D&D 5E The implications of Basic 5E: An adventure-based approach?

[Echohawk]

Did 4E ever actually have a time when it had hardcovers coming out that fast?

Yes. 2009, for example, had an average of 1¼ hardcovers per month:

January: Open Grave
February: Dungeon Delve
March: Player's Handbook 2
April: Arcane Power
May: Monster Manual 2
June: Eberron Player's Guide
July: Divine Power and Eberron Campaign Guide
August: Adventurer's Vault 2 and Dragon Magazine Annual
September: Dungeon Master's Guide 2 and Revenge of the Giants
October: Primal Power
November: Draconomicon 2
December: The Plane Below

 

[Thaumaturge]

I'm saying if they don't rush to put on 22 hardbacks in 18 months, they might have a chance to better playtest it.

Remember, a bad module can be fixed or forgotten. A bad rulebook lingers in the ruleset forever. If they release fewer rulebooks and spend more time ironing out kinks, we'll have a better ruleset as it begins to expand and mature.

And Mearls has mentioned he'd like to do open play tests for future books like they have for the core system. If they still want to do that, it will very much slow the process down, but should improve quality. It will at least improve the likelihood they deliver products players want.

Thaumaturge.

 

[Remathilis]

And Mearls has mentioned he'd like to do open play tests for future books like they have for the core system. If they still want to do that, it will very much slow the process down, but should improve quality. It will at least improve the likelihood they deliver products players want.

Thaumaturge.

Yet another good idea they stole borrowed from Paizo.

 

[Morrus]

Yet another good idea they stole borrowed from Paizo.

Paizo did not invent the idea.

 

[Remathilis]

Paizo did not invent the idea.

Well, no. But if it Makes 5e a better game...

 

[Bugleyman]

Yet another good idea they stole borrowed from Paizo.

Are you sure you want to ride the "look at what WotC borrowed from Paizo" train?

 

[Mark CMG]

The implications of Basic 5E: An adventure-based approach?

I think this kills any possibility of a full (or likely any) OGL.

 

[jsaving]

This gives a new take on how to get into D&D, which draws somewhat from the Paizo experience: Buying a full campaign adventure and having the (basic) rules thrown in.

WotC has obviously thought deeply about what lessons to draw from 3e's OGL and how best to use ancillary material as "advertising" for the core books. Doubtless there will be some who will say WotC is unnecessarily giving away their intellectual property, dooming 5e to subpar growth and then crippling WotC when 6e eventually comes along. But they'll be wrong, at least in my view -- this will strengthen the "network" of 5e players and thereby make everyone better off than they would otherwise be.

It would be even better if they released a full-fledged OGL/SRD along the lines of 3e, rather than what amounts to a "trial edition" of the 5e product. But even a trial edition shows much more openness than WotC has displayed in the 4e era, and is at least a modest step in the right direction.

And as far as "borrowing" from Paizo is concerned -- look, whether one likes them or not, Paizo took the fundamental building blocks of Ryan Dancey's 3e insights and used them to displace the strongest brand in the industry. The concern would be if WotC continued to stick its head in the sand and not take any pages from Paizo's playbook...

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

WotC has obviously thought deeply about what lessons to draw from 3e's OGL and how best to use ancillary material as "advertising" for the core books. Doubtless there will be some who will say WotC is unnecessarily giving away their intellectual property, dooming 5e to subpar growth and then crippling WotC when 6e eventually comes along. But they'll be wrong, at least in my view -- this will strengthen the "network" of 5e players and thereby make everyone better off than they would otherwise be.

It would be even better if they released a full-fledged OGL/SRD along the lines of 3e, rather than what amounts to a "trial edition" of the 5e product. But even a trial edition shows much more openness than WotC has displayed in the 4e era, and is at least a modest step in the right direction.

And as far as "borrowing" from Paizo is concerned -- look, whether one likes them or not, Paizo took the fundamental building blocks of Ryan Dancey's 3e insights and used them to displace the strongest brand in the industry. The concern would be if WotC continued to stick its head in the sand and not take any pages from Paizo's playbook...

I don't know if there will be an OGL or not, but the Basic D&D rules and an SRD serve different purposes, and could comfortably exist in tandem.

Basic D&D is a entry point to the game. Not a demo or a trial, but a D&D 101 course that all other products build upon. The target user is someone who has never played before.

An SRD, on the other hand, is a specification. The target user for an SRD is a professional game developer. It would be the absolute worst thing you could give a new player.

 

[Blackbrrd]

And Mearls has mentioned he'd like to do open play tests for future books like they have for the core system. If they still want to do that, it will very much slow the process down, but should improve quality. It will at least improve the likelihood they deliver products players want.

Sounds like they will actually keep their promise and reign in the splat-book publishing. I don't mind splat books if you get 1-2 a year, that will probably be a welcome addition to the game.

The interesting part is how they are going to go about with an adventure based approach. Do they just hire Kobold Press, Paizo, Goodman Games etc to make the adventures or will they make it easier to publish your own non-wotc controlled adventures? Enworld did a one-off, To Slay a Dragon, and it seems it would require relatively little work to get it into perfect 5e module.

Personally, I would prefer to get more short* modules so that I could mix and match as I wanted. This way I could create a pseudo-sandbox. I don't like to run adventure paths because they often feel railroady and I feel constrained as a DM (and as a player if I am playing in one).

*32 to 64 pages is pretty nice. It makes it much easier to just pick up a module with minimal preparation time and start a campaign.