D&D 5E Have you moved on yet? Has Wizard's handled this properly?

[ForeverSlayer]

This is all my personal opinion and experience.

To be perfectly honest, I think Wizards hasn't handled the transition from 4th to Next very well and I think it's really going to hurt the overall outcome of the next edition. I went to a gaming convention a few weeks ago and the three main games that were being played are Pathfinder, FATE/Dresden Files, and Warhammer/Dark Heresy. There were no D&D games present and after speaking with a lot of people there, nobody was interested in playing. I also made a point to speak with these people about Next and how excited they were. Almost every response I had gotten was that they had moved on and gotten more involved in other games they were playing to the point where they aren't going to drop their games when Next is fully up and running.

This is my own experience as well. Pathfinder is my game of choice but lately I have gotten even more involved to the point where I really don't care much about Next anymore. I think the trick to it is to leave only a tiny gap between editions so you don't have people moving off to find something else while they wait. You don't want people to get too comfortable with another game because it will be harder to get them to leave it to come back to D&D.

Right now I have gotten so intrenched in Pathfinder that it would take a lot to get me to take D&D back on as a second game.

Anyone else share my experience?

 

[delericho]

There's a certain truth in that. However, I think WotC's thinking was that the open playtest would be the thing that people "moved on to". Because it was new and exciting (and, with ongoing changes, would remain new and exciting), plus with it offering the ability to influence the generation for years to come, there would be enough interest to sustain people in playing.

Which is a reasonable approach. Whether it has worked or not... that's another question.

(Certainly, my Meetup group haven't played any 5e. We initially started with good intentions, but we were so wrapped up in our ongoing campaigns that we never found time. And now the interest levels of the people most likely to DM it have largely cratered. But I don't think any of that is WotC's fault - just the way it has panned out for us.)

 

[FireLance]

So far, I haven't seen much that leads me to believe that 5e will be a better game system for me than 4e. One or two interesting ideas, but not enough to make me want to switch.

As it stands now, whether or not I remain a WotC customer will depend very much on whether it chooses to continue supporting 4e.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Due to assorted reasons, not really related to the game industry, I haven't been playing much lately. I am in the process of getting back to gaming, and I find the in-between situation that's here now is a bit awkward. I want the flatter math of 5e, but the game system isn't close to being finished at the moment.

I made a thread of making 4e math flatter, but I also realised that my problem with 4e isn't just about the steep scaling, but also the complexity it has inherently. In many ways I feel the same way you do, but for different reasons.

 

[amerigoV]

Right now I have gotten so intrenched in Pathfinder that it would take a lot to get me to take D&D back on as a second game.

Anyone else share my experience?

I left D&D for Savage Worlds early in 4e. I've been watching D&D Next and even did a playtest at Origins - I enjoyed it and it hit the classic D&Disms. But right now I am so into Savage Worlds and what it can do that I am not sure Wizards could have done anything different to pull me the other way. I'm not saying it out of meanness, malice, or that I was betrayed or anything - but SW has revolutionized my group's game (and quite frankly saved it as d20 was killing our game in a rather torturous way). Plus I got two Little Ones (tm) now, so there is not an option for "second game."

At both Origins and Con on the Cob (small Con in NE Ohio), there is a heavy Savage presence. I cannot say how that impacted the D&D side of things as I was otherwise occupied .

But I think if you are the perceived Top Dog you might be right on not letting a gap appear. I remember being hooked on Warcraft. My son was born and at the same time my account got hacked (might have been him, the little bugger). It took two weeks to get the account fixed/restored. Well, never take a drug from an addict -- they will find something else to get hooked on. My account ran out a month or so later and I never re-upped (and I've been clean 3 years now).

 

[Ahnehnois]

I wonder what a good edition transition would look like.

3e gets a bit of a pass because it was so long overdue and because 2e was pretty moribund by the time the new edition came out.

But besides the 4e disaster, the "sub-editions" of 3e and 4e (3.5 and essentials) have also been problematic. So, in all seriousness I do wonder how a transition could be handled well and what that would look like.

I think the trick to it is to leave only a tiny gap between editions so you don't have people moving off to find something else while they wait. You don't want people to get too comfortable with another game because it will be harder to get them to leave it to come back to D&D.

Frankly, it's just too late for that.

 

[Alzrius]

Having felt that previous editions changed too fast already (just three years from 3.0 to 3.5, only four years of 3.5 until 4E was announced, and now Pathfinder has only been out for just over three years), I was already very unengaged when I looked at the initial playtest packet. I just wasn't in the right head-space to be excited about another new thing.

It didn't help that my entire group had absolutely no intent on converting from our current Pathfinder game. For each of them, a different RPG was a complete non-starter.

In regards to the playtest itself, I think that it's suffering from offering too little at the outset, and spreading itself out over too long a time.

It's one thing to have a few releases that focus on different parts of the game, maybe with an update or two, over time. But these continual revisions over such a short period, knowing that it'll be two years before we get the finished product, make it seem like WotC is just dashing stuff off to fill the void, and that the playtests won't be very relevant to the actual design process.

All of this is my opinion, of course, but at this point I just want a game I can stick with for the foreseeable future.

 

[Nagol]

I'm unconvinced there is a good way to handle a revolutionary change to a living product.

Anyone who is not a current comsumer has to be convinced the changes warrant re-evaluation of the product and that's always a hard sell.

No matter what you do, you're going to alienate at least a portion of the current base -- perhaps because they see the radical changes as implying you think the current product is deficient, they think the changes make the product worse, or because they see no need to convert even if it is marginally better.

A visible change in ownership/guidance helps buy a bit of a honeymoon and if the new owners bring fresh passion and vision then the changes become more palatable. So if you want a successful revolutionary change, think about selling the line.

Probably the best way to handle revolutionary change while maintaining ownership is a period of neglect/limited production to allow the current consumers a period of mounting demand -- like the Disney model. That should reduce the alienated population. That doesn't help current revenue though.

 

[Dykstrav]

Yeah, I "moved on" about 2010. Pathfinder is my D&D of choice now.

I've kept abreast of the 5E developments and have been downloading the playtest packets and all that jazz, but bluntly, I'm just not all that invested in being part of a massive effort to playtest the new edition. Why?

First off, there's the simple restraint of available time for working adults. It's a real challenge for me and the gamers I know to keep a regular game going on even a bi-weekly basis. I was involved with a group that was interested in playing 5E when the playtest packets first started coming out, but the idea of trying 5E was quickly shot down--no one wanted to spend our limited time learning a new system, we wanted to play a game that we already knew and that we knew wouldn't have constant updates. (Which is, ironically, one of the major reasons that particular group dropped 4E for Pathfinder. Que sera, sera.)

In many ways, I think it's also a way to fracture the fan base even more. I think that the designers have their hearts in the right place, but collaborative design always leaves someone feeling left out in the cold when their ideas aren't embraced. Inevitably, some people playing 5E will not like the final product and prefer to play one of the playtest versions (or more likely, a mish-mashed hodge-podge of several of them and the final product). I also don't want to get attached to a particular version of the game as being 5E before it's "officially" released. Maybe it's a subtle thing, but I don't want my opinion of the edition to be influenced by a bad version of the game or a good version that didn't make the final cut. I'm going to wait until I can look at a physical book on a shelf before I decide whether or not I like 5E.

All that being said, I know of several groups playing 5E. They don't play it exclusively, however, it's one of several games in their rotating lineup. Most of them play a session or two when a new playtest packet is released, but my experience matches up with yours: the people I know don't seem to have a fire in their belly about 5E. It just doesn't seem to excite people that much. "Oh, another edition?"

 

[ForeverSlayer]

I've been gaming since 1985 and in all those years I have never had this "non interest" feeling coming from fellow gamers and myself with regards to D&D. There was always this underlining excitement when a new edition was coming.