D&D (2024) WotC is right to avoid the word "edition."

[Warpiglet-7]

Put “Dungeons and Dragons” on the cover and have a bar that says (somewhere) also usable with 5e or “fifth edition”

 

[Blue]

Good-bye and good riddance to "edition" as some nebulous term of game design that only ever had any meaning as marketing pablum in the first place.

Question: If I am considering purchasing D&D books this year and next, do I have a right to know if they will continue to be fully usable with the 2024 Anniversary edition? Or am I buying books where parts will become obsolete even if I can salvage other parts of it.

I feel that is a valid question for the consumer.

Regardless of feelings on the word "edition", that knowledge should be made clear. And if made clear in one way ("It's all the same edition") and the truth comes out another way ("These new character choices are obsolete, and I need to work to keep other mechanical aspects") I would feel cheated.

So this needs to be something that they communicate, and regardless if you call it an edition, a revision, or whatever wordplay is used, WotC needs to communicate this clearly. And they have communicated clearly it's the same edition - let's hope that some customers, especially new ones who aren't on places like ENworld to see these discussions, aren't deceived or cheated.

 

[Reynard]

Basic to 1e.

Point of order: AD&D was very specifically an entirely new game. To satisfy the entire reason it existed it had to be.

 

[Alzrius]

I don't really know how to feel about this "compatability". With feats not being optional it puts a bad taste in my mouth. I'm going to have to see how the playtest goes. If you can play a 2014 phb character at the same table of a 2024 phb character I'll be okay with that but I get the feeling that won't be the case.

Owen K. C. Stephens has a great artice on his blog about what "compatible" can mean in the context of a new iteration of a tabletop RPG:

One D&D: What Can “Compatible” Mean?

This is an editorial. It is not covered by the Open Gaming License. One of the things that’s being debated in the wake of the “One D&D” playtest release is how this is going t…

owenkcstephens.com

 

[Maxperson]

This something I just have to get off my chest after watching too many D&D youtubers smugly saying, "WotC says it's not 6th Edition, but actually..."

In the RPG context, and particularly the D&D context, the word "edition" is a skunked term. It's skunking began with TSR's pretty drastic overhaul of the game in 1989, which probably should have been called something like "Revised Advanced Dungeons & Dragons", but no one knew at the time how tortured the term "edition" would become. WotC's initial strategy of planned obsolescence turned the word inside out. I can give them "3rd Edition", even though it was a good time to make a clean break with the "edition" terminology altogether. But "3.5" was a lexical abomination. By any normal definition of the term, 3.5 was really 4th Edition, but by combining the "edition" word with "version" numbers, the understanding of what an edition was became more and more muddied. Then 4th Edition came out, and the term was truly skunked. An edition was an entirely new game, not compatible with the one that came before it, an idea only reinforced with 5th Edition.

So now we come to the latest revision of the game. And there's confusion. No longer does "edition" have its straightforward publishing meaning of a new edit of an existing work; now it means "new ruleset." But does backwards compatibility mean it is 5.5? Is it 6th Edition? This by itself would be plenty of justification for abandoning the term "edition," but then there's the additional baggage the term brings from the "Edition Wars." Some of that baggage has been mitigated thanks to WotC releasing 5e and largely leaving it alone for eight years. But there's no benefit to bringing all of it back by grandly proclaiming "6th edition!"

Good-bye and good riddance to "edition" as some nebulous term of game design that only ever had any meaning as marketing pablum in the first place.

If as they promised we can use all of our 5e supplements with no modifications on our part, and those supplements are roughly equal to the new stuff, then 5e is backwards compatible with 5.5e and it's 5.5e. If on the other hand they fail yet again to provide actual backwards compatibility(3.5 failed miserably), then it's 6e. At no point, though, will I use the gimicky One D&D name to describe what comes out in 2024.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Yes, and the new books will say "Dungeons & Dragons."

Yes, just like they do today.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

If as they promised we can use all of our 5e supplements with no modifications on our part, and those supplements are roughly equal to the new stuff, then 5e is backwards compatible with 5.5e and it's 5.5e. If on the other hand they fail yet again to provide actual backwards compatibility(3.5 failed miserably), then it's 6e. At no point, though, will I use the gimicky One D&D name to describe what comes out in 2024.

You won't have to. It's the name of the playtest like "D&D Next" but with the added bonus of being the name of the initiative to integrate D&D design with their digital tools (a VTT and D&D Beyond.)

"It's all One D&D" is their slogan.

But it WILL NOT be the branding on the 50th Anniversary Core books. Trust me.

 

[Parmandur]

Point of order: AD&D was very specifically an entirely new game. To satisfy the entire reason it existed it had to be.

That was even more egregious BS than 3.5 or OneD&D.

 

[Reynard]

On the other hand, WotC marketing horse hockey worked well enough that theybgotnpeople to use the garbage "3.5" to this day. Don't count them out yet.

Hard to unscramble an egg.

 

[Reynard]

That was even more egregious BS than 3.5 or OneD&D.

There was money involved. What can you say?