D&D 5E My #1 hope for D&D Next

[MJS]

All this debate, makes we change my #1 hope for D&D Next and what I think will be the most important thing that will determine D&D Next's success, is if D&D Next allows 3rd party publishers of adventure material. And very open flexible terms of doing

Can't see a word of what you post due to black text

 

[MJS]

The B/X and BECMI Red Boxes between them probably brought more people to the game (and more people who stayed with the game) than anything written by Gygax. But who gets all the glory?

.

I think the White Box and know AD&D are no slouch in this regard, but indeed the credit in later Basics was confusing. They were meant as cleaned up OD&D, though, and I can't say as I blame Gary for protecting his authorship. He and Arneson wrote D&D, and Holmes, Moldvay, and Mentzer rewrote, or compiled, it.

 

[D'karr]

You know there are still people making modules for the PC game Neverwinter Nights (the first one). http://nwvault.ign.com/
I played a lot of those, and there were some darn good ones.

Yep, they were difficult to design, but sometimes somebody put the effort to make one that was exceptional. Lots of dross too, but that is to be expected. Lots of modding from the community also.

I actually tried out that brand new Neverwinter MMO, because I read that a reviewer on Gamespot.com said that much of the fan-made adventures were better than the stock ones. An MMO that allows fan created material, crazy.

Yep that was pretty sweet too, and the community could grade them. If there was something really good you actually did not have to spend lots of time sifting through the crap. Unfortunately lots of dross there too, also not unexpected.

On VTT Tabletops:
You should check out Fantasy Grounds, it the most high-tech tabletop right now. 4E is fully integrated. While WotC made it a total pain in the butt to get material into it. The tech-savvy people in the community have made parsers and web navigators to put every single bit of 4E info that exists right back into it, and programmed the functionality that it does so many things for 4E that you'd be like "holy cow, I can't believe it tracked the duration of that Insubstantiality and handled the damage reduction properly."

That is awesome to know. I might have to check them out again. I believe the first time I started looking it was "expensive" because of their licensing model. Now that you've recommended it, I might have to look at it again.

 

[Mistwell]

Well, now, if we're going on wish lists, what I REALLY want is a virtual tabletop and then sell me modules that plug and play into that tabletop. I heard a rumbling that Paizo is going in this direction, and, if they are, I hope it rocks.

There are some significant hurdles for such a product. They explain why, in stating "The interactive game restriction exists because Wizards has an exclusive licensee for all interactive games. Authorizing other parties to make electronic games would violate the exclusive terms of that license."

They're not insurmountable hurdles, but they're significant.