D&D 5E 5th edition driving people back to 1st/2nd edition.

[Queer Venger]

But what happens, like in our group, when you don't have the time and you have to choose one over the other? That can't be good for the edition when you choose an older edition over the new one.

Sales of 5e do not support the concerns you are having. In fact, it removes them. The success and popularity of 5e is what is giving rise to players exploring older editions, from what we see in DM's guild a lot of these pdfs are easily adaptable to 5e, unlike other editions. I myself have purchased a plethora of 1e and 3e books for my 5e campaign, this does not mean Im playing 1e.

Nothing is wrong with your group choosing 1e; but methinks doth protest too much...

 

[Guest 6801328]

Oh, and in addition to the growth I've seen at two FLGS's, the other thing that happened with 5e (starting with the Next playtest really) is that it revived interest among the group I played with in middle school. Decades later we're scattered geographically and have families and stuff, but we started getting together on roll20 to play D&D again.

It's like getting the band back together again.

 

[RotGrub]

At this point, I've picked up the core 5e books and put them on my book shelf. The expected advantage for switching over to 5e was new content and yet I'm still using 2e campaign settings, modules, monsters, etc.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

I don't miss the class-based to-hit charts, the high-is-good-no-wait-low-is-good dice acrobatics of varied checks, weapon speed, turn/round/segment confusion, THAC0, non weapon proficiency, multiclass hyjinks, bend bars/lift gates, etc, etc mess that 1st and 2nd were. Alignment languages, say what? No thanks. RPG design has come a long way since then and there's nothing significantly broken with 5th that isn't better than what was broken or completely lacking with 1st and 2nd.

5th has stimulated a prolonged and profound resurgence in D&D play in my neck of the woods. We had too many players to accommodate at a 6 DM AL event last Saturday. Tables on D&D night at the FLGS are packed. Other than nostalgia, I just don't see why anyone would go back.

 

[Mallus]

My group went from 4e --> AD&D --> 5e, with pit stops at Savage Worlds and, briefly, Fate. We're enjoying 5e quite a bit. So far I'm finding it easy to incorporate the best of the older edition/OSR materials into our 5e campaign.

In a month or so I'm going to take a break from DM'ing so my friend can start a LBB Traveller campaign. But we haven't been driven away from 5e. I'm sure we'll return to the 5e game so we can properly end the world. Which is something we've been building toward for a while...

 

[Jester David]

Something I've noticed in my area is that people are dropping their 5th edition games and going back to playing 1st/2nd edition games. I've noticed on the Dungeon Master's Guild site that the top 7 most popular books are the 1st and 2nd editions of the game. People in my own game are wanting to drop 5th and go back to 2nd edition.

Is this becoming a trend? It's like playing 5th edition is sparking an interest to go back and playing those older editions.

Just wanted to pop in and say that the ENWorld Hot Games Chart doesn't reflect this:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/hotgames.php

So it's either a local phenomena or personal perceptions.

 

[Corpsetaker]

Sales of 5e do not support the concerns you are having. In fact, it removes them. The success and popularity of 5e is what is giving rise to players exploring older editions, from what we see in DM's guild a lot of these pdfs are easily adaptable to 5e, unlike other editions. I myself have purchased a plethora of 1e and 3e books for my 5e campaign, this does not mean Im playing 1e. Nothing is wrong with your group choosing 1e; but methinks doth protest too much...

What sales?

Do you have any data to show this? All I see is an edition that has managed to have a lot less overhead because of the slow release. I don't see this as confirming anything really. Profits don't always mean something is selling well.

 

[Corpsetaker]

Just wanted to pop in and say that the ENWorld Hot Games Chart doesn't reflect this:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/hotgames.php

So it's either a local phenomena or personal perceptions.

Those are games that are talked about so I'm not sure how that confirms anything beyond people are discussing these games.

You might want to try something else if you are trying to prove me wrong.

 

[seebs]

What sales?

Do you have any data to show this? All I see is an edition that has managed to have a lot less overhead because of the slow release. I don't see this as confirming anything really. Profits don't always mean something is selling well.

But sales rankings suggest that it's selling pretty well.

Do you have actual data showing that 5e is selling poorly? You've been starting threads on how 5e is dead and 5e is a failure and 5e is unpopular forever, but I've never seen actual data for this.

 

[Corpsetaker]

But sales rankings suggest that it's selling pretty well.

Do you have actual data showing that 5e is selling poorly? You've been starting threads on how 5e is dead and 5e is a failure and 5e is unpopular forever, but I've never seen actual data for this.

You talk about sales rankings but you don't go into detail as to these figures.

You can't really rely on rankings because exactly who are they in competition with? Also, yes people have purchased the game. It's a new edition and people do have to buy it to get the full effect but who's to say they are not buying it and then deciding to go back to another edition after they've played it? All new editions sell well in the beginning.