In case you hadn’t heard, last week Wizards of the Coast announced D&D 5e. I’ve been asked multiple times for my thoughts on the game, so here they are.
I am hopeful.
Or, well, I have hopes. Only two of them have anything to do with mechanics because, right now, D&D (of any edition, as well as its clones) is incompatible with the stories I want to tell in RPGs (that is not a condemnation). Maybe 5e will be different. I guess we’ll all find out this year.
So anyway, in a very particular order, here are my hopes for 5e:
- I hope there’s a true OGL.
- I hope the books come out on PDFs (or better yet, on the Kindle, so I can read them on the bus!).
- I hope the art gives women gamers and their allies more reasons to cheer than jeer.
- I hope we can legitimately play without map or minis.*
- I hope I can use it to tell at least one of the stories I want to tell, with minimal modifications. So…
- I hope the game allows (dare I dream, encourages?) the inclusion of non-fantasy elements.
- I hope I get to playtest it. :3
- If I like it, I hope I get to write for it. ;)
I’m not sure I’ll ever be as into RPGs as I once was, especially now with my delve into working with Magic. At times, I want to just quit RPGs altogether, but at other times I write huge posts about hypothetical ways of playing them. So who knows? I certainly don’t anymore.
*The last time this was actually legitimately possible was in the ’90s. And, yes, this is one of my mechanics hopes (the other appears two slots down).