D&D (2024) 50th Anniversary: 6E in 2024?

[Marc_C]

And if you're playing the first, you are not playing B/X since it does not include an X. AFAIK, there is no Moldvay/Cook/Marsh B/X, these never produced an Expert Set as part of an official D&D edition.

Cook and Marsh did publish an Expert (1981) box for TSR, compatible with Basic (1981) Moldvay which I bought.

They never published the promised Companion box because of the switch (relaunch) to BECMI Mentzer

 

[Nefermandias]

Cook and Marsh did publish an Expert (1981) box for TSR, compatible with Basic (1981) Moldvay which I bought.

View attachment 144547

They never published the promised Companion box because of the switch (relaunch) to BECMI Mentzer

Cook/Marsh Expert deniers are a new thing for me...

 

[Charlaquin]

They did say, a while back, 5e was the last edition of D&D.

What? Who said that? When?

Considering what was said yesterday the changes are more like 5.1 than 5.5 and not at all a 6e. Minor tweaks and no sweeping changes to the system.

Agreed. I think they’re going to incorporate some of the changes from Tasha’s like having features that grant inherent spellcasting also allow you to cast them with your spell slots, racial ASIs being floating, etc. and maybe some small tweaks to bring some of the more maligned classes and subclasses up to par, but no major changes to subsystems.

 

[Dire Bare]

Cook and Marsh did publish an Expert (1981) box for TSR, compatible with Basic (1981) Moldvay which I bought.

View attachment 144547

They never published the promised Companion box because of the switch (relaunch) to BECMI Mentzer

Yep, thanks. I was beginning to think I was crazy . . . .

That there's the "X" in B/X.

I started with the Elmore cover Basic Set, and never really looked backwards (closely, anyways) . . . . is this B/X Expert Set identical with the later BECMI Expert Set, other than the cover? I'm pretty sure they are different, but haven't read through the older one. Heck, it's been a while since I've read through any of those older rulesets, even the ones I owned as a kid.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It’s 5.5e.
If they call it 6e, it’s in name only.
This is more like BECMI, Player’s Option, 3.5e, and 4e Essentials.

5ssentials?

Tasha's is already "soft" 5.5e

Not at all. It isn’t even quite on the level of late 3.5 vs early 3.5. It’s just some new stuff and some minor errata.

Essentials was fully compatible with earlier 4e. It worked great standalone (and was cleaner that way IMO), but you could use it with any material you wanted from before Essentials without causing any issues at all.

Yep. Once Essentials came out, every 4e game we played had “E+” and pre “E+” material.

Actually, I kinda like the abbreviation 50AE.

Yeah that works. Way better than D&D Ultimate, my dumb 5ssentials above!

 

[overgeeked]

BECMI is Basic Expert amongst other, and the Rules Cyclopaedia is just everything combined, it's not compatibility, it's the same game.

Not according to the designers and writers of those editions of those games.

Cook Expert: “The following is a summary of new material in the 2nd edition of D&D Basic not found in this book...”

Mentzer Basic: “This edition has been completely revised to introduce the game to you, step by step...”

And just check the differences between the Holmes Basic, Moldvay Basic, and Mentzer Basic sets to see how much thry differ. Check thief skills as a great place to see how identical they are. Or skills. Or weapon proficiencies. RC is a collection of BECM stuff, with I rewritten, but RC is not the same as B/X nor is it the same as Holmes’ Basic.

 

[overgeeked]

And if you're playing the first, you are not playing B/X since it does not include an X.

AFAIK, there is no Moldvay/Cook/Marsh B/X, these never produced an Expert Set as part of an official D&D edition.

You’d be really, really wrong. Like a simple Google search away from knowing.

Except that the Isle of Dread is an Expert Module, so to play it, you need the Expert set that comes with the corresponding BECMI Basic, not another one.

Except the one in Cook’s Expert set. The X in B/X.

It's not what I'm arguing, the only thing I'm saying is that if you are really playing B/X, you are playing BECMI at low levels, and it's therefore not iterative. After that, that the Basic of BECMI was iterative on Moldway's, I don't think anyone disputes this.

LOL. Try reading up on the editions of D&D you haven’t played before posting about them.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yep. Once Essentials came out, every 4e game we played had “E+” and pre “E+” material.

I really liked E+ only, but yeah, there was absolutely no reason you couldn’t use them together.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I really liked E+ only, but yeah, there was absolutely no reason you couldn’t use them together.

Yeah. I mean I guess if you really stuck to the adventuring day guidelines and like, really paid attention to the nitty gritty balance between characters in an optimized games, the differences were maybe an issue?

But yeah our games were improved dramatically by being able to show the guy who gets burned out by crunchy complexity options like the Slayer, Hunter, Thief, etc.

Honestly E+ with bounded accuracy and a decreased HP treadmill, and 5e style feats (not 5e style ASI levels, just fewer and bigger feats), and just…almost no stacking numerical bonuses outside of the effects of powers and class features in play, and you’d have the best tradition TTRPG ever, IMO.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yeah. I mean I guess if you really stuck to the adventuring day guidelines and like, really paid attention to the nitty gritty balance between characters in an optimized games, the differences were maybe an issue?

E+ was definitely less tightly balanced than pre-E+, so I suppose it might have been a bit of an issue for highly optimized groups. But really, it wasn’t such a big disparity as to cause issues for the vast majority.

But yeah our games were improved dramatically by being able to show the guy who gets burned out by crunchy complexity options like the Slayer, Hunter, Thief, etc.

Oh, absolutely!

Honestly E+ with bounded accuracy and a decreased HP treadmill, and 5e style feats (not 5e style ASI levels, just fewer and bigger feats), and just…almost no stacking numerical bonuses outside of the effects of powers and class features in play, and you’d have the best tradition TTRPG ever, IMO.

YES! I agree 100%.