D&D 5E How to slow the 5E treadmill?

[Lalato]

Can we not rehash this gods damned conversation again? Please!

I believe the topic is about 5e. Stick to it.

 

[Erekose]

I wouldn't count on that. I can't speak for others, but I bought the 2E black books because I was a completionist, and the black-bound 3.5E PHB, even though I had the originals. I'd also (strongly) considered getting the recent reprints, but ended up I couldn't justify it (did buy the S1-S4 reprint, even though I've got copies from the 80's).

It would be much smarter, however, if any reprints they did incorporated errata or had other minor updates (such as the format layout/artwork change in the 2E books.

While on a smaller scale than WotC, Castles & Crusades are on the 5th (6th?) printing of the players handbook without it being a new edition. To be fair each printing has had some changes (from including errata to better layout to including new content) but nothing substantial enough to warrant a claim of 2nd Edition. I own two printings, and have bought another one in the recent Kickstarter that added colour to the three main texts.

The emphasis seems to be between companies that generate most of their revenue from adventures (the Paizo model but arguably the BECMI, 1E, Goodman Games, Troll Lord Games, model as well) with some revenue generated from new rule books, campaign guides, etc. and those companies like WotC that have focused predominantly on generating revenue from rule books.

Perhaps 5E is returning to the 1E model?

 

[Cadence]

To quote Douglas Adams:
“It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds."

Even on summer break, my brain is rebelling against the horribly bad mathematics in that quote.... <Opts not to put in rant because it doesn't change the point that follows>.

Is there some print on demand way to abuse the completionists with things like new covers?

 

[Jester David]

Even on summer break, my brain is rebelling against the horribly bad mathematics in that quote.... <Opts not to put in rant because it doesn't change the point that follows>.

Is there some print on demand way to abuse the completionists with things like new covers?

Well... it is from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, so I'm not entirely sure it's meant to be taken completely seriously.

 

[Cadence]

Well... it is from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, so I'm not entirely sure it's meant to be taken completely seriously.

I'll scrounge up a nice clean towel and a good cup of tea and forget all about it.

 

[Obryn]

I will just note that I see little hope of avoiding bloat this time around. We have just as many or more axes of expansion than we've seen in a while, and I think it's naive to expect that WotC won't want some of that money. If not now, then soon enough.

* Races
* Subraces
* Backgrounds
* Classes
* Subclasses
* Feats
* Spells
* Monsters (imo always good bloat until they turn into a player resource)
* Magic items
* and let's not write off prestige classes just because we haven't seen them yet. This is still mostly a 3.x chassis for classes, and they'll plug in just fine.

So yeah, there's tons of room to expand, and I have no doubt they will.

 

[Mark CMG]

I think, in part, the printed revisions come faster because of the Internet and the life cycle of an edition is shorter because of vastly more competition.

 

[barrowwight]

I don't expect Star Frontiers, Gamma World, and the like had enough sales to help really support the health of the company. I don't doubt that was part of the idea, but I don't think they would up with enough players to make it work. This supported by how short the Star Frontiers run with TSR was....

But a good cable show of Star Frontiers would be really cool. Even Gamma World but it might take some time for people to used to the lead being a mutated jellyfish with two arms(one being cybernetic) and shoots sonic rays out of one of its five eyes.