Here comes 5e.

[AxeMental]

There was nothing ever "wrong" or "broken" about the original rules (or AD&D for that matter), so why change them? It's a rhetorical question, of course. It's all about the Benjamins.

Rules for games like Chess, Life, Monopoly, Scrabble, etc. have remained relatively unchanged for a very long time, and they still sell and make profits for the companies that sell them. Ha$bro needs to just come out with one simple set of rules, sell them from department store shelves, and then just leave it alone for good.

Ditto to all of this, and of course thats been the question since the inception of 2E. Why create it if 1E was working fine? The answer was you can make more money selling rule books every 5 or less years to the same market stupid enough to buy it (that portion of the market that buys "new" regardless of cost or frequency or need).

There was hope that when HASBRO came on board they would end this self defeating business strategy started (perhaps even invented) by TSR (as its based on disenfranchising your target market every half decade). HASBRO exists of long term growth and stability of core games. 1E AD&D was that core game we hoped they would go back to. And if they had any since at all they would (hopefully more then less).

[Matthew]

I have had a bit of fun playing Heroes of Neverwinter on Face Book recently, and it occurs to me that actually a computer game like Baldur's Gate or something is by far the best way to bring in a new generation of gamers, especially if it is just labelled "Dungeons & Dragons", rather than subtitled with something to make it distinct. That would sell, I suspect, and if you released it in conjunction with a "fifth edition" core rules product utilising similar packaging they would drive one another. Still...

[foxroe]

Well that about sums it up, Matthew!

(Edit: I'm changing my sig.)

[ThirstyStirge]

Right then. Mouse-skulls and sexventure. Check. Got that, Mearls?



NOW PRESENTING DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 5.0:

LARPing for Accountants!

erm, or is that

Accounting for LARPers?

*head scratch*

[TRP]

Ten pages in two days. Impressive. Most impressive.

[tacojohn4547]

Ten pages in two days. Impressive. Most impressive.

That's what I was thinking. 10 pages of nerdgasm mixed with nerdrage.

[Juju EyeBall]

Ten pages in two days. Impressive. Most impressive.

That's what I was thinking. 10 pages of nerdgasm / nerdrage.

And nerdindifference.

[francisca]

As I said on FB, and G+: I'm 5etigued.

[WSmith]

For the record, I would play a game where you rolled mouse skulls.

[Stormcrow]

Mike Mearls, from the Forbes article:

Bringing all kinds of players under one tent isn’t easy when they want different things. To address that, Mearls says the new edition is being conceived of as a modular, flexible system, easily customized to individual preferences.

“Just like a player makes his character, the Dungeon Master can make his ruleset,” says Mearls. “He might say ‘I’m going to run a military campaign, it’s going to be a lot of fighting’… so he’d use the combat chapter, drop in miniatures rules, and include the martial arts optional rules.”

“You can have as little or as much customization as you want,” he says. “It’s about letting people find their own way to play.”

Idiot. The game has been played this way since 1974.

No it's not. This is a completely new, unrealized approach to gaming; never been tried before now. I think in a later article they may go into more detail about the concept of 'house rules'.

You're not being sarcastic, are you? Many games take a modular approach. GURPS, for instance, is built around this very concept. Paranoia XP goes out of its way to include three distinct play styles, covering the original concept, the classic crazy version, and the later zany slapstick version. Even AD&D Second Edition took this approach by letting you add various splatbooks to the basic rules, including the Player's Option series, which was all about modular rules.

This is not in any way a completely new, unrealized approaching to gaming.

[Random]

He was most definitely joking, Stormcrow.

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Indeed. Kramer's posts certainly triggered my sarcasm detectors!

[AxeMental]

So, if HASBRO/WOTC simply recreated 1E/OSRIC, filled it with art we would like (ie. something more classic) stuck 5E on the cover and printed 500,000 shipping them to every book store, what do you think would happen? Would it tank?

[SimperingToad]

I'm curious as to how they will handle not the difference in 'style', but rather in mechanics. Ascending vs. descending AC isn't really an issue, that's been handled already with no real difficulty, but what about saving throws? Earlier versions have it where the save was based on the cause of the save, where 3E for instance bases it on an appropriate type of resistance to the cause. And, how would ability score minimums/maximums be compared to unlimited scores?

All in all, I get a weird vibe that this will amount to some kind of mass conversion document, and the reason they pulled the PDFs was to 'clean up' the rules for each edition and make new releases with the 'grand unifying document' in mind.

Yeah, weird thought. That would take a TON of work.

[Matthew]

So, if HASBRO/WOTC simply recreated 1E/OSRIC, filled it with art we would like (ie. something more classic) stuck 5E on the cover and printed 500,000 shipping them to every book store, what do you think would happen? Would it tank?

Yeah, it would tank, and badly. Even a run of 50,000 books like that would have trouble, but you could probably shift 5,000 sight unseen.