Mearls announces end of Legends & Lore & New D&D Columns in 2015!

WotC's Mike Mearls has announced the end of the long-running Legends & Lore column, which was used during D&D Next playtesting to showcase ideas and concepts, and the start of the previously announced series of articles called Unearthed Arcana, "a monthly look at the art of tabletop RPG game design featuring insights into our philosophy, and examples of new and variant material to use at your table."

Additionally, series called Campaign Notebooks and Sage Advice will be launched. Sage Advice follows the old format of years past, and will be manned by Jeremy Crawford as he answers your rules questions. Campaign Notebooks will feature Chris Perkins and others -- "insights into D&D and tips for your games taken directly from the campaigns of Dungeon Masters here at Wizards."

 

[Cadriel]

5e is really in need of adventures, and I was really hoping the announcement would have something equivalent to Dungeon magazine. Unless Unearthed Arcana is basically a magazine in itself, it's really going to be quite inadequate, especially when a month's article is a bit of a dud.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I'm looking forward to the columns. Monthly is perfectly fine as far as I'm concerned. I had expected only one column, so three is a bonus!

 

[rjfTrebor]

this is exactly what i said would happen when this whole article business was announced. we'll get snippets of content that should have been in the DMG at a drip, drip, drip pace.

What WotC really sells is a place in the metaphorical waiting line for 5e to be as great as they say it is.

 

[wedgeski]

5E is as great as promised, as far as I'm concerned.

Having said that, the lack of any firm commitment to a Dungeon-like content stream is disappointing.

Have they even laid out any terms for content submissions yet?

 

[Fralex]

About the need for a gaming magazine, does anyone know anything about Gygax Magazine? All I really know is it has Order of the Stick comics in it (continuing the Dragon Magazine continuity) and it's sort of like Dragon. I know you guys said Dungeon, but maybe Gygax Magazine has some of the things you're looking for?

Edit: Looking at one of the previews, this seems to have adventure ideas designed for the older editions, not 5e. I guess that makes sense, since it's made by TSR.

 

[SigmaOne]

this is exactly what i said would happen when this whole article business was announced. we'll get snippets of content that should have been in the DMG at a drip, drip, drip pace.

What WotC really sells is a place in the metaphorical waiting line for 5e to be as great as they say it is.

What WotC sells is cards, books, and other related things. If you don't like them, don't buy them; but don't try to pretend that just because they aren't doing what you want, they're somehow being misleading. The fact is 5e is already great. That's the popular opinion. If it's not your opinion, that's fine. The DMG has tons of great content, and they had to make a lot of tough choices. What should be in the DMG is what is in the DMG. I trust Mearls, Perkins, Crawford, and the rest of the D&D development team over self-appointed internet pundits for textbook content decisions any day.

 

[SigmaOne]

5E is as great as promised, as far as I'm concerned.

Having said that, the lack of any firm commitment to a Dungeon-like content stream is disappointing.

Have they even laid out any terms for content submissions yet?

I think the time-frame for discussing this was early 2015, but I don't recall for sure.

 

[Queer Venger]

It just hits all of my "annoy" buttons.
We've been waiting for 5e for two and a half years. Now it's finally here. But we need to wait even longer for content they have finished that's just sitting around their hard drives, like the kender & warforged or the BattleSystem rules.

Not sure why it should annoy. I think in our twitter, Facebook, consumerist society we've grown bloated, an unesessarily impatient, with immediate commercial satisfaction. Im perfectly okay with it being monthly, after all, many magazines are monthly and these articles essentially fill the gap until Dragon Magazine makes a return. Yes, we've waited 2 years for 5e, but its a resounding hit, and as far as Im concerned, its exciting to have Sage Advice and Unearthed Arcana, which hail back to 1e, make a return with 5e.

I mean, Folks, we just got our Holy Trinity delivered (PHB, MM, DMG). Lets settle down to playing with these before asking for more. I think 5e is here to stay for a while, (I don't forsee another 3 to 3.5e publication disaster) these bonus content will be delivered; but in the words of the greatest Jedi of all time:

"Patience you must have, my young Palawan..."

 

[Jester David]

Not sure why it should annoy. I think in our twitter, Facebook, consumerist society we've grown bloated, an unnecessarily impatient, with immediate commercial satisfaction. Im perfectly okay with it being monthly, after all, many magazines are monthly and these articles essentially fill the gap until Dragon Magazine makes a return. Yes, we've waited 2 years for 5e, but its a resounding hit, and as far as Im concerned, its exciting to have Sage Advice and Unearthed Arcana, which hail back to 1e, make a return with 5e.

The difference being prior to 3e and 4e we had official Dragon and Dungeon content from WotC. We used to have smaller monthly doses to tide us over. And those same articles were already out.
Especially since the first dozen Sage Advice columns could already be written from questions thrown to Mearls and Crawford on Twitter.

I mean, Folks, we just got our Holy Trinity delivered (PHB, MM, DMG). Lets settle down to playing with these before asking for more. I think 5e is here to stay for a while, (I don't forsee another 3 to 3.5e publication disaster) these bonus content will be delivered

That's the thing... we saw 3.5e because sales of 3e were too low for WotC so they released the planned update a couple years early. Sales of 4e and Essentials were also not "good enough".
If WotC looks at the numbers from D&D and decides that even now, with the best it's done in a decade, it isn't good enough the game could go away and the RPG department gets laid off while the game gets entirely licenced to some partner.

I selfishly want that content now because I'm not sure all the staff will be around to give it to us after the annual Christmas layoffs. Or six months after.

 

[The Myopic Sniper]

Monthly actually could be a good thing. Rather than four or five articles describing a mass combat system, why not just have one bigger article that describes the whole thing and then the next month having an article that describes half a dozen alternate races along a certain theme rather than just dropping them in willy-nilly throughout the year. The game, of course, seems to play well without this additional content so this is just gravy anyway. They can certainly look at feedback on this stuff and playtest it further if anything gets traction and becomes widely adopted and incorporate it into future printed product.

Anyway, I am not going to complain about free stuff at this point.