D&D (2024) Is the 2024 rules update a new edition? Argue about it here (not everywhere else)!

[Vaalingrade]

we will distinguish between 5e 2014 and 2024, sure. I am not sure we will do so by calling one of them 5.5

Let's use "That One" and "The Other One".

Nice and clear.

Or, going with the code name pattern of the last two playtests: D&D Ultra, D&D High Life, Happy D&D, The Emasculate Fellowship of Dungeons and Dragons, D&D Black Label, D&D Zero, The Free Republic of D&Dland, Board D&D Yacht Club, D&D Punks, D&D Max, and of Course Bitconnect Presents Tom Clany's Tyler Perry's D&D on Netflix Prime.

 

[Parmandur]

if the game was ever green we wouldn't be changing it up so much 10 years later. I mean if in your mind you don't see it, that's okay, but I just can't wrap my head around the thought that evergreen means the samething as edition change

PC sheets from 2014 work with the new rules, Monsters can be mixed and matched, and Adventures from the Teens will work with the new rules. If everything works together, if the math is interoperable with no work, that's compatible. And if the game stays interoperable for another ten, twenty, thirty, fifty or however many years...that's evergreen. If WotC can keep selling Tyranny of Dragons without a complete rewrite (and it's currently on the shelves in Target), then that's Evergreen.

"Edition" is a BS marketing concept, as WotC has used it in the past. They are being clear that this is a rules revision, but one that keeps working with older material. So, not an "Edition" as such.

This isn't about believing WotC corporate marketing, it's about them dropping an oldcorporate marketing tactic.

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

we will distinguish between 5e 2014 and 2024, sure. I am not sure we will do so by calling one of them 5.5

I don't know if it will be 5.5 or revised or maybe something we haven't even thought of yet, but it will be a different way for us to say we are playing that instead of this, but up until now that has been edition I don't understand why that is now so wrong

 

[DarkCrisis]

No, it’s a 5.5. They just don’t want to call it that for fear of scaring the newer players off.

 

[Parmandur]

I don't know if it will be 5.5 or revised or maybe something we haven't even thought of yet, but it will be a different way for us to say we are playing that instead of this, but up until now that has been edition I don't understand why that is now so wrong

Even with the 3.5 terminology, we never made that distinction in practice. 3E and 3.5 stuff was all just D&D.

 

[mamba]

I don't know if it will be 5.5 or revised or maybe something we haven't even thought of yet, but it will be a different way for us to say we are playing that instead of this, but up until now that has been edition I don't understand why that is now so wrong

because edition the way it was used until now implies incompatibility

 

[Clint_L]

This thread is exactly why WotC is retiring "editions" nomenclature. The well was poisoned in the late 70s when a new edition of the game was planned specifically to be different enough to screw David Arneson out of royalties, and TSR went to court to try to prove that AD&D was a whole new game. And ever since then "edition" in the context of D&D has meant a new version of the game.

It makes all the sense in the world for WotC to stop using it that way. The problem is that you can no longer even use the word "edition" in its normal sense because it now causes so much confusion. Thanks, TSR.

 

[Blue]

We know for a fact rules are changing. Do we expect those rules changes to be issued as errata for the existing books? If not, then it's not the same edition and it's an edition change, even if it's just an "update" such as 3e to 3.5.

We've seen this. Tritions, for example, gained Darkvision in a later book. All of the (multiple) previous sources that had them received errata. This is a single edition.

However, starting with MP:MoM, Wizards of the Coast has stopped issuing errata for existing products changed. So I would not expect OneD&D rules changes to be reflected as errata in the earlier books.

Two sets of rules that while perhaps mathematically similar do conflict with each other at points? Not the same edition.

If I can take my completely-up-to-date 2014!PHB and another person at that table takes their completely-up-to-day 2024!PHB and we both have different rules for the Hide action such that the DM or table needs to decided which edition's rules are in force, it's different editions.

Again, this is all based on if they issue errata, and that they will likely continue the trend of not. If they do issue errata, then all of the rule books say the same thing and it's one edition.

Any arguments about backward compatibility or 2014 & 2024 characters sitting at the same table, while valid, are orthogonal to this. Are the rules the same? is a criteria that can not be ignored in determing if things are the same or different.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

We know for a fact rules are changing. Do we expect those rules changes to be issued as errata for the existing books?

What changed will be listed in the back of the new books, we have been explicitly told, since they don't want it to "just" live online, which suggests that it may also be available as errata.

 

[mamba]

Are the rules the same? is a criteria that can not be ignored in determing if things are the same or different

if the rules being identical is your criteria (to the degree that one monster gaining darkvision is not the same edition), then we had several editions of 5e already. Not sure why you did not point them out at the time.

No one saying things are identical, the claim is they are compatible