Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition
As of today, it’s official. There will be a Dungeons and Dragons Fifth (5th?) Edition coming to your gaming table as early as Spring of this year. Well, in playtest form, anyway.
Why playtest form? For the first time, Wizards of the Coast (WOTC) has promised that they will have a huge open playtest and incorporate as much of the feedback into their final as makes sense for the game. The end goal is to produce a game that will make as many people as happy as possible and bring everyone back to playing by the same rules (clever subtext: avoid the mistakes of 4th Edition and get people to stop spending money on Pathfinder.)
Given that this news broke this morning, I’ve had a good half-day to ponder what the release of Dungeons and Dragon Fifth Edition means and to the best of my ability, I’ve come to these conclusions.
Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition: The Personal Viewpoint
Even though this is the Heroic Journey Publishing blog, I couldn’t help but share a few personal thoughts. Mainly, I’m excited about Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition, but then again, I’m one of the few people who liked 4th Edition. (Yeah, I know, weird, huh?) While I’m not the world’s biggest D&D fan, I did enjoy the ideas behind a lot of what went into 4th Edition, namely healing surges, Skill Challenges and powers.
In fact, I find it funny when people say 4th Edition killed role playing since Skill Challenges almost forced it.
With all that said, I look at Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition as a potential watershed, or at the very least, a cool time in the history of gaming. We just don’t get new editions of Dungeons and Dragons that often and for some reason, I don’t think that WOTC will deliver a product people don’t like this time as long as they listen to fan feedback and take advantage of it.
Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition: Heroic Journey’s Viewpoint
With my personal feelings aside, HJP is looking at Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition with cautious optimism. While there is no reason to believe WOTC won’t create something commercially viable (and fun to play), there is more to a Dungeons and Dragons game than just the core books. We all know that WOTC will step on the supplement treadmill as soon as it can and produce copious amounts of material for their new game (an Eberron source book, a Forgotten Realms book, martial combat books, wizard books, adventures, a Something of Elemental Evil book, Neverwinter, etc. etc.)
However, what really interests us a publisher is how open the final license will be. The greatest strength of 3/3.5 was the openness of the Open Gaming License (OGL), which allowed just about anyone to write material for Dungeons and Dragons, D20 Modern, or D20 Future. The second Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition came out, an entire subset of the RPG publishing community sprung up to produce OGL material for various D20 games. As far as HJP is concerned, this is a Good Thing.
Why the OGL Is Good
First, while we acknowledge that not all of the material was of the highest quality (some far from it in fact), there were some true gems from all that OGL material (Ptolus anyone?) Secondly, we are all for factors in the industry creating opportunities for more people to publish (full disclosure: HJP does have a line of OGL products it is considering) as this generates excitement for the industry and aligns with our core values. Third, and the most compelling for WOTC, is the buy-in the OGL created. Suddenly anyone who wanted to write material could and, in doing so, they knew they were leaving their stamp indelibly on at least a small part of the Dungeons and Dragons world.
Then Came the GSL
When Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition dropped, it was also open, though not as open as OGL games. It used a different license, the Game System License (GSL), which restricted the genres of which material could be created and it restricted how the core material could be used. These restrictions, along with the fact that WOTCs tools for organizing powers do not support third-party material and how annoying it is to create 30 levels of powers for classes (believe me, I tried), stifled the creation of additional material.
To this day, for the most part, books available for 4th Edition are written by WOTC. Still, 4th Edition was technically open. Part of me wonders if perhaps some of the reason why 4th Edition didn’t do so well is due to the fact it lacked buy-in by player/creators.
Make Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition Open
All of this, then is a fancy way of saying keep Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition open! The kind of open like the OGL was instead of the GSL.
We support Tracy from Sand and Steam in his Open Letter to Wizards of the Coast where he asks WOTC to make their new game open for expansion.
The fear around HJP is that, ultimately, Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition won’t be open at all. While this won’t keep everyone from creating new feats, powers, items or whatever for it, it will undoubtedly stifle that spark and all our campaigns will suffer for it. The only good news is that individuals will continue to create material for their favorite fantasy game, it’s just that their favorite game will continue to be Pathfinder and the unity of rules WOTC is striving for will continue to avoid them.
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