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Just posted by R. A. Salvatore regarding the release of the new D&D product line with titles and dates.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/new...ct-Line-Release-Dates-and-Details-Update

Not sure if we will even bother. We just kind of wing it now, having played everything from the original paper books in the 1970s until 3.5. It is weird that they aren't releasing all three core books at the same time. Kind of hard to play it without all three.

Yeah, I prefer 3.5 and Pathfinder to what I saw with the 5e playtest. WotC have proven over the years to not be good with stuff outside their core focus.

Funny, of all the versions of the game, I disliked 3.5 the most.

Am excited about 5e. They are releasing a starter box (levels 1-5) first. Then the PHB at GenCon. The reason for the staggered release was to insure proper quality control. Given that they had umpteen erratas published for 4e, they've learned a lesson.

According to Mike Mearls, the project manager (via Twitter):




I'll know more after GenCon.

OK ... I now have a had a chance to run 5th (this week @ Gen Con). And I can tell you that ... unless you feel some need to start with high level characters, the 'starter set' has enough to get you started.

And to be honest, I think it is usually advantageous to start a new game system at the beginning ... first level characters and all. That will let you start out with very simple characters and monsters to run and you can 'grow' into the more complicated stuff as you get comfortable with the basics. Your first reading assignments were not Shakespeare and Kierkegaard, were they <wink>

Here is what I came away with. First and foremost, 5th edition is going back to its roots. They kept using the term 'theater of the mind' to reinforce the idea that it is about 'Role-playing' characters, the GM and players working together to creating a story ... as opposed to the direction it had been going often referred to 'roll-playing', where it was all about exploiting the rules to maximize advantages and minimize disadvantages.

Now having made that distinction, I have to say that I don't think that there is anything wrong with either approach. I like things about both. But I can understand why someone might like one approach to the game over the other.

From what I saw at GC, there was an =AMAZING= amount of interest and enthusiasm in the new concept. And I have to say that there were a =LOT= more 'brand new' players at GC for D&D this year than I can remember seeing ... well ever, I think. Many of these were people that had never played D&D before, but there were also people coming back that had not played since 2nd ed ... and some that had not played since 3 or 3.5. Most of the feedback I have heard was positive. There were some lamenting the loss of this or that feature from a previous game (mostly from 4th ed players I think). But even they admitted that they enjoyed the games they played.

Granted all of that is anecdotal, but one of the things I did this year was 'Marshal' one of the games, so I got to talk to a =lot= of these players, so I think I got a pretty representative sampling.

Overall it seems like there is a brighter future for D&D with 5th edition that it seemed like there was with 4th, which felt like it was ... imploding or exploding ... I am not sure which <g>

If you get a chance, give it a try.

run us a game mike!

We start a new campaign in my FTF group next week and we will be starting with the new rules, at least in part as we learn them

I tried that once, PP. It was a fiasco. While I am (reportedly) fun when I run F2F, I have not figured out how to run a game here <sigh>

Ken, If you are not sure if you will like it, the Starter Set ... which includes a subset of the PHB, a scenario and some other fun stuff that will give your group a chance to see if you like the direction D&D has gone ... and it is less than the cost of just the PHB ... which is, I have to say, pricier than in the past.

No, I will buy the PHB just to read it if nothing else. And it is our GMs decisions on what we use. Lately we haven't been using anything really, just a hodgepodge of old rules in our heads and winging it.

Oh, I wasn't trying to talk you out of it, just mentioning possible cost saving options <g> The PHB and the MM (I managed to get a pre-release copy <weg> ... gotta love the perks of working for 'them' <wink> ) =ARE= very well done.

It will be nice if they finally get an edition right (Dig at 3.5/4 users )

I loved 3.5. Still the one I use. Every time I hear someone say they like 2 better, I think they're just old and afraid of change.

Just got back as well, and played 5e all week. Have to say I like it a lot. As one of the designers (Mike Mearls) described to us in a previous discussion they tried to take the best features of all the editions and blend them together.

IMO it is closest to version 2 than any other.

As MikeD said, they are purposefully trying to correct the dramatic shift towards miniatures tactical play that required maps and calculators that was 4th ed (which was effectively WoTC trying to mesh D&D with Magic the Gathering).

They've returned to the "Role" playing core that they began with but added in enough different races, classes, and powers to give it a lot of variety. It is not the hodgepodge of dozens of books and sub-classes, (which often conflicted with each other) that was 3.5 nor is it so complicated that you need a software program to even create a pc as was 4th ed.

You can still play with miniatures and graph paper if you want, but my DM for the week ran "Theatre of the Mind" and we had no problems.

The biggest change is the rules are simple enough that you don't need to keep a dozen reference books (3.5) or a pc open to the on-line Rules Compendium (4.0) on the table. We had a single book (the PHB) and the DM had his module and we played for 3 days straight.

i'm old and I'm afraid of change! so what?! ppttthhhh!

But, i think i will buy me a copy of this edition, because they made an effort to get back to the heart of the concept!

Nope, it really wasn't. There are no similarities between the two, and any efforts to merge the brands has been rejected out of hand repeatedly in-house. WOTC is a company which likes adhering to buzzwords, and 'brand distinctiveness' is one of them. I'll see if I can dig up one former employee's account of that particular cursed hot potato.

I'll choose to disagree. Not from a business perspective, but from a "style of play" perspective. MTG was fabulously profitable for them and they wanted to reuse the formula.

4thed ed was effectively an attempt to turn D&D into a card game. You had powers (cards) you could play from your hand once per day or once per combat. They were even written much like many of the MTG cards I have seen. In fact the pc sheet that comes out of the 4th ed character builder displayed all the pcs abilities in nice tidy rectangular card shapes that could easily have been cut up with a scissor, laminated, and turned into a deck of cards a player could hold and play (sounds just like MTG doesn't it?).

Nope, it really doesn't. You might as well say 'Sounds like poker, doesn't it?' After all, there are kings, queens and knaves involved in mediaeval fantasy, and they're on _cards_ in Poker.

Believe me. I've played and GMed 4th Ed. I've played and made thousands of dollars talking about M:tG. I'm not arguing that some things from 4th Edition could be done as cut out cards, I'm arguing that it has nothing to do in terms of appearance, play style, usage, or anything else with M:tG. 'X is sold as packs of random cards, Y has the potential to use cut out cards, Company Z makes X and Y, X=Y' doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

We can disagree. I know in conversations with dozens and dozens (perhaps even hundreds) of D&D gamers at numerous Conventions and in my FTF games since 4th ed came out the prevailing belief among them is what I described.

To me it is more like saying one is Gin Rummy and the other is Poker. Not the same game, no. Different rules. But at the bottom a similar core structure.

Fair enough. I take it you've played both?

I have played D&D for decades, beginning first with the Chainmail paperbacks and subsequently every version since. I have played MtG only a handful of times, and observed games being played a few more than that, so my analysis of MtG is admittedly sketchy. I am not trying to say the in-depth details are similar, just the feel of D&D 4e was closer to MtG than any other version of D&D was.

I apologise if I have been overly assertive here, it's been one of those days. I agree that the feel of D&D4 was the furthest from D&D as we know it.

I've only had the chance to skim the PHB so far, but it's giving me a "back to its roots" feel.

Back in the days when I was playing a long-running D&D campaign is was mostly 2e, and it's all looking very familiar. It might end up playin differently, since they've tweaked a lot of the numbers.

AJ - no problem. Been one of those days for me too. Bit of a culture shock after immersing myself in gaming at Gencon the past 5 days and then coming back to a big, stinking, gut-heaving, pile of sh*t at w*rk this morning.

I'm back from GenCon having played with Zeim for 4 awesome days.

D&D 5e has the D&D "feel" that 4e didn't. I liked 4e but it didn't feel like D&D.

1) It's easy to make a PC in about 10-15 minutes with pencil and paper. No need for a computer to calculate your attack bonus with this power and that.

2) The power is back in the DM's hands. While many of the DM's did use tactical grids and mini's at GenCon, none of the ones we played with did. They used "theater of the mind" and it worked out great.

3) There's an emphasis on roleplaying again and I like that.

Just my quick take.

One of the most ironic things, I think, is that ... as Zeim pointed out, 5th doesn't need computers to run, but it is the first edition that has corporate support for a computer app. DungeonScape was 'play testing' an app for the iPad at the convention that ... even though it is still in beta, looks pretty cool.

I heard a lot of folk talking about "WotC merge of D&D and MtG", but I agree with AJ. Sure they came up with the cards as an interesting mechanic because they were familiar with cards, but I also think it was a very effective way to deal with the complication of the rules that had develop. I still use cards as a tool for combat and I think it helps a lot.

As to the argument that they 'worked' like MtG is more coincidence. In point of fact, the those 'powers' were =very= much like spells that casters had used in every edition =and= it was one of the things I liked best about 3.5 ... now every class had 'resources' to manage which made combat more than 'hack - hack - slash - slash' for no casting classes. I think AJ is right. Here is another ... maybe more apt ... analogy. I use cards to play Poker, I use cards to build a card stack wall ... that does not mean that those two 'games' are the same just because they use cards. Yeah, still not a perfect analogy <sigh>

But of course everyone likes what they like, sees what they see <wink>

Tim, I think you will find 5th to feel very much like 2nd, only easier. The biggest difference between 2nd and 5th is that they have simplified things. 2nd had a mechanic for everything. Thac0 to hit, saves and so on. In 5th everything is based on a single mechanic - the 'DC' or 'Difficulty Class' (well, =if= you imagine 'armor class' as the DC to hit someone). Almost everything else ... feats, class features, skills and so on ... involves granting 'Advantage' or 'Disadvantage' ... one of the most interesting 'rules' in 5th.

Hmmm, I think that Neptune has gotten to the crux of the matter! While the names may have been the same, it became a "women are from venus, men are from mars' sort of thing. 4th was the culmination of the focus on the idea of 'a rule for everything' so that no matter who is running a game, everything always works the same. That was ... at least to some extent ... driven by the 'shared campaign' that started with The Living City and progressing through the subsequent Living Campaigns where players, covetous of their characters, needed some consistency independent of who ran them through an adventure. 5th is getting back to story telling.

BTW Zeim, I just cannot relate to your 'problems' at all. Since I am retired, all I had to do today was relax and take a nap or two <heh heh heh>