Quote from: gamerGoyf;707542To be honest I don't see how Next isn't going to flop,

Quote from: Skywalker;707555GenCon 2014 has been the best estimate from the first announcement and accords with the playtesting period for 3e and 4e. The only difference is that they announced it almost two years earlier in the name of "open playtest".

2014 is also D&D's 40th anniversary.

Quote from: Omega;707563As of last check they were putting some optional rules through some sort of private playtest. After that and the suits get done meddling it is just a matter of finishing the various bits not in the playtest packets or that needed fixing from the last feedback session. And lots of filler text unless they have that part allready prepped. Art may be a holdup, but even if they went with just one artists it should be close to done by now if they started prepping way back in 2012.

Quote from: Bill;707557I hate skill challenges, but what is Iron Heroes?

Quote from: Arduin;707559Maybe the same way 4E flopped.  Good initial sales.  Word quickly got out that it wasn't worth the $...

Quote from: Frank TrollmanWell, I would be surprised if it didn't have a little bit of life in it. There's very little buzz, and what they've released has looked really bad. No one seems to like it, and there are no good ideas in there. The methodology is beyond suspect and into "cannot possibly work". In particular, the whole idea of deferring math until the end is something that literally cannot end well.

That being said, it's still a new edition of Dungeons & Dragons. It will take a while for bad word of mouth to actually bury the thing. In particular, it's going to have a big sell through right at the beginning when a bunch of people who don't know anyone who has read it and hated it are going to buy it because it's D&D and it's new. Also, just like Pathfinder and 4e, they are going to pull some print run shenanigans in order to "sell out their print run".

It's going to take a couple of months probably before we will be able to see that 5e is failing. The lag time on sales figures and the difficulty of getting them is going to leave a bitter core of 5e partisans refusing to believe that their newest favoritist edition is in hard financial shape for quite some time. Remember that 4vengers were continuing to refuse to admit that 4e had failed even after the edition had been canceled, the lead had been fired every year for three years running, and multiple independent sources had confirmed that they were getting their ass handed to them by some dude's house rules for the previous edition.

Almost certainly the new edition is going to outsell Pathfinder in its month of release. I mean, for fuck's sake we're talking about three core books for a brand new edition going up against whatever tail products Paizo comes up with for that month (Genasi of Golarion or whatever the fuck). If they have some actual products backing it up, we could expect it to outsell Pathfinder for a couple of months straight on "newness" alone. Probably during that period, Pundit and Benoist are going to be doing endzone dances and claiming that they've finally killed the 3tards and 4rries. This will be a very annoying time to be on the internet.

But yeah, 5e is going down. They have spent 3 years fucking around, and the only thing they've come up with is that people would rather have a working set of rules than not. But since they haven't spent this time actually making a set of working rules, they're rather up shit creek at this point. Mike Mearls has never designed something functional to completion in his entire fucking life. Everything he has ever made has been halfassed and unfinished. Everything. I am totally at a loss as to how he keeps holding a job when better men than he have repeatedly been fired for fuckups he was part of. Him being lead on this project has been the black spot of death since before they even put numbers on a page. And now that they have put down some numbers, it's obvious he hasn't learned a thing.

While 4e was still a thing, the lead for D&D got sacked every single year. There is no reason to believe that 5e will do much better. Hopefully, this will finally rid gaming of the millstone that is Mike Mearls.

-Frank

Quote from: 1989;707567Hope you're right, dude. I'm ready to slay some orcs.

Quote from: gamerGoyf;707581I wouldn't be suprised, that what Frank is predicting too.

Quote from: Bill;707586What does 'fail' mean?

I like 1E dnd better than 3X or 4E, but the majority of the dnd players I know only want to play Pathfinder or 4E.

If 5E has a '1E feel' and people actually switch from Pathfinder and 4E over to 5E, I guess that would be good for me.

Quote from: FickleGM;707595Failure means exactly what an individual needs it to mean in order to support their claim that it failed.

Quote from: Haffrung;707601If I live to be 100, I'll never understand the intense desire on some people's part that something have no intention of ever buying will fail. What can explain this fathomless wellspring of resentment? An unhappy childhood? Involuntarily prolonged virginity? The creeping despair of the tobacco-stained, house-bound, wheezing man approaching middle age with no prospects of joy in his future?

Quote from: Haffrung;707601If I live to be 100, I'll never understand the intense desire on some people's part that something have no intention of ever buying will fail. What can explain this fathomless wellspring of resentment? An unhappy childhood? Involuntarily prolonged virginity? The creeping despair of the tobacco-stained, house-bound, wheezing man approaching middle age with no prospects of joy in his future?

Quote from: 1989;707393This was announced back in Jan. 2012, and the internet was hoppin' with buzz.

It's soon going to be Jan. 2014. That's two years! (Good grief, it took less time to film TLotR than it did to develop a PnP RPG).

When is this train going to leave the station?

WotC needs to start giving people something to look forward to. Something official. Some kinda game plan. Some kinda schedule.

I've been totally underwhelmed.