D&D 5E Here's Tasha's Contents Page

IGN has posted the contents page from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, along with a slew of art.

They also spoke to WotC, who commented on some of the DM tools -- "The DM Tools chapter also includes rules and suggestions for what are being called "Supernatural Regions." These otherworldly locations include (among others) haunted realms where restless spirits wander freely, the Lovecraftian nightmare of a world beyond the known sphere of existence, or a delightfully horrifying colony of mimics." The Far Realm, which is outside the Great Wheel, is where beholders and illithids come from. They also note that there weren't many Unearthed Arcana subclasses which didn't make it into this book.

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything comes out on November 17th in America, and December 1st in Europe, Asia, and Pacific countries.

 

[Mistwell]

Have we heard much about swapping subclasses?

 

[MoonSong]

Have we heard much about swapping subclasses?

We know it is half a page, and I'm sure I've seen it somewhere on the previews. It gives something like "it costs this much to retrain" and "it can be done on the spot if the situation is dramatic enough"

 

[Ruin Explorer]

No, it wouldn't. We've got decades of D&D sales history to look back on here for modeling. Adding a wide variety of rules material to an edition consistently kills new player uptake and overall sales, while keeping it strictly limited results in continuous new player uptake and accompanying sales.

[CITATION NEEDED] and "Facts not in evidence, your honour!", is how I respond to this extreme claim.

And extreme claims require extreme evidence. I haven't seen any evidence to support this. As far as I can tell, this is basically a superstition you're promoting, whilst ignoring so many other factors that it's just silly. It's like those people who say that the Spartans were better warriors than other Greek hoplites because they were "tougher" and practiced baby-killin' and got their kids to murder helots and so on, whilst ignoring the much more salient facts that the Spartans trained vastly more (it's not even comparable), and engaged in vastly more battle (as a result of their "ruling a ticking timebomb of slavery" situation) than any other Greeks. You're saying "Oh it's releasing rules that kill sales to new players who don't even know about those rules!", and ignoring the fact that in both the 1980s and now, D&D was "having a moment" culturally, and that the rules themselves were at their peak moments of accessible-ness, which actually doesn't have anything to do with "extra" material on top of that, only the core material. 2E, 3E, and 4E were nowhere near as accessible as 5E is, and 3E was very successful as well, despite having less accessible rules, and releasing absolutely giant tons of extra material, because D&D was also "having a moment", albeit a much smaller one, culturally there as well.

So attributing all this success to whether they put out X sourcebooks or X+1, which is literally what you're doing, given the particularly wild "THIS BOOK MAY BE A BOOK TOO FAR!!!!" angle you're arguing is just superstitious nonsense. Better throw all the women and cats off your ship, I guess.

(As an aside, I can buy that how many books you put out is a factor in the long-term health of a game, but that cuts in both directions, AFAICT, my issue with the primacy this poster is giving to it. It's also a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whichever book is the last book you put out before your RPG became less popular, that's the X+1 book. That's not logic - that's magical thinking.)

 

[Mistwell]

[CITATION NEEDED] and "Facts not in evidence, your honour!", is how I respond to this extreme claim.

And extreme claims require extreme evidence. I haven't seen any evidence to support this. As far as I can tell, this is basically a superstition you're promoting, whilst ignoring so many other factors that it's just silly...You're saying "Oh it's releasing rules that kill sales to new players who don't even know about those rules!", and ignoring the fact that in both the 1980s and now, D&D was "having a moment" culturally, and that the rules themselves were at their peak moments of accessible-ness, which actually doesn't have anything to do with "extra" material on top of that, only the core material. 2E, 3E, and 4E were nowhere near as accessible as 5E is, and 3E was very successful as well, despite having less accessible rules, and releasing absolutely giant tons of extra material, because D&D was also "having a moment", albeit a much smaller one, culturally there as well.

So attributing all this success to whether they put out X sourcebooks or X+1, which is literally what you're doing, given the particularly wild "THIS BOOK MAY BE A BOOK TOO FAR!!!!" angle you're arguing is just superstitious nonsense. Better throw all the women and cats off your ship, I guess.

(As an aside, I can buy that how many books you put out is a factor in the long-term health of a game, but that cuts in both directions, AFAICT, my issue with the primacy this poster is giving to it. It's also a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whichever book is the last book you put out before your RPG became less popular, that's the X+1 book. That's not logic - that's magical thinking.)

Mike Mearls said repeatedly in numerous interviews that the slow release schedule is a big part of the success of 5e, and that the reduced number of player options is also a big part of the success of 5e. See for example here, where our own @MerricB summarizes the relevant portion of that interview as, "Mike believes that the slow release schedule has been a big part of the success of the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons. D&D can be big and intimidating, and in earlier editions, the breadth of options allowed for many broken (over-powered) combinations, as well as characters that were (mechanically) quite difficult to understand. Similarly, with settings, the amount of detail published for (say) the Forgotten Realms, would intimidate Dungeon Masters, as they didn’t feel that they could get enough of a handle on them to properly run and design adventures in the setting. The wall of information presented by previous editions so daunted potential players and Dungeon Masters that they wouldn’t even try the game."

Mearls also said at the time, "We really want to take it easy with adding new mechanics to the game. Each new option increases the chance that something broken or confusing will enter the game. Our plan is to add things only if the game really needs them, like an option that makes sense for a setting or that fits a role within a specific campaign. The playtest showed us that most players and DMs don’t want hundreds of pages of new content each month, but instead a much more deliberate, careful release schedule."

It might be wiser to acknowledge the poster you were responding to, @see , is coming from a perspective which does have some foundational support. Probably better to do that before diving in to disagree with Mearls and questioning his data and introducing other factors which may not have been considered (all of which is a fair perspective to look at). Saying the poster is coming from baseless superstition, given the context of the words of the guy who helped design 5e and who has the insider data at his fingertips talking directly about what he thinks are the key points which contributed to the success of this edition, probably isn't the look you're going for here. It looks like you're being dismissive without good grounds for that approach.

 

[tetrasodium]

Mike Mearls said repeatedly in numerous interviews that the slow release schedule is a big part of the success of 5e, and that the reduced number of player options is also a big part of the success of 5e. See for example here, where our own @MerricB summarizes the relevant portion of that interview as, "Mike believes that the slow release schedule has been a big part of the success of the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons. D&D can be big and intimidating, and in earlier editions, the breadth of options allowed for many broken (over-powered) combinations, as well as characters that were (mechanically) quite difficult to understand. Similarly, with settings, the amount of detail published for (say) the Forgotten Realms, would intimidate Dungeon Masters, as they didn’t feel that they could get enough of a handle on them to properly run and design adventures in the setting. The wall of information presented by previous editions so daunted potential players and Dungeon Masters that they wouldn’t even try the game."

Mearls also said at the time, "We really want to take it easy with adding new mechanics to the game. Each new option increases the chance that something broken or confusing will enter the game. Our plan is to add things only if the game really needs them, like an option that makes sense for a setting or that fits a role within a specific campaign. The playtest showed us that most players and DMs don’t want hundreds of pages of new content each month, but instead a much more deliberate, careful release schedule."

It might be wiser to acknowledge the poster you were responding to, @see , is coming from a perspective which does have some foundational support. Probably better to do that before diving in to disagree with Mearls and questioning his data and introducing other factors which may not have been considered (all of which is a fair perspective to look at). Saying the poster is coming from baseless superstition, given the context of the words of the guy who helped design 5e and who has the insider data at his fingertips talking directly about what he thinks are the key points which contributed to the success of this edition, probably isn't the look you're going for here. It looks like you're being dismissive without good grounds for that approach.

that release cycle you reference is usually in comparison to the days of 3.5 where it was not uncomon to get a new book every month

 

[Mistwell]

that release cycle you reference is usually in comparison to the days of 3.5 where it was not uncomon to get a new book every month

I think it was a broader discussion than just that prior edition, but regardless my point is See has a fair point, and it's not just baseless superstition which should be dismissed and derided without taking his position more seriously than I feel it was being taken. The claim of "Adding a wide variety of rules material to an edition consistently kills new player uptake" is in fact supported by things Mike Mearls has said, in his official capacity for WOTC, like "The wall of information presented by previous editions so daunted potential players and Dungeon Masters that they wouldn’t even try the game." Statements like those by Mearls can be disputed, but Ruin Explorer claiming there is no support for claims like that in light of Mearls' comments is not persuasive. Do you disagree?

 

[tetrasodium]

I think it was a broader discussion than just that prior edition, but regardless my point is See has a fair point, and it's not just baseless superstition which should be dismissed and derided without taking his position more seriously than I feel it was being taken. The claim of "Adding a wide variety of rules material to an edition consistently kills new player uptake" is in fact supported by things Mike Mearls has said, in his official capacity for WOTC, like "The wall of information presented by previous editions so daunted potential players and Dungeon Masters that they wouldn’t even try the game." Statements like those by Mearls can be disputed, but Ruin Explorer claiming there is no support for claims like that in light of Mearls' comments is not persuasive. Do you disagree?

Ohh... we progressed from just an outsourceable claim of statement to "I think it was x" when called on the misapplication of the statement's details. Your "I think it was" is completely meaningless & we are talking about something you raised to support your argument so it's on you to go find the source & link to the full context.

 

[Mistwell]

Ohh... we progressed from just an outsourceable claim of statement to "I think it was x" when called on the misapplication of the statement's details. Your "I think it was" is completely meaningless & we are talking about something you raised to support your argument so it's on you to go find the source & link to the full context.

It is not meaningful to discuss if he was referencing just 3.5 or more than just 3.5. What point are you trying to make which is relevant to what See and Ruin Explorer said? I didn't raise 3.5 as my support, and Mearls' comment is about 5e and does not specify anything about your allegation of it being about 3.5. I did link to the source. Did you miss the link?

 

[tetrasodium]

It is not meaningful to discuss if he was referencing just 3.5 or more than just 3.5. What point are you trying to make which is relevant to what See and Ruin Explorer said? I didn't raise 3.5 as my support, and Mearls' comment is about 5e and does not specify anything about your allegation of it being about 3.5. I did link to the source. Did you miss the link?

It's not meaningful to discuss a reference to a summarized segment of a statement made somewhere when the person bringing it up gets called on the reference being used out of context & is unable or unwilling to provide the full context. Also given that you chose to argue over why "Mistwell thinks Mearls said something about something" it's starting to look more likely that either you know that the context doesn't support your claim now that you checked or you can't source it with a link to the statement. In either case it fails to support your claim.

 

[Mistwell]

It's not meaningful to discuss a reference to a summarized segment of a statement made somewhere when the person bringing it up gets called on the reference being used out of context & is unable or unwilling to provide the full context. Also given that you chose to argue over why "Mistwell thinks Mearls said something about something" it's starting to look more likely that either you know that the context doesn't support your claim now that you checked or you can't source it with a link to the statement. In either case it fails to support your claim.

Again, the link I was pulling from was IN THE POST YOU QUOTED. Did you miss it? It sure sounds like you did.

HERE IT IS AGAIN. Fast forward to around the 5:50 mark and listen. Mike Mearls is not specifying any one particular edition for almost the entirety of his comments. He looks to be talking in general terms about the past of D&D leading up to 5th edition.

Here, I will even transcribe it:

"When you look at D&D, it's big right. There's just lots of stuff. And it is very intimidating. Not only for beginners, but you always have a sense for veteran DMs that you bought everything, that well now the broken combo is coming out, or you know well if using this feat and this prestige class, or depending on what edition you're playing, these kinds of characters where you really have a hard time understanding really what they can do.

And then I also think for Settings, you know one of the things we also hear about Forgotten Realms especially is that people say I don't feel comfortable Dungeon Mastering it because there's so much detail that I never really feel that I have a good handle on what's going on.

And so I think that that wall of information really was daunting to people. Especially the people who we weren't getting but who wanted to play D&D.

And I think if there's been a story of 5th Edition, why it's been a success, is that we've finally been able to dip down what turns out to be a very large group of people who wanted to play D&D, but there were just too many barriers between them and the game. And I think that the volume of releases, that shelf of games, that shelf of books, was a big part of it. Because there just weren't clear starting points.

And there also weren't clear conversations. That when you think about it, if you're a new player, and you were talking to the existing players and asking "Where should I start?" if you've been on any forum or on Reddit, I believe in the past that what happened is that it wasn't really clear beyond the player's handbook what you should get. Like what was the big event? What were people talking about?

And now that we have this more focus, I think it has been bringing together the view and so then people think "Oh well you should start with, like, Storm King's Thunder." Like you'd run that campaign, it's the one everyone is talking about. And then what I think has happened is this sort of digital culture and role-playing culture has kind of really melded together."