I a m not surprised by this announcement (the interest seems to have waned over the years), yet surprised at the up frontedness of the announcement. I guess it is better to hear this from the horse's mouth than to circulate unfounded rumours. Mike gives a link to a review by the New York Times.
Many people; friends, family, and some of the top blog writers were invited to attend a session in Seattle for some early playtesting of some of the new ideas for the new edition.
I am a big supporter of the 4th Edition of Dungeons&Dragons. I have played all the editions and have found this edition to be the easiest to play. The rules are simple, albeit sometimes confusing to those that want to change the wordings to suit their needs. I find it is very well streamlined and the Compendium is a fantastic resource to get any information from. You would not really have to open any sourcebook for any of the information if you have access to the compendium. Unlike 3rd or 3.5 Editions, 4th edition is well balanced: DM preparation is much reduced, adventures are well planned out and easy to use,and with time, characters became very customizable and original(if you took the time to think about a good roleplaying character).
The organized play with LFR (Living Forgotten Realms), D&D Encounters and all the Game Day play was a fantastic idea. With the creation of 4th edition, it brought most of these ideas for organized play about(I do not remember anything prior to this). Many players in my city have enjoyed just the casual play these products bring every week to their lives. Especially with the launch of the new Lair Assault programme, it would be a shame if the changes brought about to the game would cause the disappearance of these events
I find 4th Edition became confusing with the addition of the Essentials line, the D&D for dummies line, which in my opinion started the downhill trend for this edition. From this point on, many things changed: rules changed, items changed and core rulebooks were no longer good sources of information with all the errata put into play by WotC. When the Essentials line was introduced, I found that some of the information overlapped so much that I got confused and frustrated. With time it lessened and I learned to embrace it for no other reason than to be able to play the game I love.
Introduction of 4th Edition caused a big rift between a lot of the diehard players of RPG's. Some followed the new edition, some remained with 3.5, some went to Pathfinder etc...I understand that some people are afraid of change, afraid of getting out of their little bubbles and it can be argued till the end of time the pros and cons of each RPG system, which one is better, which one is more customizable, simpler, refined, fun, dynamic, whatever...
The reality of it all is there is a new system in development and WotC is asking the fans to help them create this new edition with the opportunity to playtest the new edition.
There are a few things I would like to suggest for the new edition:
- Bring back the spellcasters: magic missiles, fireball were never the same.
- When publishing adventures, instead of creature tokens, add the minis for the adventure.
- It would be nice to not have to pay 50$ for a book that is going to be useless within a year from all the errata. Sell the books online in PDF form, or have them be accessible from an online source like the setup of the compendium. This way the books would all be relevant and WotC could incorporate the errata with updates to the PDFs.
MORE D&D 5E NEWS: