I guess this is as good a place as any to post my feelings about 5E D&D.
4th Edition
* I own a bunch of the books (hundreds of dollars)
* I played it for a summer back in 2008 and again in 2010.
* My biggest gripe is the powers system. I feel that the action descriptions are too specific. When I play, I feel like Ken or Ryu on Street Fighter --"Haduken! Haduken! Haduken!"
* When I read the intro to the D&D 4E PHB, I felt like it was a sales pitch.
* Ever since 3E, WOTC has been mentioning miniatures more and more as a necessary part of the game. They've never appealed to me, and I resent the emphasis.
These are all typical reasons why "old school" D&D players dislike 4th. I have friends who like 4th. I think 4th can be an enjoyable game, but it's (a) not free enough to appeal to me, (b) obviously focused on taking my money, and (c) not executed as well as Pathfinder (e.g. adventure paths?).
I think mechanics changes resulting in (a) was a misplaced reaction to the growing popularity of WOW. I think (b) is caused by the difference between these two links:
http://www.google.com/finance?q=hasbro
http://www.google.com/finance?q=paizo
And (c) is what happens when you dump a bunch of passionate, talented people who have been working on D&D for years.
I'm a good candidate for D&D 5E to target. I have enough disposable income to buy every 5E D&D product they can make. I am willing to buy more than I'll use, just so I have the option of using it. Just so it can look pretty on my shelf. Paizo is doing well because they're selling me more products than I actually use. Congratulations on the subscription model -- it's a way of getting more money out of me without making me feel like I'm being targeted.
Why would I play D&D 5E? Pathfinder already has such a huge lead in terms of content for the modified 3.5 system. Am I going to buy yet another Forgotten Realms campaign guide? I haven't even had time to read the 4E one yet. If I wanted to play Forgotten Realms, why wouldn't I just grab my 3E Guide and use it with Pathfinder?
Why should I even trust WOTC? Why should I believe that 5E isn't just another money grab? Mike Mearls needs to answer these questions before I'll have any enthusiasm for 5E. 4E was the nail in the coffin as far as my relationship with the WOTC brand. If Mike Mearls wants me back on board, he needs to stop talking around the issue.
I see this in Silicon Valley all the time. You have business focused on getting return for their investors (e.g. companies founded on the premise they will be sold after 12 months), and you have businesses focused on building a product they love ("lifestyle businesses" which never make anybody super wealthy, but which offer people work that they enjoy doing every day).
Lisa Stevens has one of the biggest Star Wars collections in the world, so I can believe she's a pretty big nerd, and that her criteria for success as a business is more than just financial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Goldner
What about the CEO of Hasbro, Brian Goldner?
I googled for "brian goldner dungeons and dragons" and I find this:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/5765766-post205.html
There seems to be evidence that Brian Goldner likes making CCG's because they are profitable, but I don't see anything suggesting that he plays Dungeons and Dragons or that he cares at all about it as a cultural institution.
"Sometime around 2006, the D&D team made a big presentation to the Hasbro senior management on how they could take D&D up to the $50 million level and potentially keep growing it. The core of that plan was a synergistic relationship between the tabletop game and what came to be known as DDI."
Systematically, WOTC is set up to fail, because the way it gets funding is to pitch business plans premised on making as much money as possible. This is why there are D&D "Fortune Cards" -- because Hasbro wants to make money, and since they're used to making money w/ randomized card packs (a.k.a. CCG), they're going to try and make D&D into a randomized card pack. This is why D&D has randomized miniatures.
Executives make money using one method, and they try to apply that method across the board, regardless of whether it makes sense in the context of adding value to the product. They say stuff like "leveraging existing strengths." But at the end of the day, they're crapping on the product to try and make more money. Owners of Hasbro stock think this is fine -- that's why Goldner has his job.
But consumers hate it. And if you don't have shareholders to answer to, you can't feel very good at the end of the day when you make a crappy product, especially if you're making a crappy product and not getting rich at it.
In the 5th edition announcement, Mike Mearls says:
"Our mission is to ensure that D&D enters its next 40 years as a vibrant, growing, and exciting game."
I hope he can enter the next 2 years as a vibrant, exciting game. Much less the next 40. If you read between the lines, he's saying that D&D 4E won't be a vibrant, growing, and exciting game in the next 40 years. He doesn't discuss why. He doesn't acknowledge the failure. He doesn't say anything specific enough to make me believe that he recognizes what needs to be fixed. All he's saying is that WOTC wants me to spend more money on yet another set of rules with vague specifications. Since he's not saying what the problem is, I have no idea what 5E is fixing, and therefore I have no idea why I'd want to buy it.
"By involving you in this process, we can build a set of D&D rules that incorporate the wants and desires of D&D gamers around the world. We want to create a flexible game, rich with options for players and DMs to embrace or reject as they see fit, a game that brings D&D fans together rather than serves as one more category to splinter us apart."
This sounds nice, but it doesn't mean very much. There's already oodles of content to embrace and reject in previous editions. Why do I need more? WOTC would have done better to delay announcing 5th Edition until they actually had some concrete value to offer. I have zero confidence WOTC will deliver a compelling product, both due to the performance on 4E and due to the systematic challenges they face as part of a publicly owned corporate structure.
"There is a lot of work to be done, and I’m hoping you have the time, energy, and inclination to pitch in."
Why would I have the inclination to pitch in? Why would you expect me to? To help make Hasbro profit? The book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" says to admit when you're wrong, because when someone believes that you know you were wrong, then they can believe that you can change your behavior and fix things -- they can believe you have good intentions even if the execution isn't perfect.
D&D 4E isn't a terrible game, but it's obviously a worse game than 3E. You can see this just by the rise of Paizo and Pathfinder. By not acknowledging the problems with 4E and by not apologizing for the damage 4E has done to the D&D brand, WOTC is sending me the message that they don't truly care about what I think. They may say they want my input on 5E, but their attitude towards 4E says otherwise.
Mike and Hasbro can hope all they want, but without offering some concrete value and without expressing a meaningful, specific opinion about what makes D&D good -- why would I waste my time playtesting? I could be playing Pathfinder. Right now, the best thing WOTC can do for fantasy roleplay is to give D&D a rest. They should hire some of the people behind Eclipse Phase and revisit sci-fi. Whatever they do -- dump the powers system. That's what I could get behind.
