No sooner had I written up my treatise on why I was leaving Fourth Edition behind then, mere hours later, Wizards of the Coast announced the worst kept secret in gaming. They're working on a Fifth Edition of the game.
The writing had been on the wall for a year or so. Fourth Eidition products were coming out less frequently. Most of the Fourth Edition design team had been let go and Mike Mearls promote to take over. They brought back Monte Cook of Third Edition fame. We all knew it would happen.
The thing is, it doesn't seem to be happening the way I thought it would. My guess had been that they'd announce the new version at this year's GenCon, with an expected release date of Spring 2013, so that 4E would have lasted five years or so.
But no, the announcement of "D&D NExt" came today, with an explanation that starting in Spring 2012 there will be an extensive playtest period. They swear that this time they'll listen to the playtesters. We'll see, but I signed up to be notified by 'em anyhow.
So there it is. If you consider Advanced Dungeons & Dragons to be First Edition, and I do, then there was 12 years between First and Second, eleven years between Second and Third, eight years between Third and Fourth, and now perhaps five to six years between Fourth and Fifth. I think that suggests that Fourth Edition was the least successful of the modern D&D rulesets, which feels correct to me.
So, let's see how the playtest for Fifth works out, shall we?
Opening to the fans is a terrible idea. Putting aside most things built by committee are terrible, the big strike here is that there are distinctly different and often mutually exclusive gamer camps out there. Attempting to get consensus is a sure road to failure.
ReplyDeleteWell, if it's free I don't see the harm in getting our licks in. Besides, it sounds like they're going with the "design first, THEN playtest" model, which sounds reasonable. That's how Valve and Bioware and Bungee do it...build the game then playtest it to within an inch of its life.
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