What will influence 5E during its development?

[Derren]

It is pretty normal that different medias influence each other, eithder directly by people judging the interest of people in certain things or indirectly by influencing the developers who then, unkknowingly, bring some of that experience into the design process.

So with the development of 5E going on, what do you think will influence its direction?

Movies

I am not much up to date concerning movies, so I can't write much here. I know that there will be a new Hobbit movie next year, but I don't think it will have much influence in 5E as it practically is "just another" LOTR movie.

Star Trek had a big revival, but I am not sure that it will have any influence either as WotC tried to do exactly that with 4E already.

Other than that it seemed to me that in recent past the "straight action movie" was a bit on the decline (Michael Bay etc.)

Books

Not sure if those will still have much of an influence and if any, then only a small one.
I also don't know much about what great books have come out recently. I certainly hope not that vampires will become playable races in 5E because of a certain book series I don't want to mention by name...

Video Games

The influence of Video Games will likely be rather big as they and PnP basically compete in the same field (make believe entertainment).
While in the beginning of Video games D&D influenced them, video games are now such a big industry with such short turnover cycles that it is only logical that the 5E designers would look at the success of video games to see what the youth of today wants in their games.

When talking about video games, one simply has to mention the huge success of Call of Duty, heavily scripted yet strongly linear action.

Other than that, there were several big RPG releases.
First there is the recent Skyrim. A open world game widely successful open world RPG, so sucessfull that even other game designers now openly say that they will "aggressivly copy" parts of it. This is especially interesting as "open world" was pretty much dead before Skyrim and now we have not only Skyrim with open World Gaming but also Batman AC and several smaller games.

Dragon Age 2 is interesting as it is very similar to D&D, in more ways than one.
Dragon Age 1 was very D&D like in all but the name. Dragon Age 2 was a big step away from the first part. It was made mure streamlined and much more action orientated. It also had a very short development cycle, wave combat and reused levels. It still has a more or less loyal following, but sales and review wise it is far behind DA1.
One could argue that it is similar to what happened with 4E. If you agree then it will be interesting to see how Bioware handles this situation with Dragon Age 3.

On the MMO front WoW finally shows signs of decline (at least that what critics say) and we have another WoW wannabe killer. This time with a strong license (Star Wars) and an interesting concept.
Every class has its own story which can (should/must) be played solo and generally solo play is heavily supported for an MMO with everyone having AI controlled companions.
The classes themselves can all cover two roles most of the time, depending on skilling and specialization.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

WoW's "decline" still has it above 10 million subscribers, more than five times the size of any other Western MMO. It'll be around as a dominant player for years to come.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is interesting, but lots of MMOs look great in their first month -- Conan and Aion especially spring to mind -- and crash and burn in the first six weeks. SWTOR has a very good developer, but the game's strengths are all things either coming from their single-player RPG experience or lifted directly from (pre-Cataclysm expansion) WoW. It remains to be seen how the game will play out when most players have reached the level cap, which hasn't happened yet.

 

[Umbran]

I think you'll see few directly identifiable influences (like, "this power if lifted directly from this one source" stuff). Especially because many of the things folks claim are specific influences, aren't. Many supposed WoWisms appear in primitive form before WoW, for example, and the folks they have for design are old enough to have played those older games, too.

Same goes for media influences - new media borrows from old. What you are tempted to see as influence of recent media may well be more a trope that appears in media since the 1960s.

I'd expect influences to be more generalized than specific - taking influences seen in many different sources, and seen to work well in those sources, and incorporating them. I think both Mearls and Monte are types to think broadly, rather than limit themselves by recent influences.

 

[Rechan]

What will influence 5e's development?

Alcohol. Lots and lots of alochol. And likely cheetos.

 

[kmdietri]

I could see Skyrim having an influence, depending on how successful it is.

 

[cattoy]

more than anything else?

Pathfinder kicking 4e in the junk.

 

[Jhaelen]

I could see Skyrim having an influence, depending on how successful it is.

That's extremely doubtful, no matter how successful it is because it's a single player and single character game. So, the setup is too different from a typical party-based pen & paper rpg that is supposed to be played by multiple players.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

That's extremely doubtful, no matter how successful it is because it's a single player and single character game. So, the setup is too different from a typical party-based pen & paper rpg that is supposed to be played by multiple players.

Skyrim's biggest influence, I suspect, will be the same as Kingmaker's: Open world, hex-crawling, free-form play has an audience -- a large and passionate one. That's something that WotC hasn't given first-party support to since they purchased D&D.

At the very least, I expect to see at least few more pages in the 5E DMG about that style of campaign play and, if WotC is smart, something Wilderlands-inspired in their official setting materials.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I think a strong influence to 5E's development will be how easy it is to sell and support it on DDI. I hate the idea, but that is how things are going, for sure.

 

[howandwhy99]

Modularity seems to be a buzzword. I'd expect more published works to be optional for a Mega-Game as well as playable as stand alone games, if not always as an RPG.

Current cultural fashions will have some influence too. Whether this be retro D&D iconography, LARP and Cosplay compatibility, computer game cross overs (maybe were we track our game with a program or online), card and toy sales - with an eye on what toys are selling today, and narrative ideologies like instilling mood, understanding pacing, rising action, and the like.

5E may include some commercially licensed products like Star Wars. Hiring or contracting with accomplished writers could allow for new settings and/or games. With the advent of modular design it may be viable again to publish alternate games from D&D, but then include means to tie them into a D&D core game.

Art is a very important element of game design IMO and I'd expect to see a different direction. How different may be real question though. 3E had a different style than 4E artistically. 5E may embrace modular artistic styles, but then I don't know how wedded they are to overarching brand identity. Still, I like to see a way out of such. There are enough different artistic styles out there to satisfy by-product or by-product-line customization.