The Gaming Den

I just went to a little local convention in my hometown. People were playing Magic and Vanguard and some other locally popular games and playing some 3.5, Pathfinder and other systems.

I wanted to get a feel for where people were on 5E/Next.

Very few people had downloaded playtest packets of any iteration of Dungeons and Dragons Next in their open playtesting/beta-testing phase.
One person who had and played it, quite a rarity, said the Bounded Accuracy thing was quite wonky (I agreed) and scared him a bit considering how much they dropped the ball on that promise with 4E.

The people I played Pathfinder with kind of felt that Pathfinder 2.0 was in the air and they were going to stick with that unless "Dungeons and Dragons Next just truly blew them away."

Distressingly enough, most people didn't even know Dungeons and Dragons Next was imminent, as in "It is the 40th anniversary of
Dungeons and Dragons this year and Next drops within months at
GenCon or this Christmas."

I think this is what happens when the last edition of Dungeons and Dragons is a dead edition that hasn't put out material since November 2011. That almost 3 year lag in publishing just convinced people 4E
was a dead issue, 5E would be a disaster and everybody started playing Pathfinder or OSRIC stuff.

I cannot help but think Next is stillborn. I am shocked at the lack of interest.

Yeah, I gather there is not much interest in Next. Of course, the theory on the Den is that the whole thing is Mike Mearls seeing how long he can go before he has to release something and get fired when it fails to perform.

name_here wrote:Yeah, I gather there is not much interest in Next. Of course, the theory on the Den is that the whole thing is Mike Mearls seeing how long he can go before he has to release something and get fired when it fails to perform.

Well there was a whole recent thing where he talked about how the game was 95% done, and plays like a full game. Basically they're ramping up for that Gencon release with what they've got, whether it's worth a damn or not.

I think there will be a bit more excitement about 5E by the time August rolls around and promotions start to ramp up again, but WotC definitely has their work cut out for them.

There is too many games out there. Even if WotC gives us the ULTIMATE RPG of our lives, people will continue to play WoD, 40k, or even OVA (i hope).

Wait till GenCon and grab a NEXT copy for your own amusement.

I don't see Wizards of the Coast or Hasbro on the list of sponsors for Gen Con. Seems fishy.

brized wrote:I don't see Wizards of the Coast or Hasbro on the list of sponsors for Gen Con. Seems fishy.

Probably they will sell the first books at the same time as GenCon, not there. Or not, who knows what they are planning?

Here where I work, not a single customer has asked about D&D Next. The only appreciable impact on our business is that we lack a Beginner Box for D&D, and they won't be printed until D&D Next.

On the other hand, new PathFinder books continue to sell like hotcakes.

We'll be ordering less D&D Next core rule books when they release than we typically order for an average PathFinder hardcover for, but we will probably regularly stock the Beginner Box for walk-ins.

Smeelbo

Oddly enough, all of the reports I heard from the PAX area where Next was being played was pretty positive. I don't know how representative that is, though.

I did not get to ask Mearls if he had a new job lined up post-release.

Ed wrote:Oddly enough, all of the reports I heard from the PAX area where Next was being played was pretty positive. I don't know how representative that is, though.

I did not get to ask Mearls if he had a new job lined up post-release.

Which playtest they use? That one where Sorcerers are interesting and Warlock are playable?

Who knows? They just kept throwing random ideas out and multiple playtest packages that nobody has a fucking clue what's going on.

Atmo wrote:

Ed wrote:Oddly enough, all of the reports I heard from the PAX area where Next was being played was pretty positive. I don't know how representative that is, though.

I did not get to ask Mearls if he had a new job lined up post-release.

Which playtest they use? That one where Sorcerers are interesting and Warlock are playable?

I have no idea. I was too busy laughing at their pretentious-as-shit setup and expectation that people would wait for a game.

So, at the PAX thing they announced the Tranny of Dragons.

They didn't announce 5e though. It was billed as a 5e talk and they didn't really talk about 5e at all, they just showed some new art and talked about how the next season of their seasonal thing will have a bunch of Dragons, and Tiamat in the Realms, because they don't even care any more.

Given they have artists hired and almost nothing coming out, new art is something that you'd sort of expect. People wrote up the talk and everyone kept saying "but what did they talk about", and it was just a bunch of "look what the guys in the other office are doing" and some art shots, which may be from the other office too.


There's no buzz because they're in hiding. Very carefully not committing to any times or dates or product names or book layouts or how many books or ... they haven't even given it a fucking name yet.

The biggest announcement was that they're committed to providing Next stats, 4e stats, and 3.5 stats for all their adventure stuff in the future. Mike Mearls noting that he didn't care what edition of D&D people played, as long as they played. When, I would have thought he might care if someone wanted to play his edition.


It's kinda like they've given up. They've got a game, they're just not really wanting to run out of excuses for no one buying it by putting it up for sale. Meanwhile, everyone on earth is playing Pathinder, because http://www.d20pfsrd.com/

What? 3.5 has been a dead edition for Wizards since 2007.

Have they NOT learned anything from the 4E/Essentials debacle?

"Never split the party."

So WOTC official material will actively give people reason to not play 5E while exposing new people to 3.5, which may be better than both...

brized wrote:I don't see Wizards of the Coast or Hasbro on the list of sponsors for Gen Con. Seems fishy.

That is baffling. Last year, WotC co-sponsored GenCon without buying exhibit space at all - even without products to push, they thought the co-sponsorship was worth it for the sake of brand publicity. This year, WotC has dropped off the sponsorship list at the same time they're supposed to be marketing and releasing D&D Next? Even if D&D Next doesn't turn out to be total vaporware, that looks a whole lot like WotC tacitly admitting they're done spending money to advertise the D&D brand.

Sounds like Mike has been getting his ideas from his buddy who writes an India-flavored campaign setting for Labyrinth Lord. Ideas that work okay if you're selling the setting. Not so much when you're selling rules.

tussock wrote:So, at the PAX thing they announced the Tranny of Dragons.

Typo of the year.

Whipstitch wrote:

tussock wrote:So, at the PAX thing they announced the Tranny of Dragons.

Typo of the year.

I guess you could say it...

shades.gif

...has its drag on.

Ed wrote:Oddly enough, all of the reports I heard from the PAX area where Next was being played was pretty positive. I don't know how representative that is, though.

Taking into account Penny Arcade has been consistent in their dnd advertising since 4E well... I'd say you did a Christianity census at a church.

Whipstitch wrote:

tussock wrote:So, at the PAX thing they announced the Tranny of Dragons.

Typo of the year.

You mean a typo for the ages.[/u]

On the one hand, system flexibility isn't a BAD thing. If you can plug in all the encounters with 3.x creatures, you're 85% there to true compatability. But if you're publishing variant stats for multiple editions, I see a couple of problems.

1) That's a lot of page space taken up for stats that 2/3 of your audience isn't using. I mean, if you publish 3.x/4th/Next statblocks for every encounter, no matter which edition you play you're going to have 2x as much for an edition you don't play.

2) Assuming that monsters can fill the same role equally in all editions seems like a stretch. If your adventures are balanced for Next, I'm sure that for 4th/3.x some of those monsters will be MUCH tougher; some will be MUCH weaker. Overall, I would expect it to impact the quality of adventures.

But WotC doesn't have much success with adventures in general, so perhaps this is all pointless.

The WotC ones, part of their freshly commercialised "encounters" program, monster stats at the moment are all downloads. The skinny module you can now buy describes the encounter and MTP stuff, but you download the stats and other resolution rules for that encounter separately for your preferred system.


ENWorld's been selling someone's adventure path's (Zeitgeist?) for a while that you could buy a 3.5/Pathfinder version or a 4e version of the same thing. They had a sample one, and I grabbed both to see the changes, and they basically fit the same story and pacing and everything. The guy in charge said at one point (last year) the 3.5 one was selling nearly twice as well, but the 4e support was still profitable with all the reused art and stuff.

Like, they invent rules in both books to get certain 4e stuff working in 3.5, and visa versa. The monsters are all custom built with class levels or whatever to make it work out, I think their 4e monsters don't follow the standard formula, which is probably a good thing. But it's just explained in a sidebar and the people involved make it fit the system's stat blocks perfectly. Nice art, professional.


So it can work. I'm not sure it's working for Wizards, but they are half-assing it a bit. Also, physical books are tougher to dual-print and pre-order in multiple types, even little ones. The ENWorld stuff is all pdf and print-on-demand.

tussock wrote: The biggest announcement was that they're committed to providing Next stats, 4e stats, and 3.5 stats for all their adventure stuff in the future.

Yes, and the rules will be modular so you can fine-tune the complexity!

Publishing side by side stats for two incompatible game systems didn't work out super well for Legend of the Five Rings 2nd edition or for Champions Fuzion. Actually... there's probably an OSSR or two in there.

-Username17

So... is the lack of sponsorship for Gen Con a sign that WotC has simply thrown the towel? I can't understand the business decision behind not advertising their brand heavily when they're supposedly about to do a big product launch.

Actually, I can imagine two possibilities, none of them good:

1) D&D Next won't be ready for release this year.

2) D&D Next is ready for release, but WotC don't believe they have a good product. In fact, they fear negative word of mouth once the game is actually played and they lack the "this was only a beta-test" excuse. So their plan right now is to maximise pre-orders by avoiding scrutiny and showing just fluff for the finished product (art, etc). They'll try their best to keep the finished game in a quantum state in their their public's mind, so that people pre-order hoping that the bits they liked in any of the playtests was used in the end product.

Next was announced January 2012. I cannot imagine that they wouldn't
have something to ship this Christmas, especially with the 40th Anniversary pressure AND Pathfinder
2.0 breathing down their necks.

WOTC hasn't put out a Dungeons and Dragons pen and paper RPG
product since November 2011 so they've had about 3 years to work.

It would be unconscionable for them to not have a release.

Edit: I think this year they'll just be forced to release Next
and go the Vaporware product: It isn't truly done, but we'll
say it is, and recommend the "best" modules to use and if
you don't like the end result, you're a Munchkin, Cheese Junkie
Powergamer who is Doing It Wrong (tm).