D&D (2024) Jeremy Crawford: “We are releasing new editions of the books”

[mamba]

My Shark(robot that cleans my floors) is not a shark, but has the same name. My vacuum isn't the vacuum of space, yet has the same name. Hollywood stars are not stars from space, yet are called stars. And on and on.

you are making a good case for two things being called the same here, like 5e and One D&D

 

[Remathilis]

IOW: I think they already made an incredibly stupid move: trying to pass off 5e as evergreen. I'm sure they were sincere. I just think they were wrong. I'm certain they did not know better; I just believe they should have known better.

Bear in mind when WotC made the promise of "evergreen" D&D was barely alive. 4e had failed to make the impression Hasbro wanted and become a major tier property. 5e was life support. A final core book, an adventure or two per year, and a supplement about the Forgotten Realms was all that was in the cards. They didn't expect the popularity surge that would come from CR and streaming, nor the uptick in sales that changed their marketing strategy.

Given my...issues...with 5e, yeah, I do kind of feel that it is stagnant. There were bits and pieces of genuinely bold, innovative, good design back in D&D Next (e.g. the playtest Sorcerer and Warlock.) They got strangled in the cradle. I haven't seen any signs that "One D&D" is changing any of that--if anything, they're moving even more flat and uniform.

5e was equal parts innovation and return to Jesus. It was an apology for perceived slights made during 4e, a Greatest Hits as it were. Again, they didn't expect the audience it got. So of course they were going to play conservative, being bold in design choice had nearly killed the game. Even now, the relatively modest change to race has people demanding a return to orthodoxy, I don't imagine bolder change would be any better received.

And yes, if they tried to build something that was fully "backwards-compatible" with content developed 20 years before--chained to design concepts that are literally an entire generation old at that point--I would consider it quite stagnant, yes. Consider that Morrowind, for example, launched in fall 2002. Can you imagine Bethesda trying to sell an expansion pack for Morrowind 20 years after its release, merely pushing the boundaries of the engine it had at the time rather than developing anything truly new? It would go over like a lead balloon. Or any other major releases around that time: Knights of the Old Republic, the original Call of Duty (I shudder to think of the criticism levied by fans if any company tried to sell expansions for the oldest of old-school CoD today!), Grand Theft Auto III, World of Warcraft, etc. Now, of course, video games are not 1:1 identical with tabletop games, players bring a lot more to the table. But twenty years is enough time for people to start to sour on something, even if it was deeply beloved--that's exactly what happened with 3/3.5/PF1e.

Lol. Skyrim has been released on every major platform released in the last decade. GTA 5 gets updates today for it's MMO. Same with Elder Scrolls Online and World of Warcraft. Street Fighter 5 got new character updates up to a year before SF6 came out. Games as a Service is a thing and it's not uncommon for successful games to get new content for years. And with vibrant modding communities (aka homebrewers) it can go forever.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Bear in mind

I know the fallacies and frustrations that went into 5e's design. I'd rather not re-litigate them.

Lol. Skyrim has been released on every major platform released in the last decade.

And do you think people would accept Bethesda selling TESVI at full price, if it were literally just an expansion for Skyrim, game-breaking warts and all?

GTA 5 gets updates today for it's MMO.

And do you think people would accept it if they said that GTA6 was going to be simply a new expansion for GTA5?

Same with Elder Scrolls Online and World of Warcraft.

Yet major engine updates, radically changing the stuff under the hood, have actually happened, at least for WoW. (I haven't played enough ESO to speak about whether it has had heavy reworks under the hood.) Other MMOs have required heavy reworks of their engine to keep up with the times as well. FFXIV, for example, has already promised some improvements, and has already transformed quite a bit from the version that was limited by the capabilities of the PS3.

You never have a static engine that people simply put out additional content for. Not even in a "live-service" game.

Street Fighter 5 got new character updates up to a year before SF6 came out. Games as a Service is a thing and it's not uncommon for successful games to get new content for years. And with vibrant modding communities (aka homebrewers) it can go forever.

New content for years--but never forever, which is what "evergreen" requires. Modding communities and homebrewers certainly matter, but do you think fans--or modders!--would have been even remotely satisfied if StarCraft 2 released as merely exactly the same game as SC1, just with new animations? (That's a case where it wouldn't have even been possible; Blizzard failed to keep copies of the SC1 source code, and only got a copy returned to them by a loyal fan in 2017, two years after the final installment of SC2 launched.)

I don't mean to crap on these communities. I've been, after a fashion, part of one; I played Master of Orion 2 long, long, long after it should have been put in the bin, because it really was the best option for something like a decade.....

...but that's sort of the magic number, isn't it? After a decade, the world has changed enough that we should expect the tools to change too. You run into limitations: memory, code, features, what-have-you. An MMO that tried to run on completely unmodified code after a full decade would be laughed out of the room--not even Old School Runescape, which is as close as MMOs will ever get to what Pathfinder was, could survive if it tried to doggedly insist on absolutely never ever changing the underlying components.

And I guarantee you that the WoW of today is NOT backwards-compatible with the WoW that launched in 2004. The FFXIV of today is compatible with neither 1.0 (intentionally so) nor 2.0 (natural result of change over time.) The ESO of today is probably not compatible with the ESO of 2014.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

If we're going to use software as inspiration, I want it to be called D&D Snow Leopard.

That would be awesome! They should pick a subject, and name new editions after that subject ... big cats, places in Califnornia ... let's see.

They could get rid of alignment in the game, and just use it as a legacy to name editions?

2024 could become D&D: Chaotic Neutral.

Eh .... they could honor prior people that were in the D&D history, so for the 50th ...

D&D: Gygax.

Oh, no. That would be a hornet's nest I'm sure. Let's avoid people! How about ... cool D&D monsters?

D&D: Beholder

Still workshopping.....

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

It's not unfounded, though. They are claiming backwards compatibility, but the changes we've seen will require effort(maybe not a lot) on our part to mesh the two versions. That's not backwards compatibility. There's reason for my doubt here.

imagine if the new Nintendo system was advertised for a year as 'backwards compatible with n64" then you were told "Just go get a cd tray and make these minor adjustments to connect it and it will kinda work" or worse "It plays those games just not on the orginal discs"

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

I don't really care what they label the upcoming version of the core rulebooks. "5.5", "5e revised", "Anniversary edition", "D&D electric boogalloo", it's all good.

What I do care about is that they do apply an appropriate label, instead of pretending that it's exactly the same game as the 2014 books, except when it's not.

That said, I do kinda like "5.5", because it's short.

exactly people are arguing against a .5 like it's the only choice. As long as they have a clear break I don't care what they call it, but they need a way to say "this book uses these rules not those rules"

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

imagine if the new Nintendo system was advertised for a year as 'backwards compatible with n64" then you were told "Just go get a cd tray and make these minor adjustments to connect it and it will kinda work" or worse "It plays those games just not on the orginal discs"

The PS5 is backwards-compatible with the PS4.

Except when it isn't.

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

The PS5 is backwards-compatible with the PS4.

Except when it isn't.

yeah... that sounds about right.

the 2024 books will be backwards compatible with the 2014 ones... except with some spells some conditions, most feats, most classes/subclasses, backgrounds and race (that wont be called that or look like that at all)

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

yeah... that sounds about right.

the 2024 books will be backwards compatible with the 2014 ones... except with some spells some conditions, most feats, most classes/subclasses, backgrounds and race (that wont be called that or look like that at all)

As someone who lived through the TSR era (OD&D -> 1e -> UA -> 2e etc.), I'm not particularly bothered with stuff that more-or-less works together.

Back to the future!

 

[OB1]

From what I've seen from the playtest so far, I'd compare 2024 to 2014 more as PS4 to PS4 Pro than the PS5. PS4 and PS4 Pro share the same software library, with the software performing better on the Pro than the PS4. While the PS5 can play (most) PS4 games, the PS4 can't play PS5 games (without work to convert them specifically for that platform). I can't imagine any post 2024 Monster, Adventure or Splat books not also working with the 2014 platform.

The 2024 books are really just new software to run on the 5e platform combined with some platform enhancements (reworked character builder, monster changes, etc) to make both the new software and the old run better in play. The revised classes are really new software with the same names. If Fighter were changed to Warrior and Wizard to Mage (etc) there would be no doubt that the game wasn't a new edition.