Forbes article on 5e coming
So the Wizzies are looking at 5th edition D&D. The Accountants of the Coast must have realized they spent all their cash on exorcising Gary's ghost from the basement and decided to make everyone buy the rules yet again.\\

But my cynical views aside, what do you think of a 5e? Playtesters are suggesting it will be more retro and playable (that would be 2e but I'm bias).

So how would you redesign the D&D rules? What are you thoughts on the matter? Come out Come out all you old school, new school and I don't know what school players and give your opinions please.

I heard about this yesterday. I don't, frankly, care at all. After 3.5 edition (the pain of having to re-buy new versions of books that I had only bought a few years previously), and 4th edition (which was crap), I'm twice-bitten and very shy.

I frequently find myself in an unusual and somewhat lonely corner of this inn, in that I am one of the relative few who primarily play 4th Edition D&D.

I admit I had not heard of this most recent development, but I think I can spin up some thoughts about it.

I do know the rules of 3.5e, and I think that a lot of people don't give enough credit to what was good about 4e. Defenses levelled with the characters better (making glass cannon builds somewhat rarer) and it adapted the 'skill' system to remove largely useless or rarely used skills.

Of course, the other side of the coin is that the 4th edition was slow, rather less imaginitive, vastly simplified and perhaps even - the greatest crime of all - 'dumbed down'.

What I'm really saying there is that new is not necessarily bad (though, granted, there's no real way to justify constantly buying new rulebooks).

But one measure of the effectiveness of the editions is how much ease or difficulty a DM will encounter if they try to...overcome an edition's downsides. Whether it be through unusual tests of skill or puzzles where rarely-used skills could be essential, to actively modifying combat or even character building rules.

But I'm beginning to ramble and still haven't really said anything, so I'd better get to the point...

As a 'new school' player, I'd be disappointed if 5e turns out to be 4e with a few new fancy rules and a different way to make a character with a few less dice rolls in combat. What I'd hope to see, however, would be more along the lines of allowing for a greater variety of tasks/rules/twists to be utilized in a system. For example, large-scale combat (an idea 4e tried-and-failed somewhat with the 'minion' enemies), epic final battles, genuinely dangerous traps (another thing 4e failed to do), a variety of equally useful skills for puzzles or diplomacy...

I think a combat-system overhaul is what I'm most looking forward to, really. Having started with 4e, I've never experienced anything that really has made me mistrust new content from The Coast, but it looks like 5e may (or may not) change that.

Really...as long as they don't dumb anything down further and it's not just a copy of a previous edition, it should be fine. People somewhere will want to play it, and I consider that broadening the audience of D&D.

like celtia i played fourth first. Its good for beginners...thats about it. Lets hope 5th is at least decently more playable...might be worth getting.

If you turn a 5 upside down it kinda looks like a 2. So maybe if you read this new ruleback backwards we can just play 2e again.

...not interested.

Haven't bought any rulebooks for D&D, etc, since 2e, myself (although I have borrowed and whatnot)... And can't say that I've enjoyed anything about the 4e debacle of recent years...

I have purchased some RPG rules and source material outside the realm of D&D (i.e. Witchcraft, Serenity, Shadowrun) but, honestly, lost any interest in the D&D franchise (at least where spending wasting money on their "updated drivel" is concerned) before 3.0/3.5 hit the shelves.

Of course, I'm not so much about the rulesets and such, anyway... I'd rather just tell a tale or two and let it go at that.

I think that they figured out that 4th edition just wasn't as much of a hit as they hoped it would be. In all honesty, it's just comical that they dare come up with another new set of rules so soon after the last one.

But I haven't played 4th OR 5th, so I won't judge them both too hard. I know that some people like 4th as well. I think what it comes down to is this: as long as the game is good, the mechanics don't really matter. 2nd Edition was awesome, but not because of its rules. It was awesome because of the specific games that I played while that rule-set was the way to go. It's looking back on a time-period where everything would truly amaze me. Games nowadays don't have that kind of impact, but I think it's the getting older that triggers it more than influences from game mechanics.

Still, what I would like to see Wizards do is not invest in a new rule-set. Instead, they should make more games. They should create worlds of wonder. And they should make those games adaptable to any kind of system. THAT would sell. I remember drooling over the Ravenloft and Planescape box-sets, eager in anticipation of the adventures they would hold, EVEN if I didn't buy them all. The depth and wideness of the Realms, you know. That kind of stuff. Eberron was the last great thing they created, and they didn't go very far with that one.

Anyway, no thoughts on 5th edition here, just a lot of other stuff.

The problem with 4th edition is (was?) that it compared poorly to previous versions of D&D. The takeover of TSR by Hasbro resulted in D&D being a lot more wargamey, which was not always a bad thing. In the Hasbro era, the direction seems to have been to compete with MMOs, by making combat flashier etc.

The problem with the latter approach is that combat now takes forever unless you know every power intimately, and in making D&D a kind of MMO-lite, 4th edition lost what made earlier editions so special. That D&D was great because it was more grown up than a computer or war game. That the game is nothing without a focus on story, and on pointing neophyte DMs away from the cheap thrills of combat and towards the more lasting joy of an immersive narrative.

I have played 4th edition, and have enjoyed it in parts, but those parts were in spite and not because of the rules.

Since Grugg mentioned dear old AD&D, maybe someone should re-release physical versions of some of the old 2nd ed. books. I'm sure everyone's books have got lost, damaged or tatty over the years.

Well I called it. I called 4th, too. Both in front of witnesses. I'm good at this. 4th has lasted about as long as 3rd did, and even had its own 4.5 (Essentials). They still haven't delivered on the online playability they promised, and charged people for, during the 4e pre-release.

I haven't given one cent to the D&D franchise since AD&D, and I won't do it again unless they get their crap together. I put it in the same realm as Star Wars these days: A once-awesome idea that instead of living up to its potential has gotten so much worse and been so twisted by greed that it's now the opposite of almost everything I liked about it back then.

That said, I like 4th a ton more than I ever liked 3rd (still not enough to play when there were other options), but that's more because they were honestly pursuing a single design goal (be a tactical wargame with RPG elements) rather than the hybrid, barely-functional monstrosity that was 3e. I suspect that seeing MMOs plateau has made them rethink their whole concept, since 4e borrowed heavily from them (in fairness, they had borrowed heavily from D&D first). Hopefully, the success of retro-clones has shown them that a step back would actually be a step forward.

Finally, game makers are realizing what I said more than ten years ago: the OGL (and other, similar concepts), are a scam. Under U.S. laws, how to play a game cannot be someone's intellectual property. That means they can't put out a shoddy game and charge good designers to make good stuff for the game anymore - they have to make the good stuff themselves... unless they are just going to shovel out as much as they can as fast as they can with no regard to quality until the good name of D&D lies in ruins. That's not sustainable in the long-term, but how many corporations really think in the long-term anymore?

1st edition lasted 12 years, 2nd lasted 11, and it's been a steady, increasing decline since. The sustainability of the WOTC model was always doomed, though, so we shouldn't be surprised. 3e was about making money by driving out competition and conning people into paying for something they could have had for free. 4e was about trying to ape the subscription model that's been failing MMOs left and right (down to the same lies and false promises of improvements a fixes in the "next patch").

With luck, 5th will go back to the old model of "make a product people want, and they will give us money for it."

A well written game system with clearly defined rules that are easy to learn, play and lend themselves to role-playing and not roll-play. You should only need three book max to play the game, with lots more as extras (I'll buy them out of curiosity, I promise!).

I'm asking too much aren't I?

... and bought the 1e manuals as soon as I could get my hands on them. They served well for many years, especially after Unearthed Acrcana was released in the mid-80s. I'll admit that i had some skepticism when 2e first came out, but the transition from one to the other was not that tough , and the two systems are pretty compatible in any case. When the game was completely re-vamped for 3e, I completely lost interest as I saw it at the time as nothing more than a money-grab. The pubisher already had my money, and I already had a system that worked to my satisfaction.

This is not to downplay the validity of the profit motive: most of us depend upon it to a pretty large degree, whether recognized or unrecognized, and companies are certainly entitled to put out as many products as they believe the market will support.

That said, if 5e turned out to be back-compatible with 1e/2e, by which I pretty much mean if it were to ditch the d20 system in favour of the original format, I would at least be interested in checking it out in the hopes that it might enhance an already satisfying gaming experience without requiring a bottom-up revision. Though I could be wrong, I would not be surprised if a lot of other old-school gamers saw things this way.

I forgotten about the basic set. Dwarf, fighter, wizard, elf, cleric and thief were your classes. The stripped down simple combat system and only two levels of spells. I have a player who still thinks magic missiles are d6 because he started in basic.

I've been playing 3.5, some of my biggest campaigns in Eberron, and I honestly don't think I'd be switching away from that. I have other RPG systems to play like Savage Worlds, Dark Heresy, and Shadow Run to be buying ANOTHER edition of DnD. 3.5 Your mine forever ;D

Sounds like a punchline to an insensitive joke. On one hand it is too soon.

Unfortunately, I never learned the first basic ed or 2nd (AD&D). Shoot I think I would have enjoyed playing Temple of Elemental Evil. But alas Im ignorant of the joys of playing the earlier versions of the game.

3.0/.5 is what I cut my teeth on in 2001. I had more books from that edition than I could carry in a backpack. 7 years flew by almost in a blur, and its time to buy new books at $40+ a pop again. I refused. Bought my son the 4e red box set though, and ran him through the included adventure. Didn't like the new rules at all.

On the other hand, this new edition (5e) couldn't come soon enough even though only 4 years have passed since last edition. WOTC realized they made a mistake and alienated their faithful fan and gamer base with 4thed.

Now, with 5th supposedly having a "retro" feel to the rules, Im hoping the compromise pays off. I will however be waiting til I play and use the new rules to make up my mind if i'm going to buy any books. I'm hoping that the new rules revivafies the useability of books already owned.

I personally like the Pathfinder ruleset. I think they actually got it right. They are out to make money, yes, but they are not all up in your face obvious about it. I mean, the core rules and monsters are covered in 2 books not 3 like D&D. The majority of their supplements are adventure modules and bestiary books (more monsters).

So to wrap this up.....

WOTC, you money grubbing group, I cringe at and at the same time welcome the arrival of 5th edition, but don't expect me to jump on this band wagon until I'm sure its made better than what made me like the game in the first place.