D&D General How Long Does It Take to get Sick of an Edition?

[wakedown]

1E I'd probably try and scratch that itch by playing 2E first.

2E I want to say I had a good run, giving it 12 years before switching only to 3.5E and avoiding the 3.0 books. I'd still go back and play 2E again, THACO and all if an opportunity presented but it would be a casual thing, I wouldn't want to play in 5 concurrent groups once a month in 2E.

3E has been going for me and most of the group from '03 to present (16 years, and concurrent with 5E!). d20 is really a good system but 3E has a LOT of flaws that can really be dealt with via house rules. There's not enough meat on the 5E bones for a drop-in swap of already established character crunch in ongoing 3E campaigns to have abandoned it. The 3E sweet spot is a magic-light campaign and single digit levels. I want to say there's fatigue in playing 10+ as folks feel like they "won that game" and aren't in a rush to get back there.

4E was real brief, measured in under a year in tandem with 3E and wasn't found as a good enough reason to ditch 3E and spend more $$.

5E only a few years in and still finding subtle things to appreciate. Like it's getting real close to outright displacement of 3E/3PF. They're kind of doing everything right with the slow trickle of books.

PF2E right now looks DOA, of each gaming group I play within the majority are opting to pass, with just maybe 1 player beyond me (and it's just the 1 player who has a lot of time to character build and loves pouring through rules) giving it a look. Not enough changed from the Playtest experience. It feels quite distant before someone is motivated to GM and there's enough player interest to test the train.

 

[Retreater]

5e was designed as a "semi-evergeen" edition, and it is not going to leave us anytime soon. My suspicion is that it will last at least as long as 3.x, possibly longer, and will eventually have things like the Player's Handbook II, Monster Manual II (they can't hide them behind cute names forever!) and such, as well as sourcebooks which will be a bit less necessary to have (Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica has already accomplished this). It too will lapse into redundancy, but I believe that it will remain much better balanced than 3.x and Pathfinder 1e ever were. A revised ranger will probably be released, along with new classes like the Artificer and Mystic, and other expansions yet undreamed of will follow for over a decade from now. At some point, WotC might even do what they said they would, and incorporate fan-made homebrew content into official products (with some revision).

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with the idea that 5E will become bloated to the extent that 3.5/PF did. The rate of releases "feels" like the slowest since I've been in the hobby (the late 1980s) - at least during periods when a current edition of D&D has been in print [of course I have nothing to back this up with.] Even then, the releases we get are mostly big, hardcover campaigns with scarcely any usable crunch to impact the rules.

I've purchased nearly every campaign adventure and run most of them (some multiple times even!) I would be delighted to get more content, but the releases are pretty much a trickle - compared to what we got in the 3.x era. There are few 3rd party resources that have been reviewed, vetted, or have any designations of quality. Most D&D publishers of note from that era have moved on to their own systems.

So strangely, the game is more popular than it's ever been (so we're told), but there's a surprising lack of supplements, adventures, and quality content (or ways to find it, besides a stab in the dark on the DMs Guild.)

Heck, you used to be able to go to Green Ronin, Goodman Games, Necromancer Games, Paizo, Monte Cook, and others to get quality content. Nowadays, who knows what you're getting? And from Wizards, we get 3-4 books a year - and if one of those books happens to be something you're not interested in (Penny Arcade parody campaign guide, Magic: The Gathering Setting, etc), then you're out of luck for content for 6 months or more.

 

[CleverNickName]

You are assuming that new editions of D&D are created because people get sick of older editions. That does not match my experience at all.

I played BECM from 1985 to 2000. I was aware of new editions being released, but they didn't really interest me...I didn't care for the campaign settings they were promoting, and I really didn't like the psionics and sci-fi stuff they were adding. So I just kept using my Rules Cyclopedia until it fell apart (and for several years afterward.) I still have it, and I still play the occasional BECM game when my high school buddies come into town.

In 2001, I picked up a copy of the 3E rules in a bookstore and really liked it. I remember the exact moment. I picked up the book, opened it, and the first thing I saw was the artwork for the Druid class right next to the streamlined level progression table. That one-minute glance was all it took; I was completely sold.

I played 3E/3.5E for the next 12 years. I tried to get excited about 4th Edition when it was announced; I signed up for the playtest and submitted feedback and stuff, but it just didn't do it for me. When 3.5E was discontinued and 4E was released I just stayed with 3.5E and supplemented it with Pathfinder.

When "D&D Next" was announced, I signed up for the playtest and gave feedback and everything again... and this time I liked it. So when D&D 5E was released, I finished up my 3.5E campaign and switched to 5th Edition in 2017. I've been playing it ever since.

TL;DR: In my 30+ years of playing D&D, I've never quit playing a particular edition because "I got sick of it." I've always played the edition I liked, until an edition I liked better came along. Even though I play 5th Edition, I'm still not sick of BECM or 3.5E.

 

[Salamandyr]

I think 4e was the first rpg system I ever grew "bored" with. I've abandoned others out of frustration, but never boredom. Interestingly enough, systems that frustrated me I will re-visit, but I don't have any desire to revisit systems that bored or annoyed me.

With 4e, there was a certain point where I felt like I'd mastered the game and did not have anything else I was really interested in doing with the game. I also realized there were certain things I wanted to do that it was unsuited to doing. Up to that point I'd had amazing fun with the system, and I still think it would do fantastically well marketed as a skirmish fantasy boardgame.

(edit: somehow I translated "got sick of" with bored--so there).

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with the idea that 5E will become bloated to the extent that 3.5/PF did.

It'll just take time. Geological time.

 

[Shiroiken]

I think the only edition I got tired of was 2E. I had fundamental issues with 3x and 4E, so I didn't "tire" of them, so much as generally came to loathe them. I only switched to 2E because 1E was no longer supported and I liked the 2E supplements, but I wasn't tired of it. I don't know why, but after a while 2E started to become stale, and the player options they tried to add made things worse, rather than better.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yes, that was my personal opinion. Glad to have helped. My name isn’t Morris though.



You may have rather missed the point by a country mile.

Sorry didn't mean to call you a car brand.

 

[Campbell]

Games for my group rarely run more than 2 years or about 25-30 sessions, so we don't really need a new edition to start over.

Same. I run games in 10-12 session seasons. Sometimes we'll run a 2nd season back to back, but usually we like to play different games.

 

[S'mon]

I can't really see myself getting sick of 5e per se, though for a generic heroic fantasy system it is a bit high magic with few non caster classes. I can imagine having fun with a low-magic variant like AiME though my tastes are more to sword & sorcery.

I run a lot of 5e campaigns with a lot of variation in tone. I got burnt out running Stonehell Dungeon so now am running Primeval Thule - and Forgotten Realms, and my 5e version of Varisia/Golarion. Where the Thule setting is rare magic ancient Earth Conan-vs-Cthulu and Conan probably legging it, my Golarion Runelords game is epic high fantasy with characters of demigod power battling the risen Runelords. And FR is FR.

The 5e system runs smoothly and is very flexible; my FR Princes of the Apocalypse game has very few magic items where my Runelords game has 3e/PF item levels, currently the PCs have just gained the insanely powerful Sihedron. Both games work equally well.

 

[generic]

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with the idea that 5E will become bloated to the extent that 3.5/PF did. The rate of releases "feels" like the slowest since I've been in the hobby (the late 1980s) - at least during periods when a current edition of D&D has been in print [of course I have nothing to back this up with.] Even then, the releases we get are mostly big, hardcover campaigns with scarcely any usable crunch to impact the rules.

I've purchased nearly every campaign adventure and run most of them (some multiple times even!) I would be delighted to get more content, but the releases are pretty much a trickle - compared to what we got in the 3.x era. There are few 3rd party resources that have been reviewed, vetted, or have any designations of quality. Most D&D publishers of note from that era have moved on to their own systems.

So strangely, the game is more popular than it's ever been (so we're told), but there's a surprising lack of supplements, adventures, and quality content (or ways to find it, besides a stab in the dark on the DMs Guild.)

Heck, you used to be able to go to Green Ronin, Goodman Games, Necromancer Games, Paizo, Monte Cook, and others to get quality content. Nowadays, who knows what you're getting? And from Wizards, we get 3-4 books a year - and if one of those books happens to be something you're not interested in (Penny Arcade parody campaign guide, Magic: The Gathering Setting, etc), then you're out of luck for content for 6 months or more.

The DM's Guild produces both great and horrible content, and I'm inclined to agree with you. Every Kobold Press book I've bought recently has been disappointing (except for, surprisingly, the Unlikely Heroes softcover), and other companies have yet to produce much in the way of high-quality supplements.