D&D 5E How do you feel now that the game is 97% done

[Plaguescarred]

While its not clear what 97% completion actually is, i am glad to hear 5E is almost done

 

[Thaumaturge]

Seems great, if the playtests are a truthful indication of the way they're going. Otherwise, I can always come back to my beloved 2E AD&D.

The thing that has been interesting for me about the playtest is my realization that 2e is my favorite edition. I enjoyed 3e tremendously, and I had fun with 4e. But as I played DDN, the simplicity and wide-open nature spoke to me in a way the last two editions didn't.

So even if, by some craziness, 5e never arrives or is just a flaming disaster, I now know which edition to retreat to. And it wasn't the one I was expecting.

Thaumaturge.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I feel 97% complete in mind, body, and soul.

 

[DEFCON 1]

As someone working in publishing (college textbooks art & composition, not gaming, but same general process), my thoughts on the 97% number is that the proofs* have come back and they're going over everything and doing final corrections and adjustments on numbers and indexing, along with insertion of final process art in lieu or original FPO boxes. Meanwhile, cover art and paste-in material is being finalized separately and everything is being triple-checked against the marketing material before it goes to the printer. Despite what I keep reading here that folks seem to think, the actual process of printing and binding a run of a book is QUICK nowadays -- one would be surprised how late in the process the print run date actually is!

(*and maybe even test runs -- there could have been some bound versions with deliberately incomplete cover art in WotC's hands at PAX East, for example, the way that vendors often have at trade shows)

97% done doesn't mean that that they've left out whole classes or mechanics. It means that the last of the publishing sausage needs to be made to get the books to look pretty in your hands come GenCon or so. This doesn't mean that Mearls and the others are off the hook now -- the last month or two of production on a book are a constant loop of the production team (where I am in my work, for example) emailing back and forth to authors and editors a dozen times by day to check wording, pagination, placement, or editing questions. It's still small potatoes to the larger 97% of writing, illustrating, and designing, however.

I would agree with this sentiment wholeheartedly.

IMO the game itself is done. Everything the design and development guys have been working on the past several years for the three base books is finished. The only reason Chris said 97.6% is because had he said 100%, people would be inquiring (or in some cases complaining) about why there hasn't been a release date announced yet, or why they couldn't buy the book at PAX East already.

Like AmerginLiath suggests... the last 2.4% of the book remaining are just those minor publishing things that are being checked and doublechecked, or else are the marketing materials and scheduling leading up to release. But in terms of the actual game... I bet every single one of those guys have the actual completed books in PDF or computer printed form sitting on their desks.

 

[Li Shenron]

I'm very excited about the new game. Chris Perkins mentioned 97% done, but the final playtest most likely doesn't even show 1/2 of what they have.

I would love that to be true for sure! (or do you just mean they have twice as much as what they'll put in core?)

But realistically, I think the playtest shows >90% of the core books (excluding fluff text teaching 'how to DM', and artwork obviously). I think the 97% refers to core material anyway.

 

[Dausuul]

I think this question is impossible to answer unless we were looking at a 97% complete PH, DMG, & MM. I'm not sure how close the current work is to the latest play test packet.

This, exactly. I voted "like the direction and want to see more," because that's closest to my overall attitude, but all such answers come with a giant asterisk: The game sitting on Mike Mearls's computer may be 97% done, but the version we're looking at remains somewhere around 70%.

 

[Blackbrrd]

The poll makes no sense when we haven't seen any of the work they have done the last 3-4 months. Pink flowers it is.

I liked the direction they were going then, and from the spare sprinkling of information we have gotten since then, I am pretty happy. Since I have been through a couple of edition transitions already, I will reserve my judgement until I have actually tried it.

 

[Starfox]

The last 10% of a project takes 90% of the time. So there's approximately 30% of the project left to do...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-ninety_rule

 

[DEFCON 1]

The last 10% of a project takes 90% of the time. So there's approximately 30% of the project left to do...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-ninety_rule

And this would mean something if Chris was actually being factual about the percentage and not just pulling a random number out of his ass to denote "It's pretty much done, but we're just not ready to announce anything to any of you yet."