D&D General Does D&D (and RPGs in general) Need Edition Resets?

[Micah Sweet]

Do you make a habit--or, indeed, even a one-off fling--of playing anything else?

Because I would be genuinely shocked to hear that even 1% of players play D&D in a way that doesn't involve going on adventures, and thus, involves playing adventurers, who are people that go on adventures.

It's like saying that there should be extensive rules and descriptions for devaluation of goods due to market concerns and carefully-designed rules for epidemic/pandemic spread. These things are just...not useful to the vast majority of players, and I'm counting DMs in that. If all you care about is that there's a place that "thing made of fire" comes from, there are far better alternatives.

Spending a dozen pages talking about a place no one can go to, with events that are never relevant, orchestrated by factions that never intersect with the accessible world, solely so you can have an explanation for why a handful of creatures sometimes, occasionally, appear? It's just wasteful. There are much better things to do with those twelve pages.


I'm fine with the Elemental Chaos. Anything taken from WoW should be scrutinized to the nth degree because it's the same "calling it rotten garbage is an insult to rotten garbage" issue. You could do something like Zeitgeist, where planes exist but are largely inaccessible other than calling stuff from them. Or something like Shadowrun, where it's a bit silly to suggest that there needs to be a "plane of fire" in order to have spirits regarding fire appear. In my home game, Al-Akirah is the "elemental otherworld," a place suffused with elemental magic, to the point that regular animals and plants are innately aligned with elemental powers there, and elemental spirits spontaneously manifest out of the ambient energy present...but it's all mixed together unless separated by things like those animals, plants, and spirits, or the sapient denizens (which, for the area corresponding to the region where the players live, are genies and their attendants/servants/slaves/wider populations.)

There are many options. We can do much better than "plane that is fully, 100% literally nothing but empty air, except for the spots we've added that corrupt it with non-air stuff so that there's actually something to do." We can have politics that flow back and forth, places of commerce and diplomacy, wild and alien entities, without needing to harp so hard on the "and there's an infinite, empty ocean of pure water where nothing ever happens and no one interesting can live, let alone does."


I'm a 4e fan. I'm long past "relying" on WotC for a damn thing.

Have you read any of the planar books TSR or WotC published? There's a lot more in the Elemental Planes than "100% empty air" or whatever. You're overstating your point here. My interest in game lore is to create a plausible fantasy setting, not a playground for the tiny percentage of beings that decide to wander around in it.

 

[GuardianLurker]

WRT to new editions: I've always looked upon them as a neccessary-to-good thing. I remember the end of 1e era. It was presented as a "rules consolidation and update". And leaving aside all other considerations, it did just that. The rules from Wilderness and Dungeoneer's Survival Guides became core, and more smoothly integrated into the game. Ditto for the popular UA classes, items, and rules. A lot of existing rules were simplified and better explained - AC and saves the two biggest. (It also had a LOT of PR edits. Meh.)

The other editions have changed more (usually), but all of them have incorporated tons of "lessons learned". Both from the D&D community, and the gaming community at large. Oh, and dialed back the power-creep that's a part of any late-period D&D edition.

TLDR; while I might argue the pacing of the releases, I do feel that periodic new editions are a good thing.

WRT the (Gygaxian Elemental Planes): 1) While 5e has gotten rid of it (and I think 4e did as well), that was the point of "Astral Projection". Because it built your body out of native materials you didn't need any form of protection from the plane itself. 2) I've always divided the Elemental Planes into 3 subregions - the Shallows, which overlap with the Ethereal Plane and its curtains; the Deep - the region beyond this which still supports sapient and sentient life (like the full Elementals); and the Pure - the region beyond the Deep where it is just the pure element itself. The Shallows are understandable to material plane natives, though they probably need some form of protection. This is the region of the Genies, and the Azer, and the Wind Lords. Natives of the Shallows probably need some form of protection in the Deeps - the metaphorical equivalents of the deep desert or oceans of the material planes' natives' worlds. Keep in mind as well, that each of these regions is infinite is scope, and you'll probably need a native's help, or high-level magics, to transit from sub-region to sub-region.

TLDR; I always just figured that the Elemental Planes were bigger than the characters could really understand, and they never really did more than tip their toes in.

 

[Charlaquin]

Sure, but almost everyone who plays chess is playing standard chess rules most of the time (apropos of nothing, my favorite variety is dice chess). And sure, chess is not an RPG: but RPGS were invented when my dad was in hisn20's already. We don't know what RPGs might evolve to after, day, centuries of play, so analogies are helpful. And it is clear that games can be stable for a long time, while being extremely successful as design and popular, no contradiction between those poles.

“Stable, successful, popular,” sure. An ROG doesn’t need edition resets to achieve those things. It also doesn’t need to be the best version of itself it can be to achieve those things. But it does need edition resets to be the best version of itself it can be, since imperfections in the original design will inevitably be found over time.

 

[Parmandur]

“Stable, successful, popular,” sure. An ROG doesn’t need edition resets to achieve those things. It also doesn’t need to be the best version of itself it can be to achieve those things. But it does need edition resets to be the best version of itself it can be, since imperfections in the original design will inevitably be found over time.

I am really not sure how being well-liked and widely played over a long period of time isn't a game being the best version it could be.

 

[Charlaquin]

I don't think it's a question of being outdated. It's not like point-buy systems in which a player allocates finite resources among powers, skills, and other abilities they want or may find useful aren't still around and thriving.

That’s not the way in which the design is outdated. The huge number of very specific skills, as well as some of the choices as to what should be a skill vs what should be a different aspect of the character.

 

[soviet]

“Stable, successful, popular,” sure. An ROG doesn’t need edition resets to achieve those things. It also doesn’t need to be the best version of itself it can be to achieve those things. But it does need edition resets to be the best version of itself it can be, since imperfections in the original design will inevitably be found over time.

This is very wrong-headed. Most edition changes are not 'oh look, this one rule needs a slight tweak based on hundreds of hours of play experience'. They are 'let's rewrite big chunks of the game to achieve a different playstyle or follow a brand new trend'. They are ideological and revolutionary.

 

[Corinnguard]

2) I've always divided the Elemental Planes into 3 subregions - the Shallows, which overlap with the Ethereal Plane and its curtains; the Deep - the region beyond this which still supports sapient and sentient life (like the full Elementals); and the Pure - the region beyond the Deep where it is just the pure element itself.

What's your take on the Para-Elemental and the Quasi-Elemental Planes?

 

[Charlaquin]

I am really not sure how being well-liked and widely played over a long period of time isn't a game being the best version it could be.

Popularity and quality are somewhat correlated, but they are not the same thing. Plenty of great games are relatively unknown, and plenty of very popular games are just-ok. Heck, monopoly is one of the most popular games in the world despite having been intentionally designed to be unfun to play.

But even if you assume popularity = quality, just because a game is popular doesn’t mean it couldn’t be even more so with a redesign.

 

[Parmandur]

Popularity and quality are somewhat correlated, but they are not the same thing. Plenty of great games are relatively unknown, and plenty of very popular games are just-ok. Heck, monopoly is one of the most popular games in the world despite having been intentionally designed to be unfun to play.

But even if you assume popularity = quality, just because a game is popular doesn’t mean it couldn’t be even more so with a redesign.

No, I don't assume that quality equals "wuality", bit...how do you measure quality in a game? I cannot think of a better measure than being played, and people having fun. That's the  telos of a game, after all. So the more it is played, the more fun is had...ghe more the game is acheiving the purpose for whichbit was designed.

 

[Charlaquin]

This is very wrong-headed. Most edition changes are not 'oh look, this one rule needs a slight tweak based on hundreds of hours of play experience'. They are 'let's rewrite big chunks of the game to achieve a different playstyle or follow a brand new trend'.

Indeed, a slight tweak based on hundreds of hours of play experience is usually not enough to justify the drawbacks of an edition change. A large-scale overhaul, on the other hand, often is.

They are ideological and revolutionary.

Yes. Those are good things (which I would expect someone with your username to appreciate )