D&D 5E I think we can safely say that 5E is a success, but will it lead to a new Golden Era?

[Tony Vargas]

But when you speak to large chunks of the "wide range" for whom 4E was deeply substandard compared to other available options, and tell them that you know how 4E fit their tastes better than they know how 4E fit their tastes it just sounds like head-in-the-sand bitterness.

The head-in-the-sand bitterness was on the parts of those who refused to give 4e a fair chance and instead spent 6 years slandering it.

I'm not telling anyone that 4e fit their /tastes/ if they tried it found it didn't. There's no accounting for taste, afterall. What I am saying is that 4e was a clear, balanced, playable game, and as such made possible a wider range of play than other eds. Of course, it was possible to construct a 'playstyle' that was simply a requirement that the game be exactly like it was at a point in the past, and claim that 4e didn't 'support' it, and doing so was a favorite mode of attack for edition warriors.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

I think you're in a very small minority. Basically you and Ren1999. While there may be plenty of us who appreciated 4e's superior qualities as a game and are disappointed that WotC has chosen to make 5e cater exclusively to other side of the edition war, very few of us, having experienced the damage caused by that conflict, want to go and inflict a round of such damage, ourselves, in turn.

So the only negative reviews we're seeing of 5e are coming from the occasional Pathfinder partisan, and there's no 'Hater5' waging an intense campaign of lies & misinformation against it.

That's a good thing.

I'm not actively trying to inflict damage on 5E. Online, I might state my negative opinions on it in threads discussing 5E's place in the gaming world, and in the FLGS I will tend to say negative things about it to new players and recommend 4E, 13th Age, and even Pathfinder instead. That's about the extent of it. I'm just saying that if 5E turns out to be a failure, it will tickle my sense of schadenfreude due to some bitter feelings I hold about past events.

Well, sure. But an awful lot of us appreciate that past. WotC is selling to a 'graying' audience in their peak earning years, the strategy is a classic one and makes perfect sense.

Fads (like D&D was in the 80s) come back in about a generation - our society has been changing and the come-back was a little delayed, perhaps leading WotC, in 2006-7 to conclude that it wasn't coming, so they jumped the gun and launched a product positioned for a post-comeback era, just a year or so before the come-back got rolling. Now they're launching a come-back era product several years into it. Not ideal, but they're making the best of it.

The problem I've seen is that they've gone more or less full bore on tradition at the expense of everything else. I think tradition has a place in D&D, but I need more than that, and it's all 5E really does well in my opinion. I don't think I'm alone in that regard.

The bar for 'doing well' is probably a lot lower, now. 5e is a very safe, conservative design, can't have required a lot of FTEs to produce (it does mostly re-cycle d20 mechanics and classic D&D), and has announced only a vary slow, cautious pace of ongoing support. That's indicative of a low initial investment, probably calculated to be profitable even if sales are nothing special (and they do seem to be quite good, initially, in keeping with the game's usual sales patterns at the very least).

To use a tired sports analogy, they're just trying to get a man on base. The next edition will probably come later rather than sooner, perhaps at the 50th anniversary mark, but probably /will/ be more ambitious.

Of course, with 5e focusing mainly on core books, you have to expect a half-ed in a couple years...

If you are going to build on an IP, I don't think its a good situation if Pathfinder starts outselling D&D again after the initial sales boost from the core books passes, or if 5E fails to be adopted as the primary D&D of more than 50% of the D&D community. Such would indicate a loss of control of the brand.

 

[Jester David]

The head-in-the-sand bitterness was on the parts of those who refused to give 4e a fair chance and instead spent 6 years slandering it.

I'm not telling anyone that 4e fit their /tastes/ if they tried it found it didn't. There's no accounting for taste, afterall. What I am saying is that 4e was a clear, balanced, playable game, and as such made possible a wider range of play than other eds. Of course, it was possible to construct a 'playstyle' that was simply a requirement that the game be exactly like it was at a point in the past, and claim that 4e didn't 'support' it, and doing so was a favorite mode of attack for edition warriors.

Playing it wouldn't matter, though.
If you're critisizing 4th edition it doesn't matter if you looked at the leaked core rulebooks and never looked back or participated in a two year campaign. If you're being critical regarding 4e (or 3e for that matter) the fans of that edition will respond with pre-programmed rebuttals.
Because it's not a discussion. We're not talking too each other. We stopped doing that years ago. It' sustain a dance, a routine... and we all know our parts. We don't even need to fully read posts any more to respond; our replies are hard wired.

I've had lengthy conversations about 4e's playstyle with ardent 4vengers who refute that you cannot have a game of any style with 4e. They say that with proper reflavouring and imagination the system will work for any type of game. And they've supposedly done it successfully, so if you can't make 4e work with your game then the problem is supposedly with you.
I'm critcial of 4th edition but I try and be fair. I'll defend it from spurious claims (that you can' troll play in it, that it's an MMO clone, etc). But that doesn't matter, I'm still "the enemy".

 

[Gundark]

There are. I don't like the game, I think it perpetuates a lot of trends that I disliked in D&D since the 19080s. I don't care enough about D&D to want it to fail, since it hasn't been my main game for over 30 years now, but I know a couple of people from my generation who have the same sort of preferences in D&D that I do, and they do want it to fail - and fail badly. Real hardcore OSR types, who haven't liked or bought any D&D material since 1990 or so, which rather suggests they weren't a likely part of the market anyway.

There are also Pathfinder fans out there who want it to fail. They hate WotC and/or they feel threatened that their favourite game might slip down in popularity. These individuals are choosing to ignore/downplay any sort of positive review or any sort of sales data. They feel that any popularity is just a short lived spike and that 5e will quickly crawl into the corner and die quietly. Time will tell I suppose but there is a different feel out there in the "internet wilderness" regarding 5e.

Heck, there are 4e fans that want 5e to fail miserably too. 5e coming out so soon is validation for a lot of the 4e haters I can understand that something you enjoyed didn't have legs to last long term.

I should say I'm not pointing out anybody on this thread, just a general observation after watching 5e discussion across several message boards.

 

[Ranes]

The head-in-the-sand bitterness was on the parts of those who refused to give 4e a fair chance and instead spent 6 years slandering it.

I'm not telling anyone that 4e fit their /tastes/ if they tried it found it didn't. There's no accounting for taste, afterall. What I am saying is that 4e was a clear, balanced, playable game, and as such made possible a wider range of play than other eds. Of course, it was possible to construct a 'playstyle' that was simply a requirement that the game be exactly like it was at a point in the past, and claim that 4e didn't 'support' it, and doing so was a favorite mode of attack for edition warriors.

Opinion masquerading as fact. And edition warring by stealth to boot. Give it a rest.

 

[M.L. Martin]

I think there may be a few people who want 5E to fail, but they're few and far between. I actually think there are more people who want other people to 'want 5E to fail' so that they can dismiss them as 'bitter edition warriors, nongamers, etc.'

Personally, 5E looks gorgeous and seems to be a solid game, although there are some disturbing quirks and lacunae (no real warlord equivalent, some worrying text on the contagion spell). As the standard bearer for the hobby going forward, it's probably the best we're likely to get considering that D&D is, unfortunately, the 800-lb. gorilla. And allowing for the baggage from 40 years of weirdness and nostalgia, it looks like an accessible, playable game; I just hope it isn't as prone to implode as 3E reportedly was.

But I own five previous versions of D&D, and two variations (C&C and 13A). I'm not convinced dropping $90 on yet another version is worthwhile, especially when I barely play as it is.

 

[BryonD]

The head-in-the-sand bitterness was on the parts of those who refused to give 4e a fair chance and instead spent 6 years slandering it.

I'm not telling anyone that 4e fit their /tastes/ if they tried it found it didn't. There's no accounting for taste, afterall.

Actually, these two statements pretty well contradict each other.
When you say that not liking it was head-in-the-sand you are doubling down on the idea that YOU know what other people like and they don't know themselves. What you call "six years slandering" due to "head-in-the-sand" because they never offered a "fair chance", it is simply ludicrous. You are simply decreeing on your own authority that lots of people went around refusing to even study the game (thus they had their head in the sand) and went out of their way to "slander" a game that they really knew so little about that the (in your assessment) happiness with the game they would have found was unknown to them. This idea is a farce on MULTIPLE levels. It is farcical to claim that people didn't look at the game (head-in-the-sand). It is farcical to say that people would punish themselves by denying themselves fun for no reason. It is farcical to claim that won't even bother to look at the actual game would in turn be motivated to go around slandering a game for years.
None of it makes the least bit of sense either from a pure logic or a human nature perspective.

On the other hand, refusing to look at the people who were down on 4E and accept that their position were honest and based on their honest tastes, is the very definition of "head-in-the-sand".

What I am saying is that 4e was a clear, balanced, playable game, and as such made possible a wider range of play than other eds.

I'll certainly give you "clear, balanced, and playable". 4E is was GREAT at what it did.
However, "made possible a wider range of play" is a complete non-sequitur.
The relevant point is that there were play styles that*some* people found great about prior games that were lacking in 4E. That doesn't even mean they were *absent* in 4E. Just that other game offered it better so 4E was not the game of preference.

Of course, it was possible to construct a 'playstyle' that was simply a requirement that the game be exactly like it was at a point in the past, and claim that 4e didn't 'support' it, and doing so was a favorite mode of attack for edition warriors.

You are skimming close to the ballpark of the truth here. If could find a way to let go of all your absolutes I think you could find a lot more peace in this reality.
No one is looking for "exactly like it was". {Note the general embracement of 5E, which is certainly not close to "exactly like" any prior edition) But there is an obligation that for what people want, it must be among the best in class when compared to its competition.

If you need to hear that it supported more playstyles, for the sake of argument, I'll just agree. But if you want to talk about elements of playstyles that people want then you are back to square one. For some playstyles it is clearly the best thing ever. There is no question that 4E has a devoted fan base. For other play styles is it a C- in a marketplace with several A options.

There may be "no accounting for taste" when ti comes to evaluating why someone perceives something different than you. But, I assure you, when the topic is selling to a mass market, accounting for taste, including tastes you may not share, is critical.

 

[Nytmare]

I don't know, but that's not what I mean in terms of a success. I'm going just on memory, but as far as I can remember, 5E is FAR more successful as far as the community reaction goes.

I don't know, it's also anecdotal, but my view includes a bit of industry insider knowledge from the design and development end of things, as well as game table and game shop conversations that predate web forums; and I'd say that it's always been a mixed bag, it's just that the internet gives vocal people a common place to bitch to a much wider audience.

When I first saw D&D, the adult war gamers complained about it and said that it was the death of gaming. When D&D gave you the option of playing as a monstrous race, the role players I knew claimed that it was a travesty and obviously marked the end of gaming as we knew it. Then there were all those RPGs that weren't D&D or weren't a fantasy setting. Then there were LARPers. Then there was that whole Magic the Gathering thing. Then the Magic players were up in arms when 3rd Ed came and that ruined everything in the entire world...

I agree with you and think that 5th Edition is a great product, and I hope that it's as successful as I think it is; but I have been, and am still hearing the same level of complaints that I've been hearing for almost 40 years.

 

[Mercurius]

I don't know, it's also anecdotal, but my view includes a bit of industry insider knowledge from the design and development end of things, as well as game table and game shop conversations that predate web forums; and I'd say that it's always been a mixed bag, it's just that the internet gives vocal people a common place to bitch to a much wider audience.

...

I agree with you and think that 5th Edition is a great product, and I hope that it's as successful as I think it is; but I have been, and am still hearing the same level of complaints that I've been hearing for almost 40 years.

Yeah, of course - people are always going to bitch, especially gamers! That said, I do think it is pretty uncontroversial and self-evident to say that the D&D under 4E was more divided than its ever been in the tenure of any edition.

 

[Manbearcat]

Role vs Roll was all over usenet back then. And, yes, it was comparable to the edition war.

I can't attest to it, but a buddy and a long-time player was knee-deep in various usenet groups back then and he has told me the same thing.

Whacked and possibly unintentional as the WoCLW might have seemed, it in no way invalidated dungeon crawling. You just barricaded yourself in a room long enough to drain a wand when you were all badly hurt, rather than over'night' so the cleric could regain healing spells.

Oh trust me, I'm familiar. It just changed the paradigm such that it was unrecognizable from 1e crawls. I guess if you squinted hard enough, the "back to" part of "back to the dungeon" didn't illicit a sour-face from you.

I found that Create Wand (WoCLW especially, but a few others as well such as SM) and Scribe Scroll had two major impacts that dramatically affected classic dungeon crawl play:

1) The impact of the work-day attrition of HP and the rationing of spells to mitigate the losses incurred was basically gone. With it went (a) all of the tension it naturally provoked and (b) the intended resource management mini-game.

2) An embarrassment of spell riches made it such that it was almost impossible not to have a load-out that could answer any and all barriers, impediments or potential problems. God forbid you had two spellcasters in your party with CW and SS. Difficult spell load-out decisions were central to trying to deal with potentially lethal conflicts.

There were lots and lots and lots of other things (especially concerning the work day and the ability for spellcasters to reframe conflicts or circumvent obstacles basically at-will due to the synergy of spell power and slot proliferation), but concerning CW and SC, those were the biggies in terms of just outright changing the scope and threat of dungeon environments.

A sort of punctuated equilibrium? I suppose you could look at it that way.

That is close enough to what I was going for.

I can't really agree. There has been a lot made of the idea that there are various imagined 'styles' that justify opinions at a level beyond just opinion or preference - like, you must choose a style, and if you choose style B, you must love game X and loath game Z. Maybe that's the 'step-change' or equilibrium position we're at now, but I doubt very much that it's some sort of final state for the hobby.

Oh I don't think we're at some sort of RPGing nirvana or final state of evolution for the hobby. Not even close. 4e itself was getting better and better and better. It would have gotten better still if it were still formally supported and/or if it wasn't constrained by the OGL.

I just think that we're at a fairly mature stage in the hobby where several discrete tastes are recognized and catered to by systems that produce specific play experiences.

I thought it was mostly 'spin' at the time, and not much has happened to change my mind. 5e still shows few signs of real modularity, and isn't a particularly 'big tent.' It's clearly got room for 3e fans who are willing to accept a little less customizeability and fewer rewards for system mastery at the outset, and for classic D&D fans who could already tolerate the d20 consolidation of quixotic sub-systems into one core resolution mechanic. Apart from that (and that's a lot, really), it hasn't broadened it's horizons any. It's clearly designed to evoke the feel of old-school D&D, and that means only working well for the "styles" that it directly encouraged. It's a valid marketing choice to consolidate and stabilize the brand identity.

Agreed.

That may well be the thinking. There's really no such thing as "4eishness" and functionally marrying Gamist & Narrativist is a fancy GNS way of saying that 4e was comparatively balanced. Balance does let a game work over a broader range if it's robust enough, and 4e's wasn't /too/ brittle. It's wrong-headed, though, to think that there was something about that balance or the mechanics of the game that made it incompatible with catering to a wide range. It's more the rancor of the edition wars, and the insistence that a game 'support' an imagined style or other that serves only to dictate that it return to one of it's past, mechanically less functional, states.

While you give credit to 4e for its (uncelebrated in my estimation - I've spoken about this on more than one occasion on these boards) versatility (if you know the pressure points and are deft at applying pressure to them as GM, it can be a wonderful platform for lethal, attrition/resource-management gaming - including dungeon-crawling), I think you don't give 4e enough credit here for its precision in its "sweet-spot." That sweet-spot is indeed a hybrid of Gamist and Narrativist interests. Both are extremely rewarding by themselves and they marry quite well given the scene-based, high-octane action that 4e pushes play towards.

You've got all manner of Gamist interests that include resource efficiency/potency in encounter deployment and overall expenditure through the work-day. At the scene-level for combat resolution, you've got several moving parts that need to be managed at once; terrain/stunts, maximizing group synergy and recognizing and minimizing bad guy synergy - whether you're team PC or team NPC. At the scene-level for noncombat conflict resoltion, you've got a small bit of Gamist play involved; primarily when/how to spend your Secondary Skill(s) to augment Primary checks and when/how to spend Advantages.

When it comes to the Narrativist angle, the system is rife. Skill Challenges being the first and foremost aspect of Narrativist play here (especially the later maturation toward providing XP even for failures so the Gamist/Narrativist tension is relieved). Abstract, noncombat conflict resolution is a staple of Story Now systems and 4e's foray into this arena is easily my favorite part of the system (and probably the primary reason, amongst many, why I won't be running 5e). A formalized Minor and Major Quest system to guide play and advance PCs is akin to Milestones in MHRP and Bonds/Alignment XP in DW. Edition warriors love to hate on the many Author and Director Stance powers spread through the system (even though they are easily, easily avoidable with alternative choices for every class at every level). There are lots and lots of other examples (eg Themes, Paragon Paths, Epic Destinies both mechanically and thematically guiding play - not just thematically), both those are enough.

4e is not nearly given enough credit for its flexibility. This is because a large number of folks just couldn't recognize the different pressure points inherent to the system, presumably because they were a bit different than what they were used to (due to different scheduling and the brilliant advent of HSes). They didn't get how robust the system is to perturbing the encounter expectations (difficulty and number) and the Rest (Extended and Short) mechanics for overall changes to campaign pacing. They didn't understand what an enormously versatile tool that the Disease Track is. They didn't stick around long enough for DMG2 (which covered most of this) which means they didn't give it 10 months. You probably have to play it a bit longer and more aggressively (and probably with a bit more of an open-mind) than many going in had. Oh well I guess. It is still there for me to play it, and play it I sure as hell will. Notwithstanding that fact though, 4e does certainly does have a "4e-ishness". If you don't even try to toggle its dials or fiddle with its widgets, it seems to me that its just about impossible (except due to either gross inability to grok or willful Pawn Stance play) to not produce an incredibly awesome, high-octane, dynamic, action-advenure game of badass fantasy heroes ensconced in mythical conflicts with titanic adversaries.