D&D 5E Rob Schwalb and what it was like at WotC during the 5e dev and launch.

[darjr]

A bit of history here form Rob. This story has already been told but it's in different places scattered on the net. This is a nice concise summary of the feeling of what they expected with 5e and the surprise at it's rapid success at launch. Fifth edition was supposed to be the mothball edition, or as Rob says the "Pink Slip Edition".

There are other interesting bits but here at about 8:50 into the video he mentions they all thought it was the edition of D&D and his ideas about why he thinks it took off.

by the
time I was done it wasn't really clear what 5th edition's future was going to look like uh you know the attitude at
the time was like well you know we're writing our own pink slips because this is like and we shouldn't be
calling it deity next we should be calling it DND last because we have no idea if this is going to go anywhere and
there was a lot of uncertainty um and of course to my to all of our surprise it exploded and I think it was
just it was the timing is great right I mean the Zeitgeist is the Zeitgeist and uh I'm not gonna send Love Letters to
stranger things but it certainly didn't hurt and uh the rise of
streaming and the rise of live plays which were all kind of just bubbling
around they were bubbling they were simmering at the time of late fourth edition but I didn't think you know their explosion into Fifth and fifth
kind of embrace bracing uh the feet of their mind my games mindset uh mind
mindset uh worked out really well and worked out in the game's favor

There is a lot more interesting there about where he began his career and of coarse the purpose behind the podcast his new game which I think I should point out just to be polite, I think it has about 30 hours or so left.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/432417423/shadow-of-the-weird-wizard/description

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I can’t read that. I don’t suppose there is a recap that fixes the readability somewhere?

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I can’t read that. I don’t suppose there is a recap that fixes the readability somewhere?

I read it - I couldn't understand it.

 

[Charlaquin]

I read it - I couldn't understand it.

The gist of it seems to be “we were expecting D&D to quietly die and 5e to be the last edition, but to everyone’s surprise it was really popular.” And then he credits the surprise success to… Stranger Things, for some reason? And some vague mumblings about how live streaming games became a real thing with 5e, whereas with 4e the medium had still been finding its legs.

 

[darjr]

There is a video….

But ok. I probably could have cleaned up the transcript. I didn’t want to change it though.

Basically they thought they were designing the last version of D&D and WotC was going to let D&D subsist on this version and essentially mothball D&D.

It’s success was a surprise. Also its continued success with things like stranger things and steaming widening its popularity was also a surprise.

It sounded like he thinks it was due in part to its emphasis on theater of the mind which helped it with steamers.

 

[darjr]

The point I wanted to highlight was the mood and thoughts of the time of the creators about D&Ds future and potential success before it’s release.

Note if you rewind the video a few minutes he talks about some of the factions that were working in 5e. I found that interesting too.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I read it - I couldn't understand it.

Yeah direct transcripts tend to be like that unless the speaker is speaking formally or is a very experienced and trained public speaker.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Yeah direct transcripts tend to be like that unless the speaker is speaking formally or is a very experienced and trained public speaker.

Punctuation, spacing, and using the correct words that he spoke help to make a transcript readable, too! I mean, "Deity Next"? Are you sure that's what he said? Because I suspect it wasn't. (I assume it was some kind of speech-to-text that wrote it?)

 

[Reynard]

Punctuation, spacing, and using the correct words that he spoke help to make a transcript readable, too! I mean, "Deity Next"? Are you sure that's what he said? Because I suspect it wasn't. (I assume it was some kind of speech-to-text that wrote it?)

It's generated automatically. It isn't that hard to follow.

 

[Parmandur]

Note if you rewind the video a few minutes he talks about some of the factions that were working in 5e. I found that interesting too.

That sounds interesting: what's the TL;DW?