D&D 5E Ruminations on 5E (serious)

[hbarsquared]

Wow, thank you for that blast from the past reminder! Fascinating to see the predictions that were spot-on as well as those a little off.

Regarding my original rose-colored post, in hindsight I might argue 4e suffered from "perfection." Anyone read that kids book from the 80s, Be a Perfect Person in Just 3 Days?

Although I admired 4e and it's math when it first arrived, it lacked the inspiration and joy (for me) at the table. My eyes would gloss over reading Powers that were barely distinguishable from each other, feats and items and classes that had only mechanical benefits and no flavor. Kind of like a grey, blurry vision of hundreds of perfect people sipping weak tea and staring straight ahead.

5e brought back imperfections, the DM fiat, the interpretations, the light mechanics that I didn't realize were sorely lacking 8 years ago, properties I didn't realize I needed.

Who knows, maybe in 10 years I'll be lamenting the lack of quantum nanotube capabilities in 5e.

 

[Miladoon]

I think GVDammerung gets the oracle award. So, so close.

EDIT: I googled quantum nanotube and started reading until I got a nose bleed. What are the applications for this in D&D, if you don't mind?

 

[Celtavian]

After 4e fails to achieve the success it might have had were it to have built more closely upon the success of 3x, as would have been demonstrated by greater compatibility with 3x, 5e will be to a large degree "back to the future" as well as "back to the drawing board." 5e will more closely resemble 3x than 4e, as 4e comes to be seen as a design cul de sac. The best ideas from 4e will be incorporated in 5e but a 3e ethos will be strongly evident. By this measure 5e will to some extent be what 4e should have been.

At the same time, 5e will be something completely new and unique due to the increasing integration of technology, online support and functionality, that is just beginning with 4e. This is not to say that the integraton will necessarily be a good thing or successful. It could go either way depending on implementation. 4e will demonstrate how to fail integrating technology when you move before you are ready and underestimate the level of sophistication that consumers, being familiar with slick websites and video games, will demand.

5e will also be forced to deal with the "age wave" among gamers. 4e will not bring in a substantial number of new gamers. The gaming public will continue to gray. As other companies and products, e.g. WoW, continue to refine their already leading products, Wotc and D&D will be unable to alter that picture, leaving D&D at its core still a paper and penicl, tabletop experience. Those interested in such will be older and older. 5e will per force compromise between something new and something old; there will be a designed nostalia factor in 5e's design.

5e will also be entirely closed. Only a very few individual licenses, more akin to strategic alliances like the Paizo license to publish Dungeon and Dragon, will be let.

4e will in retrospect be seen as a lost opportunity, a hard lesson in the inability of a company, any company, to decide for consumers what they should want and should enjoy. As such, 5e will not be long in coming, 2012/2013. They should already be engaged in initial planning, at least to the extent that 5e should avoid the miserable job 4e has done in its rollout that has seen the gaming community split as never previously over the very idea of a 4e.

Wow. How the hell did he predict this?