D&D 5th Edition has been announced. Lots of info here.
Looks like they’re crowdsourcing the rules this time (last time they released an edition, they managed to upset a lot of people with sweeping changes).
(Gah - sorry. Could someone move this to the Game Room?)
Done! If this happens again, please go ahead and report the post - that way we’re sure to see it.
I reported the post for a forum move.
When I heard about 5th Edition, I laughed so hard. Schadenfreude at all the 4th Edition fans who told me (a 3e fan) that I had nothing to complain about because “they can’t take your books away!”
What makes them come out with new editions? I thought the 2nd edition was fine.
I suspect that is vastly overstating the situation. If player feedback results in any radical changes from their original vision, I’ll eat my head.
When was the last time you bought a 2nd edition Player’s Handbook? 
Remember, they’re in the book-selling business, not the “gee, isn’t it nice that people are still using our book 30 years later” business.
In our email chain for my group, I noted that we’ve been playing just over three years (honestly think it’s closer to 4) and our GM noted we’ve played through the lifecycle of an entire edition (To be fair, we only play once a month). We started the War of the Burning Sky with 3.5, switched over to 4e at 8th level, and we’re now at 24th level and in the middle of the 9th module of a 12 module adventure path.
Whether or not we switch to 5e will depend a lot on what it looks like.
My biggest fear is that the economics of the game get less and less realistic as they go, and I don’t have much faith in anyone reigning that back in. Of course, that’s me as a GM/World Builder saying that.
So do the rules really improve the game or is it just a cash grab?
I’m still used to the idea that Armor Class should be low, not high.
With 4E, they tried to get out of the book-selling business, and into the ‘RPG-as-a-service’ business - a D&D Insider membership, for $10 a month, gave you access to their character builder and online compendium, with which you didn’t need any books. Oops.
Reportedly, their goal with 5th edition is to allow for all styles of play - to pull back in the 3E fans who switched over to Pathfinder when 4E came out. I think they could pull it off - with a ‘Basic’ D&D that plays like the breezy tactical game 4E wants to be, and an ‘Advanced’ D&D that gives you all the crunch and choices of 3E, built on the same foundation. But I won’t hold my breath.
Because it’s easier to rehash the rules again than to write interesting new world/adventure material that people will actually buy? Because they can sell core rulebooks at a higher price than modules? Don’t get me wrong–pretty much anything they do to the 4th Edition rules will probably be an improvement. That doesn’t mean the decision is motivated by a desire for better rules, though. Wizards of the Coast grew up selling cardboard crack, and that’s the model they want to use for everything.
Doesn’t matter to me. I’ll stick with Pathfinder.
I started with 2E, and I think the game peaked (so far) with the Revised 3rd Edition. 3E eliminated several of the old edition’s oddities - like : “humans can dual-class, demihumans can multi-class, but the opposite CAN NEVER HAPPEN” - in favor of a consistent and modular system. All non-damage rolls use a d20, and you add modifiers to it, and the higher you roll, the better. You can take class levels ‘a la carte’ - so if your 13th level fighter decides to study arcana, he can add a level of wizard next time.
It felt more ‘realistic’ - in the sense of being consistent and reasonable within its own context. And yet, 3E managed the trick of maintaining a good measure of reverse compatibility - any character you have in 2nd, you can build a reasonable copy of in 3rd.
So with 1E and 2E, I’d use the analogy that the game is like an action figure line, but the size and form of the action figures aren’t really consistent with one another. The line has lots of support for flavor - tons of campaign worlds, kits, specialty priests, rules for non-combat skills… Your character is unique, and as long as you care more about the story than game balance, it’s a fun ride.
4E, I’d compare to a standardized action figure line. Your character comes with lots of cool accessories, and everything’s balanced to work with each other - but the figures have relatively little background flavor, and that feeling of being unique is subdued. No non-combat skills. Three campaign worlds. There are different ‘builds’ for the classes, but honestly, most classes feel pretty similar to me, especially within the same combat role.
3E is a Lego set. You can build whatever figure you want. With whatever accessories you want. And the rules are there to support the story/flavor side, too. It’s the best of all worlds. IMO.
Because that’s what TSR did, and it’s not a sustainable business model. It’s hard to profit from when people people are buying small quantities of each of a large number of things you make, rather than large quantities each of a small number of things you make.
A rule book gets bought by everybody who plays. An adventure gets bought only by the DM, and he isn’t going to buy them all. So you get ever decreasing sales figures combined with high costs producing all these hundreds of adventures so that people can choose which 2-3 of them they’re going to buy.
The other option is to close up shop and stop producing altogether. And that’s a pretty bad business plan.
There will be a Pathfinder 2 in a few years, I betcha.
It depends on whom you ask, and in most cases there will be some things people like about the new edition and some things people don’t like.
Personally, I like 3E (and/or Pathfinder, which is a close relative of 3E) the best, but they all have their merits and there are staunch defenders of each edition of the game.
No bet.
I know that the company’s reason to release new editions is to sell the books, but that’s not really relevant to me, because I’m not the company. What’s relevant to me is how good the game is.
I see three fundamental changes from 2nd edition to 3.x:
1: They cleaned up a lot of stuff that was just messy. In the end, rolling a d20, adding your attack bonus, and comparing to the target’s armor, really isn’t any different from rolling a d20, adding the opponent’s armor, and comparing to your THAC0, but it’s a lot easier and smoother to keep track of “high rolls and high stats are always good”. I also include the changes to multiclassing here: Why have two completely different systems, segregated by race, and both overly-complicated, when one simple system will do?
2: They made the rules more modular, making it easier to expand them. It used to be, when you had only certain races being allowed to take certain classes, for instance, that every time a supplement introduced a new race, it had to specify what classes that race could take, and vice-versa for a supplement introducing a new class, but what about a race from Supplement A with a class from Supplement B? In 3rd edition, they either removed these restrictions, or (mostly) made it clear what the restrictions were based on, so you could extend to other new material.
3: 3rd edition expanded the rules to cover a lot more situations than 2nd did. In 2nd edition, if you wanted to do something but the rules didn’t say how, you had to just fly by the seat of the DM’s pants to see how it worked. Now, admittedly, this can be a very good system with a skilled DM, but then again, the DMs skilled enough to make it work in 2nd edition are also the ones skilled enough to know when to override the rules in 3rd edition. And on the flip side, a DM who isn’t that skilled can get a lot more help from the rules, in 3rd edition. So I view this as a net positive, too.
I disliked the lack of uniqueness for the sake of balance they added in 4E. It was like a rule system they expected Bioware to make into NWN3, even though most of the old RPG-System-To-Video-Game companies began using proprietary rules and engines by that point. The thing is that 3E was BROKEN, and that made it FUN. Yeah, a munchkin can outshine everyone, but outside of video games it doesn’t matter. Any reasonable GM can find a reason or way to may every player feel useful, or fudge the rules (“okay, you can reroll your stats… all 3s is not okay”) to make sure one player isn’t useless or overbearing. Video games make you save an reload, but I’ve had games that almost ended in the first 5 minutes because of a series of absurdly unlucky rolls involving encounter level 1/4 monsters – and while it’s annoying a GM is what separates it from a video game in that they can improvise a reason that you come out alive (if with your pride hurt).
Edit: Also, broken rule systems get wonders like PunPun the kobold, you can’t get THAT with anything resembling balance.
My gaming group calls 4E “Diablo & Dice”.
True. PunPun looks nothing like me at all. My scales are shinier.
I’ve been playing 3.5 Edition for about 6 months (as my first tabletop RPG experience) and may see if my group wants to give the new edition a look.
I think CandidGamera’s comparison to a Lego set is spot on; there are so many pieces in 3rd/3.5 that it feels like you can do almost anything and that’s part of what I love about the game. There’s just so much material out there that I have trouble imagining a new edition could measure up without finding some way to be highly backward compatible (the very idea of which is a bit headache inducing).
Ironically, I still play 1st Ed. I’ve never seen the need to move to any later editions but the last from what I did see of it was pretty pathetic. At least 2nd & 3rd made some interesting changes, just not changes I cared to buy into. 4 & 4.5 were pretty crappy money grabs only.
I didn’t realize people still played D&D. Hasn’t MMOs killed D&D the way video killed the radio star?
A computer is no replacement for a breathing and living GM, and a GM can come up with new content faster than a MMO. You can personalize the story and plot to each character and make up new things on the fly.
The interaction is more social - I find myself playing less computer games and more board games, just for the interaction.
That said, I was never a fan of D&D, preferring FATE, Dragon Warriors or Dragon Age. D&D4E doesn’t make sense to me for lots of reasons, such as a warlord being able to push back a gigantic dragon, just because the ability says so and if you shapeshift into a flying creature, you can only fly and attack etc. All in the name of balancing.
I think I want something like D&D 3.5E but without classes being too overpowered, especially the spellcasters. They can also rework the move/standard action into something more understandable and attacks of opportunities. I also wish the system would emphasis skills and innate abilities instead of requiring characters to have lots and lots of items to be effective.
However, I probably have just described many microlite D20 systems with the above paragraph - such as Blue Rose, True20, Dragon Age etc.