D&D (2024) What would change for you if Wizards started calling it 6E?

[payn]

I imagine that less then half the people playing will be paying for a beyond account.

Good thing the accounts are free to sign up. You only have to pay for features.

 

[Clint_L]

I pay for a DDB account, and my 6 bucks/month allows me to share as much of my content as I want with any player who joins one of my campaigns. I have several "campaigns" that only exist to give high school students access to basically every WotC D&D book. This is working as intended - WotC even gifted me most of their books because I am an educator running a D&D Club and they want students to have free access to the game.

I cannot overstate how much havoc an edition split would wreak on DDB users.

 

[DEFCON 1]

If you define the question and the answer, then IMO both are meaningless outside your own head.

True dat. And which is why it doesn't seem like WotC is concerned with how the rest of us choose to define things. We can all argue till the cows come home about what these new books are going to be, and they'll just publish what they want in the way they want it anyway. So in that regard, all our arguments about what to call these books are just as meaningless as their answering of their own question.

But hey... all this typing on the boards here certainly passes the time. Better than working!

 

[Shardstone]

I wish someone could explain to me why it matters if they call it 6E or not. People have said "They want their cake and to eat it too" but what does even MEAN here?

 

[Clint_L]

I think plenty of folks, including Jeremy Crawford, have explained exactly why it matters: in the history of D&D, the publication of a new "edition" meant that you, the consumer, had a decision to make: whether to stick with the old one or switch to the new, at considerable expense of both time and money. This created a natural jumping off point for many people and splintered the D&D player base, which persists to this day (c.f. this forum). So they want to get rid of that model, and doing so means getting rid of the word "edition."

Keeping it will confuse people because of how it has previously been used in D&D. Context matters.

 

[Azzy]

The biggest difference for me would be the ability to discus a set of classes/feats with a single label (5e) and not have to explain WHAT 5e I am using

Is using the year of publishing or referring to the '24 books as Revised 5th Edition not enough?

 

[Velderan]

I agree this is an issue. However, im curious how the DDB will differentiate? I would imagine folks will naturally be using that in the future.

Probably the same way they did for content that changed from VGtM/MToF to MotM, which is using a legacy tag to show something is the older version and there's a new version available.

 

[mamba]

I wish someone could explain to me why it matters if they call it 6E or not. People have said "They want their cake and to eat it too" but what does even MEAN here?

in the past every edition change introduced some to a lot of incompatiblities with the previous edition. To the point where people are used to having to start over with new books completely, unable to use the ones from previous editions (without a lot of work)

1DD will be compatible with 5e, you can use 5e adventures with it and vice versa. Nothing is being forced into obsolescence.

That is why 6e is an awful name for the next iteration of the core books. That is why it matters what it is being called.

If people were informed and rational, it would not matter, but… I guess you have met people…

 

[Faolyn]

I wish someone could explain to me why it matters if they call it 6E or not. People have said "They want their cake and to eat it too" but what does even MEAN here?

I think it's been explained: right now, the naming can be bit confusing, especially since the books are supposed to be mostly but not entirely similar and you can supposedly use them both at the same time--but how practical will that actually be? You know there's going to be people comparing every single thing in the books, trying to find out which version is "best," and that's going to lead to some Frankenstein characters.

If WotC straight-up said that this was 6e (or 5.5, or 5e Essentials, or anything like that), it would be less confusion because people can easily compartmentalize the books that way, even if 6e and 5e were compatible in the way that 2e and 1e were compatible).

 

[MichaelSomething]

Why are people upset about differences between the 2014 and 2024 books? Didn't players cross mix stuff from 2E, 1E, and before back in the day??