Big News from WotC
WotC made the official announcement today that what everyone thought was going on is going on and will begin play testing soon - 5th edition D&D. This is pretty huge news in the role-playing game industry and has even made it out to the New York Times. WotC must feel that 4e is really taking a beating out there to turn around on it after only 3 and a half-years out to the public. And I think it is. Pathfinder has been outselling 4e in the hobby stores for a little while now according to ICv2, though that doesn't take into account large book chains and online sales like Amazon. That said, according to the people running Paizo, there are ways to subscribe to parts of that information as a publisher and they feel that even in those arenas Pathfinder compares really well to 4e.
WotC can't be in a comfortable position over this. There's only one other time in the history of D&D that it has not sat squarely on the top of the RPG world and that was when TSR was having so much financial trouble that they couldn't pay their printer and get product to the market. For a company not running on the edge of bankruptcy to be in this position at the helm of the best known RPG in the world would be unthinkable. So WotC may be doing the only sensible thing open to them... rolling the dice on a new edition in an attempt to recapture the lost market. According to their announcement, they'll be running much more open play tests than they ran under 4e as well as soliciting much more input from the gaming community.
Frankly, I'm a bit skeptical. They've rehired Monte Cook, one of the designers of 3e, and I respect much of his vision of D&D. But they're going to have to figure out how to reconcile the vastly divergent viewpoints of 4e fans and 3e (and earlier edition) fans that led to the worst rift in the D&D fan community, a rift great enough to knock the official brand of D&D off the top of the RPG sales list. Maybe being skeptical is a good thing. I was skeptical of WotC's ability to produce a good 3rd edition, in part because of the poor design directions I saw under the Players Option versions of 2nd edition AD&D. But 3e won me over with enough good content and forward thinking, while still respecting the base game, that a version of 3rd edition is now my favorite RPG (Pathfinder). 5e might pull off the same thing. I don't know.
I suspect that if 5e does better than 4e that we'll see nerdboys starting to see D&D as the Anti-Star Trek movie series. In the movie series, the odd numbered movies are the weak ones, particularly Star Trek V. For D&D, people will be calling the odd numbered editions the good ones. Personally, I think this would be unfair to 2e which was actually a very good game for the most part, but then the first Star Trek movie was also actually pretty good, at least with ideas and story if not with its glacial pacing.
WotC can't be in a comfortable position over this. There's only one other time in the history of D&D that it has not sat squarely on the top of the RPG world and that was when TSR was having so much financial trouble that they couldn't pay their printer and get product to the market. For a company not running on the edge of bankruptcy to be in this position at the helm of the best known RPG in the world would be unthinkable. So WotC may be doing the only sensible thing open to them... rolling the dice on a new edition in an attempt to recapture the lost market. According to their announcement, they'll be running much more open play tests than they ran under 4e as well as soliciting much more input from the gaming community.
Frankly, I'm a bit skeptical. They've rehired Monte Cook, one of the designers of 3e, and I respect much of his vision of D&D. But they're going to have to figure out how to reconcile the vastly divergent viewpoints of 4e fans and 3e (and earlier edition) fans that led to the worst rift in the D&D fan community, a rift great enough to knock the official brand of D&D off the top of the RPG sales list. Maybe being skeptical is a good thing. I was skeptical of WotC's ability to produce a good 3rd edition, in part because of the poor design directions I saw under the Players Option versions of 2nd edition AD&D. But 3e won me over with enough good content and forward thinking, while still respecting the base game, that a version of 3rd edition is now my favorite RPG (Pathfinder). 5e might pull off the same thing. I don't know.
I suspect that if 5e does better than 4e that we'll see nerdboys starting to see D&D as the Anti-Star Trek movie series. In the movie series, the odd numbered movies are the weak ones, particularly Star Trek V. For D&D, people will be calling the odd numbered editions the good ones. Personally, I think this would be unfair to 2e which was actually a very good game for the most part, but then the first Star Trek movie was also actually pretty good, at least with ideas and story if not with its glacial pacing.