I don't want 5E, I want a definitive D&D (the Monopoly model)

[GregoryOatmeal]

Both football and Monopoly have changed rules over the years. There's literally hundreds of variations of Monopoly on the market. On some, it's only the names of the properties that have changed, but there are versions with alternate rules. There's also plenty of house-ruled games of Monopoly that have been played over the years.

Football and Monopoly and all games get tweaked - they don't get entirely revamped like D&D did for 3E and 4E. I'm talking about the foundation of the game. While Football and Monopoly vary and evolve, everyone recognizes that a field goal is worth three points and you get $200 when you pass go. If Hasbro released radically different versions of Monopoly every five years or so the public would become confused, nostalgic about "classic Monopoly" and probably stop buying the product. So while their are obviously hundreds of different Monopoly games with different coats of paint, that's not really pertinent to my discussion about people being able to keep track of the rules. Anyone that has ever played Monopoly will get Star Wars Monopoly or Oklahoma Monopoly - no barrier to entry. Changes to football really don't seem to stop people from watching football like an edition change can kill someone's interest in gaming.

Games obviously evolve. This is a good thing and D&D is no exception. However after a few decades for most games these changes seem to crystallize. D&D may require a much longer process (Okay, total consensus on an edition simply isn't realistic) since the game is so much more complex than Monopoly or Football (stack the rulebooks next to each other). I think this would be healthy for the hobby because it would make it easier for people to play with one another.

House rules are awesome. I think gamers can agree on that. And I would hope WOTC would continue to support this theoretical stable foundation with tons of experimental products, in the spirit of D&D. If they want to add powers and healing surges and two new attribute scores to the base six in an optional "Arcana" book, more power to them. If it catches on great. I'd probably buy that book myself. I want an enduring simple and stable game with the potential for modular experimentation if players choose.

Not everyone wants to play the same game as everyone else but the surplus of choice makes it difficult for some people to agree and invest in a system. The pros and cons of a system are less important for me than being able to stick with an edition so people actually buy the books and commit to learning the rules. I like to game with a lot of different people just to mingle so this means I need to learn a lot of systems.

Also my preferred game is definitely Castles and Crusades, but I just tend to run the game people ask for and agree on. If I come off as a 3.5 fanboy it's largely because I like their being an edition more people agree on and have resources for than not. It's not my favorite and it's obviously imperfect, but people seem to know it and it's good enough. Having more editions just makes getting people together to game more difficult.

 

[GregoryOatmeal]

The problem with having Just One D&D is that people don't all want the same edition. You like 3.5, I like 4e. If your Eternal Edition was more like 3.5, I wouldn't play it. I already have a game I enjoy more. If your Eternal Edition was more like 4e, I'd probably play it, but would you? You'd already have a game you enjoy more.

Well at that point you're basically playing two different games. You've discontinued a successful game and began steering people towards a new game that divides gamers into groups. If one of them or both was popular and stayed in print forever I'd be happy because at the very least I'd have a deep roleplaying game I could play with just about any gamer.

 

[GregoryOatmeal]

Who plays Monopoly seriously? I'm also a board gamer, and in the past two weeks, I've played nine different games, one of which is $85 on Amazon, and several others are $35 a piece new. Top-ranked* games Agricola, Power Grid, Settlers of Catan, and Carcassonne each have a dozen expansions that sometimes can change game play dramatically. Of the top ten highest ranked games, all come from the 21st century, and 6 of them from the last five years.

* On BoardGameGeek.com .

Why is Monopoly so stable? Because it mainly sells to non-gamers who aren't interested in learning something new. Hobbiests, as a general rule, turn up their nose at it, in exchange for newer games.

Yeah, yeah, Monopoly is pretty lame. It's the game you can play with your grandma. I don't care much for football either. I'm talking about the ability of these games to bring people together, not their quality.

I'm interested in playing with borderline gamers, new players, and people that don't have much time for D&D but may have played 2E in highschool. I want a deep roleplaying game I can play with them, and it's hard to get them into it when their has been two edition changes since they last played and no one at the table has played a common rule system.

 

[prosfilaes]

Yeah, yeah, Monopoly is pretty lame. It's the game you can play with your grandma. I don't care much for football either. I'm talking about the ability of these games to bring people together, not their quality.

I'm not talking about the quality; I'm talking about what hobby people play. You said "Only roleplaying gamers would tolerate so many constant changes in a hobby"; it's simply not true.

In 2045 I want to play it with my sister, uncle, future unborn nephew, and my oldest friend, all of whom haven't played the game in 1d4 decades. ... That game, a standard-issue roleplaying game, should be on sale for decades like Monopoly. It would still be D&D - where you can make up anything you want and spend $800 on new third party splat books and homerule to hell, it would just have a single solid foundation that everyone knows.

There are very few board games from Monopoly's era still on the market. As I said, most of the games that board gamers play are less than 10 years old. The reason Monopoly is still available for sale is because it's not selling to board gamers. The dynamics of the market for Monopoly is entirely different then the dynamics for a modern gamer game. The later, like most RPGs, sells huge when it hits the market, then sales drop off pretty sharply. That's a lot of the reason RPGs do new editions; to sell basically the same books, over again.

You want Monopoly-type sales, which means to wide audience, more than just gamers, and an audience that will accept a game that never changes. You want them to switch models. The problem is, the Monopoly model depends on having tens of millions of people buy the same game. I don't think they have that; I think if they stop the business model of producing new systems every 5 years or so, they will be hard put to keep the game in print at all.

 

[Dausuul]

The problem with having Just One D&D is that people don't all want the same edition. You like 3.5, I like 4e. If your Eternal Edition was more like 3.5, I wouldn't play it. I already have a game I enjoy more. If your Eternal Edition was more like 4e, I'd probably play it, but would you? You'd already have a game you enjoy more.

This, exactly (I must spread some XP around).

There is no edition I'd want to see made eternal. From my perspective, BD&D has the true spirit, but let's be honest, the rules are an incoherent mess. AD&D is also an incoherent mess and has less of the true spirit. 3E is a bloated monstrosity. 4E has some excellent innovations and the tightest rule structure of any edition so far, but it suffers from a number of issues which are too long to get into here.

I don't want to be stuck forever with any of 'em. I'm already building my own "Dausuul edition." When 5E comes out, if it looks good, I'll pick it up and play it, but there will probably come a time when I don't want to be stuck with it, either.

 

[Holy Bovine]

I'm curious how you reconcile this;

Football and Monopoly and all games get tweaked - they don't get entirely revamped like D&D did for 3E and 4E. I'm talking about the foundation of the game.

with this;

I'm edition-fatigued. We all play the same game with about a 1% difference between the editions/spinoffs/clones in what the actual game is.

If we are all playing the same game with such minor differences haven't we reached your 'eternal edition' already? And one thing - you are wrong that 3.5E was the 'edition most of us liked and accepted'. A lot of players were leaving 3.5E by 2007 in my neck of the woods. People had just grown tired of the constant rule bloat and seemingly endless parade of short, expensive hard covers.

 

[prosfilaes]

The problem with having Just One D&D is that people don't all want the same edition. You like 3.5, I like 4e. If your Eternal Edition was more like 3.5, I wouldn't play it. I already have a game I enjoy more. If your Eternal Edition was more like 4e, I'd probably play it, but would you? You'd already have a game you enjoy more.

At the heart here is the hobbyist game model versus the Monopoly model, and I think if you could switch over to Monopoly model, all these hobbyists wouldn't matter. Monopoly is not a great game; it's just the one everyone knows. Whatever D&D was picked would be the D&D everyone knows; the hobbyists could play whatever they want, but the casual D&D player, the Average Joe that the Monopoly model depends on, would pick up the one RPG that everyone knows and plays. If people regularly played D&D at family outings with random family members, what old versions of D&D the D&D was similar to wouldn't matter.

And really, it's like that in right now. I don't play D&D 3.5 because it's my favorite system; among D&D's, I think I prefer Pathfinder, and given a choice, I don't think I'd be playing anything much like D&D at all. But this is the group that's convenient and open to me, so I play D&D 3.5. It's probably not coincidental at all that I'm playing the best selling RPG of the 21st century, instead of something like Nobilis or In Nomine.

 

[Dausuul]

If people regularly played D&D at family outings with random family members, what old versions of D&D the D&D was similar to wouldn't matter.

But they don't. D&D isn't Monopoly. Even at the height of the '80s craze, or in the wake of the 3E resurgence, D&D was never in a position to adopt the Monopoly model, and there's no sign it ever will be.

4E was an attempt to create a more accessible version of the game, something less dependent on a skilled and experienced DM to make it work. It backfired and ended up losing a bunch of the player base, without bringing in new players on the scale the designers were aiming for. When you get right down to it, a game that requires as much creativity, intelligence, and commitment as D&D is going to have a very hard time becoming a game you pick up and play with random folks at a family get-together. (If this happens at your family get-togethers, I envy you your family!)

The dream of "Monopoly D&D" is one that has been pursued without success by owners of the property for decades. Should they ever figure it out, I expect they'll do exactly what the OP wants. Who would mess with a formula that expanded the RPG market a hundredfold? But I'm not holding my breath for that to happen. The way D&D reaches mainstream markets is through its electronic descendants, like World of Warcraft. I think D&D itself will always be the province of the few, the proud, the geeks*.

[size=-2]*Apologies to the U.S. Marine Corps. But then again, I know a lot of military folks play D&D, so maybe no apology is needed.[/size]

 

[Mercurius]

I haven't read the entire thread, so forgive me if I'm repeating what someone has already said, but the comparison just doesn't work and gets in the way of what is otherwise a valid point. D&D and Monopoly are completely different; D&D is far more complex, with endless variations and subtleties. Compared to it, Monopoly is relatively simple and straightforward.

That said, I think you could make a pretty simple core D&D ruleset that would, if not please everyone, come pretty close. d20 + relevant stat modifier vs a target number, with ability scores and a few other core stats like AC, HP, defenses, etc. From there you can have tons of options and variations and, in truth, this may be what Mearls is going for with "5E." The great thing about this approach is that if the core is simple enough, there really is no end to the possible splat variations. In other words, if the complexity dial of the basic game is set at 3 on a scale of 10, then you have that much more freedom for options. If it is set at 7 or 8 as it is with both 3.5 and 4E, then there is less room to move. But I digress...

 

[Barastrondo]

Yeah, I have to side with "many editions, and the picking and choosing is a necessary evil" side because I run and play in long campaigns. Rules that don't quite work for your group are like pebbles in your shoe -- you can probably put up with it for a trip down to the corner and back, but if you're going on a hike, they rub you rawer and rawer the longer you keep walking. As an example for our group, it's gotten to the point where caster supremacy is a complete no-go: if a version of D&D will have casters outshining the martial folks the longer you play, not interested. We'll bust out a WoD game or Champions or something instead. But that's a feature for other groups, who don't think wizards feel right if they're no more world-shattering overall than equal-level fighters and rogues, and a game where casters are kept in check would rub them the wrong way the longer they played.

Would D&D be better off if it didn't have lifers like us? If it was something you almost exclusively got together with various relatives and strangers and only played for 1d4 sessions before you did something else? I don't know. But being a lifer and gaming with lifers, gotta say I'm thankful for the ability to pick a ruleset that gives us what we want, instead of what we might want if we were playing shorter-term games with an eye toward evangelism.