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[Sensei]

The next version of the famous pen-and-paper role playing game, Dungeons and Dragons, has already been in development by Wizards of the Coast for some time now. I think we ought to have a forum thread by now! You can get play test materials in PDF format by signing up right here! As I write this (Dec. 16 2012) the game is basically written for characters up to 10th level.

Spoiler: Legalese- yes, we can discuss this! (click to show/hide)

The agreement reads:

While I can't provide materials, we're all free to discuss our opinions on the new mechanics publicly. It seems that you can get the materials immediately when you sign up, for the time being, however.

At a glance right now, the biggest changes I see are the way hit dice are used, expertise dice, and backgrounds. Bewarned, I never really touched 4e, so my opinions really regard changes from good old 3.5.

Backgrounds allow you to diversify your class somewhat: they affect skills and a recommended package of starting equipment. So, there's nothing stopping you from being a fighter who used to be a locksmith and therefore knows how to pick locks and has some business skills. They also add a trait- for example, an artisan has ins with the trade guild and a farmer knows how to make himself welcome and find hospitality among commoners. A rogue might choose the Charlatan background, which gives them skills in persuasion as well as a false identity, right off the bat.

Whether or not you gain HP linearly instead of rolling when you level up (which is now a suggested feature) you also have Hit Dice based on your class and level- when you take a short rest (~10 minutes) you can spend those dice, rolling them to heal, and you gain them back when you sleep.

The biggest change I see, for nonmagical classes, is Maneuvers and Expertise Dice. Depending on your class and level, you have a certain number of Expertise Dice each day. You can spend these whenever you want- for example, the Fighter class gets a maneuver called Deadly Strike, where he can spend however many expertise dice he wants and add them to damage.  Instead of slow fall, monks can use expertise dice and subtract them from falling damage. Rogues can use Skill Mastery and add expertise dice to a skill roll, or Composed Attack to add expertise dice to the lower of attack rolls when at a disadvantage.

I also like the way Advantages and Disadvantages are handled: Instead of circumstantial bonuses like in the old edition, where you get a bonus or penalty to the number you roll, you instead roll 2d20 and take the better/worse. For example, a Large creature has an Advantage over a medium one when grappling, and gets two dice instead of a +4. I really like this because it creates a lot less scenarios where one outcome is guaranteed, especially when advantages/disadvantages stack.

I'm a little unsure about the expertise dice since they give nonmagicals a tendency to "wear out" over a day the same way spellcasters do. I think it's a lot better than special attacks you get to use X times a day or whatever, though.

Anyhow, there's my ramblings after a quick glance. Discuss! I've got a good feeling about this edition- I think the DnD franchise may have stolen all the odd numbers from Star Trek movies.

[Viken]

Sounds like they're opening the system back up for more roleplaying elements than an o verusage of dice.  While I don't know for sure how welll it'll work, I didn't even bother touching 4th Edition  because of the negativity alot of people had on it. 

[Catastrophic lolcats]

But can they fix revert the terrible and horrid things they've done to the lore. Forgotten Realms is in the biggest mess, I can understand a shake up every now and again but the whole Spellplague thing was too much. Nobody knows any of the lores so everything is confusing and often conflicts.
Plus the way version 4 handled alignment. Do not want.

My favourite version will still remain AD&D and early version 3 . 2.0 might be a bit simple in areas and didn't have much in the way of customisation but it was perhaps the more balanced ruleset and it was good for playing large parties.
Early 3 really vamped up the customisation but it's cost was a massive increase in how effective "powerplaying" was. This isn't too bad in a Pen and Paper environment but for video games (where I think DnD really failed to penetrate outside of NWN and the Infinity Engine games) it was a bit of pain. Disliked how the skill system was very limited for some classes of average intellgence. Having an average int fighter only being able to put 2 or so skill points down was annoying. The later editions tended to focus on the whole prestige class more thing which I disliked. I found it way too restricted and railroading. It was again a haven for powerplaying.

With all that said I haven't been able to really get into Pen and Paper DnD. Ilve played like 5 games, 3 of them in AD&D, 1 in early 3 and 1 in later 3. I'm still surprised there hasn't been more effort into making a "digital" ruleset. Even just a "combat simulator" where you punch in the values of your party and the monsters and you can go through the combat without extremely lengthy combat calculations.

[Sensei]

But can they fix revert the terrible and horrid things they've done to the lore. Forgotten Realms is in the biggest mess, I can understand a shake up every now and again but the whole Spellplague thing was too much. Nobody knows any of the lores so everything is confusing and often conflicts.
Plus the way version 4 handled alignment. Do not want.

So far the test is entirely mechanical. I'm not too concerned about lore though, as long as it's not intractable from the rules themselves (which in the past it hasn't been). Pretty much every campaign I've ever run or been in has been in its own setting even if sometimes that's just Faerun with a different name. I never liked using characters or cities from established lore very much. Besides, what's to stop you from just ignoring the new lore and playing as if nothing had changed?

Incidentally, how DID alignment work in 4e anyway?

[Bluerobin]

In 4e there were only 5 alignments (as far as I remember): Good, Lawful Good, Unaligned, Evil, and Chaotic Evil. In 5e it looks like the old system is back. Also, with regards to skills, all classes get the same number of skill points to assign and both your class and your background affect the skills you're trained in, so you can have a mage that used to be a guide so they're trained in tracking and some other wilderness-y skills. I'm sure there'll still be powerplaying since even 4e had a fair amount and they tried hard to stop people from what I remember. It looks like there's a fair amount of flavor in choices and they're trying to add diversity to character building both horizontally and vertically to try and strike the balance between 3.5e's planning out your entire character to be railroaded into a prestige class and 4e's general feeling of a lack of depth.

Of course all of this is from someone who's only ever played half of one 4e game and a bunch of D&D based PC games (although I have read a lot of the documentation from 3.5e and 4e just for fun), so take it for what you will.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

So far the test is entirely mechanical. I'm not too concerned about lore though, as long as it's not intractable from the rules themselves (which in the past it hasn't been). Pretty much every campaign I've ever run or been in has been in its own setting even if sometimes that's just Faerun with a different name. I never liked using characters or cities from established lore very much. Besides, what's to stop you from just ignoring the new lore and playing as if nothing had changed?

Incidentally, how DID alignment work in 4e anyway?

If we ever see a new DnD game they have to use the established lore created by WoTC which isn't too great at the moment. It also seems that the vast majority of people have either ignored 4e completely or have pretended that the lore changes never happened. It only makes sense that they'll go through a period of either revisionism and fixing or just reverting the whole thing, the community is just not down with the changes. 
The changes to the lore affect the mechanics of the game as well, as you'll see from the alignments.

The alignments in version 4 are:
Lawful Good
Good
Unaligned
Evil
Chaotic Evil

This obviously removes some of the more interesting character alignments. Chaotic Neutral is my favourite alignment and in version 4 is just comes under "Unaligned" which is nonsense. Chaos is very much a force you can be aligned with in pre-4 lore. Alignments are pretty much what shape and shift the planes so the changes has caused a whole bunch of strange things over there.
This alignment system also doesn't cover "shifting" alignments very well either. It has also made deities step on each other's toes quite a lot which I think distracts from the divine classes.

Ninja'd by Bluerobin.

In 4e there were only 5 alignments (as far as I remember): Good, Lawful Good, Unaligned, Evil, and Chaotic Evil. In 5e it looks like the old system is back. Also, with regards to skills, all classes get the same number of skill points to assign and both your class and your background affect the skills you're trained in, so you can have a mage that used to be a guide so they're trained in tracking and some other wilderness-y skills. I'm sure there'll still be powerplaying since even 4e had a fair amount and they tried hard to stop people from what I remember. It looks like there's a fair amount of flavor in choices and they're trying to add diversity to character building both horizontally and vertically to try and strike the balance between 3.5e's planning out your entire character to be railroaded into a prestige class and 4e's general feeling of a lack of depth.

Of course all of this is from someone who's only ever played half of one 4e game and a bunch of D&D based PC games (although I have read a lot of the documentation from 3.5e and 4e just for fun), so take it for what you will.

That actually sounds pretty good mechanically-wise. I've often enjoyed traits and backgrounds in RPGs since they allow you to really specialise to the extreme, often having great negatives and bonuses.
Powerplaying will always be a thing but it seemed like 3.5 just rewarded it too much, to make a half-good character you really had to sit there and plan out everything from start to prestige class, it was tedious for me and didn't feel organic at all.

[ductape]

as an old timer (I played the original box set) I am really digging the Old School Rennaisance thats going around. In particular I think Old School Hack is really fabulous.

Its free, check it out here: http://www.oldschoolhack.net/

In a nutshell, it's a love letter to a style of gaming that seems to be lost in the modern days of tactical battle-mat style play. This is great for a sandboxy style hexcrawl like them good 'ol days.

Give it a looksee and do yourself a favor and forget D&D Next, imho.

[timferius]

I have to say, I enjoyed 4e. However, I'm liking the sounds of next now even better. It looks like they're taking some of the depth added with forth (different skills/abilites etc.) and combining it with older systems. I'll have to get a group together and playtest this soon.

[ductape]

I didnt want to make a new thread for this, but Gygax Magazine is about to release its first issue, I signed up and got an email with a sneak peek at the contents, here it is:

Thank you for signing up for updates about Gygax Magazine. It's just a few weeks before our first issue is out, and we wanted to give you a sneak peek of what's in store. Here's the contents of issue number one — we hope you're looking forward to reading it as much as we're looking forward to getting it out!

The Cosmology of Role Playing Games by James Carpio
Still Playing After All These Years by Tim Kask
Leomund's Secure Shelter by Len Lakofka
The Ecology of the Banshee by Ronald Corn
Bridging Generations by Luke Gygax
The Gygax Family Storyteller by Ernie Gygax
Keeping Magic Magical by Dennis Sustare
Gaming With a Virtual Tabletop by Nevin P. Jones
DMing for Your Toddler by Cory Doctorow
Great Power for ICONS by Steve Kenson
Gaming Through the Generations by Ethan Gilsdorf
Between the Dungeons by Ernie Gygax
Talents Off the Front Line by Dennis Detwiller
Adaption Decay by Michael Tresca
Gnatdamp: A Sanctuary in the Swamp adventure by Michael Curtis
The Kobold's Cavern - a special section edited by Wofgang Baur of Kobold Press:
---A Magical Miscellany for AGE by Randall Hurlburt
---Scaling Pathfinder Combat Feats by Marc Radle
---An AGE of Great Inventions by Rodrigo García Carmona
Comic - Marvin the Mage by Jim Wampler
Comic - What's New with Phil & Dixie by Phil Foglio
Comic - The Order of the Stick by Rich Burlew

[Sensei]

It seems weird that for Fighters, they've added a combat expertise similar to what rangers had. It seems to aim to replace some alternative melee base classes, like the duelist. Kinda bugs me though, that there's no real means to pick our maneuvers in whatever order you want like feats. So for example, you can't get Whirlwind Attack without going for the specialty that also gets you Great Fortitude, which I think I've never seen anyone use back when it was a feat (except one player who played a monk specifically designed to deal with a DM who had a serious high-level arcane caster fetish).

Oh yeah, and, bump.

[Neonivek]

Chaotic Neutral is my favourite alignment and in version 4 is just comes under "Unaligned" which is nonsense

Given that the allignments in dungeons and dragons are nonsense anyhow...

Chaotic Neutral and True Neutral are equal in terms of action, concepts, and where they are applied.

It is unfortunate.

Mind you nothing could fix the allignment system because the problem isn't the allignment themselves, since they have had entire books devoted to making sense of them, but with how they are impossible concepts to teach other DMs and the vagueness is something that is never handled well. As well there are so many other issues such as different forms of good and evil as well as how Evil and Good are NEVER equally weighed (Good is nearly weightless and Evil is made of Lead)

I've even gave GMs examples from the game itself and got completely different oppinions. Even so far as to get that Lawful Good societies were Neutral or Evil because "Good must be saintly".

[eharper256]

Frankly the quashing of the many types of neutral in 4e was a boon from my point of view. Chaotic Neutral is always a (rolleyes) alignment to a GM, as its used to qualify often horrible actions.

Actually, in general, 4e was great in my honest opinion. I never really 'got' all the shouting about its apparent inferiority to 3e. Losing stupidly huge spell lists? Great! Replacing BAB with 1/2 Level? Good! Multiple Defences reducing AC's potency and complexity? Fantastic! Chopping out the menace of skill points per level? WONDERFUL! Combat that encouraged (GASP!) Movement rather than sitting in front of each other and exchanging standard actions to slap one another? EXCELLENT!

There was alot a bulls**t in Dragon Magazine, Avengers were hideously horribly broken, and lets not even talk about the travesty that was D&D Essentials. But basic 4th Edition up to around Divine Power? Mostly a good system; and if you want the old stuff back and better, then play Pathfinder.

[eharper256]

<WHOOPS SOMEHOW THIS WAS DOUBLE POSTED>

A mod can delete it if they like.

[Sensei]

Chaotic Neutral and True Neutral are equal in terms of action, concepts, and where they are applied.

Frankly the quashing of the many types of neutral in 4e was a boon from my point of view. Chaotic Neutral is always a (rolleyes) alignment to a GM, as its used to qualify often horrible actions.

I'm going to have to disagree on the loss of alignment options being a good thing. Chaotic Good and Lawful Evil are very interesting concepts. Heck- even chaotic neutral, when played right, can represent some reasonable concepts that characters might fall into.

Example: The guards ask you to pay a toll.
Lawful Neutral: Pay them, because they are upholding organization.
Neutral: Pay them, because it will be easier for you to get through.
Chaotic Neutral: Don't pay them, because that supports THE SYSTEM! One campaign I played in actually had a conspiracy theorist character who was chaotic neutral.

Given that the allignments in dungeons and dragons are nonsense anyhow...

Mind you nothing could fix the allignment system because the problem isn't the allignment themselves, since they have had entire books devoted to making sense of them, but with how they are impossible concepts to teach other DMs and the vagueness is something that is never handled well.

Ah, the ambiguity is the weak part of the whole system of alignments. I think it's not fixed at all by what 4e did, which seems to be equating law with good and chaos with evil by necessity, and may as well have been "Very good, good, neutral, evil, very evil." But yeah, the problem is that alignments represent a lot of different things to a lot of different DM's (from the PHB: "Make your lawful good dwarf different from every other lawful good dwarf"). The worst part is when a DM expects people to always act rigidly within their alignment. Of course, this usually means the DM's rigid interpretation of that alignment. Which is exacerbated by, again, ambiguity.

Spoiler: Ambiguity in Action! (click to show/hide)

Also, seriously, 11 posts until alignment argument? That's like the Godwin's Law of DnD discussions, isn't it?

Edit: In 5th Edition, presently, there's a "Neutral" alignment as well as an "Unaligned" alignment. It says that Neutral characters try to preserve the balance between good and evil or law and chaos (Dragonlance style, basically). Unaligned characters or creatures have no alignment motivations and act purely on instinct (which I think could also apply to a character who just gives no fucks).

[sluissa]

I once played a true neutral bard. It was short lived and mostly useless to the party, but ended up being more like an embedded reporter situation. The bard was simply looking for new stories. Didn't care all that much about how the stories turned out, but wanted at the very least to have a story to retell and get out alive afterwards(So usually in his interest to help the party). It's hard to play true neutral without swinging in one direction or another, you're basically balancing on one foot in the middle and you'll inevitably step on some other territory when pushed, but it's not impossible and can definitely be fun to do.

I personally felt 4th edition was just... bleh...  However, I've grown to dislike how combat focused DnD is at its core. I've given 1st edition, 3.5 and 4th all a try and I'm not saying they can't be fun... just not my cup of tea most of the time. I'll definitely look more into the new edition. DnD is just too popular, and in many cases, if you want to play a tabletop RPG, it's the only choice. But I'm not going to hold my breath that it'll sway me any more than the previous editions.