The second week in August marked the 45th anniversary of GenCon. “The best four days in gaming” has grown more than 30 percent since 2010, with over 41,000 badges sold this year. Originally started as a small gathering of Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax’s friends, GenCon now finds itself the capstone event amidst a kind of golden age for so-called hobby games. Board gamers, role-playing gamers, LARPers, and war gamers all sit shoulder to shoulder in its massive play spaces, while buskers vie for their attention on the nearly 400-strong vendor floor. Boosted by satellite events like PAX and the un-closeting of an emboldened gamer population at large, there’s plenty of room for continued growth.

Buried inside the sacred tome that is GenCon’s annual program, amidst the thousands of play sessions of new and old properties, was a listing for an entirely new event—a keynote presentation. To no one’s surprise, the keynote presentation was given by Wizards of the Coast (WotC). Their goal? To rally the faithful around their grand experiment called "D&D Next."

The time of troubles

The Dungeons & Dragons family of games has been in and out of a state of civil war throughout its history. Call them “The Edition Wars.” OD&D begat AD&D which begat Third Edition, and with each transition came, if not enmity within the ranks, then perhaps the kind of gentle chiding that siblings have for one another across the dinner table. But nothing ruined Thanksgiving quite like the row that developed over the release of Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition, colloquially known as D&D 4e.

Help shape D&D Next WotC wants Next to be an epic revitalization of D&D, so the company has made a playtest available now despite the final product being two years out. I encourage you to take a look, WotC wants Next to be an epic revitalization of D&D, so the company has made a playtest available now despite the final product being two years out. I encourage you to take a look, open for download right here

Released in 2008, this ruleset was like nothing like the ones that had come before it. It emphasized “powers” as the main element of growth for the player character (PC), a catalog of skills which changed and expanded the capabilities of a PC over time. Many of the old guard thought that these powers looked and felt a lot like the skills one might gain in an MMO, with all the buffs, debuffs, and cooldown timers that went along with them. Others lamented the game system's lack of cohesion. Elements of lore and useful rules were scattered haphazardly over dozens of books, each of which were themselves fattened with scores of magical items that began to blur together into a coagulated hunk of loot.

I dove headlong into 4e as soon as it was released, and my own campaign almost immediately became bogged down in combat. What I remembered primarily as a communal storytelling experience during my years playing D&D version 2.5 became a fairly ponderous miniatures wargame with the introduction of 4e.

Several sessions into 4e, I came to a painful realization: if it took 10 encounters to gain a level for a PC, and if our combat encounters continued to span two to four hours of play time each, it would be a very long while before we reached level 10, where great boons were granted and characters truly evolved. To make matters worse, our play space had become a riot of status indicators, books, character sheets, and decks of custom-printed power cards that made setup and teardown a chore. Four years later, we still have yet to reach level 11.

My play group’s experience is probably an extreme case, but I'm sure there are plenty of other seasoned gamer groups whose members have families and day jobs that had a similar experience with the 4e rules changes. Anecdotal evidence gleaned from my friendly local game stores, where high level campaign modules still linger on the shelves years after their initial publication, suggests that the fourth edition of D&D has mostly stalled out at retail.

Heavy weighs the head

Mike Mearls is the unassuming man tasked with breathing new life into D&D. The senior manager of research and development for D&D tends to absently brush aside the bouncy, bright shock of reddish hair that rests atop his head. Like many dungeon masters (DMs) I have played with, he is both deliberate and aloof, as likely to drift off in thought as to be preternaturally quick to respond to those around him. But like a particularly engaged classics professor, or a maniacal improv actor, he is terrifically present at the game table. During a press-only playtest on the GenCon floor, he opened up his secret stash of lore for me and a group of colleagues, sharing the introduction to a larger campaign he once played with friends, all set to the new beat of D&D Next.

You’re in a lumber town, north of the main areas of the civilized world. For years Axefold was protected by a band of druids and rangers who lived in the old wood and would hunt down orcs, goblins, and other monsters… 20 years ago a great green dragon descended upon the wood. The rangers and druids came together and fought a great, epic battle in the woods. The folk of the town could hear the thunder of spells, lighting spilling down from the sky, storm clouds gathering and the dragon’s great roar… And then there was silence.

D&D Next will be the most rigorously playtested role-playing product that WotC has ever brought to market.

In May, D&D Next launched the largest playtest that WotC has ever assembled, letting anyone sign up to download and try early ruleset and adventure material, and then share their thoughts with the development team. Armed with a set of classic pre-generated characters and only the most meager selection of rules, these testers have set out on a quixotic journey to try to break the D&D Next system before it's ready. D&D Next will be the most rigorously playtested role-playing product that WotC has ever brought to market; the company says it has already received much more feedback than it did during the entirety of the 4e beta.

Mearls and his team are serious about the business of play. Their goal is nothing short of redefining what D&D is, to return it to its core principles of exploration, adventure, and storytelling. To hear them tell it, this won't merely be another layer to cover over what has come before, but a flexible ruleset with variable complexity, perfectly capable of playing as a tactical miniatures game like 4e, or as an old school “talkie.” Without a 1-inch grid ever being rolled out on the table, and without a single ounce of pewter cast in the image of an elf or a dwarf, D&D Next games can consist entirely of the interactions between the players and the DM, of dice and words alone.

Days passed… bled into weeks… into months without any sign of the druids and rangers who once watched over the wood or the great dragon they fought. Even to this day no one is sure where this battle took place or what transpired. But most folk presume that the rangers and their allies and the dragon were all slain. And of course without all the forest’s protectors and overseers, bands of goblins, orcs, and the other creatures have slowly begun to return and threaten Axefold.