D&D 5E Scooping morrus on the site

[GMforPowergamers]

“[MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION]: Heard some weird 5E rumors from sources I'm inclined to trust - yet unable to verify. I'd dismiss them except that source is trustworthy.”

Now I even changed my sig on wotc board about not believing these types of things... But, well there it is.

He goes on to say they canceled some announcement saterday morning

Plus I really wanted to post before he did... Mostly to be funny

 

[Jack99]

Heh..

 

[Eccles]

It may be fate - didn't they do this to him in the early stages of War of the Burning Sky? Releases a massively complicated campaign, and WotC pull the rug out from underneath him...

 

[Kelvor Ravenstar]

The product direction in books for 4e sounds less like 5e than the predictors were saying, to me.
I'm betting the cancelled announcement was the 2012 campaign setting, they did say they weren't ready to show it.

But this is mostly that I don't want to believe that they're in design for 5e yet.

 

[Obryn]

He goes on to say they canceled some announcement saterday morning

You don't plan a major, epic announcement at the scale of a new edition and then cancel it at the drop of a hat. It doesn't work like that.

Months of message planning and the like would go into that sort of decision, and it would be part of an overarching brand strategy.

-O

 

[Argyle King]

I heard 5E has been mostly finished for a while now, and they're already working on 6E. They're just continuing to publish 4E because it's still making money.


I in no way I claim this was from a viable source, but I heard it.

 

[Riastlin]

But this is mostly that I don't want to believe that they're in design for 5e yet.

Well, my guess would be that they are in design for 5e, or 4.5e, or whatever, but that doesn't necessarily mean much. IIRC, they were in design on 4e for quite a while, same with 3.5. It would likely be at least a 2 - 3 year process to design a new edition.

I also think that they will likely want to get all the tools up and running in 4ed before they release 5ed (though that is also just my speculation). As I recall though (and I think it was also mentioned on Critical-Hits yesterday) Mearls did say that they learned a lot from the way 4ed was announced (namely that they handled it poorly). He said that they intend to have plenty of lead time in terms of the announcement and that it won't simply be thrown on the players. Not quite sure what that means per se since I still imagine that they would want to use a convention setting for the announcement, but it could mean that they give at least a year, if not more, between the announcement and the actual release.

 

[Saracenus]

I think that 5e development will closer the Paizo model for Pathfinder.

However, instead of open betas of a draft of a product you will see a significant uptick closed beta-test groups under NDAs that will start rigorous testing of 5e tech.

I am not sure WotC is ready to openly crowd source their material yet, but we could see a open beta of nearly completed material after the closed beta smooths off the rougher edges.

But my take is, they need to work with less staff and will sacrifice some of the in-house control for the power of large groups helping shoulder the load.

My two coppers,

 

[malraux]

I also think that they will likely want to get all the tools up and running in 4ed before they release 5ed (though that is also just my speculation).

I could almost believe the opposite, that difficulty getting the tools working with the established rules will push towards an earlier release of new rules.

 

[Riastlin]

I could almost believe the opposite, that difficulty getting the tools working with the established rules will push towards an earlier release of new rules.

That would mean though that a) they were currently designing it with the new rules already in place (after all they have to have the new rules in order to release it for the new edition meaning that the new edition is right around the corner contrary to what they just said this weekend), and that b) they were willing to embrace the huge negative outcry that would accompany such a move. Considering that they are clearly working toward trying to improve community relations and make themselves more visible to the community in an effort to mend fences this would seem to be an incredibly stupid goal on their part. We may not always agree on the direction that they take, but WotC would not have become as succesful as they are if they were incredibly stupid. Not saying that they are above mistake, for surely they've made their share of them, just that I don't believe they are that stupid.

Again, I realize this is just my personal opinion and speculation, but the only way I see the VTT not being released until 5ed is if there really is just that much trouble in gettting it to work the way they want it to, such that its still 2 - 3 years down the road to being released (at minimum as I now speculate that 2013 will be the earliest we'd see 5ed). I think that they will want to show that the online subscription model will either work or not work before releasing a new edition as it certainly seems as though their business plan going forward is going to be one of primarily digital distribution. Before they can really embrace that though, they'll need to know that a) it will work and b) they'll make enough money. Obviously the online tools would be a big part of that model.