Why 5E may be the last edition of D&D

CydKnight · Dec 14, 2018

Morrus said:
Well, nothing in the history of the world has ever lasted forever. I suspect this edition will last longer than any previous ones, but 6E will one day be a big thing. Maybe the biggest thing!

At the risk of being overly contrarian for contrarian's sake, I would amend this statement to "nothing in the history of the universe has ever lasted forever". Also, the inevitable end of 5E doesn't necessarily mean there will be a "6E" or any other new edition. It may mean the end of D&D (gasp!).

Ralif Redhammer · Dec 14, 2018

"Dragons love tacos. They love chicken tacos, beef tacos, great big tacos, and teeny tiny tacos. So if you want to lure a bunch of dragons to your party, you should definitely serve tacos. Buckets and buckets of tacos. Unfortunately, where there are tacos, there is also salsa. And if a dragon accidentally eats spicy salsa...oh, boy. You're in red-hot trouble. The award-winning team behind Those Darn Squirrels! has created an unforgettable, laugh-until-salsa-comes-out-of-your-nose tale of new friends and the perfect snack."

But, to the topic at hand, I think 5e will show longevity beyond 3e, 3.5e, and 4e. I would like to think that the next edition will just be a refinement rather than an overhaul. But for better or worse, editions are built into the long-term RPG model. Heck, even Warhammer Fantasy RPG, which originally touted that it would only ever have or need one edition, is going into #4.

That being said, I don’t think we’ll see 6e until the excitement for 5e fades. Which, so far, it shows no signs of doing so, and has only been growing.

Parmandur said:
behind "Dragons Love Tacos"

robus · Dec 14, 2018

I still think that the way to continue to grow D&D as a hobby is to provide official tie-ins with popular 3rd party IP. I know that's not what Wizards want, but Hasbro has a long history of it with their various Monopoly editions (Monopoly for Millennials being a weird mis-fire).

A special D&D bookset for playing in the world of Harry Potter, GoT (mostly low-tech fantasies obviously).

The way to keep the game "fresh" IMHO is to not keep rebooting the rules, but by expanding the play experiences and enticing fans of popular settings (the Magic cross-overs are an example of this, of course).

Morrus · Dec 14, 2018

CydKnight said:
At the risk of being overly contrarian for contrarian's sake, I would amend this statement to "nothing in the history of the universe has ever lasted forever". Also, the inevitable end of 5E doesn't necessarily mean there will be a "6E" or any other new edition. It may mean the end of D&D (gasp!).

Well, luckily it can only mean the end of the D&D *name*. The OGL ensures that the game itself will live on, even if under a different name.

Nebulous · Dec 14, 2018

I'd like to see 6th edition add some more granularity that used to exist that 5e stripped out. Remember when certain powerful monsters needed a +2 or +3 weapon to even hurt them? Or, instead of a blanket advantage against magic, they would have 60% spell resistance? You could control in increments how tough a baddie was. Anyway, that's just me. Regardless, my "fun" level in D&D caps out around 10th level when it goes from fantasy heroes to superheroes.

Mercurius · Dec 14, 2018

Just to clarify, my speculation is not that 5E will be the last edition because D&D will fold anytime in the foreseeable future, but because it may have achieved evergreen status and any future "editions" will likely only be minor tweaks and cosmetic changes.

But I'm also implying a kind of societal event horizon beyond which it is impossible to see. We can speculate that the next 10-20 years won't be radically different, but in 20+ years life on earth as we know it could begin to truly drastically change.

And yes, I do agree that 2024 will see something. But unless 5E plummets in sales over the next few years, that will probably be more along the lines of a commemorative 50th anniversary reprinting of the core books, maybe a 5.1.

Parmandur · Dec 14, 2018

Ralif Redhammer said:
"Dragons love tacos. They love chicken tacos, beef tacos, great big tacos, and teeny tiny tacos. So if you want to lure a bunch of dragons to your party, you should definitely serve tacos. Buckets and buckets of tacos. Unfortunately, where there are tacos, there is also salsa. And if a dragon accidentally eats spicy salsa...oh, boy. You're in red-hot trouble. The award-winning team behind Those Darn Squirrels! has created an unforgettable, laugh-until-salsa-comes-out-of-your-nose tale of new friends and the perfect snack."

But, to the topic at hand, I think 5e will show longevity beyond 3e, 3.5e, and 4e. I would like to think that the next edition will just be a refinement rather than an overhaul. But for better or worse, editions are built into the long-term RPG model. Heck, even Warhammer Fantasy RPG, which originally touted that it would only ever have or need one edition, is going into #4.

That being said, I don’t think we’ll see 6e until the excitement for 5e fades. Which, so far, it shows no signs of doing so, and has only been growing.

Dragons Love Tacos are big with the toddler set, believe me.

The RPG industry has only existed for 54 years. It isn't that large edition changes are built into the long term model: no long term model has been successful, so we've seen big edition changes.

Just because this has been the case, doesn't mean that it is going to be the pattern in the future.

Mercurius · Dec 14, 2018

Parmandur said:
Dragons Love Tacos are big with the toddler set, believe me.

The RPG industry has only existed for 54 years. It isn't that large edition changes are built into the long term model: no long term model has been successful, so we've seen big edition changes.

Just because this has been the case, doesn't mean that it is going to be the pattern in the future.

Not to nitpick but 54 years? What was happening in 1964? I suppose we could go back to the early 70s if we want to include Arneson's early Blackmoor stuff, but anything before 1971ish can't really be classified as an RPG, and the industry itself really started with OD&D publication in 1974. So maybe you meant 44 years?

Parmandur · Dec 14, 2018

Mercurius said:
Not to nitpick but 54 years? What was happening in 1964? I suppose we could go back to the early 70s if we want to include Arneson's early Blackmoor stuff, but anything before 1971ish can't really be classified as an RPG, and the industry itself really started with OD&D publication in 1974. So maybe you meant 44 years?

Yes, I meant 44 years: thanks, that makes my point stronger. Just because for 40 years D&D had not hit on an evergreen model, doesn't mean an evergreen model isn't achievable. The current team seems to think they have one now, and the results seem to be evident.

Zardnaar · Dec 14, 2018

Parmandur said:
Yes, I meant 44 years: thanks, that makes my point stronger. Just because for 40 years D&D had not hit on an evergreen model, doesn't mean an evergreen model isn't achievable. The current team seems to think they have one now, and the results seem to be evident.

Now might even be a fad, few years later its over.

5E I doubt won't last 20 odd years like some are speculating the only D&Ds to come close to that would be Basic which in effect had around 4 or 5 sub versions (Holmes, Moldvay, BECMI, Black Box etc) was technically around for 19 years (77-96 IIRC) but was more or less out of print/on life support for some of those years. 3.X if you count 3.0, 3.5, Pathfinder as the same system but I don't think we'll see WoTC drop the ball again.

Sooner or later the books will plateau but they can always go down the spam some splats path for a year or 3 or see how will campaign settings etc do. See what sales are like in year 6 and 8, its really to early and most sales of D&D come early in the editions lifetime and 5E is following that trend.

A D&D movie won't land for 2 years minimum even if they start filming in the next 6 months and D&D and good movies don't go hand in hand. The entire RPG market yearly sales would only pay around a quarter of a AAA+ game or block buster movies production values. That is the main reason you're not going to see a good D&D movie or game unless you get some cheap indie development that blows up.

Same reason most of the good D&D games date from the late 90's and early 2000's. Game development back then was around $4 million, now its in the $80-200 million range, at least for a decent big budget version. The number of 90%+ rated titles on the PS2 is another example.

People are getting carried away methinks with how big D&D actually is.