there was some limited third party support for both OD&D and AD&D. Officially there was Judges Guild, unofficially there was Mayfair, Game Lords, The Companions, and a few others. (I did some work for The Companions.)

The Auld Grump

 

[Therise]

Why does it matter the length of each? Isn't it about creating fun and enjoyable games? I've played them all, but started just after AD&D 2e came around. I've loved each iteration of the game since.

It depends...

For a company, you want fresh, shiny product that moves well off the shelves and generates income. When games reach a certain saturation point (i.e. everyone likely to buy it has bought it), sales drop and you need to create shiny new product that will again sell and keep profits high. Therefore, new systems, new rules, so long as they will sell, are a high priority every few years.

For a gamer (and this is speaking generally, as all gamers differ somewhat), there's a split. Some gamers want "new and shiny" constantly and are willing to pay for it. In this case, rapid turnaround is not a problem as the company is willing to provide. But many gamers want a certain amount of stability in their gaming experience. For those of us who prefer stability of rule systems (perhaps with refinements along the way), we buy things that are classically "support" books: settings, campaigns, adventures, magazines with new options, new fluff, etc. But those things do not sell as well or as widely as rule books because fluff is a matter of taste and rules are a matter of "need" (so to speak).

 

[TheAuldGrump]

If I counted 3e and v3.5 as truly separate games, I would have distinguished. If you are going to count them as different games, I think you ought to count Essentials as distinct from 4E, in which case 4E will have lasted 2 years and Essentials 3. As well, I am not so sure that the WotC era is really directly comparable to the TSR era. There is no BECMI in the current era unless you want to say roughly analogous to Pathfinder.

It is why I tend to write '3.X' for 3e and 3.5 or 'the 3.X architecture' when I want to include Pathfinder. I tend to summarize Pathfinder as D&D 4th edition in my head, and discount that other game, uhm, what was its name again?

For me 4e is not an edition of the same game as OD&D - 3.5, it is a new game trying to use an old imprint, one that is not an exact fit. This is aside from my perceptions of 4e as a game, and also aside from the way I feel about the GSL. I end up disliking the game on three separate levels....

The Auld Grump

 

[Roland55]

Why does it matter the length of each? Isn't it about creating fun and enjoyable games? I've played them all, but started just after AD&D 2e came around. I've loved each iteration of the game since.

I must admit ... I, too, don't really care how long an iteration lasts.

"Fun," whatever that is, is what I look for and usually find.

 

[Agamon]

The poll is too polarized for me to vote; I'm not currently playing D&D, so I can't really say if I'm "ready" for 5e. Not unlike any other new RPG, I'd be interested and possibly check it out, but do I need it? No, not really. But, it would be interesting to see.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I'm ready for 5e and 6e. The amount of money and game design talent that gets thrown at a new edition of D&D means they are always welcome in my book. I was way impressed both by the Lego-brick sim of 3e and the battlegrid gamism of 4e. More weird new ideas please.

 

[William Ronald]

I will be curious what WotC comes out with, but I am not very passionately involved in thinking about 5E. I do think that we have a lot of questions here about what 5E might look like, and whether it can appeal to people with different game preferences.

I will try to have an open mind about it, but I think that one of the great challenges that WotC will face is drawing people who have adopted other games to adopt a new one. My hope is that we will try to be civil with each other. (Ironically, considering the rancor of the Edition Wars, it seems that many of the game designers are pretty civil to each other. Maybe we can learn a few things from them.)

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I think that a lot of the rancor is reserved for WotC the corporate entity rather than for WotC the game design studio, at least in my case that is true.

I do not know how much of the rhetoric in the lead up to 4e was corporate, for all I know Wyatt might just have been toeing the party line as hard as he could. It is also possible that he was the source of that party line. It is also possible that he was running off at the mouth because it was his game, like an overly zealous parent watching his kid play softball. (This last is the one I favor, with no real supporting evidence.)

All that I can say for certain is that by the time 4e appeared I was already prepared to hate the game. The rules supported this belief, so my opinion was only confirmed.

I know that in my case I have never vowed ne'er to so much as look at a WotC product again, but then... they have not had much that interests me in years, so that is kind of moot. (I think the last thing I bought from WotC was some Elder Evils minis - I wanted the Remorhaz.)

If I had a time machine, I would like to travel back to when Peter Adkison was planning to sell WotC to the Devil Hasbro, grab him by the shoulders and shake him, yelling 'Don't do it!' He would, of course, have me hauled away by security, but hey! At least I would have tried!

But that has more to do with the politics of the situation - 4e is what a whole bunch of folks want, and I cannot honestly call them wrong. I just disagree. I am willing to assume that if I had a time machine then 4e would still be 4e, that Wyatt would still have annoyed me, and that I would still not like the game. But hey, maybe it would still have the OGL....

The Auld Grump

 

[msears]

Cannot say I am a fan of 4th, so why not?

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

I went with no, but it's not that I'm against or not ready for a 5e, it's just that I don't care. I don't expect a new edition of D&D from WotC to mesh with my tastes.