DDXP and DnD Next

So I am finally expanding on my thoughts in regards to the D&D Experience (DDXP) and the new edition of D&D in the works, also known to almost everyone except WotC as 5E, to WotC as D&D Next (DDN). My guess is that WotC is avoiding the term 5E or 5th Edition to try to avoid the stigma of the edition wars. I can't say as I blame them, as long as they don't pretend that the fallout in the D&D community is one of the big reasons they have to dump 4E.

There has already been a lot of info in the gaming blogosphere about DDN and the info from DDXP. Like everyone else, I signed a NDA, so I won't be disclosing any crunch that wasn't talked about in the seminars, which were NDA free.


First of all, my impression from the playtest was very favorable. It felt a lot more like playing old-fashioned D&D as opposed to spending 3 hours trying to get through a tabletop approximation of a couple of WoW instances. We were able to get through several fights and our characters were in genuine peril. As a player, I would enjoy playing this system. As a GM, I could run it.

Any of my players reading this are thinking "sure, you could run it after you tamper with it, like every other game you run." That's one of the things that interests me about DDN, the intended modular rule design. It will be premade so that I can take rules systems I like and plug them into the framework. Yes, I'll probably make some modules of my own, especially since we don't know how many modules will be out at launch. My guess is enough to play the game, not they will hold some stuff back to make more books we'll want to buy.

One of the statements that caught my interest during the seminar was that they intended to include every class that has appeared in a Players Handbook, or the PHB1 in the case of 4E. That's a lot of classes. My first question was "do we need something like 20 classes?"

What really is the difference between wizards, sorcerors, warlocks and illusionists? Aren't warlords really just fighters with some leadership ability? Assassins are rogues that are more stabby and less thiefy. Barbarians are tough fighters (or rangers) with anger management issues. It seems like these could be handled with themes and class ability options.

I think the basic classes should be iconic. If you go to D&D players and say fighter, rogue, druid, wizard, they'll have a solid mental icon. Try sorceror, illusionist, and warlock and they'll probably look like the wizard. Say warlord and you'll get a blank look or a fighter. While I'm sure the designer are reluctant to let go of their 4E creations (and warlocks were actually my favorite class out of the 4E PHB1), the class list should be pared down.

I don't remember races being discussed, but my opinion is along the same lines. They should have the basic races and save the races created or added to the core rules in 4E (dragonborn, eladrin, and tiefling) for an advanced race option module.

I couple of other things in the seminar that I think hit the mark was their intended approach towards multi-classing and magic items. Multi-classing will probably work a lot like it did in 3rd edition, while magic items go back to being treasure and having some mystery to them as opposed to progression you can buy in a store.

So far I'm not in the playtest... and I guess even if I was it wouldn't matter as I couldn't talk about anything in it. But I'm keeping a hopeful mind regarding DDN and will buy the first round of books. Maybe WotC will turn me back into a game buyer as opposed to someone who peruses the internet looking for ingredients for his homebrew d20.

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D&D Next/5E - some thoughts

So unless you've been locked in a dungeon all week, you've probably heard that WotC announced the next edition of D&D was coming. Borrowing a page from Paizo's playbook, they were going to go to the gaming community for feedback, an open beta if you will.

The reason for this is that WotC alienated a large portion of the D&D player base with 4E, to the point that Paizo's iteration of 3.5 began outselling 4E. That made me think, what rubbed me the wrong way about 4E and caused me to give up my habit of buying D&D products?


So that you don't think this is just some Edition Wars rant, there were things that 4E got right. The math under the engine was balanced and easy to understand, putting together encounters was a snap for GMs, and monster stat blocks became easy to use.

So what didn't I like?

One of the first things that struck me was that WotC was going to scatter the "core" classes and races across 3 PHBs to make room for their own "new" classes and races. It felt like they were sacrificing the core game on the altars of establishing their own IP and forcing us to commit to buying the PHBs to get what we had before. I looked at dragonborn and tieflings as intruders that only existed to give 4E art a distinctive appearance, the warlord and the various new classes in PHB2 as interlopers that pushed out bards, druids and monks.

I didn't like that there were no more "simple" classes, as fighters took up just as much space as wizards with all of the power entries, while casters seemed dumbed down. The whole whiz-bang videogame feel felt wrong. Casters no longer had to worry about getting interrupted, targets were knocked about like soccer balls, and it seemed like everyone ended up with fairly similar powers.

The game lost its organic feel, become a game of structured encounters instead of stories. As a GM I hated the notion of a 16th level monster with 1 hit point, I never used the concept of giving players a wish list for their magic items, and I tossed out treasure parcels.

Fights, while balanced, took way too long. Combat over-relied on powers that forced movement on the grid, a grid that I almost never used.

What am I looking for from D&D Next? Give us back our core game with an organic world. Speed up fights and remove the reliance on movement inducing powers. Fights should feel like dramatic events, not entering an instance. Put some mystery back into magic. Quit trying to prove that D&D is your IP by flooding it with new classes and races.

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