Sunday, January 29, 2012

Loss of Enthusiasm

For the first couple of weeks since the announcement of 5th Edition, I was actually really quite enthusiastic as to what was happening. It seemed like they were avoiding making the same mistakes again, there was a definite sense that the community was coming together, and it was all good.

This weekend was the D&D Experience convention in the States when we got our first look at what the new game might actually hold... and suddenly I find myself cold on the idea. It's starting to look like they're in the process of making a whole new bunch of mistakes.

Part of the problem is that I have some very clear ideas on how the game should be structured, and while I'm not absolutely insistent that that is the way it must be, I do have good reasons for those opinions - when they go in the exact opposite directions, it doesn't give any confidence that I'll like the destination.

Plus, they're in the difficult position that I have a game that does 90% of what I want already, in 3rd Edition. There are sufficient glaring weaknesses (and those weaknesses are sufficiently bad) for me to be interested in a new edition. But any new edition needs to be significantly better than what I have for me to consider switching. It's not enough for it to just fix the problems, if in doing so it introduces a new batch of flaws.

Shame. I was having fun looking forward to the new game, too.

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