Here comes 5e.

[tacojohn4547]

D&D Next

Are they really calling it that? Because that's an absolutely terrible name.

It is the name they doing the playtest under.

You can see this coming...Captain Obvious to the rescue...

and the next edition would be:

D&D Next.next

or

D&D Next.2

etc etc

[blackprinceofmuncie]

So they had the class design seminar at DDXP today. You can read the ENWorld summary here.

It sounds like feats will be an integral part of the core game and "added complexity" will come from deviating from the pre-established feat path for your character to add alternate options. Sorry, I don't think "your character has 8 feats that have all been pre-selected for you" is equivalent to "your character has no feats".

[Juju EyeBall]

So they had the class design seminar at DDXP today. You can read the ENWorld summary here.

It sounds like feats will be an integral part of the core game and "added complexity" will come from deviating from the pre-established feat path for your character to add alternate options. Sorry, I don't think "your character has 8 feats that have all been pre-selected for you" is equivalent to "your character has no feats".

Halflings will still have hairy feats, though.

[Ragnorakk]

I don't know about a well-done D&D5 blowing the small-press publishers out of the water. I don't really buy much rpg product at all, but when I do it is usually based on my opinion of the author(s), or after looking at the near obiquitious art-free PDF. Maybe I'm being too broadly optimistic about people wanting quality vs. a brand-name, but it the writing and design is crap, their product wont sell well. The best-case strength of a successful D&D brand in my opinion is that it might increase the "size of the pie" - i don't think that they can realistically think that they are going to grab all of the pie for themselves.

I think it'd be smart to offer supplements for 4e feel in the form of boardgames. People have apparently reacted well to those. Hell, I'd love to play Dungeon! again, so do some Oe boardgames!

[Flambeaux]

Them: I don't know, it just seems like a lot of hassle; I don't like Ebay and I hate printing big docs because ink is $30 a cartridge and then you've got a bunch of loose leaf paper to put into a notebook. It sounds like fun but I think I'll pass.

In my experience, I have not had this problem. But I usually start with, "No book needed, man."

Even then, most of the guys I've talked with who are excited about Skyrim or the latest CRPG du jour aren't interested in D&D under any name.

D&D doesn't offer them anything they are interested in. One of my bosses played in college. He asked me about S&W and OSRIC after he saw me wearing my t-shirts around the office. I told it was the D&D he played in college under another name. He said, "Cool. I prefer hockey now, but it's cool that someone's still playing that."

I work surrouned by more than 50 computer geeks, 2/3 of whom were gamers at one time or another. Excluding myself, all but one prefer computer games to tabletop games. This is an absolute preference; i.e. they have zero interest in a tabletop RPG under any name.

So, and this might just be me, I don't think it matters what the game is called. Most people have less-than-zero interest in our preferred hobby. This is bad news if you're trying to play face to face or make a living publishing RPG-related materials.

It's not the brand name that's the problem. And "reclaiming" the brand name wouldn't change anything, even if it was possible.

[TRP]

Dan, I’m with you. I remember 3.0 being billed as a return to 1e, and 4.0 being billed as a return to OD&D, and Essentials being billed as a return to Mentzer. The way things are looking, 5e will suck, and in a few years, so will 6e.

By regression, D&D Next will obviously be a return to Chainmail.

[Guy Fullerton]

So they had the class design seminar at DDXP today. You can read the ENWorld summary here.

Wow. Ugly, ugly stuff. So many of those tidbits are total deal-breakers.

[francisca]

and the next edition would be:

D&D Next.next

or

D&D Next.2

etc etc

My prediction: there won't be a 6e. I honestly think this is the last dice/paper/pencil version of D&D, whether it is a rousing success or not.

There will be D&D video games and MMOs, of course, and probably D&D branded boardgames, but I think this is the end of the line for tabletop D&D.

Wow. Ugly, ugly stuff. So many of those tidbits are total deal-breakers.

Yeah, I didn't care for what I read, either.

[rogatny]

My initial reaction to that seminar is, "Good Lord! The PHB is going to be 3,000 pages long!!!"

[Juju EyeBall]

I got to "I like to be able to plan my characters feats over 20 levels..." and I threw up.

[Chainsaw]

I got to "I like to be able to plan my characters feats over 20 levels..." and I threw up.

You sumass, the whoel character arc requires 30 levels.

[Matthew]

Not seeing much to change my opinion from page twelve here. Same old marketing trick. Willing to be surprised, of course, but I have no problem discerning between "D&D" and "AD&D" when advertising a game, so hopefully they will refrain from adopting that trademark for some non-version of the game in the future.

[T. Foster]

If WotC intended their re-release of 1E to interest me in 5E it has totally backfired - since the news of that release my interest in all things 5E has been absolutely zero. There's only one thing I want from them - to make the limited edition re-release of the 1E rulebooks into a non-limited edition evergreen release. If they do that, whatever they do with 5E will be of no interest to me, because I'll have gotten what I wanted. And if they don't do that, whatever they do with 5E will still be of no interest to me, because I'll know that they could give me what I want and have deliberately chosen not to.

[James Maliszewski]

So they had the class design seminar at DDXP today. You can read the ENWorld summary here.

Thanks for that link. What a mess.

[Chainsaw]

In a totally shocking development, 5E (er, NEXT) sucks vs actual D&D.