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

[Azzy]

It literally can't cut both ways. Either you are going to be right and it's backwards compatible or we are going to be right and it's not. It's not going to be both backwards compatible and not backwards compatible simultaneously.

You underestimate the compatibility superposition.

 

[Marandahir]

my limited understanding (some one correct me if I am wrong) is that at the beginning of an edition cycle the splats sell some high % of what the PHB did but each year it drops. in 4e it dropped sooner then 5e but that could be a function of 1 per month as apposed to 2-3 per year.

4e sold SO many books. We're STILL not to the number of 4e books with first party 5e books, in well more than 2x the amount of time (and 4e slowed down precipitously after 2010, so really it was 3 years of 1-2/month and then 3 years of maybe a 1-2 per year).

5e has gone the slow and steady model even with adventures, and let the adventure season breathe. And they've leaned into the DM's Guild to provide resources for folks who want faster churn out at sometimes lower-quality products.

4e products were SO riddled with typos and had so many material errors that errata came out MONTHLY if not more frequently.

 

[Corinnguard]

You underestimate the compatibility superposition.

Schrodinger's Displacer Beast?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Its like you believe one should continue following a recipie for a cake when all you have in front of you is squid ink and raw chicken.

You do know that foresight is a genuine thing and that it is, in fact, possible to assess a situation and make an educated guess at how things are going to turn out, right?

And you can miss me with the predictable "but its just a guess!!" response.

It literally is just a guess. You don’t have any special insight.

I don't think it will take long after the release of the 2024 rules for the masses of people out there to find broken combinations of 2014 and 2024 rules, requiring a good amount of work on the the part of the DM to make it work, or else causing the DM to throw up his hands and just declare for one year or the other, ruling out books from the other release

What do “broken combos” even have to do with backward compatibility?

If combos that forum going D&D DMs perceive (usually falsely) as broken make the new content incompatible…the PHB is incompatible with itself, nevermind Xanathar’s or Tasha’s.

People will “find” broken combos even when no such thing actually exists. Some DM will start out not realizing a thing is possible, and be surprised by it, and instead of even trying to adapt to a thing they just didn’t see coming, they cry “broken!” And start swinging the ban hammer.

 

[Marandahir]

Anecdotally, my gaming groups back in the day mixed 1e and 2e stuff all the time.

Note that I referred to OD&D/Basic/A1e/A2e as a ship of theseus separate from 3e/Pathfinder 1e separate from 4e separate from 5e separate from Pathfinder 2e.

Advanced 1e and Advanced 2e WERE functionally the same system, but a refinement thereof, in the same way that B/X was a refinement of Basic, and Basic and Advance 1e were refinements of Original D&D. That's how the game functioned until a complete rules overhaul for 3e. And then every new Edition of the game MEANT incompatibility, not revision of the rules as extant and republished in a way that doesn't require twice as much errata as original pages.

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

Schrodinger's Displacer Beast?

that is so what I am calling the confusing argument that it is both a fix/replacement AND completely useable together.

 

[Azzy]

No. I'm not going to slog through all the threads and pages looking for the posters who have been telling me that it will be fine playing the two versions of the game simultaneously, because the new classes will be balanced with the old ones so one edition's classes won't be more powerful than the others. I'm certain that @Parmandur was one of them, but there have been several.

If they aren't balanced, though, then WotC is wrong about backwards compatibility. As I pointed out to someone else, I COULD use the 3.5 version of wish in a 2014 or 2024 game. It's not going to cause the game to melt down and stop if I do that and the rules are similar enough to be workable. Unbalanced, but workable.

To be fair, the "balance" in 5e is very loosely spun. It remains to be seen how the revised classes compare to the '14 ones.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

If you've been viciously attacked, please report people who are viciously attacking you.

They have, and frankly while I disagree with thier point, I have as well. To pretend it isn’t happening just comes across as gaslighting.

If there is nothing to report, you are not a victim who is being viciously attacked.

Kinda gross, my guy.

You are just feeling defensive of your position and keep iterating the same argument because you think you're not getting your point across.

Considering how many pages of people finding every way possible to call @OldSchoolGamerGirl an idiot without technically doing so, while the offending poster literally attacked a strawman of her arguments…nah.

It’s also telling that of at least two people making the same point, only the one with “girl” in thier username got the intensely, aggressively, negative response.

 

[mamba]

Right, which is why they should have left 5e alone and just put out quality books to improve it in other ways.

leaving 5e alone and creating a 5.5 or 6e? That is precisely what they do not want.

‘Leave it alone and improve it’ seems to be a contradiction

It is when you could sell even more by leaving things alone and making quality books to improve the game in other ways.

this is entirely undemonstrated. I see no reason why 1DD would sell more if it were called 5.5 than 5e - and an actual 6e is out of the question, see 4e

Give me an example of ‘leave alone and improve’ that is not just an iteration of 1DD or Tasha

And also into the books I was suggesting. Two books at 150-200 pages would also see increased prices, and with two books that would translate into even more profit than the one PHB or DMG.

again, two more X of Everything would sell a fraction. 2 of them is about as much as makes sense, a third is stretching it, and lo and behold, it is also how many we got. Coincidence, I assume.

Printing more of the same, but slightly different is not a way to keep the game from getting long in the tooth. Introducing NEW stuff to the existing game is how you do that.

I guess we disagree on that. Also on how new / different 1DD is vs another ‘of Everything’. I don’t see the latter having anything more ‘NEW’ than 1DD will bring

Make the game more interesting, not the same with some slight changes(in order to be "backwards compatible").

can you pick a lane? Do you want compatibility (new stuff for the existing game, see above) or ‘not the same with slight changes’?

To me it looks like 1DD pretty much meets all your requirements, you just do not like that fact

 

[doctorbadwolf]

that is so what I am calling the confusing argument that it is both a fix/replacement AND completely useable together.

It’s just a larger version of the Tasha’s fixes. They’re optional fixes.