It sounds like they've got the basics of the system already figured out since they did a playtest for people in the industry/media. I would imagine it's still going to be a bitch trying to filter out the good input from the ridiculous but it does seem like they've already got a foundation in mind. A strong hand on the rudder is going to be important here to avoid pleasing nobody by trying to please everybody.
Things that will instantly and immediately turn me off to any future edition of D&D:
1) Vancian power systems
2) deck-based power systems
The former just doesn't scale adequately. It's theoretically possible to work it, but as long as you have classes that work only one day-based resource management, while others work on encounter-based resource management, and still others are pure at-will, it simply doesn't scale.
The latter is just something I don't care for in D&D. It works great in Gamma World, and I thoroughly enjoy it there, because it's neat and random and that's part of the appeal, but in my heroic fantasy games I prefer more say in what my character is capable of.
It sounds like they've got the basics of the system already figured out since they did a playtest for people in the industry/media. I would imagine it's still going to be a bitch trying to filter out the good input from the ridiculous but it does seem like they've already got a foundation in mind. A strong hand on the rudder is going to be important here to avoid pleasing nobody by trying to please everybody.
My hope with this is that they're looking for outside perspectives of things they either A) haven't thought of; or haven't noticed. Seeking outside opinions is useful, you may get a critique, question, or idea that revolutionizes your whole system. You need to have a strong outline of where you want to end up before you go that direction, otherwise it turns into trying to please everybody.
Frankly the amount of updates that were made to the game in the first year alone suggests that they could use an outside perspective. When you look at the final versions of the Cleric and Warlock updates, it further suggests that the internet can actually be a positive influence in this regard.
Yeah, I cannot possibly see this approach they've announced going anywhere good at all.
Oh well. I have my 4e and nobody's taking it away.
I think until we have actual mechanics to look at, "We're listening to player feedback" is just PR. Of course they're listening to player feedback, everyone listens to player feedback and deeply values their business.
AssuranIs swinging on the SpiralRegistered Userregular
5E already?
Unless it absolutely wows me, I'll probably be getting off the edition train with 4E. Between 4E, Pathfinder, and 3E, I don't really need any other fantasy RPGs. Besides, as a GM, 4E has been my absolute favorite RPG to run.
I wonder if there will be some sort of rebirth of the open gaming license. There were problems but that was a pretty major shot in the arm for the industry.
The OGL situation was another reason that added to my feelings towards WotC.
They have absolutely nobody to blame for the Paizo situation but themselves. They created the company because they couldn't make profitable magazines and then they forced them to become an independent adventure publishing house by seizing the then successful magazines. Once Paizo, again, took a business Wizards had historically lost money on, publishing adventures, and made it profitable Wizard's then forced them into a direct competitor role by fucking around with 4e's OGL situation, mainly by being so ridiculously late to release what they charged 5k for they effectively forced Paizo into Pathfinder.
It pisses me off because I know the lesson corporate took from it was "The 3.0 OGL was a mistake."
Making/releasing 3rd edition made sense. 2nd edition was over a decade old, and even the revised release was 4 years old when 3rd edition came out. It made sense to update the game and rerelease it.
4th edition similarly made sense to me. 3rd edition was 8 years old, and had been released with a lot of very bad problems. Even the 3.5 update, while it fixed the biggest balance issues, had a lot of problems of it's own.
This doesn't make any sense to me. 4th edition is barely 4 years old. To put that into perspective, 3rd and 4th edition were both in development for 3 years prior to release.
So they developed it for 3 years, released it (with some pretty decently large problems of its own), then two years later effectively revised it with Essentials, and now another two years later they're announcing that 5th edition is coming out, basically early next year.
Hey WotC, remember all that anger that was unleashed when 4e was announced even though 3.5 would only be 5 years old when it came out?
Things that will instantly and immediately turn me off to any future edition of D&D:
1) Vancian power systems
2) deck-based power systems
The former just doesn't scale adequately. It's theoretically possible to work it, but as long as you have classes that work only one day-based resource management, while others work on encounter-based resource management, and still others are pure at-will, it simply doesn't scale.
The latter is just something I don't care for in D&D. It works great in Gamma World, and I thoroughly enjoy it there, because it's neat and random and that's part of the appeal, but in my heroic fantasy games I prefer more say in what my character is capable of.
Coming soon to DnD 5E... Deck-based Vancian magic! Place magic spell cards down on the table in your daily spell slots! Actually, that would look rather impressive on the table. You'd lay the cards out in a pyramid like Solitaire.
Things that will instantly and immediately turn me off to any future edition of D&D:
1) Vancian power systems
2) deck-based power systems
The former just doesn't scale adequately. It's theoretically possible to work it, but as long as you have classes that work only one day-based resource management, while others work on encounter-based resource management, and still others are pure at-will, it simply doesn't scale.
The latter is just something I don't care for in D&D. It works great in Gamma World, and I thoroughly enjoy it there, because it's neat and random and that's part of the appeal, but in my heroic fantasy games I prefer more say in what my character is capable of.
Coming soon to DnD 5E... Deck-based Vancian magic! Place magic spell cards down on the table in your daily spell slots! Actually, that would look rather impressive on the table. You'd lay the cards out in a pyramid like Solitaire.
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
Despite WotC's directionless, meandering mismanagement of the brand I honestly believe we wouldn't be in this situation if they hadn't had that massive licensing fuckup with Atari for video games. I don't think it's a coincidence that 3e made a big splash coming out a year after Baldur's Gate reminded everyone that D&D was fun, and if there'd been one or two good triple-A 4e titles on PC or console I don't think we'd be having this conversation now.
Despite WotC's directionless, meandering mismanagement of the brand I honestly believe we wouldn't be in this situation if they hadn't had that massive licensing fuckup with Atari for video games. I don't think it's a coincidence that 3e made a big splash coming out a year after Baldur's Gate reminded everyone that D&D was fun, and if there'd been one or two good triple-A 4e titles on PC or console I don't think we'd be having this conversation now.
But Jacobkosh! We already had a 4e-style video game!
World of Warcraft :P
But seriously you're probably not wrong there. Frankly it just abrupt to me. Granted, there were a lot of things hinting at this happening, but the fact they they'd just released Neverwinter, and are starting on a new line of supplements (Heroes of Shadow, ...the Feywild, ...the Elemental Chaos), it just feels weird and sudden.
It certainly didn't help. Aside from just the PR issue the shared resources could have been huge.
A good 4th edition game could have been leveraged into a good multiplayer platform, i.e. their fucking virtual table they've been promising for ages while independent sources have put together better offerings, for free, in their spare time.
I've never really understood why DnD never ran on an HP/MP system for Magic or Skills. StarWars Revised kind of had this for Vitality/Wounds.
Because it doesn't really work very well unless you limit the fuck out of it.
Well, the power point system seemed to work pretty well for Psionics. And with the advent of Essentials, they were able to build classes that had no daily powers. So it's theoretically possibly to build a class that has only at-will powers, with power-point based upgrades to represent encounter powers.
That would work. It'd be tricky, and it probably would feel fairly limited, but it could be interesting.
Not a surprise. I don't want to start edition wars, as I like D&D (2e, 3e and 4e), but 4e seemed almost intent to not playing to the strengths and advantages of a tabletop RPG.
Smashing four systems together and then throwing the results at the mob of public opinion does not a design intent make.
I suspect we've seen the highpoint of D&D as a game.
It could possibly work if they play it right.
At its core, give it the basic fundamentals for a D&D game. Stat block, AC, core combat, class/race/leveling structure. Just enough to where you have a perfectly workable basic version of the game. Then let you pick and choose the more complicated mechanics to throw on top of it, all (potentially) balanced to work with each other. I'd totally love to play the game with 4E abilities/combat with 2E skill rolls and non-weapon proficiency system.
By the way (forgot to add), this "design by comittee" decision has an unpleasant smell of "we really can't afford a 3e-level design process".
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EvilBadmanDO NOT TRUST THIS MANRegistered Userregular
edited January 2012
I'd rather enjoy a return to D&D that didn't absolutely require tokens and square grids. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against 4e, but it got out of hand on that regard.
By the way (forgot to add), this "design by comittee" decision has an unpleasant smell of "we really can't afford a 3e-level design process".
No, it smells of them being tired of system wars and trying to figure out what is going to make everybody happy. Which won't happen, because people are going to find reasons to hate it even if it is the best system ever*.
*Which won't happen either, because Savage Worlds already claimed the title :P
By the way (forgot to add), this "design by comittee" decision has an unpleasant smell of "we really can't afford a 3e-level design process".
Considering what they got for their money out of the 3rd edition development, that's a good thing.
It's not "design by committee" it's "hey you folks out there that play this game have a lot of insight, we'd like to use that insight to improve the game before we release it, instead of one to three years down the line."
3rd edition was released with huge flaws. As was 4th. If you look at the latest updates to the Cleric and Warlock, the internet has proven itself capable of giving good feedback and improving the game.
By the way (forgot to add), this "design by comittee" decision has an unpleasant smell of "we really can't afford a 3e-level design process".
Considering what they got for their money out of the 3rd edition development, that's a good thing.
It's not "design by committee" it's "hey you folks out there that play this game have a lot of insight, we'd like to use that insight to improve the game before we release it, instead of one to three years down the line."
3rd edition was released with huge flaws. As was 4th. If you look at the latest updates to the Cleric and Warlock, the internet has proven itself capable of giving good feedback and improving the game.
They got... the best-selling D&D edition ever?
I honestly think you're giving 3e waaaaay too much flak. Remember, 1e and 2e were objectively broken systems. Is 3e a perfect system? No. But considering the past editions of D&D, it's an enormous improvement (for one thing, it had a DMG that wasn't bought solely for loot tables).
By the way (forgot to add), this "design by comittee" decision has an unpleasant smell of "we really can't afford a 3e-level design process".
Considering what they got for their money out of the 3rd edition development, that's a good thing.
It's not "design by committee" it's "hey you folks out there that play this game have a lot of insight, we'd like to use that insight to improve the game before we release it, instead of one to three years down the line."
3rd edition was released with huge flaws. As was 4th. If you look at the latest updates to the Cleric and Warlock, the internet has proven itself capable of giving good feedback and improving the game.
They got... the best-selling D&D edition ever?
I honestly think you're giving 3e waaaaay too much flak. Remember, 1e and 2e were objectively broken systems. Is 3e a perfect system? No. But considering the past editions of D&D, it's an enormous improvement (for one thing, it had a DMG that wasn't bought solely for loot tables).
And considering they had to release an updated version of the edition three years later, it's fair to say there were some pretty glaring flaws with it. For reference, it was in development for 3 years, was released, and then upgraded to 3.5 only 3 years later. 3.0 had the shortest lifespan of any edition of D&D released. 4th edition has lasted about as long as 3.5 (or likely will have by the time the "next iteration" comes out).
and 4th edition had some pretty glaring, if less problematic, flaws of its own, resulting in the huge amount of updates made in just the first year of the edition.
Oh and can you source 3.0 being the highest selling edition in the game? Wikipedia tells me it was 4th edition that had record-breaking sales.
I'd rather enjoy a return to D&D that didn't absolutely require tokens and square grids. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against 4e, but it got out of hand on that regard.
There were actually a lot of popular methods of eliminating the need for a grid. Personally I despised losing the grid when I tried it, but I like granularity in positioning.
Incenjucar on
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
The thing with 3e is that it improved and streamlined a lot of the bad stuff.
And then proceeded to introduce new stuff that for the most part were either badly designed or a confusing mess.
I thoroughly enjoyed the tactical component of 4e combat. It's one of the main attractions of the game for me. In 2nd edition we never used maps or minis, and I thoroughly enjoyed that, too, but we had an amazing DM who was more storyteller and less dungeon master.
By the way (forgot to add), this "design by comittee" decision has an unpleasant smell of "we really can't afford a 3e-level design process".
Considering what they got for their money out of the 3rd edition development, that's a good thing.
It's not "design by committee" it's "hey you folks out there that play this game have a lot of insight, we'd like to use that insight to improve the game before we release it, instead of one to three years down the line."
3rd edition was released with huge flaws. As was 4th. If you look at the latest updates to the Cleric and Warlock, the internet has proven itself capable of giving good feedback and improving the game.
They got... the best-selling D&D edition ever?
I honestly think you're giving 3e waaaaay too much flak. Remember, 1e and 2e were objectively broken systems. Is 3e a perfect system? No. But considering the past editions of D&D, it's an enormous improvement (for one thing, it had a DMG that wasn't bought solely for loot tables).
And considering they had to release an updated version of the edition three years later, it's fair to say there were some pretty glaring flaws with it. For reference, it was in development for 3 years, was released, and then upgraded to 3.5 only 3 years later. 3.0 had the shortest lifespan of any edition of D&D released. 4th edition has lasted about as long as 3.5 (or likely will have by the time the "next iteration" comes out).
and 4th edition had some pretty glaring, if less problematic, flaws of its own, resulting in the huge amount of updates made in just the first year of the edition.
Oh and can you source 3.0 being the highest selling edition in the game? Wikipedia tells me it was 4th edition that had record-breaking sales.
Well, I might be wrong about being the best selling. But 3.5 isn't very different from 3.0; they fixed conjunctural flaws, not strutural ones. 3.5 came after 3 years for one reason, and one reason only: cash (Ryan Dancey commented on it).
Well, I might be wrong about being the best selling. But 3.5 isn't very different from 3.0; they fixed conjunctural flaws, not strutural ones. 3.5 came after 3 years for one reason, and one reason only: cash (Ryan Dancey commented on it).
3.5 came out because WotC released 3.0 because Hasbro had just bought them and wanted them to release a new edition to cash in on, but it wasn't ready, so it was rushed. They saw this, got some people on board to fix the problems, and re-released the new edition to fix the biggest problems with the game (most of which were class-balance issues).
3.5 wasn't a pure money grab. Companies don't work that way.
I can't help but feel that the promise of an open 5th ED playtest is a cynical attempt to get the fans back from Paizo.
To my mind Pathfinder's playtesting was what cemented it as the next D&D. That WotC and Hasbro are looking to do the same thing after being usurped for the D&D crown looks and feels more like marketing than an honest attempt to engage the player community.
D&D cannot be all things to all players. Any promise of a flexible, modular system should be taken with a grain of salt.
All opinions are my own and in no way reflect that of my employer.
Despite WotC's directionless, meandering mismanagement of the brand I honestly believe we wouldn't be in this situation if they hadn't had that massive licensing fuckup with Atari for video games. I don't think it's a coincidence that 3e made a big splash coming out a year after Baldur's Gate reminded everyone that D&D was fun, and if there'd been one or two good triple-A 4e titles on PC or console I don't think we'd be having this conversation now.
I bet you the Cryptic Neverwinter will make more money for Hasbro than this will.
The thing is... 4th ed is so good! I personally think its such a vast improvement from third ed and so much more inspired than pathfinder (I'm talking in terms of combat, pathfinder has some very nice adventures on offer and quite dedicated publishers so I respect them for that). I really like how the combat currently works. The only thing that bugs me is round speed but they'd have to completely remained the system in order to change that.
There's also a lot of great fan made stuff out there for fourth Ed (look at the angry DMs stuff alone!)
On top of that I am very concerned about the design premises. They want it to be everything to everyone and they want heavy fan involvement. Personally I feel that the best systems have a strong set of design principles that actually make a statement. They might fly in the face of some players but they are unique and make the system that much more appealing for the other players.
Wizards really needs a solid design brief rather than this Larry Farry rambling style.
Do you think we'd get things like the wii or the DS if Nintendo let the fans design their console? I like head strong designers with a unique consequently followed design philosophy.
My other concern with the modularity of the system is that this works quite well for the combat (as long as its all in a heroic fantasy setting of some sort) because the essence is very similar in any world. It however doesn't work as well of you want to have an interesting set of rules to govern non combat events. This is where I think fourth edition fell flat. Great combat, quite weak non combat resolution mechanics. The skill challenge system is okay but it isn't amazing. Things like rpg rewards for acting true to character but against the party, destiny cards, more analytical approaches to trap disarming (eg a DM description of its workings and then a player description of means of disarming said trap) and other flavorful non combat mechanics are usually quite heavily tied to specific campaign settings.
Finally I'm concerned about what will happen to the online support of 4th ed given how terrible (or underfunded?) wizards IT team already is. I hope that they give it all "shareware" status so that it can be taken into the loving embrace of dedicated fans...
Posts
Smashing four systems together and then throwing the results at the mob of public opinion does not a design intent make.
I suspect we've seen the highpoint of D&D as a game.
Those of us in industry know how design by committee turns out.
And if that committee is the internet? Dear god.
I hope it is not going to be done that way.
Oh well. I have my 4e and nobody's taking it away.
1) Vancian power systems
2) deck-based power systems
The former just doesn't scale adequately. It's theoretically possible to work it, but as long as you have classes that work only one day-based resource management, while others work on encounter-based resource management, and still others are pure at-will, it simply doesn't scale.
The latter is just something I don't care for in D&D. It works great in Gamma World, and I thoroughly enjoy it there, because it's neat and random and that's part of the appeal, but in my heroic fantasy games I prefer more say in what my character is capable of.
My hope with this is that they're looking for outside perspectives of things they either A) haven't thought of; or
Frankly the amount of updates that were made to the game in the first year alone suggests that they could use an outside perspective. When you look at the final versions of the Cleric and Warlock updates, it further suggests that the internet can actually be a positive influence in this regard.
I think until we have actual mechanics to look at, "We're listening to player feedback" is just PR. Of course they're listening to player feedback, everyone listens to player feedback and deeply values their business.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
What Type of Monster Should Be Featured in the First Playtest?
Goblins
Kobolds
Orcs
Skeletons
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
Then skeletons (to test vs Undead stuff)
Then goblins and orc, together, to test how powers stack up against diversity
Unless it absolutely wows me, I'll probably be getting off the edition train with 4E. Between 4E, Pathfinder, and 3E, I don't really need any other fantasy RPGs. Besides, as a GM, 4E has been my absolute favorite RPG to run.
They have absolutely nobody to blame for the Paizo situation but themselves. They created the company because they couldn't make profitable magazines and then they forced them to become an independent adventure publishing house by seizing the then successful magazines. Once Paizo, again, took a business Wizards had historically lost money on, publishing adventures, and made it profitable Wizard's then forced them into a direct competitor role by fucking around with 4e's OGL situation, mainly by being so ridiculously late to release what they charged 5k for they effectively forced Paizo into Pathfinder.
It pisses me off because I know the lesson corporate took from it was "The 3.0 OGL was a mistake."
Making/releasing 3rd edition made sense. 2nd edition was over a decade old, and even the revised release was 4 years old when 3rd edition came out. It made sense to update the game and rerelease it.
4th edition similarly made sense to me. 3rd edition was 8 years old, and had been released with a lot of very bad problems. Even the 3.5 update, while it fixed the biggest balance issues, had a lot of problems of it's own.
This doesn't make any sense to me. 4th edition is barely 4 years old. To put that into perspective, 3rd and 4th edition were both in development for 3 years prior to release.
So they developed it for 3 years, released it (with some pretty decently large problems of its own), then two years later effectively revised it with Essentials, and now another two years later they're announcing that 5th edition is coming out, basically early next year.
Hey WotC, remember all that anger that was unleashed when 4e was announced even though 3.5 would only be 5 years old when it came out?
No?
Oh, well, carry on then.
Burn.
It.
Down.
But Jacobkosh! We already had a 4e-style video game!
World of Warcraft :P
But seriously you're probably not wrong there. Frankly it just abrupt to me. Granted, there were a lot of things hinting at this happening, but the fact they they'd just released Neverwinter, and are starting on a new line of supplements (Heroes of Shadow, ...the Feywild, ...the Elemental Chaos), it just feels weird and sudden.
A good 4th edition game could have been leveraged into a good multiplayer platform, i.e. their fucking virtual table they've been promising for ages while independent sources have put together better offerings, for free, in their spare time.
Because it doesn't really work very well unless you limit the fuck out of it.
Well, the power point system seemed to work pretty well for Psionics. And with the advent of Essentials, they were able to build classes that had no daily powers. So it's theoretically possibly to build a class that has only at-will powers, with power-point based upgrades to represent encounter powers.
That would work. It'd be tricky, and it probably would feel fairly limited, but it could be interesting.
I'd certainly give it a read, that's for sure.
At its core, give it the basic fundamentals for a D&D game. Stat block, AC, core combat, class/race/leveling structure. Just enough to where you have a perfectly workable basic version of the game. Then let you pick and choose the more complicated mechanics to throw on top of it, all (potentially) balanced to work with each other. I'd totally love to play the game with 4E abilities/combat with 2E skill rolls and non-weapon proficiency system.
Considering what they got for their money out of the 3rd edition development, that's a good thing.
It's not "design by committee" it's "hey you folks out there that play this game have a lot of insight, we'd like to use that insight to improve the game before we release it, instead of one to three years down the line."
3rd edition was released with huge flaws. As was 4th. If you look at the latest updates to the Cleric and Warlock, the internet has proven itself capable of giving good feedback and improving the game.
They got... the best-selling D&D edition ever?
I honestly think you're giving 3e waaaaay too much flak. Remember, 1e and 2e were objectively broken systems. Is 3e a perfect system? No. But considering the past editions of D&D, it's an enormous improvement (for one thing, it had a DMG that wasn't bought solely for loot tables).
And considering they had to release an updated version of the edition three years later, it's fair to say there were some pretty glaring flaws with it. For reference, it was in development for 3 years, was released, and then upgraded to 3.5 only 3 years later. 3.0 had the shortest lifespan of any edition of D&D released. 4th edition has lasted about as long as 3.5 (or likely will have by the time the "next iteration" comes out).
and 4th edition had some pretty glaring, if less problematic, flaws of its own, resulting in the huge amount of updates made in just the first year of the edition.
Oh and can you source 3.0 being the highest selling edition in the game? Wikipedia tells me it was 4th edition that had record-breaking sales.
There were actually a lot of popular methods of eliminating the need for a grid. Personally I despised losing the grid when I tried it, but I like granularity in positioning.
And then proceeded to introduce new stuff that for the most part were either badly designed or a confusing mess.
Well, I might be wrong about being the best selling. But 3.5 isn't very different from 3.0; they fixed conjunctural flaws, not strutural ones. 3.5 came after 3 years for one reason, and one reason only: cash (Ryan Dancey commented on it).
3.5 came out because WotC released 3.0 because Hasbro had just bought them and wanted them to release a new edition to cash in on, but it wasn't ready, so it was rushed. They saw this, got some people on board to fix the problems, and re-released the new edition to fix the biggest problems with the game (most of which were class-balance issues).
3.5 wasn't a pure money grab. Companies don't work that way.
3ssentials, you might say. :P
To my mind Pathfinder's playtesting was what cemented it as the next D&D. That WotC and Hasbro are looking to do the same thing after being usurped for the D&D crown looks and feels more like marketing than an honest attempt to engage the player community.
D&D cannot be all things to all players. Any promise of a flexible, modular system should be taken with a grain of salt.
There's also a lot of great fan made stuff out there for fourth Ed (look at the angry DMs stuff alone!)
On top of that I am very concerned about the design premises. They want it to be everything to everyone and they want heavy fan involvement. Personally I feel that the best systems have a strong set of design principles that actually make a statement. They might fly in the face of some players but they are unique and make the system that much more appealing for the other players.
Wizards really needs a solid design brief rather than this Larry Farry rambling style.
Do you think we'd get things like the wii or the DS if Nintendo let the fans design their console? I like head strong designers with a unique consequently followed design philosophy.
My other concern with the modularity of the system is that this works quite well for the combat (as long as its all in a heroic fantasy setting of some sort) because the essence is very similar in any world. It however doesn't work as well of you want to have an interesting set of rules to govern non combat events. This is where I think fourth edition fell flat. Great combat, quite weak non combat resolution mechanics. The skill challenge system is okay but it isn't amazing. Things like rpg rewards for acting true to character but against the party, destiny cards, more analytical approaches to trap disarming (eg a DM description of its workings and then a player description of means of disarming said trap) and other flavorful non combat mechanics are usually quite heavily tied to specific campaign settings.
Finally I'm concerned about what will happen to the online support of 4th ed given how terrible (or underfunded?) wizards IT team already is. I hope that they give it all "shareware" status so that it can be taken into the loving embrace of dedicated fans...