D&D 5E Fifth Edition.....Why?

Aspects07 said:

When I started gaming it wasn't on AD&D, it was West End Games Star Wars, TSR Star Frontiers, Top Secret, Shadowrun 3rd Edition, Werewolf the Apocalypse, Vampire the Masquerade. It wouldn't be until about 4 years into my gaming tenure when my grandmother would purchase the blue and red box of original DnD for me complete with the crayon to mark the dice with. Having begun my RP experience with systems that offered generous character options and variability. I disliked the limitation of AD&D where humans only actual benefit was they could progress through a class for a bit, then could restart progression in another class, and there was no limit to their progression, however, no group I ever played with followed that proscription, and for every 40th level Human 20 rgr/5 fgtr/ 5 rogue/ 5 mage/ 5 cleric there was a 40/40/40 Elven multiclass that shouldn't have ever been allowed. I didn't get into DnD until 3rd Edition where some of Ed Greenwood's characters in his novels finally made sense statistically. And I adored 3rd edition, it allowed me to create the fantasy character I wanted to play in an easy to delineate manner. Then came fourth edition which eliminated everything great about 3rd Edition but tried to turn the system into a tabletop World of Warcraft, a system I promptly demonstrated the idiocy of its lack of thought with by building a fey aspected warlock with a cape of the mountebank which let me basically deal damage and teleport, the damage and teleport, and when the GM tried to be clever and isolate me then I used the cape to teleport me back behind the line the party had formed, the whole system was stupid, not to mention the abject horror they turned the Forgotten Realms into.
Then I bought the 5th Edition players handbook, It seemed to actually streamline the 4th Edition and make it less a tabletop MMO while bringing back the simplicity of the old school blue and red boxes. However what drove me to ignore the rule set was that fundamental lack of variability that 3rd Edition actually offered. It seems like I'm pretty much stuck in the class I began the game in and I can either choose a mediocre stat bonus where I used to be able to alter the standard progression path by taking a feat, and the stat bonus would come later which demonstrated a focus in a differing area of my character's priority.
So, why should I play 5th Edition? It eliminated the wonderful options a player could take his character and even it's weak multiclassing can't portray the most famous characters of our favorite DnD novel characters. I mean, stat out Elminster the way he should be in 5th Ed, or even Mirt the Merciless.

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To elaborate on [MENTION=6803664]ccs[/MENTION]'s response: buying 5th edition keeps the D&D team in business, and putting out more official D&D content. #notWotC

But with all the complaints, maybe the thread header should be:

Savage Worlds...Why?

Hackmaster...Why?

GURPS...Why?

Fantasy AGE...Why?

(Choose Any Free D&D Clone)...Why...

DMMike said:

To elaborate on [MENTION=6803664]ccs[/MENTION]'s response: buying 5th edition keeps the D&D team in business, and putting out more official D&D content. #notWotC

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Not what i meant, but I guess you could interpret it that way....

See, much like you shouldn't play a game you don't like, you also shouldn't BUY games you don't like.
Because if you do? The company receives the wrong message.
"Sure, they all bitch about the product. But they keep buying it. Conclusion: Make more of it."
$, or the lack of it, is the only opinion the company actually gives a damn about.
We got 5e because 1) 4e wasn't making enough $, 2) WoTC Hasbro deemed there to be enough potential to try another edition vs mothballing the game.

Uchawi said:

It is the same comparison when stating why does someone like an operating system like Microsoft, versus Apple, or even Linux. Based on that preference, you will be limited out of the door in regards to who else uses it, has experience with it, or continues to purchase or develop products for it. I like Linux, but based on that choice, I am already limited on what is available to use without a lot of work. D&D presents the same problem, because it is more readily available and more people play it. The only way to break the cycle is choose another game, but if you can't find a DM then the point is mute.

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??
You were actually expecting the troll to respond?

As most other folks in the thread have said ... play what you like. No one will tell you what to play.

That said, I started with AD&D1e and have played at least a few games (and purchased the books) for all the editions in between. In my opinion, my impression is that 5e gets back more to the roots of the D&D game system. Classes get some mechanical uniqueness while also adjusting class balance so that most classes can contribute over the range of levels. Earlier editions would often be dominated by melee classes at the lower levels and caster classes at the high level. Overall, I like the feel of 5e, the possible emphasis on roleplay with reasonable but not overly complex mechanics while more or less preserving the unique character of the different classes and more or less balance.

Although I hesitate to comment, some of the experiences you cite would be very uncommon if actually ever occur ... I've never even heard of let alone seen 40/40/40 level character ... I've never actually seen a game with any level 40 character though I have heard it is possible playing some of the D&D video games. As someone else mentioned, a 1st edition human multiclass with comparable experience to the 40/40/40 elven multiclass would have far more levels than your 20/5/5/5/5 example .. if only because level 5 requires a trivial level of experience to achieve.

In addition, 5e does include feats which can be chosen as an alternative to increasing stats. The selection is more limited perhaps than compared to 3e or 4e but they do provide for some interesting choices without hugely disrupting the game balance. The concept of "bounded accuracy" on which 5e is based means that most character builds can be constructed around a role-playing concept without causing a significant mechanical disadvantage for the character in actual play.

Anyway, some folks like it, some prefer earlier editions, and that is exactly as it should be ... there is no wrong choice.

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I'd also point out that some of the games you describe as starting play with weren't even in print until the middle or late 90's ... long after the original D&D boxed set was out of print (though its always possible a copy was kicking around a store somewhere).

West End Games Star Wars : 1987 (1st Edition) 1992 (2nd Edition) 1996 (2nd Edition Revised and Expanded)
TSR Star Frontiers: produced by TSR beginning in 1982
Top Secret: first published in 1980 by TSR, Inc
Shadow Run 3e: 1998 (Third Edition)
Werewolf the Apocalypse: 1992 (1st edition) 1994 (2nd edition) 2000 (Revised edition) 2013 (20th Anniversary Edition)[
Vampire the Masquerade: 1991 (1st edition) 1992 (2nd edition) 1998 (Revised edition) 2011 (20th Anniversary) 2018 (5th edition)


AD&D:

1974 (original)
1977 (D&D Basic Set 1st version)[1]
1977–1979 (AD&D)
1981 (D&D Basic Set 2nd version)
1983–1986 (D&D Basic Set 3rd version)
1989 (AD&D 2nd Edition)
1991 (D&D Rules Cyclopedia)
2000 (D&D 3rd edition)
2003 (D&D v3.5)
2008 (D&D 4th edition)
2014 (D&D 5th edition)

The 1991 release of the boxed set was black. The blue and red version of the D&D boxed set was out of print before some of the games in the list were even first published.

Actually just for interest:
D&D
1e - 1978 - lasted 11 years
2e - 1989 - lasted 11 years
3e - 2000 - lasted 8 years (due to the free licensing issue?)
4e - 2008 - lasted 6 years
5e - 2014 - ???

So ... is the release cycle getting shorter as a method to generate revenue? Or was 4e the shortest because it was less popular? I haven't seen any numbers on the popularity of each edition so I'm just curious ...

[MENTION=6916036]Keravath[/MENTION] it's a popularity/sales issue: 5E has sold more core books since 2014 than 3E/3.5 did over seven years, while 4E stalled after some good initial sales.

Keravath said:

So ... is the release cycle getting shorter as a method to generate revenue? I haven't seen any numbers on the popularity of each edition so I'm just curious ...

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According to WotC, each ed on their watch has been more popular than the one before. But none have re-captured the unit sales of the fad years.

For instance, 5E sold more books is 3 years than 3e did in seven - but less than TSR did per year in the 80s.

Instead, the shortening of edition life-cycles after 1e probably has more to do with boardrooms than game tables. D&D has gone from TSR to WotC to Hasbro and from flagship to rescue to bycatch to would-be core brand to come-back classic that might have a movie in it, now that it's own fans have (mostly) stopped slandering it.

New eds don't map to that rollercoaster, precisely - rolling an ed takes time - but there's a lot driving the brand's fate beyond relatively trivial differences in how much less popular it is at a given moment than it was at the height of the fad in the 80s.

Tony Vargas said:

According to WotC, each ed on their watch has been more popular than the one before. But none have re-captured the unit sales of the fad years.

For instance, 5E sold more books is 3 years than 3e did in seven - but less than TSR did per year in the 80s.

Instead, the shortening of edition life-cycles after 1e probably has more to do with boardrooms than game tables. D&D has gone from TSR to WotC to Hasbro and from flagship to rescue to bycatch to would-be core brand to come-back classic that might have a movie in it, now that it's own fans have (mostly) stopped slandering it.

New eds don't map to that rollercoaster, precisely - rolling an ed takes time - but there's a lot driving the brand's fate beyond relatively trivial differences in how much less popular it is at a given moment than it was at the height of the fad in the 80s.

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Actually, according to their latest statements they are approaching 80's sales of the core books now, with no real slowdown in sight.

Parmandur said:

Actually, according to their latest statements they are approaching 80's sales

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If you want to consider 1/3rd the unit sales 'approaching,' ...
... or if you don't adjust for 30 years of inflation...

But, either way, 5e is latest WotC ed, and each of them has done better than the last - according to WotC, even as faces change at the top of Hasbro, policies & goals change, and staffing levels on D&D get built up or slashed.

Nerd culture has taken off this millinium, and D&D may not have benefited to the degree Marvel or Wow have, but it is doing better than it has since the original fad flopped.

Tony Vargas said:

If you want to consider 1/3rd the unit sales 'approaching,' ...
... or if you don't adjust for 30 years of inflation...

But, either way, 5e is latest WotC ed, and each of them has done better than the last - according to WotC, even as faces change at the top of Hasbro, policies & goals change, and staffing levels on D&D get built up or slashed.

Nerd culture has taken off this millinium, and D&D may not have benefited to the degree Marvel or Wow have, but it is doing better than it has since the original fad flopped.

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On what do you base either of the opening assumptions.. ?

Parmandur said:

On what do you base either of the opening assumptions.. ?

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~1/3rd? On 5e moving 750k units in about 3 years, when TSR was moving that each year in c1985, it came up in another thread - the current volume on a WotC comment, the mid-80s from a contemporaneous news story linked by Morrus. Inflation? It's pretty well-documented, but, on a personal level I vaguely remember buying the 1e AD&D PH for 12 bucks or so back in the day, today it's $50.