WotC Seeks Unity with a New Edition

[howandwhy99]

Oddly I made a post about designing modular game systems only a few days ago.

 

[BrooklynKnight]

From the Wizards new D&D blog:

Mike Mearls, Team Lead
Greg Bilsland, Team Producer
Monte Cook, Design Team Lead
Bruce Cordell, Designer
Robert J. Schwalb, Designer
Jeremy Crawford, Development Team Lead
Tom LaPille, Developer
Rodney Thompson, Developer
Miranda Horner, Editor

No Sean K Reynolds? Fail!

The rest of the list is pretty cool though...

 

[Dragonblade]

To be honest, the statement you make in the sentence immediately preceding this one does, too:
As a business / business model - I'll buy that. As a game? That smacks of the same kind of "you're Doing It Wrong" arrogance that turned folks sour around the launch of 4e in the first place. For WotC's sake, and D&D as an entity, it's probably a good thing that you're no longer involved if that's how you truly feel.

I'm not attacking you personally here. I gather that you had a rough time with them, so your bitterness is understandable. That said, I don't think your assessment of 4e is all that fair.

Agreed. 4e is a fantastic game when evaluated on its own merits without all the baggage that comes with being an edition of D&D.

Its game design is superb and its my favorite edition to play by far. Though, I remain cautiously optimistic that 5e won't throw the baby out with the bathwater in its attempt to woo back prior edition players.

 

[Kzach]

Not just you. It's busted as heck for me too.

News just in: 5e broke EN World!

 

[Scott_Rouse]

To be honest, the statement you make in the sentence immediately preceding this one does, too:
As a business / business model - I'll buy that. As a game? That smacks of the same kind of "you're Doing It Wrong" arrogance that turned folks sour around the launch of 4e in the first place. For WotC's sake, and D&D as an entity, it's probably a good thing that you're no longer involved if that's how you truly feel.

I'm not attacking you personally here. I gather that you had a rough time with them, so your bitterness is understandable. That said, I don't think your assessment of 4e is all that fair.

My statement about the game being broken is more a commentary on the environment in which 4e currently lives (play & business). The audience is fractured among a few D&D systems, the GSL did not accomplish what it was supposed to do (create broad 3pp support for the system), the designs has evolved over time (class changes, monsters etc), Essentials was/is confusing to new(er) players and veterans. If 4e was healthy we would not be talking about 5e right now.

And for the record, I am not bitter AT ALL. I enjoyed my time at WotC, I am proud of what I accomplished there, I still have a ton of friends that work on D&D and I hope 5e is a smashing success. To add to that, I am a pretty big 4e fanboi. It is my favorite D&D rules system and I wish I had more time to play in a campaign.

 

[Roland55]

Thanks

BTW is the thread looking goofy for anyone else? Everything from #125 is posting like a multi-quote under Roland55

I see it, also.

For once, probably NOT my doing ... I simply don't have that kind of "power."

Now, if we're talking quantum physics ... but, no.

 

[Scott_Rouse]

Agreed. But it's more than that. The D&D team has undergone such a continual shift that it looks like there's absolutely no consistent leadership and vision. Until there is such a person (who actually has backing from the company) and vision, it's all a crap-shoot.

It's hard for me to have any faith in such a company. Obviously, for everyone else, YMMV.

Beyond Gary Gygax & Bill Slavicesk who has been at the design helm of the game for more than 1 edition (8-10 years)?

 

[Morrus]

Beyond Gary Gygax & Bill Slavicesk who has been at the design helm of the game for more than 1 edition (8-10 years)?

The question, presumably, should be who has been at the design helm of a game for more than 1 edition (8-10 years)?

 

[catsclaw227]

Paizo is not going to be beat at their own game. The adventure path paradigm is their bread and butter because it naturally works with a subscription based book selling model - very lucrative for a small bookseller. Not to mention they have been cultivating authors and running contests to find more. It is every bit as much if not more important to their success IMO as the updated ruleset with a legacy audience.

This is a good point about the success of the AP sales model. It worked for Paizo during the mid-late 3.5 era because it was still part of a magazine subscription.

What Wizard could do is go with alternate adventure designs until they find something that hits. Traditional modules can be every bit as complex as any finely written novel, but they are simply a different beast. Imagine a basic module-sized situation (an adventure territory) and tie all of the piece together in their relations. Then spin out a potential future of dynamic change within it. The key is, let the players change the world and the future timeline and enable DMs to construct alternate ones easily on the fly and between sessions without ignoring the starting relationships. - Well, that's one way. But just because adventures may not be selling or be seen as a weakness now doesn't mean they don't support play or cannot be reinvigorated.

This is sorta like what they wanted to do with Chaos Scar. I think it's a nice idea, but I do really want WoTC to do some kind of adventure pack, whether loosely detailed regions or highly detailed cities or even traditional adventures. TSR did adventures and they were pretty well sold (if I recall correctly)

Actually, I think this is where an OGL/GSL could be beneficial for indie press - adventures and/or adventure series' geared towards different settings or setting types. I loved some of the 3.x campaign regions, especially those that took an exception based design methodology and spun the rules a bit on it's ears.

What I DIDN'T like were the super crunchy 3PP books of the 3.x era. There were some exceptions, but mostly they were unbalanced and geez... did I really need to see the 11th "Complete Book of Drow" with a not-so-new spin on drow mechanics?

IMHO, the worst 3PP offenders of the 3.x era were the crunchy books written by amateurs and semi-professionals that didn't quite understand the ruleset. The best books were the colorful campaign settings, adventure areas, adventure series.

As I said, there were some exceptions, I generally trusted things from Green Ronin, Malhavoc and Necromancer Games, but how cool were books like Seven Cities from Penumbra, Portals and Planes by FFG, and Lost City of Barakus from Necro?

 

[Walking Dad]

So, I took the time to read the whole thread...

This is why I'm not that optimistic for the 5e

- Monte articles
Disliked nearly all of them. And the polls were mostly heavily weighted.

- Face-to-Face focus
I'm a PbP player. There are some things that work great on the table and not in PbP (like interrupts).

- Open playtest (like pathfinder)
I hat like it looks that they try to copy the Paizo success. First making a familiar based wizard class and calling it "witch". Then an "open playtest" (still thinking Pathfinder Alpha had some great ideas that were destroyed by this).
And they make "mistakes". Their witche's familiar is less a focus of this class and their playtest is under NDA protection.

- 4e failure
<acronym title="Wizards of the Coast">"WotC</acronym> has acknowledged publicly that they made mistakes in the buildup to <acronym title="D&D 4th Edition">4E</acronym>, and has learned important lessons from that period."
I really like 4e.

----

And now some comments on previous posts:

remeber there is a right and wrong way to do it. In sales we ask people what they want, then ignore 90% of there answer and take the last 10% and twist and interpirt it to give our first suggestion, then we gage there responce to maek a second suggestion.

Makes me wonder how Paizo did this...

Bah! The OGL was just a poor excuse for small time companies to make money off the backs of a real game system. 90% of the 3rd party stuff was poorly conceived, utterly unbalanced, overpriced crap.

Feel free to have an OGL again WotC, but this is one consumer who won't touch it.

But the OGL gave us Mutants & Masterminds, Spy-/Fantasycraft, Iron Heroes and Pathfinder.

Not a bad legacy.

...

UNLESS, you get a license from Paizo to integrate the Pathfinder system in whatever offering you come up with. Then we'll talk.

The already have the license...

it is calld "OGL".

Dunno, most of the ones I wanted to see gone are already gone. I'm fine with the above 5e core team, though it could be greatly improved by adding a few more names.

Maybe he thought of some people in the Hasbro management...

...

People who play 4E are still going to have support for their game. Who are they supposed to be unifying with?

How, without something like an OGL or Hasbro selling the rights for the 4e system?