Is it time for 5E?

[Dice4Hire]

One barometer for this sort of thing that nobody has mentioned yet is bloat.

2e sank under its own bloat before 3e arrived.
3.xe was well on the way to sinking under its own bloat when 4e arrived.

Agree 100%

I don't play 4e nor do I follow its release track very closely, so I need to ask those of you who do: is it getting overly bloated? If yes, 5e won't be too far away. If no, you've got some time yet.

In my opinion, not yet. Eventually? Absolutely.

And whenever 5e does come it had better be on paper, buy-able by picking it up in my hands and physically taking it to a counter where a real person takes my money for it...

Lan-"this year's GenCon could be interesting"-efan

That is the same for me. I want a book. Support it all you like online, knock yourself out, but don't get rid of the offline component. Right now, I have no problems with WOTC's online and offline mix. I wish for many people pdfs were online, and I think they should be, but nothing I can do about that. People know what I think of me using DDI, but I'm glad that other people enjoy it, and I think it is a good step forward.

 

[Shazman]

After hearing you say that for two years, your doomsday proclamations have lost a bit of leeway.

Not a doomsday prediction. Just a statement of fact. No one has ever demonstrated that 4E has indeed been a complete commercial success. Essentials kind of hints that it wasn't as big of a success as they hoped or needed.

 

[delericho]

And whenever 5e does come it had better be on paper, buy-able by picking it up in my hands and physically taking it to a counter where a real person takes my money for it...

Yeah. In fact, I'd go further than that.

If 5e has any required electronic component, any required collectable component, or requires the use of minis, then I'm not interested. They can add any and all of these things to the core if they want, but if they require them, I'm out.

 

[Korgoth]

Maybe WOTC should change up their game plan and try sticking with a system for a while.

Arguably, the "big shakeup" model has not been working for them. 3.5 went OK, people were willing to accept it. But will people accept it over and over again? Where I come from, the "Do-Over" has a rule: if "Do-Over"s are actually allowed, the rule is that you get one. After that, whatever you do stands.

I say this as someone who thinks that Essentials is tons better than baseline 4E. But sometimes you have to stick with a suboptimal approach because that was your approach. Once you're committed, go forward.

How many times can you re-release the same material with new rules? How many times can you blow up the Forgotten Realms and reassemble it with Litko Insta-Cure and leftover Blokus tiles? How many times can you have a book/module whatever about the dang Drow? I've heard of recycling, but this is ridiculous.

On top of that, there's the marketing question. The "Your doonit WRONG" school of 4E launch marketing was an insult... and I say this as a person who finds 3E to be the worst edition of D&D ever made. There are certain people who will refuse to drag out their wallets after being slapped really hard in the face (I guess some people might like it, but that's beyond the scope of this thread).

So how would they even market 5E, especially after Essentials? I guess they could go with "You guyz R tards" or possibly "OOPS we did it again!"

 

[Wiseblood]

5e will be announced at Gencon 2011. It is not rational but there it is. They did the same thing with 4e. The announcement came while ther was a ton of 3e stuff on the shelves of retailors.

 

[RangerWickett]

I think it's silly to complain about the fact that there will eventually be a new edition of D&D. Do you want WotC to go out of business? Do you want the gaming hobby to shrink? If not, then you'd better think of a dash clever business model that lets them keep putting out products, without those products being redundant, without putting out a new edition.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I think it's silly to complain about the fact that there will eventually be a new edition of D&D. Do you want WotC to go out of business? Do you want the gaming hobby to shrink? If not, then you'd better think of a dash clever business model that lets them keep putting out products, without those products being redundant, without putting out a new edition.

I am not sure that putting out a new edition is putting out new products without their being redundant.


RC

 

[ArcaneSpringboard]

As to the above, I did notice that on the WotC site the catalog of 4E releases looks alarmingly slim. I believe it was two 4E books listed within the Jan-June release schedule - certainly much smaller than the 1-2 book release schedule I seem to recall up through 2010.

What if these cancellations (if they actually are cancellations) are actually a precursor for doing a big marketing push for DDI? That is, taking all of that material and increasing the size of Dungeon and Dragon?

 

[ArcaneSpringboard]

Alternatively, since AFAIK, the 'cancelled' books are all hardcovers, it could be as simple as them being changed to the Essentials softcover format.

 

[Stormonu]

What if these cancellations (if they actually are cancellations) are actually a precursor for doing a big marketing push for DDI? That is, taking all of that material and increasing the size of Dungeon and Dragon?

I dunno, but unless something's changed I would have thought they make much more money out of the book market than DDI subscriptions. For D&D, the books are a form of advertising ("Hey, look what's new this month!")