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

[Sonny]

I agree that while hitting the 40th anniversary would be nice and they shouldn't take more time than they need to (for a variety of reasons), I think that the impact of the 40th Anniversary may be getting a bit overestimated in this thread. D&D is not going to suddenly be dominating the news cycles just because it's a semi-major anniversary, and while WotC could and probably will incorporate it into the marketing in some fashion if it lines up, I don't know that "40th Anniversary! New D&D!" is a significantly stronger marketing pitch than "New D&D!", or one that will reach way more people. It's not that I don't believe that there's not some person out there who's going to read the four-line sidebar in Time magazine's minor news items column and then decide to play again, but I'm not sure that that guy is necessarily a ton of guys.

I do think that later release dates are a lot worse for a lot of reasons, most significantly that while D&D still has about eight trillion times as much general brand recognition as the rest of the industry combined, its stranglehold on the mindspace of people already within the hobby has been gradually loosening for a while, and not having an active product certainly doesn't staunch that.

I don't think anyone is claiming the 40th Anniversary will dominate the news or bring in a ton of new people. But it will give D&D more visibility and mind share then it's had in years. Especially when table-top RPGs currently have near zero visibility with the general public in recent years. It will help D&D Next.

 

[Mercurius]

Another way to put that is that the 40th anniversary is a window of opportunity. It isn't a death knell of WotC doesn't take advantage of it, but it can help.

I think the death knell is more if they wait too late. I believe the last 4e physical product was in 2011 - and that was the last of them actively developing the game with the Player's Options books. 5e was announced in early 2012. To put off publication until 2015, would be 3-4 years of no product.

 

[Mark CMG]

I stand by the date I put forth soon after they announced 5E - 06/06/2014

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I'm just not seeing it. Anecdotally, I personally know exactly zero people who have ever been to GenCon, and I've done most of my gaming until recently in the midwest.

I also don't think many gamers are going to miss the memo about the new D&D. Heck, even if they are V:tR LARPers, someone is probably going to mention it.

I think the potential gains in releasing it at GenCon are far less than the gains in releasing it well-developed and refined, with limited need to errata and minimized design flaws.

 

[Mercurius]

I think the potential gains in releasing it at GenCon are far less than the gains in releasing it well-developed and refined, with limited need to errata and minimized design flaws.

Why do you think the two are mutually exclusive? As I said earlier, they could be formatting the books as we speak, compiling art and writing text. That's one side of what's likely going on. The other side is the final adjustments and refinements to the rules themselves. Once those are finalized, you add A to B, then do some serious editing and, voila, 5th edition is ready to go.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Why do you think the two are mutually exclusive? As I said earlier, they could be formatting the books as we speak, compiling art and writing text. That's one side of what's likely going on. The other side is the final adjustments and refinements to the rules themselves. Once those are finalized, you add A to B, then do some serious editing and, voila, 5th edition is ready to go.

It's an educated guess based on the things they've shown us so far. It seems to me that, based on the way the playtest has progressed, they have continued to make significant changes not only to all of the things they haven't shown us, but the fundamental things they are showing us for the entire length of the playtest. The pace of rules content solidifying has been extremely gradual. If it increases it is because either:

1. They achieve a firmly established foundation, and all additional content is peripheral (adding spells, feats, and subclasses).
2. They prematurely freeze game elements before they have naturally solidfied.

I think they can get the game out by June if they apply #2. I doubt that #1 can be achieved without at least another 3 1/2 months of internal development and testing. They just aren't far enough along yet. If they were, we wouldn't have just gotten a new skill system, wildshape wouldn't be in extreme flux, races wouldn't be slated for revisions, etc.

 

[Mercurius]

It's an educated guess based on the things they've shown us so far. It seems to me that, based on the way the playtest has progressed, they have continued to make significant changes not only to all of the things they haven't shown us, but the fundamental things they are showing us for the entire length of the playtest. The pace of rules content solidifying has been extremely gradual. If it increases it is because either:

1. They achieve a firmly established foundation, and all additional content is peripheral (adding spells, feats, and subclasses).
2. They prematurely freeze game elements before they have naturally solidfied.

I think they can get the game out by June if they apply #2. I doubt that #1 can be achieved without at least another 3 1/2 months of internal development and testing. They just aren't far enough along yet. If they were, we wouldn't have just gotten a new skill system, wildshape wouldn't be in extreme flux, races wouldn't be slated for revisions, etc.

I haven't been following the different playtest packets to make an informed guess, but one thought that came to mind is that what they've shared in each packet isn't necessarily indicative of where the core rules are at, but that they were offering different variations to try to come to a middle ground. In other words, maybe they've had the core rules, the math etc, in the background, and have offered different variations around those numbers to see what the response was.

Again, I don't know. I'm just guessing that they're a lot closer to "achieving a firmly established foundation" than you seem to think. And if, as I think is likely, they have people working on the layout of the physical products already, then they really could be fiddling with the rules up until a couple months before the release date. All they have to do is plug them into an already-written book.

 

[Echohawk]

We only need to look at the track record of D&D books to see that it's likely:
PHB 1e: June 1978
PHB 2e: Can't find a month anywhere, 1989
PHB 3e: August 10, 2000
PHB 3.5e: July 2003
PHB 4e: June 6, 2008

The PHB 2e was released in February 1989, so it's a bit of an exception to the general rule.

 

[Mercurius]

For whatever reason, WotC has deemed it best to release new editions in the June-August window. For what its worth, Pathfinder was also released in August, I believe (at GenCon?).

June - August seems, by far, the most likely range for release. If that's the case, it further supports the idea that we're talking 2014 and not 2015. I just can't see WotC going another whole year and a half before releasing 5E. Unless, of course, they have some kind of beta playtest product in the works.

We can spin our wheels all we want - and I'm admittedly the one who started this particular spin - but in the end, we just don't know.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

For whatever reason, WotC has deemed it best to release new editions in the June-August window. For what its worth, Pathfinder was also released in August, I believe (at GenCon?).

Yeah, it was at GenCon. They are always released in summer because of GenCon.