MichaelSomething
Legend
How could it overwhelm people? Weren't you suppose to ignore most of the rules and use rulings for everything?
Maybe if they sold books in some kind of "deluxe" binding folders that you can insert pages that you print on expensive photo paper when errata(patch) comes out it would be a good compromise.
Even before it started to fall apart, the best aspect of this system was lost. Being able to have a single source of monsters in alphabetical order (or a custom, personalized order of your choosing) was a great thing in the day of multiple books and the pre-WWW Internet. But then they ruined that by printing monsters on both sides of the page.This was actually tried with the Monstrous Compendium in 2e--it was a three-ring binder and you could insert monster sheets on three-holed looseleaf paper. You can guess what happened--the thing fell apart and the pages got torn.
is it possible (or advisable?) to be up to date on all these things?
I am totally torn between both approaches.From the current examples of the new stat blocks, they won’t.
The best we can do if we would rather that stay (unless you‘re a personal friend of those in charge and call up and say “Yo man, what the crap? If you haven’t heard the issues some people have with this, lemme explain“) is to make sure to give useful feedback on every survey that comes out.
That being said, nothing stops you from playing only the core 3 (plus whatever you I want to allow) from any edition.
The question is, do you need to read all of something to be "up to date", and I'd definitely say you do not need to.I honestly don't think it's possible, considering that you added fantasy books on top of D&D itself. D&D is extremely vast, thousands of hours of reading at the very least, and if you start on massive series of books like the Witcher and especially Wheel of Time, it will take you a while more (although both of these are definitely worth reading - way more than D&D books - if you have the time and the inclination).