D&D 5E Signs & Portents (that we can read into) about the ETA of 5E

[Zustiur]

I like the idea of that but I don't think it fits the reality of publishing. Feedback from the beginner's set would have very little time to get incorporated.

 

[Jester David]

Games only have one 40th Anniversary. D&D will be in the news and it would be a mistake not to have product available for sale to synergize with that free publicity.

You can't just say "report on this in three months" as news outlets will just say "sure, whatever" and find someone else to give free advertising. Neither can you tell people curious about the game "hey, come back in three months when the books are ready."

GenCon 2014 is the likely date. The *might* be able to get a small book out for June or July, but that would be pushing it. So they'll have wasted 2/3rds of their 40th anniversary with nothing in stores. Really, it doesn't even look like they have a single product out after December (although we know one other adventure is coming...)

 

[Sonny]

Pretty much set for 2014 unless something disastrous happens. As Canuck pointed out - the 40th anniversary is next year. Its mind share during the next year among ex-gamers and non gamers should be higher than it has been at any point in the last decade. And that'll be just from free advertising from the 40th anniversary stories. Add a large, paid, and aggressive advertising campaign for Next into the mix, and you should see the new edition do very, very, well.

Unless Wizards marketing team is completely incompetent that is.

 

[Ashran]

GenCon 2014 is the likely date. The *might* be able to get a small book out for June or July, but that would be pushing it. So they'll have wasted 2/3rds of their 40th anniversary with nothing in stores. Really, it doesn't even look like they have a single product out after December (although we know one other adventure is coming...)

They do have products according to amazon... but they are novels (the rest of the sundering for the forgotten realms, and paperbacks of the first two novels), and a board game (dungeon). But yeah they don't have a real role playing product.

 

[Blackwarder]

I'm pretty sure that WotC is going to drop a bomb and start releasing the game on January 2014, probably a basic box set with basic D&D with rules for levels 1-10. Several months later they will release the core books of the standard version.

Warder

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

Another thought that crossed my mind is that they could come out with a beta product, one that is semi-finished, that would allow them to kill two birds with one stone: Increase excitement about the game and get another round of feedback to make sure they've got it right.

I think this would be a mistake.

I think 5E/AD&D3E fans want to be able to buy the three books. Of course, I could be wrong.

Pretty much set for 2014 unless something disastrous happens. As Canuck pointed out - the 40th anniversary is next year. Its mind share during the next year among ex-gamers and non gamers should be higher than it has been at any point in the last decade. And that'll be just from free advertising from the 40th anniversary stories. Add a large, paid, and aggressive advertising campaign for Next into the mix, and you should see the new edition do very, very, well.

Unless Wizards marketing team is completely incompetent that is.

They've screwed the pooch a few times so it wouldn't surprised me if they did it again. But to let the 40th Anniversary go by without an extant version of D&D would be way past screwing the pooch. Maybe a new Basic Set by GenCon along the lines of this idea ...

I'm pretty sure that WotC is going to drop a bomb and start releasing the game on January 2014, probably a basic box set with basic D&D with rules for levels 1-10. Several months later they will release the core books of the standard version.

Warder

... although I am guessing for a GenCon release rather than January.

Don't forget, 4E introduced the idea of a basic set with a different ruleset to the 4E rules... and it fed into a book that wasn't even called the Player's Handbook. That was a dumb move and flew in the face of one of the few hard and fast rules of running D&D as a business: sell PHBs.

I don't think we will see a repeat of these errors with 5E's release.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

The more I look at it the more I'm thinking that given we have the final playtest already that the game may come sooner than expected.

The 3rd book in the Sundering series that will convert the Realms to 5e comes out in December. If the adventures keep the same pace they have been, that means the 3rd adventure in the Sundering series will come out late February. They've been coming out every 3 months. 3 months after that would be late May.....with no product to release but the Realms will have fully converted over to 5e in both adventure and novel format.

The last product on their schedule is the end of December currently with no other products announced.

Also, there was no Living Forgotten Realms at all scheduled at GenCon this year and with the announcement of 5e it's been dying quickly.

The more I consider it the more I'm beginning to think the release date of 5e PHB is May/June next year with June/July being the DMG and July/August being the Monster Manual. Thereby making GenCon instead the celebration of 5e being completely out as well as likely the debut of a new RPGA campaign for 5e.

 

[Quartz]

Is there anyone here who can comment on the logistics of publishing? It seems to me that the act of publishing will take several months, what with proofs being printed, proofread, errors in the text and formatting and artwork etc caught and corrected (there'll probably be at least two rounds of that), and so on. And then stock must be printed and shipped to your FLGS ready for the release day. And there will always be delays. And before that there must be extensive playtesting (and therefore fine-tuning) of the final product. So, for a release at GenCon, August 2014 we're looking at the game being print-worthy sometime in April at the latest, with final in-house testing probably taking a month or two, bringing us to February, which, with Christmas, is nice time for a final closed playtest packet.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Is there anyone here who can comment on the logistics of publishing? It seems to me that the act of publishing will take several months, what with proofs being printed, proofread, errors in the text and formatting and artwork etc caught and corrected (there'll probably be at least two rounds of that), and so on. And then stock must be printed and shipped to your FLGS ready for the release day. And there will always be delays. And before that there must be extensive playtesting (and therefore fine-tuning) of the final product. So, for a release at GenCon, August 2014 we're looking at the game being print-worthy sometime in April at the latest, with final in-house testing probably taking a month or two, bringing us to February, which, with Christmas, is nice time for a final closed playtest packet.

I think you are over-estimating the amount of playtesting that WOTC will do. They haven't exactly been known for their editing and playtesting up until now.

Also, I don't know for sure, but I believe that the print industry has become faster and faster at turn around times. If you send a printing company a completed draft, I'm fairly certain that you can have a production line printing them within 48 hours. With print times for the number of copies plus shipping times, I'm fairly certain that within 6-8 weeks of sending the draft over you could have copies delivered.

This means that if they sent the final beta to their internal playtesters in March and gave them 2 weeks to provide feedback in, they could have it edited and a test print ready by early April with a delivery of books by late May.

 

[fjw70]

I don't see a Gencon release. I think they will want it out there prior to Gencon yo give people a chance to learn the system first. So I will say a late-May or June release. Maybe early July.