And yeah, that's reasonable. Why should you be convinced that 5e D&D is a Vaporware Product? It goes to who is making it, what they've said about what they are making, what they've made recently and in the past, and so on.BearsAreBrown wrote:Maybe I'm less experienced or maybe I'm less jaded, but Frank, why are you so sure about all this? You seem to be extrapolating heavily from a few paragraphs of text. Are the drawing from some source material I'm unaware of?
First, let's look at the track record of Mike Mearls. Remember when he fixed Skill Challenges? Sorry, remember the first seven times that he announced that he was fixing skill challenges? Remember Iron Heroes? The man has a history, going back several years and literally dozens of instances, of announcing with great fanfare that he was going to make a new subsystem, then announcing the subsystem was ready for publication, then announcing that criticism of that subsystem was unfair because it "wasn't really finished" and he was "working on something new and exciting".
Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twenty eight times, what the fucking fuck?
Now 5th edition is supposed to be layer upon layer of Mike Mearls blessed subsystem. Each one done up to the specifications of a different section of the fanbase. Each one interacting in some odd way with all the others, but every one of them optional. So, for example: if you make a cogent condemnation of the way they track movement or durations or whatever, they can claim openly that this version is "not for you" and is nebulously for some other group and obviously you should be using some other movement or duration tracking subsystem instead.
They have announced a platform that is perfectly suited for denial in depth of non-functionality. In order to show that there is a problem to the satisfaction of their ability to not simply dismiss it for you supposedly not being the target audience, you'd have to do each separate variant together. And then they could dismiss your complaint for being TL;DR.
In short: they've made an edition that would take months or years to expose as vaporware and the project leader is a man who has made nothing but vaporware since Kerry was running for president. And his second in command is a man who hired out his name to promote that guy's actual Vaporware in 2005. Remember: it was originally called "Monte Cook Presents: Iron Heroes" when it was originally released and sold for real money despite the fact that none of the subsystems worked properly and even Mike Mearls admitted that the magic system was just a draft taken from a brainstorming session. The number three guy is Bruce Cordell, who apparently didn't read any of the rules or setting material for 4th edition before writing rules and setting material for 4th edition. In short: a man whose design work has been literally monkeys on typewriters style vaporware paycheck writing for at least four years.
So the entire core group of authors have a clearly demonstrated history of making vaporware, and the hype is completely consistent with and even suggests a vaporware product. But how do we know that this is actually vaporware? Well, there are clues.
- Let's talk about they admit they haven't done: higher levels and hard numbers. That's... the entire design. It's a level based system, therefore if you haven't tested the leveling or the system, you haven't actually done anything. They are already putting up sign-ups for beta testers, but their actual product has been admitted to being in a pre-alpha state.
- Now let's talk about the things they've promised. They have promised that a character who gets pure numbers will be balanced with a character who gets abilities instead. We already know that's impossible, because we've played BESM and Champions. So we know we're being promised things that we know can't be implemented. Either they know that they can't really deliver and are jerking our chain because it's Vaporware, or they haven't actually gotten far enough down the design rabbit hole to recognize that fact, because it is fucking Vaporware.
- Now let's talk about the things they've actually shown people: Magical Teaparty. MTP, all the way down. The actions people took at the D&DXP were not on the character sheets, the DMs did not have DC charts. The DMs used their judgment to determine whether actions succeeded or failed. The actual game system, if there was one, was not used.
Regardless of the motivations on the ground, it is clear that having an office filled entirely with new blood means that there is no process. There are no working relationships or project schedules, because heads roll too often for a corporate culture to actually show up. A half-assed, overly ambitious project is probably inevitable with a core set of demoralized hacks who are already looking for a new job leading a group of untested fanboys who don't know what they are doing.
But the promises being made for 5e are on the face of it absurd, the people in charge have a long and storied history of booting projects out the door in a totally nonfunctional state, they lack enough confidence in their mechanics to actually use them, and they've admitted that they haven't even tried to do so in-house. This is what Vaporware looks like.
-Username17