A new edition!

A new edition of Dungeons and Dragons, that is. The announcement even got a fluff article in the New York Times.

It may be considered an admission that the fourth edition of the venerable role-playing game was a failure, given it's been around for less than four years, a much shorter lifespan than the eight years of 3e/3.5e and the 11 years of 2e.

The link above is to Ace of Spades, who discusses the announcement. The comment section is active, as might be expected on a subject that attracts this level of passion. There are the normal anti-nerd jokes, people talking about how they've outgrown the game, and people talking about how they still like the game (and which edition they like). Here's one interesting comment, on the Pathfinder game that follows in the style of 3.5e:

As for Pathfinder, it simply is not as backwards compatible as the publishers and fans like to pretend it is, and is quickly accumulating just as much dead weight rules books as 3E/3.5/4E did. Add to that the hard Left worldview of well near the entire management and workforce, and a dominant theme of Torture Porn masquerading as "edgy" and "adult", and you have a product with no real attraction above and beyond sticking with whatever junk WotC is spamming the shelves with.

I can certainly confirm the hard left views of the Paizo publisher on my Facebook feed. And while I haven't played enough of their adventures to see the torture porn, I did see an early example. This same publisher, at the time leading and writing for the new Living Greyhawk campaign, showed off his darker vision by having an early adventure start with a dirty, bruised and naked girl running into the PCs' coach.