Will there be a Dungeons And Dragons Afterwards?

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Insomniac
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Will there be a Dungeons And Dragons Afterwards?

Post by Insomniac »

You know the Essentials thing, but for Dungeons and Dragons Next?

Lets say 2 or 3 years now, it becomes apparent that Mearls and Co. dropped the ball on Next, the sales stink and it has no buzz.

Will they try "Afterwards" or just pull the plug and go for 6E?
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Depends on how fast shit tanks and how badly. If it tanks superhardcore (like I'm predicting) they'll just go for a new edition altogether.

I don't think that Hasbro is ever going to completely pull the plug on D&D unless the entire TTRPG industry collapses slot-car style. Startup costs are almost embarrassingly low even for top-tier productions and Hasbro can just keep rebooting the property over and over again until it catches fire somehow. D&D may go the way of WoD or Shadowrun, though, where it exists more as a meme and a trademark than a production company.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by Koumei »

They might not pull the plug completely, but I can see them shelving it "for a while", basically sitting on it for up to a decade. That way when the next one *does* come along, it's all new and fresh and nobody can remember what it used to be like.

Edit: that said, if they do Next.5 then I imagine they'll just take the name from a soft drink brand. D&D Zero, D&D Light, D&D Max. That fits well with D&D Next.
Last edited by Koumei on Sat Nov 22, 2014 5:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Prak
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Post by Prak »

And most of the current players who know why it sucks are too busy with mortgages and jobs and shit to care what it's like and just buy it for their kids out of nostalgia.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
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You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

Probably. D&D 3e and 4e had explicit half editions.
AD&D 2 didn't have an explicit half edition, but the various Players Options / Skills and Powers stuff changed the game radically enough to call it an implicit half edition. It's only realy when you go back to 1e AD&D where that sort of thing didn't happen - but even there you had Unearthed Arcana and could make and argument for the evolutionary changes during the course of the edition being similar enough to count as something like and intra-edition update.
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Post by Username17 »

Well the target is presumably to do D&D 5.5 in 2017. If things go poorly, expect the timeline on that to be accelerated. If things go poorly for the half edition, they'll pull the plug and we get two more years of no D&D while R&D goes back to the drawing board.

Basically we have three possibilities: D&D 5e does well, and we get 5.5 in 2017. D&D 5e does as badly as 4th edition, and we get 5.5 in 2016. D&D does spectacularly badly, and we get 5.5 in 2015. Because 5e is already on development delays, for these purposes 2015 ends in February of 2016; 2016 ends in March of 2017, and 2017 ends in April of 2018. Think of them like tax years or school years rather than calendar years.

I'm putting my bets on "as badly as 4th edition" and I'm expecting a 5.5 revision in January of 2017. But things do seem to be going impressively badly over there, so maybe it won't even get that far. I've been continually surprised that Mike Mearls hasn't been fired. I genuinely don't understand that.

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Re: Will there be a Dungeons And Dragons Afterwards?

Post by Dogbert »

Insomniac wrote:the sales stink
Citation needed.
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Re: Will there be a Dungeons And Dragons Afterwards?

Post by Username17 »

Dogbert wrote:
Insomniac wrote:the sales stink
Citation needed.
WTF is wrong with you? Here, let's look at the whole quote:
Insomniac wrote:Lets say 2 or 3 years now, it becomes apparent that Mearls and Co. dropped the ball on Next, the sales stink and it has no buzz.
Are you blind? Are you a deceitful asshole? You just cut out a piece of a hypothetical statement about the future two years from now and demanded that the author produce evidence that it was currently true in the present. This isn't a big thread, everyone can see your ridiculous sleight of hand.

Now as it happens, things are pretty consistent with the sales being pretty bad. The fact that they haven't sent any more copies to Amazon indicates that they haven't bothered to do a second printing, which indicates that they don't have good enough sales to warrant doing one. But we really don't have hard numbers. For 4e we didn't even get the "hundreds of thousands" revelation until after the PHB2 came out.

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Re: Will there be a Dungeons And Dragons Afterwards?

Post by Dogbert »

FrankTrollman wrote:The fact that they haven't sent any more copies to Amazon indicates that they haven't bothered to do a second printing, which indicates that they don't have good enough sales to warrant doing one.
Thanks, that's the kind of data I was looking for.

I guess I could have formulated my query in a more coherent way. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20.
Last edited by Dogbert on Sat Nov 22, 2014 11:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by mean_liar »

I thought I'd read that DnD5e was supposed to have a Living Rules set, or something? Was I mistaken/that idea dropped?
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Post by Insomniac »

Anything more than the bare bones seems to be getting dropped. They can't even get out the DMG on time. How are there supposed to be Living Rules when they don't even have...rules?
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Post by Dogbert »

Insomniac wrote:Anything more than the bare bones seems to be getting dropped. They can't even get out the DMG on time. How are there supposed to be Living Rules when they don't even have...rules?
Perhaps the rules will consist in the length of time and quality of the fellatio you have to give a Living DM to accept your character sheet at his table.
Last edited by Dogbert on Sat Nov 22, 2014 11:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Prak
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Post by Prak »

Rule 0.5: If you cum, you have to let them play whatever character they want.
Rule 0.5a: If they swallow, you have to give them an artifact sword.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by Dogbert »

Prak wrote: Rule 0.5a: If they swallow, you have to give them an artifact sword.
Are you kidding?? They have to swallow just for the privilege of you respecting the XP and gold from their previous table! Players are the enemy!

This is d&d, not super-happy funtime!
Last edited by Dogbert on Sun Nov 23, 2014 2:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Prak
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Post by Prak »

So, wait, what do I have to do for the artifact sword? Annilingus?
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by mean_liar »

This has gone to a dark place.
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Prak
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Post by Prak »

Annilingus is dark? Psh. Annilingus is nothing.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by RadiantPhoenix »

mean_liar wrote:This has gone to a dark place.
Indeed.

You could even say that it's gotten quite shitty. :rofl:
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Post by JigokuBosatsu »

Prak wrote:Annilingus is dark? Psh. Annilingus is nothing.
Depends.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

You know, I thought that TGD had scraped the bottom (... :hatin:) reached its lowest point with the influx of bear puns. But Yet, once again, you guys have found a way to prove me wrong with these rimjob puns.

Never change, TGD. Never change.
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Sun Nov 23, 2014 2:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by RadiantPhoenix »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Never change, TGD. Never change.
But... :sad:

My Depends is... full.
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Re: Will there be a Dungeons And Dragons Afterwards?

Post by Windjammer »

FrankTrollman wrote: Now as it happens, things are pretty consistent with the sales being pretty bad. The fact that they haven't sent any more copies to Amazon indicates that they haven't bothered to do a second printing, which indicates that they don't have good enough sales to warrant doing one. But we really don't have hard numbers.
There's an additional problem WotC is currently facing: even 4-
and 5-star Amazon reviews report with worrying frequency that their books fell apart after a single month's use, and that WotC sent them an inspected replacement copy free of charge. For all we know, WotC may be looking for a more reliable printer for the 2nd printrun (which takes time to negotiate), and they may even have pulled in the stock from the 1st run themselves. In either case they are shot with no sales in the high season of the year.
I totally agree with your point on the dev team not even believing in their own product. As I wrote a few weeks before the 5e Starter was released:

http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php? ... tcount=155
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Post by Insomniac »

Apparently, the rumor Windjammer said is being circulated is that Hasbro has no faith in D&D anymore and that Dungeons and Dragons part of WOTC is so understaffed that for every one employee they've got, Paizo has three.

That explains the DMG delay.
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Post by Dogbert »

d&d being reduced to the Champions Online of WotC's Perfect World Entertainment sounds rather depressing.
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