Will anyone here attend the D&D Experience convention? I admit I can't wait to learn more about the next edition.

That's, like, tomorrow or something, right?

Not even on my radar - and I'm interested in a sort of standoffish kind of way about the next iteration.

I think, for me, there are just too many things going on this time of year. Just finished the holidays and our kids birthdays are a one two punch in January and February. Then March is GaryCon.

I don't know why, but DDXP has never been on my radar. It's GaryCon and GenCon.

I haven't followed DDXP ever. I seem to remember it's only been created a few years ago. I don't even know what it's like.

I'm totally looking for info about the next edition. Haven't liked anything they've done to the brand since 3.0 back in 2000 so it's been a while for me.

I'm trying to be interested in going to a convention, but my convention experience was pretty not cool. I've never heard of this one.

Was it a bit like this?

Heh, at least that made me laugh.

Do NOT aggro the nerd train!

I've been reading news of DDXP. There was a seminar with the royally incompetent Mearls and Cook as well as some dude called Jeremy but what they say so far sounds good.

This here suggests that thankfully, the grid will be entirely optional and not stuck in the basic game:



Some hints about the modular approach. It seems ambitious:



They say they want to make high level play flavorful again. That's one area the four editions of the "advanced" game have neglected:



Getting a grasp of power creep and how the game always fizzles at high level. Sounds promising:



Same here. If they can pull this off, long term campaign consistency would be significantly improved:



Getting a clue that classic flavor is important:



Here it sounds like they want to empower the DM a little more (I presume it's meant to be "things not covered specifically)



They're going for a slightly more classic aesthetic feel as well, it seems:



Lot of questions were asked but there were very few specifics other than the open playtest should start next spring. Overall, based on the above, I am cautiously optimistic. Which was also my stance when they gave early details of 4th edition and it turned out to be completely different from what they were saying and really bad.

There was a second seminar focusing on classes yesterday and it was trying so hard to be "everything for everyone" that I don't really buy it as a productive overall design goal anymore.

For instance, this fantasy they are promoting that players favoring different edition playing styles will all be happy around the same table. It just doesn't work. Monte Cook suggests in the transcript that if you want a fighter type to dish out damage old school abstractly, you can do that and if another player prefers to make a character who "plays the grid" he can do that too and that they can both play at the same table. That just doesn't work at all unless you want to displease everyone at the table, including the DM.

All the talk about distilling the game back to its essence across all editions and then they spend all their time discussing weird-ass classes, feats, skills, at-wills and "how much damage Charm Person is equal to"

They're also saying how every class has now more options than ever so you can apparently make a "beast ranger, or an Aragorn stye ranger or a Drizzt style ranger and they all feel awesome and iconic". Options are fun but they usually result in more bookkeeping and fiddly bits in DnD. That's how a lot of people grew tired of 3.x.

On the positive side, I like how they are speaking of magic (spells, magic items being special, refining rituals) so far.