D&D General Does D&D (and RPGs in general) Need Edition Resets?

[haakon1]

And the answer should always have been "Because the dragons are thing you're supposed to be fighting against!"

As I may have mentioned before, I once had a new player to whom I suggested a young metallic dragon in polymorphed form, to get the right CR and an interesting character, but fitting him never having played (but read the books).

Instead, he opted to take over an NPC Tiefling Sorcerer.

 

[Minigiant]

How many editions were more popular than their predecessor, comparing saying 1-2 years in for each (long enough for people to get past the Gee Whiz new phase):

I think Yes: Basic & AD&D (both versus OD&D), 3e, 5e

I think No: 2e, 3.5e, 4e

So, not clear 6e will be more liked than 5e. 5e set a very high bar. And it was smart to CUT rather than add as it’s basic “less is more, bloat doesn’t work” approach.

2 years in both 3.5e and 4e were more popular than their predecessor.
Wasn't in the hobby 2 years in 2e.

6e will likely be more popular than 5e.

All industries make advancements and discoveries. TTRPGs is no different.

MCDM, Kobold Press, Darrinton Press and other are making RPGs for next year and the year after.

Amongst these 5+ games, the D&D community will likely some of the lore, mechanics, allowances, and flavors of these products.
6e will steal the most popular ideas from these games. If done well it will be more popular than 5e.

 

[haakon1]

All industries make advancements and discoveries. TTRPGs is no different.

D&D is art, not engineering. Is Bosquiat better than Rembrandt? Is Taylor Swift better than he Beatles? Was Star Trek Discovery better than Star Trek the original show? These are matters of taste, not fact.

If you disagree it’s art, try sports. Was Vince Lombardi era football “worse” than the current day version?

Your contention that newer D&D is always better doesn’t make sense to me.

 

[mamba]

I think Yes: Basic & AD&D (both versus OD&D), 3e, 5e

I think No: 2e, 3.5e, 4e

since you separate out 3e and 3.5, this is also probably not true, leaving BX, 1e and 5e

 

[Minigiant]

D&D is art, not engineering. Is Bosquiat better than Rembrandt? Is Taylor Swift better than he Beatles? Was Star Trek Discovery better than Star Trek the original show? These are matters of taste, not fact.

If you disagree it’s art, try sports. Was Vince Lombardi era football “worse” than the current day version?

Your contention that newer D&D is always better doesn’t make sense to me.

Exactly D&D is art.
It's not about being better. It's about giving the people what they want.

The Majority of 5e players are under 45. Their fantasy touchstones are different from someone who was a teen when 2e came out. People who grew up on 90s, 00s, and 10s cartoons, movies, tv, and books will want to inject those in D&D. People from other cultures, scenes, and subgroups will want to inject their ideas into D&D.

The people who say "Nobody wants to talk to NPCs and roll dice during it" are going to be outvoted by the new gamers who want friendship, romance, business, trade, and politics mechanics. "Can I roll Charisma to get a discount on the sword?"

Other designers will make RPGs and fans will want to inject those ideas in D&D. "So and So's RPG has a mechanic for X. It's better than D&D's mechanic for it."

New good ideas and New bad ideas are going to be made every year until the TTRPG industry dies.

Vince Lombardi era football has less rules than the current day version.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I still would say that most of the play in the hobby is within that type of group. Organized play always has an outsized voice in comparison to the number of participants, and playing with previously-unknown people over the internet - while growing - is I think still a minority thing.

My point was that even the sort of rotating group I was talking about can have trouble keeping track if the GMs involved are using widely variant versions of the same game rules; initially it wasn't a problem because we were all playing RuneQuest, and had a collective house rules set decided by everybody (GMs and players), but once that broke down, it was sometimes an issue. So for a lot of people who aren't primarily locked into one group, someone who's decided they're going to stick with the version of a rules pre-errata is a non-trivial problem, because some of the players aren't just keeping track of one version of the game, but multiples. That's often harder than playing in entirely different games. As such, its plenty of reasons for some people to just take a pass.

 

[Thomas Shey]

There is a reason unified mechanics have won out, not just in D&D, but in the TTRPG sphere in general. "Lower is better" is just inherently less intuitive. Pedagogical research tells us that much.

Though you're not entirely wrong, for some sorts of designs it can still be a virtue. If you normally have a set roll with modifiiers, there's a strong intuitive quality for "I need to roll within this value." Hero, GURPS and the RQ/BRP school of games have used that for their entire lifespan, and I've seen enough in terms of new players picking that up fast to be pretty firm in considering it a virtue.

This is not my disagreeing with the fact the old up-and-down thing with earlier versions of D&D was pretty nonsensical, to be clear. I just have to note that "high is always good" is not entirely true; its a naturalistic to think high is good, but moving target numbers have some overhead flat values with modifiers don't.

(You couldn't do this with D&D because of the way armor is baked into attack, but that's not exactly common away from the D&D-adjacent sphere; a lot of the hobby would consider armor modifying to-hit as weird as heck.)

 

[Jacob Lewis]

They don't, but we're programmed to believe it is not only inevitable but necessary.

It really boils down to who you want to play with. Do you have a close circle of friends who are content to play whatever game as a group because of the camaraderie shared and experience that have led to good relations with one another? Or do you want to keep up with the current trends to be relevant as part of the current shared experience with random people that you hope won't spoil your fun somehow?

 

[Lanefan]

Except they all too often didn't. Which was exactly the problem. Why were certain effects from wands actually death saves, or whatever? There was no logic to it. Maybe if the effects had actually been consistent and well-defined, but they never were.

There was a perfect logic to how it worked (though I'm not sure if this is explained in the DMG and it took me decades to realize it): you took the effect and started reading across the save matrices from left to right until you hit the appropriate save.

So, a wand of death. Paralyzation/poison/death is to the left of rods/wands, so you'd use the PPD matrix.

The far-right one was a generic spells/magic (or similar), intended as a catch-all if no other matrix was more appropriate.

Because it is patently ridiculous. +N bonuses somehow subtract. Some penalties are listed as -N. Some as +N. Lower is better, but higher attack numbers are better, but lower saves are (sometimes) better, but...

Yes, it does require one to pay attention to the context. Are you talking about AC? Good, that +1 makes your AC lower. Oh, you're talking about saving throw bonus? In that case, the +1 makes your save rolls 1 point higher.

I live in hope that most people are able to consider context.

There is a reason unified mechanics have won out, not just in D&D, but in the TTRPG sphere in general. "Lower is better" is just inherently less intuitive. Pedagogical research tells us that much.

Even to the thickest of players I've only ever had to explain descending AC maybe twice.

That said, lower-is-better appears often in our games so there's already a built-in reason to keep context in mind.

 

[haakon1]

Vince Lombardi era football has less rules than the current day version.

I know very little about football, but I went to elementary school with two of his grandkids.

Baseball I follow pretty closely. The MLB rules changed a lot last season, after testing in MLB Partner Leagues and the Minor Leagues. They made the game faster, which is more fun for most people.

But stuff like “Bananaball“ rules, for Savannah Bananas games (not affiliated or partnered with any league), annoy me. Popular, but not nearly as popular as the close-to-classic every other league rules. That almost made this aside related to the topic!

Happy 2024 - we’ll all see what it holds.