When 5E D&D flops, will the designers go to the 3E D&D well?

[Username17]

After two failures - likely getting worse simply because they bled off a lot of players over the course of 4e - are you sure there'd be a 6e? Perhaps they'll try to use the name for a card game or boardgame, or file it away against the possibility someone will buy it off them, and stop trying to make a RPG.

D&D has been declared dead before. It literally went bankrupt in 1997, and the IP got bought up by Wizards of the Coast. The company may insist on hiring gamers they know from around the Seattle area, but that same short sightedness will also keep them from actually folding up D&D's tent.

As long as the WotC branch still makes money (which as long as they can keep making Magic sets with good mechanics or good art, seems assured), and it still has D&D fans in it, they won't be reporting failure of the branch to the higher ups and won't cut D&D loose.

There will be a sixth edition. And probably in not very long. Although since 5th edition is not called "fifth edition" they might call the edition after next "5th edition." D&DN is also not going 3 years until it's N.5 revision. 4th edition got it after 2 years, D&DN is getting it 18 months into the cycle. D&DN is hitting the ground with comparatively very little buzz, so they won't even get a honeymoon period like how 4th edition got the biggest first week sales of any edition of D&D. It's going to be DOA, and since the actual rules are sloppy warmed over Mike Mearls horse shit, it's not going to get positive word of mouth. They are going to go back to what they were doing in 2010 when they realized that 4th edition was an unpolishable turd: completely overhaul the game every six months and hold mass firings twice a year as people lost the game and were forced to take responsibility for each failure.

So we can look forward to a radical re-imagining of D&DN on the order of Essentials or 3.5 being worked on almost as soon as D&DN actually gets on the shelves. And as soon as that gets on the shelves and also fails, we can look forward to someone working on a newer new edition.

-Username17

[Grek]

Odds that they'll leave Mearls in charge for 6th edition?

[Username17]

Odds that they'll leave Mearls in charge for 6th edition?

I put it around 3:1 that Mearls goes down with this particular ship. He is amazingly durable, but remember that while he was much more public than the other 4th edition authors, he was actually junior to all the guys who got fired ahead of him. During the 4th edition fiascos, the head of D&D got fired every year. Mike Mearls only saved his job by refusing to put his name on a product that could succeed or fail. Sooner or later, he has to release a product, and when that fails he'll be in the firing seat.

I am putting it at 100% chance of him being out of a job, because he is so very good at failing upwards. It's possible that he can arrange for someone else to be the fallguy for the first year or even the second. But even with his well known resilience to paying any price for his design mistakes, it's hard to imagine him keeping his job after releasing no products for two fucking years only to dribble out a half assed fantasy heartbreaker that no one cares about.

Of course, I'm sure he has a promising career in front of him at Paizo.

-Username17

[Atmo]

It's probable that they could do like Final Fantasy and Bravely Default: recreate the basics on a new system, only the name changed. And a Lying Airy on the title.

[deaddmwalking]

I wonder if Mearls has hidden away the rules for the next big thing - the final version of Orcus. But he's planning on brining it to Paizo when he inevitably gets fired, so Next is a release of crap to see how long they can keep their jobs. Of course - Paizo wants to keep Pathfinder in it's original edition for a good long while, but eventually, people will be ready for a solid core...

[sake]

It's probable that they could do like Final Fantasy and Bravely Default: recreate the basics on a new system, only the name changed. And a Lying Airy on the title.

So the horrible, unplayable mess that has a bizarre fixation on MMO mechanics and the most flat characters ever gets to keep the D&D brand, while the new game that's actually based on the stuff that once made the franchise popular has to pick a new name?

[shadzar]

3.x will never return because PF is better in the minds of the majority remaining playing it and thanks to the OGL nobody ever has to buy any 3.x from WotC ever again.

I think you under estimate how flighty and fickle those people are, even after all Hasbro's bullshit

not really, it is one reason i keep returning hee because the insanity of WotC worshipers is about as funny as the insanity of christians and many other delusion cults.

but the thing is that HASBRO dos not want to go back to 3.x because it was given away via SRD, and thus the push to gain legal IP definitions of things in D&D, without understanding that that is not what D&D is about. HASBRO will not allow a direct return to sole use of the edition that brought the SRD, because MANY other people made better material than its subsidiary, WotC. there is no money to be made for HASBRO from returning to 3.x, no matter how fickle and flighty those players are, they still don't need to rebuy the core books again for 3.x.

[Koumei]

So the horrible, unplayable mess that has a bizarre fixation on MMO mechanics and the most flat characters ever gets to keep the D&D brand, while the new game that's actually based on the stuff that once made the franchise popular has to pick a new name?

Well, when D&D went to 3Ed there were plenty of people who felt that it was no longer D&D, and any number of "reviving AD&D to its TRUE ORIGINS AND SPIRIT" games were made. All of them were shit, and not one of them could actually be called Dungeons & Dragons. But they probably felt betrayed that D&D wasn't D&D and what actually was D&D couldn't be called D&D.

And yeah, the horrible unplayable mess did indeed get to be called D&D 4th Edition, while "basically 3Ed more or less" was named Pathfinder, and not D&D. It's what happens.

Although "Swords & Sorcery", "Dungeons & Dragons" and "Might & Magic" have shown that Paizo really should have called their game "Paths & Pilferers" or something. You need [letter] & [that same letter again].

[shadzar]

D&D has been declared dead before. It literally went bankrupt in 1997, and the IP got bought up by Wizards of the Coast.

Why are you such a fucking retard? Seriously why?

D&D isn't a business and cannot go bankrupt. Stop being a fucking retard. T$R went bankrupt because of the embezzling and admin abuse and poor management. T$R made more than just D&D.

Before you ever speak about gaming again, you need to go learn something about it prior to 2000. There is not a single goddamn thing anybody should ever listen to you about, because you have ZERO facts. you don't know your ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to RPGs, so take a month vacation from being online and talking to anybody ANYWHERE about gaming and just get to the reference section and rad up to learn some facts rather than the ignorance you constantly fucking spew.

get some Prep H and icy-hot for your buttsore over the bad games you played while you are at it and come back when you actually have ANY amount of knowledge that can contribute to any kind of conversation other than just continually lying about shit you have no knowledge about in order to just spew hearsay and conjecture to look cool and popular.

fuck you are dumber than PL, Lago, and Mistborn combined!

[Prak]

So the horrible, unplayable mess that has a bizarre fixation on MMO mechanics and the most flat characters ever gets to keep the D&D brand, while the new game that's actually based on the stuff that once made the franchise popular has to pick a new name?

Well, when D&D went to 3Ed there were plenty of people who felt that it was no longer D&D, and any number of "reviving AD&D to its TRUE ORIGINS AND SPIRIT" games were made. All of them were shit, and not one of them could actually be called Dungeons & Dragons. But they probably felt betrayed that D&D wasn't D&D and what actually was D&D couldn't be called D&D.

And yeah, the horrible unplayable mess did indeed get to be called D&D 4th Edition, while "basically 3Ed more or less" was named Pathfinder, and not D&D. It's what happens.

Although "Swords & Sorcery", "Dungeons & Dragons" and "Might & Magic" have shown that Paizo really should have called their game "Paths & Pilferers" or something. You need [letter] & [that same letter again].

Ideally, you should create an alliterative title which will still get shortened to D&D.

Edit: on the other hand, "Monsters and Murder-hobos" could have some traction...

[TiaC]

Delving & Dying?

Doom & Destruction?

Dodos & Douchbags?

[Prak]

I'd go with Denizens and Delvers, and then use those terms in the books to describe the monsters that have taken up residence in dungeons and abandoned structures such as ancient ruins, and the adventurers which kill them and take their stuff.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Challenges and Chtreasures

http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/ori ... clip_2.jpg

[OgreBattle]

Dicks & Dongs

[Ghremdal]

In my shadowrun game, one of my players is playing Dungeons and Dinosaurs (Lofwyr and co. don't look to kindly on a game about slaying dragons).

[Omegonthesane]

Is "Gold & Glory" taken?

[Username17]

-Username17

[Koumei]

When I was much younger (20 years ago minimum), I had an adventure book that... each double-page had a maze or number puzzle or something similar, more involving than a simple word search but you get the idea. It was about sneaking into the castle of the monsters and something something save the day.

One of the rooms was their recreation room or barracks, and the orcs/goblins had a box titled "Houses & Humans". It was a long time before I remembered that and got the joke. That said, I'd love to see a "Through the eyes of monsters that are in a fantasy world" view of modern life.

What the fucking hell, there is basically a database for Word&Word (Warning: tvtropes)

[radthemad4]

That's hilarious, and yeah a monster perspective would be interesting.

Everything is a trope. Well, almost everything (Warning: tvtropes).

[Seerow]

-Username17

Heh.

There's some guy over on GitP that's been calling his Heartbreaker Gold and Glory. I should forward that picture to him.

[Eikre]

I'd go with Denizens and Delvers, and then use those terms in the books to describe the monsters that have taken up residence in dungeons and abandoned structures such as ancient ruins, and the adventurers which kill them and take their stuff.

Do this, and make certain the most prevalent denizen race is "trollmen".

[tussock]

The question is: who's going to be the next chief designer after 3-4 years of firing people at the top.

Which person gets the top job at the point in time where the next design comes online? Because if it's someone from Magic, it'll be a card game. Like the guy from the minis game made 4e, so it's the minis campaign of point-balanced mini-battles spread over 900 pages or whatever, and fuck your "1d6 per level" because this mini has a level already, and it's 24 because that's EPIC!

Step 1: Blast 3, range 10, 6d6, and push 3 squares.
Step 2: Someone write it some flavour text.
Step 3: Profit! Look at the minis game! It WORKS!!!!!oneleven

---

Like, before 3e Monte wrote some stuff where he liked AD&D Wizards but thought they were too hard to get started with too much bookkeeping, and really liked metamagic, and thought saves should be harder and magic resistance shouldn't work because Wizards again, and Fighters were totally OP, so 3e. At least the man liked the basic concepts of D&D, and they listened to the playtesters and threw out a lot of bad ideas.

[Ravengm]

Which person gets the top job at the point in time where the next design comes online? Because if it's someone from Magic, it'll be a card game.

Tom LaPille was (somewhat) recently moved over to D&D from the Magic development team. He played it as a move because he loved D&D, but the general consensus in the circles I frequent saw it as more of a last chance, both because there were a bunch of people that disagreed with his design/dev decisions, and also for the fact that he wrote articles that angrily belittled the very audience he was attempting to attract.

For example. (tl;dr: He's butthurt that people didn't like a particular type of card and spent his entire weekly column accusing players of being Wrong and not actually playing the game.)

I sort of want this to happen, because LaPille at least got shit done and had solid examples and opinions that he backed up (regardless of how correct they were), rather than vaporware.

[kzt]

Classic horror requires that ubiquitous smart phones not exist. The entire cabin in the woods, slasher on the prowl, cannibal mutants on parade thing revolves around the characters being unable to look at Google Maps or contact the state police. The genre was created in the 20th century, and is heavily tied to that era's technological limitations.

Now conspiracy horror doesn't require that. Indeed, 21st century inventions have made the panopticon posited by most men in black conspiracies more plausible. If you were doing something like Doubt, it wouldn't be at all helpful to take peoples' smart phones away. The players might have to go retro on the portable phones to keep the Conspiracy from tracking them. But in any case you wouldn't expect to be able to accomplish much by calling the authorities or looking at public map databases, because dispatchers and online map providers are obviously in on the conspiracy.

Monster Hunter International is a twist on that, where certain elements of the Feds know pretty much what is going on (or at least they think they do...) and the Feds will "deal" with people who expose things or threaten to do so. The basic idea of MHI is the monster movie turned on its side, where the people in the cabin in the woods don't wander off one by one to get murdered and when the mad slasher kicks down the door to kill the helpless terrified occupants they are instead all waiting with loaded guns and shoot the shit out of him. The end.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Bumping this thread again, because after witnessing how much 5E D&D is floundering (collapse of digital tool support, delayed core rulebook, no videogame support, and a spartan release schedule) I think it's relevant to bring this topic up again.

My position is more-or-less the same, though there's two wrinkles in my argument: the resilience of 4Erries and the increase in bloatware from 3.0E to 5E D&D. Looking at certain 5E D&D venues, it looks like the majority of complaints against the edition are being made by leftover 4E D&D fans. I mean, as predicted a lot of them just hopped onto the latest bandwagon but I know a surprising number of holdouts. They're a minority of a minority demographic, but they're not nothing.

As for bloatware... holy shit. Read a 3.0E sourcebook like Sword and Fist and now read a late 3.5E D&D one like Book of Nine Swords. Then read a 4E D&D one like Adventurer's Vault 3 Mordenkainen's Emporium or whatever. 3E D&D books have always had the problem of pointless bloat from the beginning, but that problem steadily got worse over time.