We need / want a "D&D 5th Edition" forum.

[Fredrik]

I'm not speaking for anyone. They're speaking for themselves. You can tell the need/want for a 5th Edition forum from the number of supposedly "4th" edition posts that aren't. Also, I'm pretty sure that corroborating statements by the NY Times and the publisher are enough to take it from the realm of speculation to reality. Please task a coder as soon as might be convenient.

[Elton]

I agree. We could use a 'fifth edition' forum.

[Helaman]

Its happening now - what will it be? Not sure...

I quote something from SteelWind (of Chronicles fame) he posted on the O66 boards. Not sure if he posted this on enworld (where he does review work as well). I like his writing a lot and thought this was relevant to post here given that WOTC are doing playtesting now...

Here is the link for the rest of the article below... well worth the read.

Quote:

The Five Year Trend

2013 also fits within WotC’s emerging “five year” horizon for their editions of D&D. After 3.0, WotC went towards an emerging trend of “five years” in terms of their “Revise. Reset. Resell” marketing strategy for the game. I find that marketing strategy to be exceptionally odious and the main reason why 4E was a failure in comparison to 3E. Never mind what it was or what it wasn’t in terms of its underlying design – it’s main failing was that it was released too soon.

As Monte noted on the podcast earlier this year, there was a tremendous interest in 3E because 2E was D-E-A-D at the time of 3E’s release. When 4E was released, 3E was still very much alive in the market place in terms of its value in use. Late era 3.5 sales edged down for WotC because the market they wanted to exploit (rule books) had only so much capacity before it was overwhelmed. And there is no question at all that WotC overwhelmed gamers with 3.5 rules – so many of them and released so often that WotC pretty much ran out of ideas and topics to write books about – and enough customers interested in those ideas – to make it sensible to make more of them. I’m not suggesting somebody could have come up with better ideas, btw. There’s only so many rules you can release in such a short period of time. (I’ve got at least twenty 3.5 books from that era on my shelf I’ve barely cracked – and never read.)

What WotC needed to do was come up with a different product line instead of selling rules. WotC needed a new product line that had more capacity for absorption in the marketplace. WotC did exactly that with D&D Miniatures and for a time, it worked. But WotC overestimated the capacity of the market to absorb the product in as short a time span as the product was being released. They ended up flooding the market with too much inventory in 2006/2007 and that inventory glut harmed that market in the short to medium term for the next few years, too.

So WotC ran out of topics to write books on and they ran out of customers who wanted to buy miniatures by the case. They couldn’t find a way to make adventures profitable enough for them to justify the development expense and sustain the product line over a longer life-cycle. It was time to release 4E.

As a consequence, 4E was not “too soon” for WotC, but it was much “too soon” for most of their customers. That’s a real problem for WotC’s business model and it is one that they still have not addressed.

Moreover, 4E’s break from compatibility with 3E was a disastrous design decision from a marketing perspective, because when the OGL was factored into the picture, it opened the market to actual competition against D&D’s brand. Taker a release of an Edition of the game which was put out too soon, add to it the OGL, and what you got was Pathfinder RPG. Pathfinder aimed directly at lifestyle gamers who weren’t done with 3.xx yet. As a consequence, in my estimation, Paizo has now pried at least half of those “lifestyle gamers” away from WotC and they have built their following for Pathfinder from that secure, (if demanding), customer base ever since.

Losing half or more of your lifestyle gamers hurt WotC’s success in the “long tail” of its product line in the later stages of 4E. Its expansion rule books did not sell nearly so well because half the people (or more) who would have bought them didn’t. They were off buying Pathfinder. Still, that’s not the real problem when it comes to marketing 4E. The expansion books sustain the brand and make a bit of money, but the real cash is in the temporary gamers. And THAT has been the problem we’ve seen in the past two years for WotC. The emergence of Paizo as a real competitor of an ongoing brand has siphoned off not just half of their “lifestyle gamers”. If that is all it was, it wouldn’t be so bad. But Pathfinder has become so successful that it has siphoned off a BIG ASS CHUNK of new gamers churning IN to the market for their temporary 1 to 3 year stint in the hobby. Those are the customers who bulk up the number of core rulebooks sold and can make the game significantly profitable.

I don’t know how many of the new gamers have “churned in” to Pathfinder RPG instead of “churning in” to 4E, but it’s a HELLUVA LOT. That’s why we have seen the sales numbers of Pathfinder’s Core Rulebook INCREASE in 2010 and 2011. There is no other explanation for that sales trend that fits the facts. Those are customers who aren’t WotC customers and never will be. That’s a big loss to WotC in terms of their sales levels. Not good. WotC’s Essentials line was aimed at those new customers, and the market performance of the Essentials lines indicates that it didn’t work. At the same time, there weren’t enough of those new customers coming in to make the D&D minis line profitable, and WotC has killed that collectible product line off, too.

So now we’re getting 5E.

5E will Probably be Awesome

So, what will 5E be like? I haven’t a clue. Given that it’s Monte Cook, and further given that WotC lost a lot of customers to Pathfinder RPG that they would very much like to have back (and FAR worse, has since lost a LOT of short-term customers who have become Paizo’s temporary customers instead of WotC’s), I think it’s fair to say that the future of D&D will look more like its past and less a significant break from the traditions of D&D that 4E was. I think 5E will not be taking not so much a step forward so much as it will really be one step back and two steps sideways.

While there will remain some aspects of 4E that WotC will continue with along into 5E, I think 5E will look a lot more like a fusion of Star Wars: Saga Edition & d20 Modern re-infused with Arcana Evolved/Iron Heros touch of 3.xx.. The game will look a lot less like 4E and a lot more like 3.5. It truly will be more of a ver 3.90. That’s my feeling. I may well be wrong.

But really, that’s not what’s important. I know it SEEMS that it’s important, but it isn’t. I’m fairly certain in fact that I will like 5E as a system. In fact, I am fully prepared to like it a lot. But there are three factors involved in 5E – all of which are beyond the capabilities of Monte Cook to redeem or remediate – which will cause me to not adopt it as my go to RPG.

I want to be clear that I really don’t think there will be “problems” with Fifth Edition, as such. I think Monte will do a pretty damn good job, overall. From my perspective, the “problems” with Fifth Edition stem from the corporate objectives and business model of Wizards of the Coast, not from the design talents of Monte Cook. As such, those problems are beyond the capability of any one designer to ameliorate == and any one edition of the game to fix.

The Problems with Wizards of the Coast Approach to the Hobby:

1. They want the fast buck, not the long dollar: If you have ever read articles by Ryan Dancey on the sales figures for the core books of 3.0, Ryan gives you a sense of just how many copies of the core rules that WotC sold a little more than a decade ago. It was a breathtakingly large number of core rulebooks. They sold hundreds of thousands of copies a month when it was released. The later iterations of 3.xx – even the core rulebooks for 3.5, never sold nearly so well. Hell, I’m not sure that (excepting the three core rulebooks for 3.5), that if you took the REST of the entire 3.5 product line, combined? My bet is that you wouldn’t match the number of core rulebooks that WotC sold for 3.0. They sold millions of those things -- just a stupid number of them.

When your sales figures get that large, your cost of production drops to extremely low levels. You can print those books for a couple of bucks each on that scale. Your profit per book still goes sky high. At that point, you realise that what your business is really all about is selling core rulebooks. The rest of your game is just window dressing and marketing spin so you can sell more core rulebooks to new gamers.

And that’s why WotC does what it does. They aim to sell core rulebooks to as many players of the game as they possibly can, in as short a timespan as they possibly can. They don’t care if those players churn in and churn out of the hobby in less than three years. A sale is a sale, in their view. If those customers stick around as “lifestyle gamers” – so much the better. But WotC is a division of Hasbro, and Hasbro wants the fast buck. That’s why the Revise. Reset Resell strategy will continue in another five years after 5E is released, even if Monte Cook gives us a Fifth Edition that he received from God on the slopes of Mount Sinai engraved upon Stone Tablets.

So when is 6E coming? It says right here in 2018.

My timeline for an RPG system isn’t five years - it’s much closer to ten. I think ALL lifestyle gamers are customers who dig MUCH deeper and care MUCH more about the game than the 80% of WotC customers who are temporary gamers of convenience (game for three years or less). Lifestyle gamers are closer to a ten year product cycle than a five year cycle in terms of our edition horizon. So WotC and I don’t see eye-to-eye on this and that’s not EVER going to change with 5E, 6E, or 7E. Monte Cook sure as hell isn’t going to change WotC’s marketing strategy on that issue, either.

Paizo knows this and has been quite clear that their horizon for the Pathfinder RPG product line is aimed at a deeper and longer run than five years. They haven’t yet said how long they will aim for, but the intent is to longer than five and get closer to ten. Their business model and product release schedule on the Rules side is aimed at this longer span, too. (I do fear that Paizo’s release schedule on the Golarion side / Player companion aspect of the game is too ambitious. We’ll see.)

So that’s Knock #1 on 5E. In fact, I am so dead certain about that aspect of WotC’s business model that I know it will be a problem with a game that does not yet exist and that I haven’t even seen yet.

You know the line from Jerry Maguire, “You had me at hello”? Well, in this case, “You lost me at five years”.

Worth reading the rest of the article posted over on O66... I edited this to take out the saltier language but I think that SteelWind nails it.

[Laithoron]

Elton wrote:

I agree. We could use a 'fifth edition' forum.

Agreed. I don't think it's necessarily fair to 4E players to clutter their forum with unwanted posts and the inevitable edition wars it would bring.

I have little doubt though that a new forum will emerge and posts will get sorted out. Gary et al are pretty good about these things.

[Sissyl]

Commenting on fifth edition on a fourth edition forum feels weird. :-) You could of course change the name of the fourth edition forum to Dungeons & dragons, new editions...

[Elton]

At least the Wizards folks aren't fighting over there.

[GeraintElberion]

I think we need to root out these fifth columnists!

Spoiler:

what?

[Marc Radle]

I think it will be interesting to see if an edition war of sorts happens between fans of 4E and fans of 5E. It almost seems inevitable in a way ...

[ChaiGuy]

Marc Radle wrote:

I think it will be interesting to see if an edition war of sorts happens between fans of 4E and fans of 5E. It almost seems inevitable in a way ...

Sadly even the 4e fan base is split, the more accurate edition war is original 4e vs Essentials 4e (a lot of people don't even know they're compatible) vs 5e.

[Souphin]

Wotc's on article makes reference to the "analog and digital" game and based on that I get the idea that the gaming will be more like a video game. I see this only in the aspects of making the game play in both "analog and digital" the same so that wotc can sell the same product. Like when they changed ddm to flow with 4th and how with each flavor of D&D the digital gaming went along side it. BG, NVW, DDO, Daggerdale. Now with this new game it see it getting even closer.

What I'd like to see is maybe a 4.5 type of game. Where the classes are pretty much as they are but the powers are not specific to a class but to a region of classes. For example there is a list of arcane, divine, martial and psionic powers. And wizards, warlocks and sorcerers all have access to the same arcane list. This gives more flexibility to the game and still keeps it not changing too much between versions.

Also a change is needed in encounter and daily. At a table encounter and daily work just fine but in a video game you use a daily rest and use it again. When playing for hours like many video gamers you want to perform the cool actions as often as you can. Instead the encounter and daily powers should have a rule to recharge them, this giving a consistent rule between "analog and digital". Of course encounter being faster to recharge than daily.
---For example if you hit with 4 magic missiles (I’m using the original 4th edition magic missile rule) then you can recharge one encounter power. And if you hit with 4 encounter powers you can recharge a daily power.

[Gary Teter]

We might make a new forum, but we won't do it today. We have a lot of forums, and adding another needs to be carefully considered. For one thing, I don't even know what we'd call that forum. Is it going to be called "5th edition"? Magic 8-Ball says "I dunno, check back later."

For now, think of the 4e forum as the "current state of Dungeons & Dragons" forum.

[ChaiGuy]

Souphin wrote:

Wotc's on article makes reference to the "analog and digital" game and based on that I get the idea that the gaming will be more like a video game. I see this only in the aspects of making the game play in both "analog and digital" the same so that wotc can sell the same product. Like when they changed ddm to flow with 4th and how with each flavor of D&D the digital gaming went along side it. BG, NVW, DDO, Daggerdale. Now with this new game it see it getting even closer.

What I'd like to see is maybe a 4.5 type of game. Where the classes are pretty much as they are but the powers are not specific to a class but to a region of classes. For example there is a list of arcane, divine, martial and psionic powers. And wizards, warlocks and sorcerers all have access to the same arcane list. This gives more flexibility to the game and still keeps it not changing too much between versions.

Also a change is needed in encounter and daily. At a table encounter and daily work just fine but in a video game you use a daily rest and use it again. When playing for hours like many video gamers you want to perform the cool actions as often as you can. Instead the encounter and daily powers should have a rule to recharge them, this giving a consistent rule between "analog and digital". Of course encounter being faster to recharge than daily.
---For example if you hit with 4 magic missiles (I’m using the original 4th edition magic missile rule) then you can recharge one encounter power. And if you hit with 4 encounter powers you can recharge a daily power.

I think that you have some interesting ideas Souphin. Powers not tied to classes, I think that if they go this route that it should be along roles (defender, striker, leader & controller) rather than by power source (arcane divine ...).

Alternate encounter & daily recharging, this has been addressed somewhat in the DMG 2 which gives optional ways to recharge them. This is very good when the DM wants to run encounters in quick succession.

[Gary Teter]

Please take actual discussion about 5th edition to an appropriate thread in the 4e forum.

[Oxlar]

No more forums!

[Jeff6016]

Hi Gary,

Just an idea, but consider re-naming the 4th edition forum as "The current and future editions of D&D" forum.

It corrals all 4th, 5th (and 6th?) discussions in one place and leaves the 3rd and prior edition forums intact.

[Fredrik]

Gary Teter wrote:

We might make a new forum, but we won't do it today. We have a lot of forums, and adding another needs to be carefully considered. For one thing, I don't even know what we'd call that forum. Is it going to be called "5th edition"? Magic 8-Ball says "I dunno, check back later."

For now, think of the 4e forum as the "current state of Dungeons & Dragons" forum.

I know! I'm the one who complained about having to scroll through so many to get to the ones that matter. If careful consideration is called for, then I will be happy to have a dialogue on the philosophy of categorization.

To some extent, categories are always arbitrary. There is always some other type of scheme that could have been used to distinguish between types of things, and always some other level of granularity that could have been applied.

Let me make that concrete. You're deciding where to put the manual for your new ACME Widgizmo in your filing cabinet. Does it go under ACME, ACME - Widgizmo, gizmos, gizmos - ACME, widgets, widgets - ACME, or Widgizmo? And do you really have to do everything the same way, or could it depend on how willing you are to shuffle through folders and how many things would end up in each folder?

Of course, that's just you. In multi-user categories, it seems to me that different schema prioritize between four perspectives: the data itself, the one who puts it there, the one who maintains it, and the ones who look for it.

In the case of the Paizo fora, the data is the posts themselves, and a good scheme from their perspective is one that produces an elegantly logical arrangement. The people who place the data are posters, and well-chosen fora from their perspective are ones that make it clear where to put posts. The maintainers are the mods, and I expect some sense of responsibility to their employer, making sure that the scheme is good for Paizo. For lookers, a good set of categories is one that makes it easy to find posts that they would want to read.

So. Let me throw out some possibilities and consider them from each perspective.

One is to simply add a 5e forum under the 4e one. It has the advantages of being logically consistent with the precedent of a 4e forum, being clear to posters, and lookers can easily find 4e or 5e posts without having to scan through a jumble of irrelevant stuff. However, it would facilitate pre-release excitement over a competitor's easily-idealized product that can't disappoint, because it doesn't exist yet.

Another is to turn the 4e forum into a 4e-and-later forum. It has the advantages of being clear to posters, not adding to the number of fora, and making it more difficult to have a coherent dialogue about a competitor's products. However, it would be increasingly useless for lookers over time.

Another is create a forum for Future RPGs (including major edition changes). It has the advantages of elegance in requiring only the one new forum *total* to contain all such discussion, including possible Pathfinder edition changes; it would eventually become clear to posters; and due to being future-oriented, it would always remain useful to lookers wanting to read about the soon-to-be latest thing. However, it would merely postpone the choice of where to put discussion of the new RPG (or edition thereof) when it comes out.

Writing this all out has given me an idea that I did not have before. (That is one of the uses of philosophy.) Using option #3, to be followed by option #1 once the future RPG is released, would maximize the positives and minimize the negatives of both. I mean, make a Future RPGs forum for all in-discussion-yet-unreleased RPGs and major edition changes; and when 5e becomes an actual released product that you can purchase, read, play, and be disappointed by, then it gets its own forum right under 4e. Bam! All upside, no down.

Anyway. You get the idea. There are lots of different ways to do it. It isn't even just a question of how you want to prioritize the perspectives; sometimes you can find creative win/win solutions like I did.

[Steelfiredragon]

we don't need any new forums.

just take out the dnd 4e forums and put them back in as the DnD forums.

we'll be fine with that.

[BPorter]

I'm curious, does WotC have a Pathfinder forum on their boards?

If they do, then put me in the 4e & Future forum rename camp.

If not, why does Paizo need a 5e forum exactly?

I'll save you the typing -- they don't. Just sayin'.

[Steve Geddes]

BPorter wrote:

If not, why does Paizo need a 5e forum exactly?

They don't need one, but it would be nice for those of us Paizo fans who like to talk about 4th edition (on and off). Those conversations are often somewhat leisurely and it's hard to keep track of slow moving threads when a forum goes berserk.

Of course, in a week's time, it might have all settled down - so I wouldnt advocate creating a new forum for a good month or so. If it's still resulting in the frenzy of thread creation we currently see, then I expect those of us who play 4th edition would appreciate a litte segregation.

[R_Chance]

BPorter wrote:

I'm curious, does WotC have a Pathfinder forum on their boards?

If they do, then put me in the 4e & Future forum rename camp.

If not, why does Paizo need a 5e forum exactly?

I'll save you the typing -- they don't. Just sayin'.

WotC doesn't have a Pathfinder forum (that I know of)... but WotC doesn't sell PF products. Paizo, on the other hand, does sell 4E and other WotC products (and presumably will sell future WotC products as well). Other publishers goodies (PF compatible or not) get discussed here, why not WotC? Just sayin' :) "5E" or whatever it's going to be is pretty speculative right now, but obviously of interest to Paizo's customers or some wouldn't be posting about it / requesting a forum for it. It may not need a sub-forum of it's own yet (and I don't think it does at present), but it may later...

*edit* Not to speak of the rather good point Steve made in his post above. 4E players might not want their threads buried under tons of speculation...

[BPorter]

R_Chance wrote:

BPorter wrote:

I'm curious, does WotC have a Pathfinder forum on their boards?

If they do, then put me in the 4e & Future forum rename camp.

If not, why does Paizo need a 5e forum exactly?

I'll save you the typing -- they don't. Just sayin'.

WotC doesn't have a Pathfinder forum (that I know of)... but WotC doesn't sell PF products. Paizo, on the other hand, does sell 4E and other WotC products (and presumably will sell future WotC products as well). Other publishers goodies (PF compatible or not) get discussed here, why not WotC? Just sayin' :) "5E" or whatever it's going to be is pretty speculative right now, but obviously of interest to Paizo's customers or some wouldn't be posting about it / requesting a forum for it. It may not need a sub-forum of it's own yet (and I don't think it does at present), but it may later...

*edit* Not to speak of the rather good point Steve made in his post above. 4E players might not want their threads buried under tons of speculation...

I have zero problem with the discussion. However, I must have missed the Rite Publishing, Open Design, Super Genius Games, and every other 3PP that sells stuff on the Paizo website having their own forum...

Discuss away. I don't think 5e warrants special forum treatment.

[R_Chance]

BPorter wrote:

I have zero problem with the discussion. However, I must have missed the Rite Publishing, Open Design, Super Genius Games, and every other 3PP that sells stuff on the Paizo website having their own forum...

Discuss away. I don't think 5e warrants special forum treatment.

Hmmm I suspect 4E outsells them and thus carries more weight. I suspect the next iteration of D&D will as well. I mentioned above that I don't think it needs it's own forum -- yet. It will however. And if the chatter is "drowning" the 4E threads it might be nice for the 4E crowd to seperate the two at some point...

[wraithstrike]

I think restricting the number of 5E threads would help. As an example if two threads are basically talking about the same thing then one of them can be closed.

[Alitan]

Hmph.

All *I* have to mention on this topic is that WotC will never see another one of my dollars. Ever.

If I wanted to play a video game, I'd be in front of my TV playing one. And 4e is, basically, nothing more than a paper massmorph. Calling that edition "Dungeons and Dragons" is the same kind of error that calling the MOVIE Starship Troopers, Starship Troopers. Steals a title and some character names and goes off in an entirely different and useless tangent from the original.

I can't tell you how delighted I was to discover Pathfinder, and Paizo gets kudos from me for pursuing a REAL heir to the Dungeons and Dragons line. And, by the way, my gaming dollars.

[Pan]

Alitan wrote:

Hmph.

All *I* have to mention on this topic is that WotC will never see another one of my dollars. Ever.

If I wanted to play a video game, I'd be in front of my TV playing one. And 4e is, basically, nothing more than a paper massmorph. Calling that edition "Dungeons and Dragons" is the same kind of error that calling the MOVIE Starship Troopers, Starship Troopers. Steals a title and some character names and goes off in an entirely different and useless tangent from the original.

I can't tell you how delighted I was to discover Pathfinder, and Paizo gets kudos from me for pursuing a REAL heir to the Dungeons and Dragons line. And, by the way, my gaming dollars.

You realize the Starship Troopers film was a satire yes? oh wait I just got trolled....

[Scott Betts]

Alitan wrote:

Hmph.

All *I* have to mention on this topic is that WotC will never see another one of my dollars.

Actually, you didn't have to mention anything, at all. You just decided that your wildly-inflamed opinion on Dungeons & Dragons merited sharing with everyone, despite being both a) blatant edition warring using half-baked complaints that, frankly, everyone is tired of hearing, and b) barely related to the topic of the thread you sloppily stuffed it into.

Take it elsewhere. Or, better yet, don't.

By the way, anyone who uses the word "massmorph" to describe what I can only assume must be MMORPGs really doesn't have any place talking about it. That's not a real term. You just made it up.

[TOZ]

Read my lips. No new forums!

[zagnabbit]

Oh now, let's be nice. The Wotcies lost my future fun budget as well. But not for videogamishness. They have a multitude of poor customer relationship issues and several "I'm smarter than you rubes" personalities that detract from their product lines in my experience. Its sad too, as they have some cool, bright and engaged people at that company. Unfortunately they've lost alot of those too.

I'm voting for "No Forum"; as if this were a democracy.
This site has WAY too many forums as it is.

The 5E feeding frenzy will find itself fizzling out or fusing into future forums naturally.

(Subforums for the 3PP would be kinda cool though)

I'm jealous of previous posters and wanted to makeup my own words too.

The Steelwind article was really insightful and likely dead on target.

[Gorbacz]

TOZ wrote:

Read my lips. No new forums!

"There's no 5E in development. Anybody who says otherwise is just silly."

[GeraintElberion]

Scott Betts wrote:

Alitan wrote:

Hmph.

All *I* have to mention on this topic is that WotC will never see another one of my dollars.

Actually, you didn't have to mention anything, at all. You just decided that your wildly-inflamed opinion on Dungeons & Dragons merited sharing with everyone, despite being both a) blatant edition warring using half-baked complaints that, frankly, everyone is tired of hearing, and b) barely related to the topic of the thread you sloppily stuffed it into.

Take it elsewhere. Or, better yet, don't.

By the way, anyone who uses the word "massmorph" to describe what I can only assume must be MMORPGs really doesn't have any place talking about it. That's not a real term. You just made it up.

Scott, I don't like reading such posts either but I think it is unfair to misread someone.

Alitan did not use 'have' in the sense of being compelled, he used it in the sense of possessing.

[Terquem]

I agree, now don't get me wrong I loved "up, Up, and Away" and "The Age of Aquarius", but I don't see why they would record a note for note rendition of the Mama's and the Papa's, "Go where you wanna go" and expect it to chart when it didn't in the first release (okay so it was a bit more up tempo, but still, what where they thinking?)

[Chris Lambertz]

Fair warning: unless you're going to discuss how we "need" a new forum, please take derailing discussions about new editions somewhere else please. We don't need fires in Website Feedback.

[Vic Wertz]

Chris Lambertz wrote:

Fair warning: unless you're going to discuss how we "need" a new forum, please take derailing discussions about new editions somewhere else please. We don't need fires in Website Feedback.

^^^

I removed some posts. Any commentary in this thread *not* directly related to the possible creation of a new forum gets deleted.

Take the edition war somewhere else—and by "somewhere else," I mean "somewhere other than paizo.com."

[Finn K]

Scott Betts wrote:

...the word "massmorph" to describe... That's not a real term...

(quote cut to avoid inflammatory material)

But, Scott-- "massmorph" is a real term-- it's a wizard spell from some of the old editions... ;)

More seriously-- name change might be in order for the 4E forums (or not)-- other than that, just keep the D&D Next/5E stuff in separate threads and it should be fine (IMO).