Courtesy of examiner.com

When Monte Cook rejoined Wizards of the Coast recently, he was coy about why he was hired. Hiring Monte raised eyebrows for those who know him – Monte was, after all, a major force in the development of Third Edition and has been actively involved in the gaming community ever since. Wizards rehiring him seemed to have some significance for the future of Dungeons & Dragons.

Perhaps naively, I sent a series of interview questions directly to him on September 21. Monte knows me by name at least (we've met at I-CON 22) and I found our chats really enlightening about the design philosophy behind Dungeons & Dragons, including its sacred cows. I was careful not to ask the burning question, because I thought he wouldn't be able to answer it. But I did ask a lot of other questions about Wizards, Monte's gaming philosophy, and what he planned to bring to the table in his new role, whatever that is.

I've worked with Wizards' public relations team recently, so we're acquainted well enough that I wasn't too surprised when I was directed to a communications manager, who politely explained that no interviews will be coordinated with Monte, or any other internal teams, until 2012.

Thing is, Monte DID grant an interview in October, with Krosch of HubPages. Krosch didn't hit on any of the questions I asked, which is why I suspect my interview was denied.

Then Margaret Weiss, Dragonlance series author and whom I trust as a woman of her word, said on the Dragonlance forums:

wrote:

I've talked to friends of Monte's who are friends of mine and they all say, Yes, he's working on 5e!

So I'm just going to call it: If Monte isn't talking, and Wizards isn't talking, and Margaret IS talking…all this adds up to Monte working on the next edition of Dungeons & Dragons. You can expect an announcement in his Legends & Lore column in early 2012.

As Monte put it in his Twitter feed:

wrote:

Thanks to everyone for the well-wishes, kind words, and congratulations. Fun and interesting times ahead!

=================

So instead of trying to fix what's broken, WotC's going to make yet another edition in hopes of getting the top spot in the RPG market after Paizo's Pathfinder dethroned them.

In case people can't bother sitting through an entire hour-long video, there was a Q&A section roughly a third into it with the following highlights. Pardon the disjointed bulletpoints:

* This edition will be based around a hub/kernel that can easily be added to. Optional systems, like psionics won't be a part of it. That will also likely mean campaign setting content will be their own optional materials. It's sounding a lot like how nWoD has the base book where you're a human and all the awakened being books (Vampires, werewolves, mages, golems, changelings, etc.) revolve around those rules.
One example to this modularity was Death and Dying; the standard rules are once you hit 0, you can survive to a certain number of negative hit points. But if the DM decides he wants to handle vitals in a more dramatic light or perhaps a more pulpy, comic-book style where the heroes never die, they just wind up unconscious.
The modular content won't be designed to be so much as campaign setting-centric as much as general style options. Avoiding "okay, there're 20 kinds of DMs, let's do a line for each kind" like TSR sort of did with 2E back in the day.

* Skills have been a big issue with development, due to a lack of uniform implementation across editions. 1E barely had them, 2E had NWPs, a full-fledged system in 3E and a stripped (dumbed) down version of that in 4E. Conversely, a wizard in every edition is going to study is spellbook to memorize spells.

* 4E's skill challenges flat out will not be returning in the base rules.

* They're currently on the 4th playtest build.

* Character customization will go beyond class and race. Story-based character themes, such as being nobility or will let you modify the base character with some modest changes.

* Turn undead was considered as a power more for higher level clerics. They realize this was a stupid move the moment one playtest group encountered some skeletons and the cleric could only shrug and say "I don't have it." Thankfully it will remain a 1st level ability.

* Online play tools like 4E's DDI and virtual tabletop are going to likely be adapted.

* They're trying to work on solving the "Linear Fighter vs. Quadratic Wizard" power issue. Especially with spells that deal damage vs spells that flat out "shut down" a monster like dominate, sleep, charm, illusions, etc. Furthermore, while 4E allegedly did a great job at balancing the classes within combat, they want to go beyond that and extend that balance to noncombat actions.

* Classes are being looked at as individual pieces. Playtesting breaks up where something like one of the newer classes like 4E's Avenger should be between a class or a kit/variant off an existing class with more traction.

* The general system, in an effort to be a simplified kernel, seems to veer away from things like saving throws and skill checks. Instead, they'll go off the core ability scores, with the throws/checks coming in with the various modular rule extensions.

* One questioner commented that 4E seems to have had about half the lifespan that 3.X had, hoping that WotC has a stronger focus on 5E. And he also joked "And how long do you think it will be before Paizo releases 4.25E?"

* Miniatures will NOT be required