D&D 5E No longer interested in 5e now

[vagabundo]

It boggles my mind that people thought that 5e would somehow allow all the different rule sets to play together at the same table. I thought it was fairly clear what they were going for and I like that they are "thinking big"

I'd prefer they do something like this and maybe fail than just produce another rung in the edition mill. It might not work, but then we all have our editions of choice to fall back too. And they might offer some support for those previous editions, at least they seem open to those ideas.

 

[Number48]

A lot of people are calling for older material PDFs. You have to remember that WotC doesn't have digital files on these. It would require cutting up, scanning and cleaning each page of the book. Just how many $10 sales of 1E Unearthed Arcana are they going to get? The labor cost for the employees doing that work is better spent making new product.

 

[Yora]

They do have quite a large number on pdf. They were available for free on their website until a few years ago, if you knew where to look.

 

[Mark CMG]

A lot of people are calling for older material PDFs. You have to remember that WotC doesn't have digital files on these.

The vast majority of older materials was scanned in the early 3.XE era by WotC (Jim Butler worked for them then and had a number of others working under him on that project, IIRC). So they do have digital files except for the more obscure items. Some/Many of them, however, were less than stellar scans due to the fast pace with which they were scanned and the limits of the technology of the time, a decade ago. I think all or most of the old ones were scanned as images and thus cannot be mined for material easily. I agree that a lot of people would find the scans, and the fact that sections can't be copied and pasted into homebrew documents, problematic or unwanted, so maybe they would need to use more modern OCR (optical character recognition) scanners to produce new digital documents. I also think this is unlikely to take place. I'd personally be content with the old scans being made available again with clear warnings about their limitations.

They do have quite a large number on pdf. They were available for free on their website until a few years ago, if you knew where to look.

They were available through RPGNow and a number of us 3PP were recruited to help get the sales text added for each of the PDFs sold. There were hundreds of them.

 

[Salamandyr]

Taking an unrelated potshot at 4e with a 4 year old catch phrase, classy. Welcome to the 4hater bandwagon!

Honestly I don't think 5e will be the amazing utopian One Edition to Rule Them All either, but it'll fair better than what you'd been hoping for. For a variety of reasons.

I say this as someone who likes and has played 4e and who likes and playes World of Warcraft. 4e suckered World of Warcraft into a dark alley, mugged it and rifled through its pockets for spare mechanics. The encounters based design, the use of class based powers to attack "I use my Sinister Strike, er, Sly Flourish!", the emphasis on settings based fights with unique mechanics, the emphasis on builds, balance, and uniform mechanical structer...here I'm referring to the way your characters generally reset to the default power level, how at X level, you'll always have Y number of powers, etc. 4e was an attempt to take many of the best parts of running an instance in WoW or Everquest and translating them to the tabletop. Yes, there's a lot of differences, but there's a whole heck of a lot of similarities.

And a whole lot of people felt that this was a bad idea (I am not necessarily one of them). You may not agree with them. You may think the similarities are smaller than the differences. That's all fine. But they have a legitimate point of view, and just because you don't like hearing it shouldn't mean they should be forced not to speak of it.

4e borrows/rips off WoW. That's either good, bad, or indifferent, but it's not a catchphrase.

 

[Njall]

I say this as someone who likes and has played 4e and who likes and playes World of Warcraft. 4e suckered World of Warcraft into a dark alley, mugged it and rifled through its pockets for spare mechanics. The encounters based design, the use of class based powers to attack "I use my Sinister Strike, er, Sly Flourish!", the emphasis on settings based fights with unique mechanics, the emphasis on builds, balance, and uniform mechanical structer...here I'm referring to the way your characters generally reset to the default power level, how at X level, you'll always have Y number of powers, etc. 4e was an attempt to take many of the best parts of running an instance in WoW or Everquest and translating them to the tabletop. Yes, there's a lot of differences, but there's a whole heck of a lot of similarities.

And a whole lot of people felt that this was a bad idea (I am not necessarily one of them). You may not agree with them. You may think the similarities are smaller than the differences. That's all fine. But they have a legitimate point of view, and just because you don't like hearing it shouldn't mean they should be forced not to speak of it.

4e borrows/rips off WoW. That's either good, bad, or indifferent, but it's not a catchphrase.

Sorry, not seeing it, and I've been playing WoW for 7 years or so, give or take.
In WoW, combat is about rotations or priorities, a constant stream of healing, tanking and repetitive tactics.
It also features different kinds of resource management depending on your class ( rage for warriors, energy for rogues, focus for hunters and mana for casters, which was kind of a big deal when the game launched ).
In 4e, encounter powers were introduced so that you didn't have to do the same thing every round; healing was capped ( healing surges ) so that healbots weren't necessary anymore and everyone was given the exact same resources to manage, and the game tried to encourage everyone, both players and DMs, to use varied, creative tactics to win the day.
Also, they tried to cut back the amount and importance of magic items, whereas in WoW ( and just about every other MMO out there, really ) getting new, better stuff is pretty much the point of the game.
So, IMHO, the similarities between WoW and 4e start and end with "all PCs get powers!", but then just about every game out there features special abilities these days.

[/OT]

As for the OP: sorry dude, but you set yourself up for disappointment here.
Still, the playtest should be free, so it's not like checking out the game will do much harm, will it?

 

[avin]

4E somewhat borrowed DPS/Tank/Healer from Wow.

Nothing more, no matter how people (who usually NEVER played Wow) say that.

4E is far closer to Final Fantasy Tactics than Wow.

If one is trying to compare it to a videogame, at least aim right...

 

[Plane Sailing]

After reading Monte's latest "Legends&Lore" article, I'm going to have to say I'm no longer interested in 5th Edition or "D&D Next" or whatever.

Why? Because of this very part:

"To be clear, we're not talking about creating a bridge so that you can play 1E and 4E at the same time. Instead, we're allowing you to play a 1E-style game or a 4E-style game with the same rules. Also, players at the table can choose the style of character they want to play. In short, let's talk about style and D&D."

Sorry, but, I care less about playing a D&D game with mixed styles. I just want my edition of game to continue getting support, in fact, I want all 4 editions getting support. That's the best way to go, and it'd be more than profitable than any new edition could accomplish. This is because you capture every generation of D&D gamer ever to exist to come throwing their money at you for products for their preferred edition.

I was hoping more along the lines of everyone gets to play their edition as is and supported, or everyone plays their edition at the same time with some sort of set of rules to help with that, and also continues getting support for the 4 editions like new game material and campaign books.

So screw 5E, it'll bomb like 4E because now instead of leaving everyone in their own camp and giving each camp their own "rations", so-to-speak, you're trying to accomplish getting 4 different and resentful camps to all sit in one big tent and eat at the same table and be happy with it.

This is going to fail hard, IMO. A DM like me, I run 3.5e with a few of my own houserules and, therefore, everyone at my table must abide by the same thing.

Exactly why is it WotC's business to convince me that I should include "1e-style" or "4e-style" gamers at MY table? We like our edition choice at our table and all we ever wanted was to, once in awhile, see a NEW 3E PRODUCT for our games. That's all we ask. We have what we want, and so does every other gamer, just continue to give us more of what we like.

Again, support the 4 editions. This "uniting" crap is silly. I believe taking the "best" of all 4 Editions and blending them into some weird soupy goo is very poor and very sloppy game design. Leave what is alone and support them.

Just like it was stupid to take everything in an MMO and blend them into a TTRPG. You can see how well 4E did because of that mistake.

Turns out that erdrick is a sock puppet for someone who has been permabanned in the past, so he has been permanently booted

 

[Salamandyr]

So, IMHO, the similarities between WoW and 4e start and end with "all PCs get powers!", but then just about every game out there features special abilities these days.

I disagree. I pointed out a number of other similarities in my own post above. But the big gist of my post has more to do with the tendency of threads to go something like this.

"4e is like WoW"

"You can't say that!"

Yes, they can.

EDIT: Avin, you may very well be right. I've never played a JRPG in my life and only know about their mechanics by osmosis. However, I'm not sure that invalidates the point. People who dislike 4e's similarity to video games have a right to say so.

 

[Njall]

I disagree. I pointed out a number of other similarities in my own post above. But the big gist of my post has more to do with the tendency of threads to go something like this.

"4e is like WoW"

"You can't say that!"

Yes, they can.

Doesn't make them right, especially considering that there are a lot of games ( and videogames) around with just about every feature you listed.

 

[Hassassin]

It's not about 4e resembling WoW or even video games. All editions of D&D resemble some video games or vice versa.

I think there is a parallel, though, with the kind of mechanics different editions of D&D use and the video games of the same time periods.

E.g. FPS games like Doom used to have a HP total that you had to protect and raise using resources you received for exploring the levels (first aid kits or whatever). Most current single player FPS games have done away with this mechanic in favor of always restoring health between fights. Pre-4e D&D is more like Doom, but 4e Healing Surges are closer to newer FPS games.

Whether these things are good for D&D depends on play style.

 

[El Mahdi]

And in the process split your customer base into any number of segments, each clamoring for different products that use up huge chunks of development time with a huge cast of designers and smaller production runs that cripple your margins. We saw how well this worked out for TSR (replace "editions" with "campaign settings" and you have an identical scenario), and you want to revive it.

You think you want something, but you really don't want it because it will mean another downward spiral for the hobby. You just don't know that you don't want it.

This reminds me of when WotC was telling us "you don't really want x...trust us, you really want y". And that worked out soooooo well...

 

[DaveMage]

This reminds me of when WotC was telling us "you don't really want x...trust us, you really want y". And that worked out soooooo well...

Yeah, but most of the people that said that have been fired.

 

[El Mahdi]

Doggone It! This is the last time I'm going to say this:

D&D does not resemble Video Games. Video Games resemble D&D!




Carry on...

 

[Njall]

EDIT: Avin, you may very well be right. I've never played a JRPG in my life and only know about their mechanics by osmosis. However, I'm not sure that invalidates the point. People who dislike 4e's similarity to video games have a right to say so.

Actually, it's not that it invalidates the point, it's that it makes it moot.
Let me explain: "video-gamey" doesn't mean anything by itself, so unless you add what you think makes it "video-gamey" and what you dislike about video games ( or about a particular video game ) the statement is just too vague to be useful, since there are tons of different video games out there, and even if you're considering a single video game ( like WoW, in this case ) understanding what you dislike about it is pretty much a shot in the dark.
Of course, if you're just going to explain what bothers you about a game in detail you might as well drop the "video-gamey" thing altogether (especially since it is often seen as a veiled insult).

 

[Alan Shutko]

If WotC did want to scan their old stuff again (to take advantage of better technologies) it would be much easier than it was before. With consumer-quality digital cameras, you can now scan books very quickly and nondestructively. I just jury-rigged a scanner with my digital camera, a piece of glass, and a cardboard box and scanned GAZ3 in about a half hour. More sophisticated builds are out there that take two pictures at once and can scan a 400 page book in an hour or less.

I put this together because I want digital copies for my own use of higher quality than the ones I bought when WotC offered them.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I find the video-gamey comparison amusing when almost every other D&D edition has video games. 4e doesn't. As for roles, look in the 2e PHB. You get the four roles of fighter, magic user, cleric, thief there. Which are only slightly fuzzied into defender, controller, leader, striker.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I find the video-gamey comparison amusing when almost every other D&D edition has video games. 4e doesn't.

What are you talking about, man?

As for roles, look in the 2e PHB. You get the four roles of fighter, magic user, cleric, thief there. Which are only slightly fuzzied into defender, controller, leader, striker.

The enhanced, focused, combat roles in 4e are actually quite remarkably different from the nature of the classes pre-4e. There are certainly similarities, but the differences are quite a bit bigger.

Ultimatley, inspiration is a weird thing. Some 4e mechanics have some pretty clear analogues to MMO mechanics. Some of those mechanics have roots in things deeper than an MMO, but were refined in an MMO context, and refined further in games like 4e. Some 4e mechanics are almost accidentally MMO mechanics, just because they're trying to solve similar problems.

It's not fair to 4e to say "HUR HUR IT'S JUST WOW ON PAPER." But it's also not fair to 4e to say "There's NOTHING from WoW in here and to say otherwise is to be an irrational hater!" Like with many things in life, a fundamentalist position is inherently untenable. 4e clearly cribs a few notes from MMOs, but it doesn't do so exclusively or ignorantly. Some of those crib notes work better than others (forex, I don't think the enhanced, focused, combat roles do anyone any real favors, though I respect the goal they set out with as a real D&D-centric goal).

A 2e wizard clearly is not a "controller" any more than a 2e thief is a "striker." To conflate them seems to miss the real advances 4e has made (in cribbing from some MMO notes) on how D&D combat should be conceptualized and balanced, advances that 2e probably could have used years earlier to be a better game.

Shrug. Inspiration is wierd.

 

[Ratinyourwalls]

In a perfect world, we'd have two editions: one for the haters, elitists, edition warriors and negative people, and one for the rest of us.

The latter wouldn't sell well because there isn't enough of a potential consumer base.

 

[Dannager]

This reminds me of when WotC was telling us "you don't really want x...trust us, you really want y". And that worked out soooooo well...

I'm not sure what you're trying to do, here. Are you telling us that people always know that they'll be happy with what they want, even if they have no real knowledge of the topic or the consequences of their preference?

I'm pointing out that people sometimes ask for things that they think they want, without fully understanding the consequences that their decision would have, and that sometimes those consequences actually mean that the end result of what they think they want is actually something they don't want at all.

Do you disagree?