WotC says, "Baby, come back! You know I didn't mean it!"

[Brian]

Article here:

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120109

My takeaway is the subject line; WotC isn't declaring 4e a failure because they brought in new blood.  But they recognize Pathfinder taking away the classical playerbase as a sign that they screwed up (or that their design changes were just a bit too much for some of the crowd).  Now they're reaching out and asking players what they want to see in 5e.

My suspicion is that they'll get a lot of good feedback, but not shift the game much towards Pathfinder as opposed to the relatively well balanced (if uninteresting, to me) system they've come up with.

Thoughts?

[Jon]

My suspicion is that the grognards will come out to play, and WotC will find themselves forced to choose between listening to their "fans" who want all the bad old things from 3.5E or 2E or whatever, or ignore the "fan input" and be seen as insensitive to their player base.

Or, as the Something Awful goons labeled it, "Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition: Whoever Wins, We Lose".

[Brian]

Jon, that's ... kind of potentially offensive to people who still enjoy those systems.  Fans of D&D are fans of D&D, not "fans" because they like a different version number.  The article seemed to me to be specifically about WotC trying to mend bridges and repair things.

I realize it's easy to point at the effort and say, "Well, this is just going to fail!" but isn't that (at this point) somewhat premature?

More optimistically, from my PoV:

It'd be hard for them to screw up worse than they did by creating 4e in the first place.

[VySaika]

I'll certainly check out 5e when it comes out, despite the fact that I'll probably never play it(not saying I'd be unwilling to, just that I'd likely have no opportunity to. My wife doesn't like learning new systems).

[Jon]

Jon, that's ... kind of potentially offensive to people who still enjoy those systems.

That's not what I meant... I think even if you enjoy a particular edition of D&D, you can acknowledge there are parts of the system that are, at best, sub-par. For example, 4E is my favorite system, yet it's obvious that it's much weaker than 3.5E when it comes to having rules for non-combat things. I'm talking about folks coming out of the woodwork to say "Intuit Direction should never have been cut in 3.5E; bring it back!"

It'd be hard for them to screw up worse than they did by creating 4e in the first place.

Pot, kettle.

[Anastasia]

5th edition will get a look from me. I'll hop on the 'they can't screw it up worse than 4e' train.

[Anastasia]

My suspicion is that the grognards will come out to play, and WotC will find themselves forced to choose between listening to their "fans" who want all the bad old things from 3.5E or 2E or whatever, or ignore the "fan input" and be seen as insensitive to their player base.

Or, as the Something Awful goons labeled it, "Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition: Whoever Wins, We Lose".

See, this I object to. If the fans want something, it makes sense for the company to give it to 'em. No matter what you think about 4th edition, it splintered the fanbase and given Paizo a serious lifeline. They'd be fools not to try and mend that rift.

[Jon]

See, this I object to. If the fans want something, it makes sense for the company to give it to 'em. No matter what you think about 4th edition, it's splintered the fanbase and given Paizo a serious lifeline. They'd be fools not to try and mend that rift.

Indeed, but in any business, there's some customers it's not worth the effort to try to serve. In a business like RPGs, there's a lot more of those than you'd find in, say, investment banking. I certainly agree WotC needs to try to mend the rift, but I'm not optimistic they'll do it properly.

[Anastasia]

Indeed, but in any business, there's some customers it's not worth the effort to try to serve.

Diplomacy check, roll 1d20....1. Failure. I like how you're implying that people who want things from earlier editions aren't worth trying to serve.

[Brian]

That's my thought.

It'd be hard for them to screw up worse than they did by creating 4e in the first place.

Pot, kettle.

Yeah, that was intentional.  You came into a thread and decided, "From reply #1, I'm going to be insulting to people who don't like what I did."  I even disclaimed that it was specifically from my PoV instead of leaving it a blanket statement that could be considered pretty rude/derisive towards people who had different opinions.

I guess I'm not allowed to respond in kind?  Well, I'll keep that in mind for the future. :|

I didn't enjoy the 4e changes at all.  They changed the system too much and it felt alien to me.  I was willing to give it a shot, but local gaming group politics kind of destroyed that before it got off the ground.  Can't play it single-player, really.

Secondly, lets go on the topic of 'bad old things'.  I think those were the second edition, significantly more Gygaxian tables where things just went crazy all over the place, and a roll of 00 was almost always inevitably 'GM's choice'.  Come on ... if I wanted to make the choice, I wouldn't have rolled in the first place!

There are issues and flaws with the old system, but I think it's better to call them the sacred calves of the D&D universe -- things that escape really good, sensible balance mechanics because they're 'staples of D&D'.  Things like Polymorph, which actually has received a lot of refinement over the years.

If you want to look at specifics--  Let's do that, instead of just implying them.  We got a whole discussion thread, here. :)

[Jon]

Indeed, but in any business, there's some customers it's not worth the effort to try to serve.

Diplomacy check, roll 1d20....1. Failure. I like how you're implying that people who want things from earlier editions aren't worth trying to serve.

That wasn't my intent, and I'd thought I'd specifically communicated that. I guess I didn't. Sorry.

I'll stay out of this thread from here on.

[VySaika]

So, to drag this back onto a less antagonistic topic, I am interested to hear if anyone here has anything in particular they do hope is added to 5e?

The one thing that will really get my attention is if they move a bit back from the "you have to have minis and a map to play" style of 4e. I like minis, I like maps, I play with them when I can. But I can't wrap my head around how anyone plays 4e online without some kind of mapping program that, for me at least, is way more effort to use then it's worth. I game both irl and online, and thusly appriciate a system that lets me do both with equal ease. That...probably qualifies as something from 3.5 that I want to return rather then something new, but it's still one of my biggest concerns.

[Brian]

Oooh, good point; yes, I'd like to see more 'easy to use for online play' changes in 5e, too.

[Anastasia]

So, to drag this back onto a less antagonistic topic, I am interested to hear if anyone here has anything in particular they do hope is added to 5e?

A more segmented approach to D&D. They mention a modular approach to gaming and I think that's the best thing they can do here. Start with a light, simple base and make everything else optional, mix and match rules. 2nd edition did that to a larger degree, and while it was of middling effectiveness there, I think this is the best track they can take now. A streamlined core game and all the complex options as opt-in rules to make the harder-core players happy.

[VySaika]

Interesting. It's rare that I hear a call for "smaller core, more splat", it's usually the other way around. One of the biggest complaints I see about 3.x was the whole "weighed down by too many splatbooks" thing.