Today, during the “Future of D&D Panel” at D&D Celebration, a panel of the D&D design team’s top figures announced that Wizards of the Coast was planning to release new versions of the core Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks in 2024 for the game’s 50th anniversary. When announcing the new products, panelists Jeremy Crawford, Chris Perkins, Liz Schuh, and Ray Winninger specifically did not refer to the books as the kickoff of a new “edition” of the game. In fact, they noted that the new core rulebooks would be backwards compatible with existing Fifth Edition books and were a “new evolution” of the game.
Do want.
They buried the lede, though.
I mean hey, Essentials made 4E great, and 5E has lots of room for improvement, but backwards compatibility is a pure win for everyone. Fabs!
Interesting - And 50 years of D&D! I kinda wished Mr. Gygax would be alive today and see what the hobby he started has ended up as, and how much it has influenced a lot of different areas, and the industry that has arrived in its wake.
Anyways - that means an end to purchasing new supplements for me, until I see just how much of an backwards compatibility we are talking (Unless of course, its Darksun that is released -then I am there!).
I played the original stuff in the mid-1970s, when it came in those little paper booklets in a small box. First character ever was a Wizard. Rolled a “1” for hit points. The set up and prep for the first adventure took so long the group had to break up and finish by telephone. I think I got to fire one magic missile. Which I think did one point of damage.
Fun times, would do again. 10/10.
The article says that they teased some “classic” settings making a comeback, and I really hope they mean Dragonlance.
I’m not sure if the project the Hickmans announced a little while ago, Skyraiders of Abarax, is at all related to what WoC is doing, but either way I’d really like to see Dragonlance make its way back into the mainstream.
I admit that is largely driven by a fond nostalgic love for the stories I read as a kid, but I still think that, objectively, there is quite a lot to work with in the world of Krynn.
It sounded like they were definitely going to do a Dragonlance 5e thing, with Weis and Hickman even, and it ended in tears and lawsuits. Did you hear about that?
And then maybe they cleared it up?
When Wizards revived Dark Sun for 4e they republished the Prism Pentad just before it. I think it’s a safe bet that Dragonlance is on the horizon.
I don’t know if I need more Krynn stuff for my table, which is in mothballs anyway, but I’d love to see official 5e rules for Mass Combat (the UA article and Matt Mercer’s (edit: I meant Matt Colville) stuff notwithstanding) and flying citadels and time travel and, what the heck, kender, gully dwarves, and hot dragon-elven romances.
Greyhawk please
Greyhawk seems unlikely. There’s no popular media tie-in (books, video games, etc) and it’s not distinct from vanilla D&D in any significant way. Dragonlance has popular books, Spelljammer, Planescape and Dark Sun are weird.
There are a few Greyhawk novels (I’m pretty sure they’re in a box outside in my garage) but it’s definitely not on the tip of people’s tongues these days.
Popular but bad.
Greyhawk or bust.
What did you think of all that Tasha stuff in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything? Pointless Grayhawk name-dropping or whetting the appetite for a feast that may never arrive?
They gonna make a good edition of D&D again?
My guess is that we see a Spelljammer reboot soon, and some sort of attempt to do a culturally sensitive version of Oriental Adventures.
I haven’t kept up since 3.5 but I thought 5e had been pretty well received. You don’t like it?
A step forward from 4E, but still not great.
I’m curious what it is about 5E that you dislike specifically? Is it because it’s too overly simplified, or are there specific handlings of mechanics that bother you?
I have always been the kind of TTRPG player who prefers that the system take a back seat to the role play, though I certainly recognize that not everyone feels that way! I have spoken to a few friends who like running 5E because it is more streamlined and easier to keep track of, but prefer playing in more complex systems like Pathfinder because they feel like they have more to do overall.
This was an amazing AD&D source book. What a setting.
Bingo.
I feel like the switch back to more traditional combat from 4E was good, I really disliked how that was handled.
The advantage/disadvantage system feels a bit too binary to me. The skill system is far too random, where it feels like even though you are putting points into something, it is still too random to feel fair.
There is also a bit too much in terms of player recovery. Fights just tend to be long matches of who can out HP the other side, and it is far too easy for players to completely recover between combats leading to less of a sense of danger for the party.
I definitely appreciate how it is really nice to DM this system, as it is far less complicated to understand all of the rules, and it also allows to focus more on the role-play elements, but it just does enough wrong to make it difficult to like. It just doesn’t go deep enough with its systems. Like, I understand simplfying the rules a bit is very helpful for accessibility, but I also feel like it is less rewarding as a player in the long run.
No system is perfect, but I have greatly enjoyed Pathfinder over the last few years, though I do dislike how ridiculously complicated the combat system can be, it also allows for some really harrowing encounters when done right.
So far, I don’t know if I love the way that Pathfinder 2E is going, as I feel like some of the simplification they have done is not great, but right now we are just at level 2 in our campaign, so I haven’t gotten the full experience yet.
Right now, I am running a Starfinder campaign, and I am loving the system so far. It feels like I can have very difficult combat encounters that stress and challenge my players without feeling to difficult to balance.
There are a few broken things about the game that I have had to address, thanks to a very min-maxy type character abusing the slow spell. (completely neutralizing any melee only character, most monsters) But we came to a fix that worked, allowing slowed characters to charge/attack still.
They’ve had enough call outs and Easter Eggs to stuff from Spelljammer and Planescape and Manual of the Planes from editions past in 5e products that it wouldn’t surprise me if they came out with a book that was marketed as, “hey, you want to jump from plane to plane, here’s the book/campaign for you. Plane portals, nautiloid ships, flying transdimensional saucers, wacky magic scepters, go nuts. Just, for legal reasons, go easy on the rif–, uh, dimensional tears that occur where ley lines cross.”