I must admit to being distinctly uninterested about the whole D&D 5th ed “D&D Next” affair. Wizards of the Coast lost my gaming dollar once I realised they wanted me on a new edition tread mill after 3.5, which I never got the same gaming mileage from than say 1st Ed, Basic/Expert or even 2ed. Even without the fiasco of Monte Cook leaving the project, its very unlikely that I’d invest.
You see I’d much rather ‘roll my own’* 5th Edition from various bits of Open Gaming Content and my own common sense additional rulings. This is pretty much what I did for Crypts and Things, but only more so to make my own version of the Class Based Worlds Favourite RPG.
- It would be heavily Old School in tone and most rules
- The four core classes (Fighter, Thief, Cleric, Magic-User) with additional classes I like (Ranger, Druid, Paladin, Bard).
- Races (Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Half-ling, perhaps Half-Orc BUT no fecking Half-Elves)
- Ascending AC from 3.0.
- From Araskia’s Sword and Sorcery rules, I would take the Skills system (but tie it to a separate Skill number rather than Saving Throw), the Sanity System and possibly weapon damage by class.
- Keep the Vancian magic system – which for me is one of the big selling points of D&D.
- Have a more class based XP system, like 2ed , or even NO XP AT ALL!
And as much fun spells, monsters and magic items that I could cram in a 6″x 9″ US trade paper back of say 200-300 pages 😉
You are right of course. I can’t help but feel that the hobby has moved on past the days were people were desperate for new editions to help “fix” or “improve” their game.
The question that keeps coming to mind for me is always “who are these people to declare what D&D is or isn’t?”. There isn’t really any good answer to that.
It would be different if they had awesome campaigns like Gygax, Arneson or even Holmes but I don’t get that feel from them.
The weirdest thing of all is this idea that 5e/Next is going to unify D&D. I have no interest in playing 3e or 4e. From what I’ve seen (and I did bow to the weight of nostalgia and buy the 4e ‘red box’) they share very little with the A/D&Ds that I have played. Unifying them seems technically impossible.
But more, pre WoTC A/D&D is on the loose – they will never get the genie back in the bottle. The retro-clones and other old school D&D-a-likes are out there, are pretty slick, and satisfy the needs of anyone who wants to run a game of D&D of that style without scouring eBay for a few second-hand books (that work out cheaper than buying 5e/Next anyhow, even if they are a bit tatty). And the success of the retro games means that anyone who isn’t satisfied with the flavours out there knows that they can ‘roll their own’.
Any more news on OpenQuest II/Deluxe?