Dungeons & Dragons Next Playtest Released

New submitter thuf1rhawat writes "For a certain type of geek, nothing is more important than Dungeons & Dragons. In January, Wizards of the Coast announced that the next iteration of the game (referred to as D&D Next) was under development, and now they've released an open playtest. They hope to gather as much player feedback as possible to help refine the new rules."

Comments

Uh....May Fools Day?

[RobinEggs]

Are they kidding here? Fourth edition is will turn 4 years old next month, and they're already actively developing the next set?

It takes at least four years just to fully develop a new edition of a major tabletop game, with all the adventures and campaign settings and stuff that come out. And forget how long it takes the publishing to catch up, what about the players? All the rule and supplement books are at least $20; the most basic set of stuff for running a campaign is $70+, and that doesn't include any "toys" like campaign manuals or power-gaming goofy shit like epic-level character rulebooks / setting-based weapons and spell guides, etc. That shit's expensive, and it takes time to get used to.

Releasing a new edition of D&D every five years is just as much a slutty cash grab as releasing a new Call of Duty annually. They're not even letting the new version settle in before they prepare to shove it out the door.

Re:Uh....May Fools Day?

[DigMarx]

Wizards of the Coast and parent company Hasbro really shat the bed with 4e, and WOTC have pretty much admitted they've alienated just about every demographic in their fanbase. The grognards were put off by the MMO styling, the simulationists hated the dissociated mechanics, the math trolls...well, they'll never be happy. The icing on the cake was the red box (it's 4.5e, but it's not). Basically they had to go back to the drawing board because Paizo, makers of Pathfinder RPG, have been eating WOTC's lunch for the past year or so. Plus, I mean, who doesn't like a slutty cash grab?

Quick Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

The playtest is pretty limited. Lots of little minor changes. But what I can make out so far:

4th Edition Base - Limited Power System + New simplified math system for positive or negative modifications to circumstance + Vancian Casting (kinda)

If you're expecting a huge shift or one back to 3rd you're better off sticking with Pathfinder at this point.

Re:There is a d3, it's not a d6 / 2 round up eithe

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

So Palmela and Her Five Sisters then?

You do realize you made that post on a Saturday night on a Slashdot story about Dungeons and Dragons, right?

Re:Anything Else?

[pthisis]

D&D and AD&D had several versions alongside each other (they were separate games developed in parallel by TSR). After Wizards of the Coast bought TSR, they merged them into a single line that was named D&D but was more like TSR's AD&D rules. Consequently there are 2 different things called D&D 3rd Edition, D&D 4th Edition--to avoid confusion, Wizards of the Coast refers to the old TSR-released ones as "D&D Version 3" and reserves the name "3rd Edition" for the post-WotC merged game. But historically the TSR one was also called D&D 3rd Edition.

The timeline was something like:
D&D 1st Edition/Chainmail rules
D&D 1st Edition/Greyhawk rules
D&D 2nd Edition
                                                    AD&D 1st Edition
D&D 3rd Edition
D&D 4th Edition
                                                    AD&D 2nd Edition
D&D 5th Edition
(Wizards of the Coast buys them out here)
                    D&D 3rd Edition
                    D&D 3.5th Edition
                    D&D 4th Edition

Wizard of the Coast's D&D 3rd Edition and later are evolutions of the AD&D rules more than of the D&D rules
Unofficially the later years of AD&D 2nd Edition are called the 2.5th edition sometimes.

The original 1st edition of D&D you had to have the Chainmail table-top game rules to resolve combat; that changed when the Greyhawk supplement was released, giving D&D its own combat rules. So a lot of people consider the change from Chainmail to Greyhawk rules to be as significant as an official new edition.