5E Announced (For real this time)

ModelCitizen · Post by **ModelCitizen** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 2:28 pm

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx ... l/20120109

We see a rules preview at D&D XP, in less than 3 weeks.
Paizo-style open playtest starts spring of this year.

TOZ · Post by **TOZ** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 2:29 pm

Well at least that will shut people up about '5E is coming!'

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 2:51 pm

I'm sure they'll respond to feedback Paizo-style as well.

Dominicius · Post by **Dominicius** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 3:00 pm

Here we fucking go!

Ferret · Post by **Ferret** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 3:05 pm

I'd love for them to embrace mathmatic testing in addition to their "how does it FEEL" playtesting that I'm sure they're going to do.

I'd also like to see them test from max level and work down...and that's what my group will do if we end up involved in the test.

Winnah · Post by **Winnah** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 3:11 pm

Mike Mearls, Team Lead
Greg Bilsland, Team Producer
Monte Cook, Design Team Lead
Bruce Cordell, Designer
Robert J. Schwalb, Designer
Jeremy Crawford, Development Team Lead
Tom LaPille, Developer
Rodney Thompson, Developer
Miranda Horner, Editor

I wonder how their open playtest will function?

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 3:13 pm

I am shocked -- SHOCKED!! -- that they're beginning work on 5E. Why weren't there any signs??

K · Post by K » Mon Jan 09, 2012 3:16 pm

Mmmm, they even got a New York Times article.

Well, I guess I'll wait to see some of the playtest documents before I decide whether I want to contribute or not. The experience with Paizo was so unpleasant that even though I got them to make a single change I am extremely disillusioned with the value of giving out free design advice again.

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 3:17 pm

That line-up does not fill me with confidence.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 3:24 pm

Well, I'm going to try. It can't hurt, right?

Ferret · Post by **Ferret** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 3:24 pm

What's the difference between a Developer and a Designer?

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 3:31 pm

Here is the NY Times article. There is an interesting question whether or not the NYT article forced the hand of WOTC. In any event it is an interesting article.

NYT Emphasis is mine wrote:When the N.B.A. adopted the 3-point shot in 1979, purists cried foul at rules changes, just as many D&D devotees dismissed the rules of the game’s fourth edition as dumbed down, overeager to mimic multiplayer online games like Warcraft — and favoring killing over the role-playing and storytelling roots of Dungeons & Dragons. Some began playing other role-playing games like Pathfinder, which won over disgruntled players. Miniature war games like Warhammer or Wizards of the Coast’s own trading-card game Magic: The Gathering have also diluted Dungeons & Dragons’ dominance.

Hopefully they will learn this trime, but I fear not.

Bonus joke: The NYT filed this under the "Video Games" section.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 3:32 pm

RiotGearEpsilon wrote:I'm sure they'll respond to feedback Paizo-style as well.

I picture it being this way as well, and not just because I think they might be a bunch of pig-headed, stubborn zealots. It takes a lot of effort to come up with something testable, and it takes a lot of work to fix problems. I suspect some problems will be so deep seeded that they'll require a full rewrite (which will never happen at that stage).

That, and honestly, they're going to get a lot of shitty feedback, and they'll have to separate the grain from the chaff, and we can't even count on them being able to tell which is which.

Open playtests look awesome on paper, but I don't know how you'd begin to implement them without being very open-minded.

K wrote:The experience with Paizo was so unpleasant that even though I got them to make a single change I am extremely disillusioned with the value of giving out free design advice again.

What change did they make?

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 3:40 pm

Ferret wrote:What's the difference between a Developer and a Designer?

In their minds? I have no clue.

I think ideally in the "real world" the developer is the one who makes the product specification and the designer is the one who makes the system specification based from the product specification.

The purpose of the Product Specification Document (PSD) is to describe clearly, explicitly, precisely, completely, and without ambiguity the functionality and constraints of the system. In other words, what shall the software product do to meet the customer's requirements?

4E was the best example of a disconnect between PSD and FSD I've ever seen. Of course there wasn't a solid PSD to begin with, but it was effectively the big (long and painfull, even for those whose jobs were not on the line with the announcement of the death of third party development access) series of announcements at the Gen Gon where they introduced the development of 4E.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 3:48 pm

RobbyPants wrote:Open playtests look awesome on paper, but I don't know how you'd begin to implement them without being very open-minded.

It doesn't even look good on paper. The general idea used in the industry is to design a game and then put the game to open playtest. Thus the open playtest occurs after everything has been committed without any real proofing and testing. Probability of failure detection 100%. Probability of complete rewrite 000%.

A real good open playtest starts BEFORE integration testing. You need to open playtest the individual components first, then the integrated components, then the complete package. This exposes the process to the public (and your opposition) and that's not good, but it could also be used as a general barometer of which way the customers want the product to go. You could therefore hide your product in a cloud of playtest options that include things you might not have considered to be a part of the product and see how the overall feedback goes.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 3:52 pm

Ferret wrote:What's the difference between a Developer and a Designer?

If I'm understanding James Jacobs correctly, the way it works at Paizo is that the designers come up with new rules systems (like Words of Power or the custom race-building system for the Racial Supremacy Guide) and developers churn out feats, spells, adventures, etc. for use with the existing rules.

Paizo only has one designer (Jason Bulmahn) and a handful of developers (Sean K Reynolds, Rob McCreary, Stephen Radney-Macfarland, Mark Moreland, Patrick Renie).

Of course, it's possible that WotC has entirely different job titles.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 3:56 pm

hogarth wrote:If I'm understanding James Jacobs correctly, the way it works at Paizo is that the designers come up with new rules systems (like Words of Power or the custom race-building system for the Racial Supremacy Guide) and developers churn out feats, spells, adventures, etc. for use with the existing rules.

Well, that's one of the reason why Paizo and Fail go hand in hand. They don't even start out with a PSD and have someone work on a FSD without any idea of how the functions "meet customer rerquirements." Then the so called developers are the actual grunts who do the code work.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 3:58 pm

tzor wrote:Well, that's one of the reason why Paizo and Fail go hand in hand. They don't even start out with a PSD and have someone work on a FSD without any idea of how the functions "meet customer rerquirements."

Can you name a single publishing company in the Known Universe that works like you're describing? If not, does that make every single publishing company in the Known Universe a failure?

ModelCitizen · Post by **ModelCitizen** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 4:09 pm

hogarth wrote:
Ferret wrote:What's the difference between a Developer and a Designer?
If I'm understanding James Jacobs correctly, the way it works at Paizo is that the designers come up with new rules systems (like Words of Power or the custom race-building system for the Racial Supremacy Guide) and developers churn out feats, spells, adventures, etc. for use with the existing rules.

Paizo only has one designer (Jason Bulmahn) and a handful of developers (Sean K Reynolds, Rob McCreary, Stephen Radney-Macfarland, Mark Moreland, Patrick Renie).

Of course, it's possible that WotC has entirely different job titles.

That's the way Heinsoo and Mearls described it for 4e. (Heinsoo was a designer, Mearls was a developer.) In practice it's probably more informal than it sounds. These teams are only about 5-9 people who have all worked together before with different job titles. I'm sure designers bounce "design" ideas off developers and vice versa.

Another random bit: Heinsoo mentioned at D&D XP 2008 (I think) that power names/fluff weren't written by the same people who concepted the power or wrote the mechanics. I don't know if that's an "editor" job or what.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 4:11 pm

hogarth wrote:Can you name a single publishing company in the Known Universe that works like you're describing? If not, does that make every single publishing company in the Known Universe a failure?

There was a time when a great failure was a moderate success. Gygax's AD&D had major fail points in it. Whole systems were incompatible with each other. Back then people just adjusted or omitted whole subsets of rules from their game. 1st Edition AD&D would be a major flop if it were released today, the community won't stand that level of fail anymore.

Off hand, I can't recall any significantly major role playing system that has been designed in the 21st century, and not in the niche role playing hobby market of the 80's and 90's.

The closest thing I can think of offhand is White Wolf's initial development of Vampire. While there was not much of a product document, and the functional rules had internal problems, they were generally in line with the overall product specifications.

The point is tha crap won't work no more. (Unless you are a startup company and well failure is a definite option.)

K · Post by K » Mon Jan 09, 2012 4:50 pm

RobbyPants wrote:
K wrote:The experience with Paizo was so unpleasant that even though I got them to make a single change I am extremely disillusioned with the value of giving out free design advice again.
What change did they make?

Their original concept for Sorcerers that they hinted at was going to be that sorcerous power came from various supernatural ancestors, but I got them to open up the flavor a bit so that your power could come from other things tainting your bloodline like magical locations or pacts or destiny and not just zoophillia/xenophillia.

Of course, I can't prove it since they never credited or even acknowledged my suggestion, but the fact that some my suggested bloodlines ended up in a slightly reskinned form in the later playtest document that featured Sorcerers is pretty damned suspicious.

Gx1080 · Post by **Gx1080** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 5:08 pm

ohboyherewego.jpg

HalcyonUmbra · Post by **HalcyonUmbra** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 6:02 pm

There's an article up on the Escapist. I lost it at the end of the first paragraph.

Greg Tito wrote:For the first time, the creators of D&D are setting out to create a role playing system that is compatible with - and takes inspiration from - every previous edition of the game.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 6:38 pm

Even the colouring book and the choose-your-own-adventure DVD? Awesome.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 6:46 pm

From Basic D&D, they got the idea of having the levels only go up to 3.