Wizards informally announces 5.5 edition

[JonSetanta]

I fucking hate modern society so goddamn much for this bullshit.
Not like I ever gave Wizards my money anyway, so I guess it's irrelevant.

I'm with you on that.
The more money an individual or corporation has, the more they want to extract from us commoners.

While I have purchased all three AD&D core books back in the 90s, then the 3e core books two decades ago, then (from a friend, half price but a bit worn) the DMG and PHB for 3.5e (MM came cheap from Amazon)... after the DND Beyond playtests I noticed so many people had binding failure with their 5e PHBs, so I waited a few years for the reprint and spent ANOTHER buttload of cash, this time 50 USD, and I think I'm done.
I don't care how spectacular any later D&D edition is or might be, Hasbro will just keep increasing price for less product.

I have my means of acquiring PDFs, and it's... a sizable collection over 15 years... but these are games I can't even find anyone willing to play, or out of print obscure things that were scanned and sites are charging 30+ USD for a digital copy for... unbalanced, poorly written junk.

On the flip side, last spring I was given 500 USD in cash for 15 Magic cards I acquired 10-15 years ago for maybe 10 cents to 10 dollars apiece, held on to them, used them, and demand drove the prices up to 50-60 apiece.

[deaddmwalking]

And when I was a kid, you got five penny candies for one red cent!

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Back when I was a kid, the eternal debtor class was much smaller than it is now!

[JigokuBosatsu]

I am dumbfounded that there is not a Netflix D&D cartoon.

Okay, hear me out... Spelljammer. (I have a feeling this has been bandied about on here before) It would work for the kids who watch Adventure Time and Regular Show, but also for the older Rick and Morty crowd. Space Hippos yeeting Mindflayers off the deck of a magical pirate ship onto the surface of Ye Olde D&D planet... that's a pretty universal human experience. And if you really wanted a backdoor pilot for your Drizz't/Entreri buddy cop show, then just land on Planet Salvatore for an episode.

Realistically this probably wouldn't work, but as I'm high as balls right now it sounds pretty cool.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

It would work for the kids who watch Adventure Time and Regular Show, but also for the older Rick and Morty crowd.

Those crowds overlap, my man. The kind of manchild who watched Adventure Time has a 50% chance of being the kind of manchild who watches Rick and Morty.
Ergo, put the show on Adult Swim. If Wizards REALLY wanted to be cheap, they could do what the first Star Wars: Clone Wars did and just pump out 2-minute long shorts to play in between other shows. You could fit a lot of bullshit into 2 minutes of a Spelljammer animation.
And fuck it, put the people who animated Superjail on it.

[virgil]

Someone who watches Adventure Time is a manchild?

[JonSetanta]

... I enjoy Rick and Morty. Not for the "LOLRANDUM" aspect, but because it references scifi movies, novels, tropes, and in general, the infectious complications of multiverse travel.

[angelfromanotherpin]

A *lot* of beloved pop culture characters are very thinly written and then elevated by a good performance. As soon as a character is portrayed by a pro actor instead of the prose of a TSR-grade author, they'll get a lot more compelling.

And there are some good stories in the D&D realm. Personally, I'd pay to see a show that covered the default BECMI arc: someone who goes from tomb robber to expedition leader to Crusader-Kings-tagonist and then has to complete some hilarious achievement in order to travel forward in time to defend their dynasty against future crises and thereby ascend to Immortalhood. Or one that recruited the Good Place team to adapt Planescape: Torment.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

... I enjoy Rick and Morty. Not for the "LOLRANDUM" aspect, but because it references scifi movies, novels, tropes, and in general, the infectious complications of multiverse travel.

Someone who watches Adventure Time is a manchild?

Heh heh... got 'em.

[Prak]

They've already done "5e with Rick and Morty"

I reviewed it.

[virgil]

Heh heh... got 'em.

So that was an intentional troll?

[JonSetanta]

Heh heh... got 'em.

So that was an intentional troll?

I knew what I was getting into when I responded, but in all intent I don't give a flying fuck.
It's a cartoon, not a way of life.

[Chamomile]

Okay, hear me out... Spelljammer. (I have a feeling this has been bandied about on here before) It would work for the kids who watch Adventure Time and Regular Show

Those shows debuted over a decade ago and have been off the air for years. Their primary audience is like 25 years old by now.

[Thaluikhain]

Eh, I think celebrity endorsement is the way to go. Get Kim Kardashian to (at least nominally) co-author a scenario where you fight an evil snake lady (with a red lip classic thing) and you're golden.

[TOZ]

How much does this fuck with that Level Up third party bullshit, do we think?

[Krusk]

How much does this fuck with that Level Up third party bullshit, do we think?

Well they just launched their kickstarter
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/en ... erm=morrus

So presumably they are trying to get it out the door asap, before 5.5 happens and they have to restart.

[Stubbazubba]

Well they just launched their kickstarter
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/en ... erm=morrus

So presumably they are trying to get it out the door asap, before 5.5 happens and they have to restart.

I was going to say that this is the absolute worst possible time to launch a third-party 5e overhaul, but given how /r/dndnext is melting down over the previews of 5.5 stuff, it might land on its feet by being the PF to 5.5's 4e. RPG Twitter, however, is mostly embracing the new stuff, so it will be an interesting 3 years.

[Krusk]

They claim its all written, and that the PDFs will ship when the kickstarter ends (Their email claims a previous one shipped in literal seconds). As someone who followed the project, I didn't see anything about an upcoming kickstarter, just an announcement it was live.

It could be coincidence, or it could be that someone said "Fuck it, ship. we can't come out right at the same time as 5.5. Get something out the door now before we have to do rewrites."

[Stubbazubba]

They claim its all written, and that the PDFs will ship when the kickstarter ends (Their email claims a previous one shipped in literal seconds). As someone who followed the project, I didn't see anything about an upcoming kickstarter, just an announcement it was live.

That's on you, then: this blog post from July 9th accurately predicted the week it would launch. The FAQ page put the date in the future tense.

[Dogbert]

Yes, but this way Wizards makes more money. I have a sneaking suspicion Hasbro is getting tired of their shit and is telling them "either monetize DnD or fire everybody who's not working on MtG."

They don't even have to write anything, all they have to do is start charging licensing fees to the generation of youtubers they created. If our favorite Sultan of Sophistry was still in charge of the dnd division, he'd probably have thought of that by now.

If anything, I'm glad 5.5 will happen, that will give me more material for comics.

[Foxwarrior]

I dunno, if they started charging licensing fees the YouTubers might all just move to Call of Cthulhu...

[JonSetanta]

Did everyone see the paragraph about maneuvers, Exertion points, stances, and "schools" of combat?
Straight out of Weeaboo Fightan Magick, but better.

With Hear the Wind, there's a "dodge roll" maneuver that uses Perception checks against the attack roll. Interesting.

https://www.levelup5e.com/news/lets-loo ... -maneuvers

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

The book of Weeaboo Fightan Magick had classes that vastly changed how you got your combat maneuvers back (to the point of the Swordsage objectively being the shittiest), yet this just gives all non-full casting classes the same pool of Exertion points that they all seem to refill the same way. I wouldn't call it "better" unless the Barbarian generates Exertion differently from the Fighter. I guess it's a step in the right direction.

[NigelWalmsley]

The more I look at the discussions people have about 5e, the more convinced I become that no one working in the RPG industry professionally has learned one single lesson from anything that happened in the past 20 years. The debates people have now about 5e are the same debates people had about PF ten years ago and the same debates people had about 3e twenty years ago. Of course 5e's proposal for fixing martials is a lazily warmed-over version of something from 3e, that's everything in 5e!

[Whatever Jr.]

I feel like they learned something from 4E. Nothing about game design, mind you, but a more important lesson: fucking up gets you fired, coasting does not.