Fifth Time’s a Charm! Will the New Edition of D&D Bring Back What We Lost?

It’s not a rumor any more. It’s a real life, honest to goodness fact – Wizard of the Coast is planning Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. Doubtless filled with the bells and whistles we’ve come to expect from this product line, as a long time 2nd Edition player as well as a Pathfinder adopter, I have to ask: Why?

First, let’s take a look at 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. Anytime a new game book or supplement is released there’s a level of anticipation and excitement. The big questions roll around the gaming table – new characters? Who’s going to DM? Can we bring in our old characters? Are there new classes? Where are the favorite classes? I think these questions dropped dead in the air and scattered across the table like so many miniatures fleeing from a spiteful die roll. On the surface, this new gaming system was unique and challenging, it was a piece of nostalgia wrapped up in the glitz of new gadgetry – like a smart phone that runs Oregon Trail or Super Mario Brothers.

Then characters were made and rules were (re)learned, “powers” were added and modified by feats and paragon paths and—suddenly—everyone had the same twenty skills. Sure, there were hundreds of powers; too many to become and expert and master them. In many cases, since players just wanted to game, you just picked a few we knew. And, as the first battle began, you realized that your meager investment in miniatures was woefully inadequate.

Luckily, Wizards of the Coast anticipated your needs and released a whole line of miniatures for you to purchase in “booster packs”. Of course, you couldn’t pick which ones you were getting though, it was something of a lottery and not unlike buying Magic the Gathering cards. If you needed five skeletons for an encounter, you needed to keep buying until you got what you needed (or buy them on eBAY). Many of us felt cheated and taken advantage of. The roleplaying and problem solving aspect of D&D had faded away and it had become not much more than just playing a miniatures game sans their beloved Space Marines.

Turning back the clock, the excitement rekindles and we find ourselves in the quagmire of 3rd Edition D&D, and then the revised 3.5E. It was close enough to AD&D, which hadn’t really changed for almost ten years. However, it was also different enough to feel fresh and new; the learning curve was low and the changes were needed, or at least added to the game. Many gamers felt that 3.5 was the penultimate version of the game. This begs the question – did we need a 4th Edition?

Meanwhile, shortly after 4th Edition D&D was released came this game that took great advantage of the Open Game License (OGL) called Pathfinder RPG. The OGL revitalized what many would call a fading industry – Roleplaying Games were going the way of the dinosaur, surpassed in the imaginations of children (small and full-grown) everywhere by Collectible Card Games such as Magic the Gathering. Pathfinder was all things 3.5 should have been (and still is). It has become wildly popular since it’s start, and has found support amongst even the most die-hard D&D players. Pathfinder brought back that missing element of roleplaying: the social interaction and skill-based problem solving part of the game that was so desperately missing in the new miniatures war game known as 4th Edition.

Now, Wizards of the Coast announces Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, and the crowd draws a baited breath—and when will the fanfare hit? I see the trumpeters, but they aren’t listening for their cue. The confetti hasn’t fallen and the balloons look like they need more helium.

Gamers rightly wonder if an already supremely flawed system can be improved and if they’re willing to pay for it. With the cost of sourcebooks rocketing towards unreasonable, how can many gamers, with a smile, plunk down another $60 for a set of core rulebooks? What would Gary Gygax think?

Currently WotC, like many software companies, only supports the latest version of our beloved game – supplements and additional materials are all geared for 4th edition rules and players. Will the same policy hold true for 5th edition? Will all the great official and 3rd party content developed by 4E become abandonware?

The fundamental problem here is that your gaming dollars are being wasted on a system that’s being replaced—not upgraded—simply replaced every few years. For serious gamers this represents a significant investment. The average 12-year old doesn’t have the gold pieces to plunk down to update his entire gaming library. The players that have the spare gold (and platinum), those 30-somethings still trying to decide if dating or dice are more important, are becoming bitter about how flippantly their investment is being treated.

Treasure troves aside, what’s the plan with 5th Edition? Rumors suggest that WotC wants to “take the best of all previous incarnations,” but that’s a no-brainer. What else would they do? Isn’t that the bare minimum gamers can expect? Massive tomes of Powers and Abilities don’t impress. Any Gamer with a shred of imagination can work with his DM to hash out new powers and skills. Feats? More feats? New classes? New player character races? As if the Fey, Tieflings, Changlings and Dragon Born weren’t already pushing it. Gnomes that look like tiny elves and Goliath (Hill Giant) Rangers make for an inconsistent and free-for-all setting. Why don’t we just all play Vampires and Illithids. Except for you Jimmy, you can be a Were-wolf Death Knight whose father was a Dragon and mother was an Elemental.

I’ve always maintained that the rules system is an arbitrary construct designed to keep players from arguing; it doesn’t matter what system you use as long as you have a good DM and a good time. But, 4^th Edition really changed that. Veteran gamers had to re-learn the system and it did affect play.

For example, the loss of “called shots,” which were always house rules anyway, really pulled the teeth from the dragon, so to speak. No longer could you spend an action/attack to flip over your enemy and deftly dis-arm him with a flourish, or summon up a killing stroke to decapitate the troll. You just keep hacking until they fall.

Take heart, brave adventurers! Not all is as bleak as it may seem. There is hope, the One Ring isn’t lost yet and Excalibur hasn’t been broken. There is a chance, the same odds of rolling a 20, that Dungeons & Dragons 5^th Edition will be the equivalent of the Limited Wish spell we’re all hoping for. What would be those key credentials, those elements that push this revision over the top?

Multi-Classing: The Argument in 4E is that characters have so many options you don’t need to multiclass. This might be true, but the fact of the matter is that there are so many powers and abilities that they do over lap, are indistinct from one another within a class, let alone across classes.

Class Distinction: Warlocks, Warlords, Rangers and Fighters are all on the same clock now: Daily Powers, Encounter Powers, et cetera. An Avenger using a Burst or Range 10 power is pretty much the same as a Warlock’s Magic Missile. Implements make everyone a divine caster; the need to rest often makes everyone a low-level mage. Stealth and perception are no longer the special realm of Rogues, but available to any min-maxer who refuses to role-play his character. Healing surges allow a party of straight fighters to do as well as a mixed party in long dungeon crawls. Why bother even rolling hit points and naming your characters if they are so similar?

Less Powers / More Player: While this is just a game, a simulation, gamers have always strove for plausibility.

If a player character party has to stop for a night (eight hours of rest) after each battle, it will take a year (game time) to get to Death Mountain! When left to their own devices, characters will play smarter. This is more fun for the players and the DM.

Grab Our Imaginations, Not Wallets: 4E’s reliance on miniatures not only removes a critical element of imagination from the game, but also gives WotC something else to sell. While I’m sure a marketing exec somewhere is laughing and rolling over his treasure horde, many gamers feel slighted. They want a tabletop RPG they can play with one book, a pen, some dice and some paper.

Go With What You Know: It’s about knights and dragons, treasure and magic. It’s about brave heroes stepping out of the crowds to achieve the impossible. It’s about heroes carving their legends in the mindscape of the kingdom. It’s about villains and monsters. Coke tried to change the formula once. Once.

WotC is likely to pour millions of dollars into promoting their new flagship moneymaker. D&D 3.0 heralded a new era in gaming with the OGL. It may have cost WotC some gold, but in the long run, it saved the hobby and revitalized the industry. D&D went mainstream and the world was right once again. If 5^th Edition is a hit, we’ll see another golden age in gaming. But will that put the pinch on smaller publishers like Mongoose and Fantasy Flight Games? The return of the juggernaut could spell the end of the smaller publishers.

The big question is, how can 5^th Edition bring back what 4^th Edition lost? And are we willing to pay for it… again?