EDIT: Mike Mearls tweeted today that the board game is no hoax. Does this mean that the 3.5 reprints are a go? Interesting times indeed.
“I’m just sitting here Watching the wheels go round and round I really love to watch them roll.” John Lennon
Well, this certainly made for an interesting week in D&D land. As you probably have already heard, Monte Cook is off the 5e team. And to top it off, Wizards announced that the release of the 5e open playtest will be on May 24th. Oh, they happened to drop that last nugget on the same day Monte announced he was off the team. No, I don’t feel like that was coincidental.
Oh wait, there’s more. It seems the reprint wagon just got a little heavier, as these guys turned up on Barnes and Noble. I’m a little concerned about these, and I hope that it won’t confuse any new players looking for “D&D”.
Oh, yeah, then there’s this guy. More stuff with the D&D label on it. That’s a whole bunch of D&D!
So what’s going on? We have 1e reprints on the way, 3.5 books with errata, and an old boardgame. I predict, by the way, that we will see 2e reprints announced before the end of the year. If not core books then settings and boxed sets.
I think what we are seeing is that either Wizards has to make a number, and they are throwing everything they can at that attempt, or simply they need to raise more cash to fund a new edition and pay the bills. They essentially (see what I did there) made 4e a lame duck when they announced 5e at the beginning of the year, so maybe they need to make up for some of the lost 4e sales caused by announcing a new edition.
I don’t fault Wizard’s for casting “Bigby’s Generate Gold”, businesses have to do what they have to do. My two concerns are overcrowding the shelves with more D&D books that’ll just confuse the heck out of new hobbyists, and whether or not there’s a mad rush out the door to get 5e playtested, printed and in stores. I can’t help but wonder what Monte’s concerns and disagreements were about.
I am excited about D&D Next, I want it to do well. The WOTC guys genuinely care about the game, that much is certain, I just hope that corporate pressures aren’t getting in the way of creativity. That’s never a good thing.
May 24th can’t come soon enough.
Oh, predictions! Since I was pretty spot on with my 5e prediction, let’s do another one.
I predict 2e reprints will be announced perhaps at Gencon. This will include campaign sets and all that stuff that made 2e popular. I also predict pdf’s will be announced as well. The entire thing. The whole library. Time to make some money.
Discuss!
www. Newbie DM .com 
paulcuchna
April 26, 2012
Great post! It’s definitely crazy times in the world of D&D and I agree I hope WOTC does well with D&D Next. Thanks again
TriskalJM
April 26, 2012
You know what this means…. Planescape!
hccummings
April 26, 2012
I wonder if they’re going to throw out reprints of all the older editions of D&D out there and decide what supplements to reprint after seeing which performs best?
Still, it looks to me like someone spinning their wheels in the mud and it doesn’t fill me with confidence for the future of the brand. I’m glad I have both old stuff and other games on which to fall back.
alphastream
April 26, 2012
I think the reprints are yet again another example of how publishers should better control the marketing communications and understand the date when online retailers announce their upcoming material. We see time and time again that the online retailers are the first marketing communication around products and this is often poor for the company.
Many have been asking for Wizards to re-release old material. All the time we hear how this is a “no brainer”. It isn’t so simple, of course, but if D&D next lends itself to wanting to own other editions, then it could make a lot of sense to re-release previous D&D material in a number of formats. It is too early to tell, but I look forward to the official communication/explanation. In general, I think reprinting is great, though I would rather see adventures and supplements along with conversion sheets to D&D Next (if that is appropriate/necessary).
froth
April 26, 2012
i agree w alpha that its always a bad look when amazon or barnes and noble effectively announce your product lines. i am not surprised though, its par for the course with wizards
id buy some 2e boxed set reprints but since wizards claim they couldnt afford to make undermountain a box i dont see planescape boxes happening
anarkeith
April 26, 2012
The whole thing is a little bit of a bad reality show circus right now. Time & money pressures are rarely good for creative products.
There is a market for a scaleable modular RPG ruleset. There are also huge challenges to creating such a thing, let alone trying to incorporate legacy rules.
I wish the team at WotC had the time to do it right.
I
Mike Karkabe-Olson
April 26, 2012
I don’t have any problem with them putting out reprints for those people who want to purchase books that are not worn and old-looking. And if it confuses people, so what? They will either buy the game because it looks cool, or they won’t. It’s no different than going into the store and seeing copies of old-style RISK sitting next to new-style RISK, and wooden box versions of RISK, etc. People will educate themselves (or not) as much as they care to do so prior to the purchase. Actually, it would be kind of refreshing to see D&D versions have the longevity of those classic board games like RISK and Monopoly, etc. It’s just not a big deal to me. Personally, I probably won’t be purchasing any of the old versions of D&D anyway, and I am still excitedly waiting for what they come up with in 5e.
Josh
April 27, 2012
I don’t get any of it… we have been asking for pdfs and told “not going to happen” and now they are going to waste time, energy, paper, shipping, space on the shelves, and $ they aren’t going to get back to re-release stuff that you can still buy on ebay in many cases for 1/2 of what it cost when it came out… why not spend some time and energy to make D&D Next actually what they want it to be, update those old boxed sets for the new game and release them as PDFs for those who want them (for a nominal fee of course), and put forth a unified front of gaming and the D&D brand instead of splintering it into 5 pieces before even getting off the ground. Sounds like desperate measures that make me suspect D&D Next is going to be the next big flop unfortunately. Releasing 1st Edition books as collectors items is a neat idea, nice bow to Gygax.. but the going to use the same rationale for 2, 3.0, 3.5, and collector’s edition 4th edition? I think not.