So now that DDXP is over with, and the WotC development team has shared their ideas with us on how they foresee the next iteration of the game working I’ve finally got some stuff to say about it.From everything the dev team said, it sounds like D&D Next will be going back to the yesteryears of D&D in it’s feel and implementation, and that a whole lot of the mechanics that were established in the 4th edition of the game are going to be removed.
Now, I’m a huge fan of 4th edition, as evidenced by the other (admittedly sporadic) posts on this blog, and the sometimes 3-4 games of it I run on a weekly basis.
But to anyone that has DM’ed, played in or even read older editions of the game, 4e doesn’t really feel like Dungeons and Dragons.
But as far as a game goes 4e made huge advancements in balance, approachability, rule stability and tactical combat that most of the current D&D community do not want to see go away.
Now D&D Next is in the works, and it appears that it will hew closer to 3rd edition and 2nd edition then to 4th edition. That doesn’t mean, however, that we 4th edition fans are going to be left out in the cold. 4e taught the devs, and in fact the whole industry, some very important lessons about tabletop games. In the following posts I’m going to cover some of the lessons that I think should have been learned, and hopefully show how that lesson could be applied to D&D Next.
The first lesson after the jump.
