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

[delericho]

1) What is the trend line in terms of number of people playtesting DndNext? I'm guessing its going down (pretty much to be expected at this point) but haven't a clue how quickly it is going down

Mearls says in his latest article that it's going up. Furthermore, the text of the article talks about how this indicates that people aren't leaving the playtest. So if he's actually talking about the simple number of people who have ever signed up (rather than the numbers actually downloading and/or responding to surveys), that would be fundamentally quite dishonest.

And I don't see any reason to accuse him of that.

That depends. In some cases, brand an even be THE deciding factor in choice, other conditions equal or not.

Infamously, New Coke...

Ah. When I said "the brand", I was referring specifically to D&D and to the present time. Sorry, I should have realised that could be ambiguous.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Well when I say "moving on" I meant to another game, I was referring to any game whether it's old or new.

I play D&D in all of its commercial editions, own several of the 3.5Ed clones, and have played in over 60+ different RPG systems. HERO is my all-time favorite.

But 3.5Ed is what I play the most, and 4Ed is what I'm playing currently.

Have I moved on?

Ah. When I said "the brand", I was referring specifically to D&D and to the present time. Sorry, I should have realised that could be ambiguous.

That doesn't matter: like some have said, there are people out there- some of whom are in my game group- who want to play "D&D" regardless of the mechanics because the brand identity has its own power. They have no interest in any of the clones, regardless of the edition, and only passing interest in other FRPGs because they are "not D&D."

 

[JeffB]

talks about how this indicates that people aren't leaving the playtest.....

I wonder if those numbers are based solely on people who have officially opted out via the links provided in the emails or on the download page.

I suspect most people would not go that route and simply would stop playtesting and giving feedback,which would gretaly skew the accuracy of the claim.

/devils advocate

 

[JeffB]

That, I DON'T think is true. It's not that hard to grok what's important to the OSR crowd. I think the problem is that they don't want to go that direction. It's harder to sell stuff to the OSR crowd since a LARGE chunk of OSR attitude... advocates for self-reliance, is I suppose a way to put it. WotC wants a game they can sell once and continue to sell support for in a constant stream. If you're doing Old School correctly you don't need nearly as much support once you get going.

Let me clarify, if what NEXT has provided is supposed to appeal to the old schoolers, then they either have no clue, or if they do not really want to go down that road, then WOTC is blowing sunshine up the old schoolers arses on purpose which will garner more ill will than they already have earned.

As for old school support, there seems to be no shortage of clones, variations, modules, andkickstarters pulling in big bucks. Talk to Frog God or Jim LOTFP. They (I) will pay if the right products are made, and have been doing so for a few years now. I have spent hundreds myself,far more than I spent on 4e or 3.5.

 

[delericho]

I wonder if those numbers are based solely on people who have officially opted out via the links provided in the emails or on the download page.

I suspect most people would not go that route and simply would stop playtesting and giving feedback,which would gretaly skew the accuracy of the claim.

/devils advocate

Hmm. I hadn't noticed them. You're right - it's possible.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

It's worth noting that 4e fans don't think there's much from 4e in the game, seeing almost nothing in the mechanics that doesn't derive from D20. Not that I disagree with your conclusion re: uniting everyone in dislike for a game that isn't like any of their preferred version, but describing it as 4e mechanics with almost nothing from pre 3e is just as accurate as a "mishmash of the old". People are seeing what they want to see, and I think some are looking for things they didn't like in older editions and claiming that's the "essential nature" of Next.

Right, I'm not saying either claim is correct, but when both groups get a complete opposite impression, their grand goal of unification has already failed.

 

[Kobold Boots]

Right, I'm not saying either claim is correct, but when both groups get a complete opposite impression, their grand goal of unification has already failed.

That's one way of looking at it. If the goal is unification of the game system such that you can play one way or another way; there's plenty to see in the playtest that leads you in that direction

1. Vancian magic
2. At-will magic
3. Feats and Maneuvers
4. Bloodied and conditions.

Granted my examples lead towards 4e, but the Vancian Magic is a huge concession system wise towards the older game.

Now if you're talking about unification of people that argue about things that they're not familiar with or argue about things that they can't wrap their heads around; you're never going to unify those people even if you acquiesce to all of their demands, why?

Because at some point, someone else's opinion of how to implement those demands is going to rub someone the wrong way. Better to build a framework.. and they're testing that framework now without necessarily telling us it's a framework. It's presented in simple ways for the testing..

I hope.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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?

I don't think WotC has mishandled the transition. I simply think the entire idea of putting out 5e was misguided from the very start.

 

[SteveC]

For my group, the one where we primarily play D&D is still playing 4E and has plans to finish our two campaigns using that system, so no, we aren't moving on to anything new or different anytime soon.

When those games do finish, we will be changing systems (most likely) but D&D Next hasn't even entered into the picture. I have playtested it with them, and each new iteration seems to take the game farther from D&D the way we like to play it. Beyond that, there has been some pretty poor design choices, which kind of shocks me, since Mearls and Co. are folks I normally like.

So when the time does come, the choices are interesting... Fantasycraft, 13th Age or Radiance are all possibilities, and I'm sure there will be more. For us, even though we're submitting our surveys religiously, the game seems to be moving away from something we have any interest in playing.

But I'm going to keep pushing ahead, and I hope we'll end up going somewhere that the group will like. And that's exactly what I hope other people are doing: if you want 5E to be a game you want to play, you have to let Wizards know what it is that you actually like!

 

[CleverNickName]

We have moved on. Well, that's not technically true. The truth is, we didn't really move at all...we just sort of stayed right where we are.

When 4th Edition was announced, we got really excited for a few months, tried it out for a few weeks, but we never seriously considered buying new books and switching to the new edition. 4th Edition was a good game but it was also a different game; we weren't looking for a different game to play.

Same thing for Pathfinder. Same thing for D&D Next. We were really excited for a few months, and we playtested a few sets of rules, but we weren't seriously considering buying new books and switching to another edition. 3.5E is the game we know best, it is the game we play the most, and it is the game we already own.