Quote from: happyhermit;1119783Yeah now that we are up to a few pages of massive "changes" like:



It's basically 5.5e Honestly, it kinda amazes me that anybody needed this stuff cleared up in the first place, but I guess it shouldn't. I mean, it's great that they fixed the errors but the "clarifications" seem like perfectionism.

That's exactly the kind of useless crap I don't want in a 5E+ or 6E.  That's what I meant by limit the changes to the parts that really matter.  It's essentially page bloat brought on after the launch, and shows a complete lack of understanding of how the game should work.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1119791That's exactly the kind of useless crap I don't want in a 5E+ or 6E.  That's what I meant by limit the changes to the parts that really matter.  It's essentially page bloat brought on after the launch, and shows a complete lack of understanding of how the game should work.

Minor changes for reading clarity bother you that much? If you don't use them then nothing much really changes, but it's a win for those that want more accurate wording. So why is this such a big deal to you?

Quote from: HappyDaze;1119795Minor changes for reading clarity bother you that much? If you don't use them then nothing much really changes, but it's a win for those that want more accurate wording. So why is this such a big deal to you?

Because rather than focusing on the micro-issues that any competent GM can probably understand the intended meaning - there are larger issues with the system that could be amended or given optional mechanics for.

At least that's how *I* see it. I can look past nit-picky verbiage or odd wording that is trying to describe mechanics. Give me some meat, not crumbs!

Quote from: tenbones;1119802Because rather than focusing on the micro-issues that any competent GM can probably understand the intended meaning - there are larger issues with the system that could be amended or given optional mechanics for.

At least that's how *I* see it. I can look past nit-picky verbiage or odd wording that is trying to describe mechanics. Give me some meat, not crumbs!

That. Plus all that putzing around with the technical language gets away from the central point, which is to convey the idea readily of how the thing is supposed to work and then let the GM adjudicate.  Specifically, those "minor clarifications" as WotC usually obscure rather than clarify, and they aren't always minor.

There are rewording exercises that could be of use, but they should typically make the text shorter overall, not longer.  Combine WotC's tendencies with their other tendency to confuse "ease of use" with "repeat the same boiler-plate text over and over again on the grounds that the idiot reader can't look anything up because WotC's indexing and organizing skills suck"--and you get their books.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1119815That. Plus all that putzing around with the technical language gets away from the central point, which is to convey the idea readily of how the thing is supposed to work and then let the GM adjudicate.  Specifically, those "minor clarifications" as WotC usually obscure rather than clarify, and they aren't always minor.

There are rewording exercises that could be of use, but they should typically make the text shorter overall, not longer.  Combine WotC's tendencies with their other tendency to confuse "ease of use" with "repeat the same boiler-plate text over and over again on the grounds that the idiot reader can't look anything up because WotC's indexing and organizing skills suck"--and you get their books.

Greetings!

*Laughs* Ahh, so true, Steven Mitchell! Steven, are you an Editor? Your commentary reminds me of one of my History Professor mentors who was like a Viking ruthlessly chopping and slashing at various papers. Cut this out. Reword that. Too long. It's confusing. Be concise! Always look for stronger words to convey your message! *laughs*

I sometimes wonder why WOTC seems to have such poor writers. Sometimes the whole way they attempt to describe or explain something, I'm thinking, geesus. I can think of several good professors that this stuff would be bled all over and trashed hard.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK;1119824Greetings!

*Laughs* Ahh, so true, Steven Mitchell! Steven, are you an Editor? Your commentary reminds me of one of my History Professor mentors who was like a Viking ruthlessly chopping and slashing at various papers. Cut this out. Reword that. Too long. It's confusing. Be concise! Always look for stronger words to convey your message! *laughs*

I sometimes wonder why WOTC seems to have such poor writers. Sometimes the whole way they attempt to describe or explain something, I'm thinking, geesus. I can think of several good professors that this stuff would be bled all over and trashed hard.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I find that unless you are literally Tolkien or Shake-a-fucking-speare, the best thing you can do as a writer is develop the skill to say as much as you can using as few words as you can manage.

As for the original question...hell, I'll just keep playing all the other systems I already have. As long as I'm alive and have the books, I don't really care about what a new edition does to the market. And if everyone wants to play the new edition (and I happen to think it sucks for some reason), I'll just do what I would've done during 4E D&D, namely wait. Fortunately, nobody around me had any interest in 4E, so we just kept playing what we were already playing.

We can expect 5E to last another 3-5 years though, since it seems to be generating steady profit and staying relevant.

I do have some skills and practice as an editor, but not professionally.  It's a crap shoot, as you can see by the error right there in my previous post, which I didn't notice until Shark quoted it.

Point being, though, that there are professional people who edit a whole hell of a lot better than I do, and they don't cost that much to employ.  If I can see the problem this easily, you bet the professionals can.

Of course, if those editors were unleashed on some of the books, someone would need to write more content to hit the page count limit.  Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide would be about 17 pages.  Oh wait, that would be a good thing.

Look to the Unearthed Arcana class revamp playtest for an idea of what 5.5e would look like.  They mostly made things more flexible (fighters can change fighting styles now) and a few changes to how things work (rangers being the notable exception with a full rework).

Started playing D&D at age 8 with the red box set, when elf was a class, played up until 3e when we started to get new players that ruined it for me with blue hair weaboo characters or whose mission it was to win or break the game. I only do D6 Fantasy/Adventure/Space now and refuse to do a game that uses hitpoints or has things like tieflings or fairy dragons or draconians or magic powered droids as player races, or which has magitech in general unless its old stuff found in ruins that is not reproducable.

If I run a game of fantasy it will look like conan or arthurian or pirates of the carribean, if run D6 adventure it's old west, ww2, or modern-near future, beyond that it's star wars or star trek using D6 space or D6 starwars 2e reup.

If i buy a product that is not for D6 its usually for art/maps.

Quote from: Razor 007;1119592If WOTC tries to keep 5E evergreen, that would be pretty cool; but it's hard to believe that at some point the SJW influencers won't feel the need to create additional safe spaces in D&D.

That would almost certainly be the most probable, and disastrous, reason for a premature adoption of a new edition. It would of course be a massive "get woke, go broke" scenario.

Quote from: Slipshot762;1119903Started playing D&D at age 8 with the red box set, when elf was a class, played up until 3e when we started to get new players that ruined it for me with blue hair weaboo characters or whose mission it was to win or break the game. I only do D6 Fantasy/Adventure/Space now and refuse to do a game that uses hitpoints or has things like tieflings or fairy dragons or draconians or magic powered droids as player races, or which has magitech in general unless its old stuff found in ruins that is not reproducable.

If I run a game of fantasy it will look like conan or arthurian or pirates of the carribean, if run D6 adventure it's old west, ww2, or modern-near future, beyond that it's star wars or star trek using D6 space or D6 starwars 2e reup.

If i buy a product that is not for D6 its usually for art/maps.

Do you have Templates for d6 Space Star Trek type PCs? Been looking for those.

Quote from: Slipshot762;1119903Started playing D&D at age 8 with the red box set, when elf was a class, played up until 3e when we started to get new players that ruined it for me with blue hair weaboo characters or whose mission it was to win or break the game. I only do D6 Fantasy/Adventure/Space now and refuse to do a game that uses hitpoints or has things like tieflings or fairy dragons or draconians or magic powered droids as player races, or which has magitech in general unless its old stuff found in ruins that is not reproducable.

If I run a game of fantasy it will look like conan or arthurian or pirates of the carribean, if run D6 adventure it's old west, ww2, or modern-near future, beyond that it's star wars or star trek using D6 space or D6 starwars 2e reup.

If i buy a product that is not for D6 its usually for art/maps.

Mom bought me the Basic set when I was in Junior high. I was used to race being class for dwarves and elves. In high school all the kids were using these strange new hardback books and it was mind-boggling to see elves that were not automatically fighter/magic users.

Quote from: S'mon;1120483Do you have Templates for d6 Space Star Trek type PCs? Been looking for those.

sadly no, never hardly used templates because players always want to tweak them, swapping skills or pips, so i usually just encourage dice distribution per the make your own template rules.

However, a few months back while tooling around the net I seem to recall finding some D6 star trek stuff.
http://web.archive.org/web/20011026144648/www.geocities.com/Area51/Vault/3901/trek/index.html

Quote from: RPGPundit;1120452That would almost certainly be the most probable, and disastrous, reason for a premature adoption of a new edition. It would of course be a massive "get woke, go broke" scenario.

Which raises an interesting question.

How resilient would WotC be to an edition failure?

When 4E hit, it was initially successful, outselling 3.0/3.5 for the initial run. However, as time went by, the issues created by the rules became too much to bear and it collapsed under its own weight (bloat being a compounding factor). All accounts seem to convey the notion that WotC's RPG division came close to critical status within the overall WotC/Hasbro structure, and if 5E hadn't performed as it did, they might not even have an RPG division today, and D&D would likely have been sold to a prospective buyer in the industry.

So, what do you guys think? What if they fail with 6E? Has 5E given them enough clout to weather the failure, or would WotC's RPG division go under?

P.S.: Assume a complete failure here, not a partial long-term failure like 4E.

D&D 5E has shown profitability, brand name recognition, and staying power.  There is little likelihood of a 6E being a total flop.  But I think history has shown that; from time to time, people are reluctant to repurchase what they already own.  There would be some 5E holdouts, who touted 5E as being plenty good enough.  Why keep reinventing the wheel?  Oh yeah; SJW frustrations....