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

[Micah Sweet]

I think it will be determined by how well Beyond integrates mixing and matching. If they pull that off that means it will be easy enough for anyone to do at home.

But you're on the "everything's fine" side already.

 

[Parmandur]

And the video they just put out wasn't raging corporate BS double-speak?

Sure, absolutely. Not as bad as 3.5 being a "half-edition" was, by a country mile, but it's definitely obscurationist. Thisnis definitely a new typical edition of the game. Obviously, it is a compatible one since they sneak it into print for use with the 2014 books years early, and their desire to join upset current subscribers or book sales makes sense.

What doesn't make sense is anyone decrying OneD&D while still buying the concept of a "half-edition" that WotC made up.

 

[Parmandur]

But you're on the "everything's fine" side already.

It's a game, not world hunger, so yes it is "fine."

In terms of whether it is compatible, yes, everything so far is compatible.

 

[Azzy]

Regardless of how minimal or how great the changes are once the playtest is done and the new core books are released, it's going to be called an "edition" by just about everyone. If not for anything but for ease of communication. Whether it's called the revised edition, anniversary edition, 5.ONE, 5.5, 6e, or something else remains to be seen as the D&D community coalesces into some type of consensus (assuming it does).

It'll be okay, too.

In the meantime, I think WotC's corp speak is there just to try to minimize consumer fear of change (which is inevitable because humans generally hate change, no matter how minimal).

That's okay, too.

 

[John R Davis]

Call it 'D&D Onwards' then it will never have a number!

 

[TheSword]

It’s fine not going by edition numbers. In truth, RPG game editions don’t map to the colloquial use of the word edition anyway. Where a book gets updated. 3.5 was a new edition. 4e was a new book entirely.

It’s just a hella confusing to get wrapped up over terminology like this so I don’t blame them for walking away from it.

One D&D just sounds like a tinkering and codifying of 5e, with a couple of minor tweaks, otherwise it’s the same. Which is what the vast majority of people seem to want.

 

[delericho]

We already have evidence it will be the case, because we have already been mixing OneD&D designs in releases the past two years using the 2014 Core. Seems entirely reasonable it should work the other way around.

They were trying out bits of 4e design in the late 3.5e books (notably "Book of 9 Swords"), and even Star Wars Saga Edition. That's probably not a good barometer of the compatibility of the finished works.

 

[delericho]

You know, that might work if they called it 16e. Everyone would do a triple take at first. And I think editions would become nearly meaningless thereafter.

Could do. But if they're doing something like that, I'd advocate for calling it "2024 Edition". It still breaks the chain, but it's still obvious how the name came about.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Essentials was a new edition, but wasn't concerned with getting existing 4E players to convert over. It was to be the "Basic" version, appealing to new players because of the simplified classes and older players who weren't thrilled with 4E's AEDU mechanics. I don't think anyone was mixing and matching books, I could be wrong though?

Essentials characters worked perfectly fine together with earlier 4E characters. Apart from class specific rules everything else worked the same, and you could happily take feats and other options from previous books for essentials characters, and vice versa. The rules were IIRC a bit different, but many 4E rules had changed over the years, so that wasn't a new thing.

There wasn't really any "conversion" needed to move an existing 4E game to Essentials, it was in many ways a huge splatbook, though a slightly confusing one as it reused a lot of class names from previous books.

 

[Reynard]

I think it will be determined by how well Beyond integrates mixing and matching. If they pull that off that means it will be easy enough for anyone to do at home.

I don't use Beyond. How does it handle revised races, etc from MotM if you own that as well as Volo's, for example?