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5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons Announced
New submitter lrsach01 writes "Wizards of the Coast has announced a 'new iteration' of their Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. Early information says the game will be more inclusive, with a basic rule set that 'builds out.' This Spring, WotC will be 'conducting ongoing open playtests with the gaming community to gather feedback on the new iteration of the game as we develop it.'"
1974 - First edition
1989 - Second edition
2000 - Third edition
2008 - Forth edition
2012 - Fifth edition
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Wizards of the Coast has announced they need more money because everyone who plays d&d has already bought all their old books.
So now it's time to obsolete everything again and make them start over.
Started playing again recently after a long (15 year) break from gaming, and I have to say it has been a lot of fun.
So....how's the divorce going ....
Don't they realize that the more often they change the ruleset the more often players have to spend money buying new books?
Oh...
A lot of people's complaints of 4e is that they basically made a pen and paper version of WoW. Hopefully 5th edition is more like 3.5e which is where they really got D&D right (IMHO IMHO).
Actually, the equation Edition(Year) is not described by an exponential, but instead rather well by a polynomial:
Edition(Y) = 0.0018684 Y^2 - 7.35 Y + 7223.2, where Y is the year
If we extend the curve, we get the following:
2018 - 6th edition
2023 - 7th edition
2028 - 8th edition
2032 - 9th edition
So we should expect vast growth over the next 20 years! Invest now.
Of course, by the 9th edition out future generations may have fully sentient AI's acting out the roles of in vat-grown bodies on a theme park on the surface of Mars. At least, one could hope...
When I play D&D, my friends and I use to original edition hardcover AD&D rule books. The rules are simple, we all know them, and we all know the books well enough to quickly point at the rule if there's disagreement. We do allow combo spells from the original lists to make new ones, cleared in advance or even on the fly if they're straightforward enough. The players & DM are mostly programmers and lawyers, so we're more interested in the role playing and storytelling than in the rules themselves. And the hunkering down in a man-cave all night to act like 14 year olds.
--
make install -not war
God forbid you ever try grappling....
Misery loves company. Online misery loves unsuspecting random strangers.
Haha. She is OK with it. Probably because there is no fear of other women being involved....
I'm just finally mastering the 2nd edition rules.
Tip: If you're a fighter, specialize in darts. First, they're distance weapons. You get 3 attacks per round at first level, and each attack gets your strength damage bonus. (1d3+bonus)x3, plus the ability to spread it out amongst multiple weak enemies, and you can build to 5 attacks per round. Also, since it's a thrown weapon, you get str and dex to-hit bonuses. Beats a fighter with a 2-handed sword easily.
While the PDF is not free, the core content is freely available on the Internet as a "Reference Document" under the terms of the Open Game License. Paizo hosts all of the details from most of their books themselves (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/), but there are many other websites that reproduce and compile details from different sources, including third party content (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/ is one).
Under the terms of the license, all of the core rules can be re-packaged and sold in your own game. Only the proper names unique to the Pathfinder setting (characters, deities, etc) are copyrighted and cannot be used.
In those days we created characters on parchment made from jaguar hides and used dice carved from the femur of a wooly mammoth.
Bah, you whippersnappers have it easy. In my day, we didn't play D&D, we just went outside an stabbed real beholders and dragons...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I was under the impression that Pathfinder (essentially a licensed fork of D&D 3.5) was outselling Wizards of the Coast D&D these days.
It is, according to industry measurements. I wish WotC well, but I honestly don't think they "get it" why Pathfinder is doing so well. Obviously it's a combination of a lot of factors, but one of the biggest ones is what you mentioned: the license.
D&D 3.5e and Pathfinder are under the OGL (Open Game License). It's a very permissive license that allows 3rd parties to effectively reprint and use almost all the rules (and in Pathfinder's case all the rules) in development of other products. Want to take a known monster, amp it up, and include it in the adventure module you're writing? The OGL allows you to do exactly that. Just include the OGL text and keep the attributions correct, and you're good to go. Pathfinder owes its existence to the fact most of 3.5e was open. The www.d20pfsrd.com site is a huge proof to the idea that open rules licensing doesn't kill the product. Aside from campaign-setting lore, names, and artwork, all the rules are available on that web site. And yet Paizo is doing great.
On the other hand, 4e was published (eventually) under a GSL, which breaks down mostly to "you can't do anything, for any reason, and if you do it, you'll wish you didn't." WotC has maintained very strict control over the 4e rules and no longer even sells PDFs of their books.
I have no reason to believe that even if WotC does open playtesting there will be any shift in licensing terms. The product will remain closed up and DRM controlled by Hasbro. Well, sorry. No 3rd-party ecosystem, no support... the name "D&D" alone isn't enough.
"Oh no... he found the
The reason you have all these versions isn't huge problems with the game system(s), its that there is a fundamental flaw in traditional RPG publishing. Once you sell someone a set of rules, you have to keep paying the bills and you have a hard time selling just accessories. I think that publishers keep re-writing things so they can keep re-selling core rulebooks to people.
Microsoft has the same problem. Once they sell you a good word processor, you never really need to buy another one. What features on office 2010 are there that you didn't have on office 97? The core product is EXACTLY the same.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I seriously don't miss calculating THAC0.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World