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 Manchu wrote:
That might send the wrong message in the larger context of "all editions are valid" marketing.

All except 4th!

They could've done something like mix elements from multiple editions...

personally, my favorite covers are the 1st edition Revised, I think... Especially the DMG with the green-cloaked wizard-type holding two massive doors open, if I remember correctly. Great image, although 'my' edition was 2nd.

4th ed was really a huge letdown for me and made me move on to other games.
I'll learn about this new edition before buying into it.

 MWHistorian wrote:
4th ed was really a huge letdown for me and made me move on to other games.

I feel the same way about 3/3.5.

 MWHistorian wrote:
made me move on to other games.

What kind of games did you move on to?

So at PAX East, Perkins said 5E is 97% done. One wonders if that means the core books will not be available at GenCon. The other news from PAX is that Tyranny of Dragons will be "self-contained," i.e., will not require the PHB or DMG, which makes me really think the 5E core books will not debut at Indy this summer.

Oh and Perkins said we'd get some Ravenloft soon ... whatever soon means ...

 Manchu wrote:
So at PAX East, Perkins said 5E is 97% done. One wonders if that means the core books will not be available at GenCon. The other news from PAX is that Tyranny of Dragons will be "self-contained," i.e., will not require the PHB or DMG, which makes me really think the 5E core books will not debut at Indy this summer.

Oh and Perkins said we'd get some Ravenloft soon ... whatever soon means ...

Could the "Tyranny of Dragons" just be the name of the starter box, or some sort of fluff book?

I'll be honest, I haven't been keeping too close an eye on this, but I was hoping to get the starter books at Gencon.

I bet Tyranny will be a range of products including a starter rpg box set.

 Manchu wrote:
I bet Tyranny will be a range of products including a starter rpg box set.

That's my guess. I'm assuming it's going to be kind of a theme for the first year or two of this edition. A major plot event for the Realms, but if they do any other settings in this period it might reflect their as well. Maybe update the Dragonlance Adventures modules series (again) to be in-line with this edition for a relatively easy re-release? It's got Dragons, and Tyranny.

This could be a neat direction for releases, though. Ravenloft has been mentioned... maybe after ToD has run its course the next 'event' will be horror-themed, starting with some undead horror stuff on the Realms, transitioning into a Ravenloft release.

I think White Wolf used to do this with their old World of Darkness line for a while. They'd have "Year of..." events which would generally have a bunch of related releases for different lines as well as a new line... For example, I think they did "Year of the Scarab" which had Egyptian-themed contend for Vampire, Werewolf, etc. culminating in the release of their Mummy game.

The only thing I find annoying with this is I feel the Realms fans are getting some Setting Event Fatigue. To my understanding, 4th made major change to the setting with a 'spellplague' and the a cosmic event literally changing the layout of the setting, I believe removing a few sub-settings (like Maztica) and changing to the 4e cosmology and magic systems. 5e is pretty much undoing this, and it's so blatantly a "We tried this, it didn't work, let's switch back" that I wonder if they'd be better off just saying that and taking the lumps than even trying to write around it. (Or just say that there's a 4e-Realms where the sstuff happened and a 5e Realms where it didn't, but I don't know if this would invalidate any novels and such.)

Still, I like that they seem to be looking at old settings (beyond the Realms) that have lain dormant for an edition or two for material/inspiration.

I think their novel publishing business keeps them from doing a hard reboot of the Realms. I don't think that will ever happen while WotC still has Ed Greenwood involved.

FR is okay but I am super ready for some new Ravenloft or DragonLance.

I've just been re-collecting the Swords and Sorcery Ravenloft stuff, having found it in English in a little comic book store in Dusseldorf.

Not too sure if I'm excited or not for a new Wizards version. I've run their Expedition to Castle Ravenloft adventure twice, and didn't find that it was really "Ravenloft" enough for me either time. We'll see though- they surprised me with the quality of their 4th Edition Underdark and Darksun materials.

What would be "Ravenloft enough" for you?

EDIT: Don't mean that to be snide, it's an honest question.

I'd like it to be fairly low fantasy, human dominated and with some reference to the setting as it was- the realms and their different cultures were really cool. It was also one of the few D'n'D settings to have Renaissance levels of culture and technology for some of the realms, I really liked the interplay between the more civilised realms like Dementliu and Paridon and the more savage like the Beastlands or Verbrek.

The last 3.5 offering was a bit too "generic" for my liking. It tried to be something that could slot into any fantasy campaign, and lost a lot of what makes Ravenloft cool and unique by doing so. Perhaps Wizards see "uniqueness" as something which is not desirable, especially when it reduces player options (for example, Ravenloft did not have a half orc race, or any Orcs of any kind. Monstrous humanoids generally were pretty rare, and non-humans were rare apart from isolated enclaves.

That sort of stuff is what I'm hoping for. Expedition to Castle Ravenloft provided a sort of generic 3.5 version that is actually pretty good for what it is, but having been a prior fan of the Swords and Sorcery and older material, it was a bit of a let down.

That said, I wouldn't be at all against a modernising of some of the lamer old school Ravenloft background, the stuff that was hammy when it was written and is really old by now. If they changed things a lot from what I've described but kept that original feel, I'd be happy. I feel that Ravenloft was the one setting where I got to play a gouty old Victorian gentleman, and that was awesome.

I find myself wondering if I'll like 5E D&D.

Is there a synopsis of what's what with this upcoming edition yet?

Mechanically, I am cautiously optimistic. Seems like a fairly stripped down system that is closer to 3.5 while incorporating parts of 4th. Seems to try to balance magic and non magic classes, we'll see how successful it is. My main worry is that players will dislike the lack of options, but I haven't found the monsters to be too "padded" at this point, they are reasonably threatening and go down in a reasonable amount of time.

A lot depends on how they manage the "tone" of the release- I felt like the stupid power names and flashy lightshow descriptions of 4th edition combat kinda put off my gaming group from playing, and the art style didn't appeal to them as much as the Pathfinder style. So we'll see how they manage. Another important point is whether the rules will be easily accessible online, in the same way Paizo's are. That's a big deal, to my group.

If you want to read a playtest report, I did one a while ago:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/581929.page

@Da Boss: I think I understand what you mean about Expedition to Castle Ravenloft being too generic but if you go back to I6 and I10 ... they were also pretty generic. The Ravenloft you seem to be thinking of owes more to a sub-setting, Masque of the Red Death (the "Gothic Earth" setting), and subsequent development via the S&S books you mentioned back towards fantasy thanks to everyone's favorite emo monster mash RPG company White Wolf. What others might call "Ravenloft proper," drawing from the original material, is exactly a Halloween-themed, generic fantasy drop-in module. I would strongly, strongly recommend you get hold of some Lamentations of the Flame Princess material given what you like about Ravenloft.

As to the presentation of 5E ... I like this deviantart concept style better than the comic book style of 3E or the saturday morning cartoonishness of 4E. But I think they should have gone a bit fresher, maybe something a bit more abstract.

@Alpharius: There are a lot of reviews of the final playtest packet out in the blogosphere but I honestly can't recommend any of them to you. And I can't be bothered to write one, either, because I learned from FFG that reviewing beta rules is a waste of time. My advice? Hold off on forming an opinion either way until you can read the final product or at least other people's thoughts on the final product.

Manchu- Thanks for the recommendation, I'll look into Lamentations.

I think Masque of the Red Death came out after the swords and sorcery Gazeteers, which are some of my favourite D'n'D setting books ever.

I'll agree- many of the 2nd edition ravenloft realms, and the original conceit, were not too far from what was presented in the Wizards 3.5 adventure. But that's all the worst and lamest stuff about the setting.

Masque of the Red Death might go too far the other way, in some respects- I've run some sessions with it, and it's so political and intricate that it won't be to everyone's taste. The Ravenloft presented in the Doomsday Gazeteers are a decent mix of that sort of Gothic horror and pulp fantasy.

I'm not generally a white wolf fan at all, but they had a pretty excellent run with that line of books in my opinion. (Of course, my goggles are most definitely rose tinted, as Ravenloft was the first setting I ever ran a game in and it's still probably one of my most fondly remembered campaigns, by my players and myself. Still, the ability to produce such a strong experience speaks for the quality of the material, I think.)

It's a good point about the fact that these rules are still beta, and anything I may have liked may change with the new edition. I feel a little burned by my investment into 4th edition which is now a lot of wasted money (especially the monster manuals) so I'm somewhat nervous about this release. Hopefully it's on the good side of my expectations.

 Da Boss wrote:
I think Masque of the Red Death came out after the swords and sorcery Gazeteers, which are some of my favourite D'n'D setting books ever.

Masque of the Red Death was a 2E Revised boxed set. It came out in 1994.

S&S was an imprint of White Wolf for publishing d20 fantasy. D&D 3E came out in 2000. S&S did its first Ravenloft Gazateer in 2002.

Da Boss, Have you looked at the two HackMaster versions of Ravenloft? Robinloft 1 and Robinloft 2?

HackMaster was written using the AD&D ruleset by Kenzerco, and is pretty easily portable to 2nd edition (just drop the 20 hitpoint kickers off everything). While HackMaster has a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor, it's downplayed in these modules. At least, it certainly was in Robinloft 2.

 Manchu wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
I think Masque of the Red Death came out after the swords and sorcery Gazeteers, which are some of my favourite D'n'D setting books ever.

Masque of the Red Death was a 2E Revised boxed set. It came out in 1994.

S&S was an imprint of White Wolf for publishing d20 fantasy. D&D 3E came out in 2000. S&S did its first Ravenloft Gazateer in 2002.

I didn't know that! Did you know they did an update for Masque of the Red Death for 3.5? That's what I thought you were talking about. Cool. Never heard of the 2E version.

Kronk: I'll definitely check that out, thanks!

 Da Boss wrote:
Did you know they did an update for Masque of the Red Death for 3.5?

Yep but I don't have a copy. I go to Call of Cthulhu for that sort of thing. My ideal of Ravenloft is basically Castlevania, ca. 1997.

 Da Boss wrote:
Not too sure if I'm excited or not for a new Wizards version. I've run their Expedition to Castle Ravenloft adventure twice, and didn't find that it was really "Ravenloft" enough for me either time. We'll see though- they surprised me with the quality of their 4th Edition Underdark and Darksun materials.

I'm guessing this adventure is a bit closer to the original Ravenloft adventure (for 1st edition AD&D), which was innovative for the time but was basically a dungeon crawl with an intelligent boss (Strahd) and some gothic horror trappings. It was the campaign setting that really took the setting to someplace interesting by adding the other domains, the idea of Ravenloft being the 'Demiplane of Dread' and the Dark Powers and such.

To me, to do it properly they need to reintroduce all that stuff, and maybe add some more. A Nentir Vale Domain would be a nic touch for the 4e fans.


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 Alpharius wrote:
I find myself wondering if I'll like 5E D&D.

Is there a synopsis of what's what with this upcoming edition yet?

In a lot of ways it's been compared to an 'alternate 3rd edition' in that it takes a lot of 2nd edition concepts and modernizes them, but in a significantly different way than 3rd. In general, I expect play experience to resemble 3rd more than 4th.

As I'm sure many are you are aware of, I'm a big 1E AD&D fan - and that's the campaign I'm DMing right now.

It would take a lot for me to get into 5th, but I'm more than willing to get it a looksee and a try!

@Balance: What do you mean by "modernize"?

@Alpharius: I never think of one edition replacing another. To me, they are all totally separate games on my shelf, like as different as Risk and Axis & Allies. I would never say, well I can throw out Risk now that I have A&A or I'll never play A&A again now that I remember how much more rules lite Risk is.

 Manchu wrote:
@Balance: What do you mean by "modernize"?

From what I've seen, less restrictions, more rigorous rules writing, and unified systems as compared to 1st/2nd edition.

One skill mechanic (stat-based, I think) instead of going to percentile skills for thief skills.
No hard-coded weird bits like racial level limits.
Some attempt to prevent casters being over-powered once beyond a certain level.

Overall nothing about it says 'revolutionary' and there's a few things that scare me, but I'll give it a try, I guess, if my group gets interested.

 Balance wrote:
Some attempt to prevent casters being over-powered once beyond a certain level.

So we don't get to "modern" until 2008?

I agree completely about more rigorous rules and unified systems (core mechanic) but I am wondering what you mean by "restrictions." Do you mean all the racial stuff (you mentioned racial level caps)?

I'm also really curious about what scares you about the playtest materials.

 Manchu wrote:
@Balance: What do you mean by "modernize"?

@Alpharius: I never think of one edition replacing another. To me, they are all totally separate games on my shelf, like as different as Risk and Axis & Allies. I would never say, well I can throw out Risk now that I have A&A or I'll never play A&A again now that I remember how much more rules lite Risk is.

Agreed!

But I played so much 1E AD&D 'back in the day' that, some 20+ years later, I can DM a game again with no problem at all!

You'd probably like the new edition of Hackmaster.

In all fairness, the guys I came with haven't really seen 'caster dominance' as an issue, but we rarely got above 12-14th level in 3rd, and our play-style for those games was generally such that there wasn't time to do a lot of item creation or similar. I'd almost like to play another game with those additions to try out the metamagic feats and such, in fact. I'm not sure when caster-dominance really became a 'thing' but I've seen scary builds in 3rd. 2nd and older just seemed tougher to advance, so a magic user getting to high enough levels to throw mroe than one fireball was a big deal and deserved it.

 Manchu wrote:

I agree completely about more rigorous rules and unified systems (core mechanic) but I am wondering what you mean by "restrictions." Do you mean all the racial stuff (you mentioned racial level caps)?

Yes. To my understanding, while the 'numbers' look a lot more like 2nd edition (They're trying to prevent the situation in 4th and to a lesser extend 3rd where you'd roll d20+20 or more for an attack, then roll 1d4+18 for damage, or similar silly numbers.) they've gotten rid of the level limits by race (so a Dwarf can't go beyond level 15 or whatever as a fighter) which a lot of people ignored anyway as player characters are supposed to be the heroic outliers of the game anyway.

 Manchu wrote:

I'm also really curious about what scares you about the playtest materials.

There's a few things:
One is the early playtest reports had some issues with trying to replicate 4th features without acknowledging it. Monte Cook, who is a good RPG designer with some great credits to his name wrote a dev blog that basically recreated 4th's "Passive perception" concept... A concept that was a key part of the most recent edition of the game they were using. Monte left the dev team for reasons not clearly stated, and I think he's happier working on his own projects anyway, but it did not bode well for the project. Basically, this was the first of several times that an idea was brought up but had to be different from 4e because 4e was bad, not because the idea was bad. (Note: I enjoy 4e.)

Healing Surges were a 4e concept to limit healing and spread it out, Simple implementation, worked well in practice, became an interesting resource to manage. 5th can't just use this idea, so they had (for a time, at least) 'Hit Dice' (similar to the regular hit dice...but for healing) that worked similarly, but were more random and didn't tie in to other systems.

Many players want Fighters to be more interesting. I agree. They've tried several systems for 5e to do this and I like the most recent one I've heard of. Fighters (and maybe other warrior-types)
get 'Superiority dice' or similar that can be used to add to AC, add to damage, or used for special effects. (The good side, here, is that from what I hear they realized that 3rd editions "Take a minus to do a status effect instead of damage' for some tricks was a bad design as, ultimately, the best status effect ever is 'dead'.

'Modularity' was a big design goal, because the stated goal for the edition was 'unifying the editions' with some statement indicating that we could have a table with a 1st edition style Dwarf, a 2nd edition style Elf Mage, a 3rd edition Halfling Rogue, and a 4th edition Dragonborn Warlord. Much of this got dropped as they presumably realized this was non-sense, but some thing have been moved to 'modules'. This includes skills, and there's some promises of a 'tactical module' for 4e style play. I wonder if this'll ever come out, and if it will work as it's non-core.

In general, the designers have not built confidence. There's been a few math failures, and this hurts things. A lot of neat ideas got tossed away because there seems to be a strong bias to do things the old way.

However:

The advantage/disadvantage mechanic reads like a great tool for DMs to run things on the fly. It's a mix of rules giving out bonus and room for a DM to give out situational bonuses. For example, rules might state that a thief gets a Dex check with Advantage. The DM might say that Disadvantage applies due to there being a monstrous fight happening just while the thief works, The two cancel each other and it's a straight-up roll, but the thief is still better at this than anyone else would be.

Some of the suggested systems I've seen for skills seem interesting.

They're acknowledging a lot of older settings and such that haven't gotten love since 2nd (or int he case of Ravenloft, 3rd party in 3rd). I even saw a mention of Planescape as the 'great wheel' is back.

I have fond memories of 2nd edition and would probably try running it tomorrow given willing players. I find the idea of something similar, but with the warts filed off, interesting.

In some ways it reminds me of how several dakka posters reacted to the early news/rumors about Apocalpyse for 40k: excitement because the game was returning to an older state, albeit modernized.

So you are saying you think they may have let Monte Cooke go for being to 4e friendly?