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

[Distracted DM]

I think it’s a bad thing.

I think D&D should be a public trust, owned by players and creators, run for the good of the game rather than attempting to maximize income.

Like the Green Bay Packers, not like Hasbro.

My understanding is that smaller gaming companies, while not owned by their audience, are at least run by people who care about their games.

Not to be a pain in the butt, but is that the question being asked?
It'd be great if D&D's IP were public, but it's not... I don't know exactly how what you're describing would work, I don't know sports re: Green Bay Packers, but that's not really a question of "should there be new editions?"

 

[haakon1]

Not to be a pain in the butt, but is that the question being asked?
It'd be great if D&D's IP were public, but it's not... I don't know exactly how what you're describing would work, I don't know sports re: Green Bay Packers, but that's not really a question of "should there be new editions?"

The Green Bay Packers are owned by their fans. They sold shares to only Wisconsin residents, so the team is community and fan owned. My wife is from Wisconsin and proudly has 2 shares.

The relevance - to me, at least - is that the core problem with D&D is its corporate owners damage the game. Lorraine Williams bankrupted TSR in 1997 and D&D stopped printing for months. Read Ben Riggs book if you don’t already know the story.

Hasbro is on the same path. Despite D&D’s astounding success, and the movie, and Game of the Year for BG3, Hasbro is endangering the game by betting all of its money on in-house video games - which they demonstrably don’t know how to do - and laying off the core talent that brought them success. And the OGL debacle. They are pursuing short term profits instead of long term viability with MtG, from what I hear.

The only way to stop the destruction of new editions is to have the decision on “should we sell all the books over again to the same players” made by people with the game’s long term interests in mind, not MBA’s looking to maximize revenue in the next FY.

Another sports analogy - watch the TV series “Welcome to Wrexham“, about what happens when two people who actually care buy this minor league British soccer (football) team and invest in it, rather than asset stripping it like previous owners.

I hope the gamers at WotC shipped 2024 before the MBA’s got ahold of it, so it’s a refresh rather than a “everything is different now, you need to buy new books” MBA driven edition. I suspect the MBA’s hate books and want online subscription only. We’ll see.

 

[MGibster]

I welcome your defense of THAC0.

My AC of -1 is my defense of THAC0!

 

[GMMichael]

. . . The relevance - to me, at least - is that the core problem with D&D is its corporate owners damage the game. Lorraine Williams bankrupted TSR in 1997 and D&D stopped printing for months. Read Ben Riggs book if you don’t already know the story.

Hasbro is on the same path. . .

Well, that reframes the question for me. Does D&D need a reset? Yes! Why? Because it knocks the market leader down a few pegs, and with luck, smaller games get the windfall.

 

[Ancalagon]

The CARDS are still usable, which is my point. Your 20 year old cards aren't meta, many have text that is outdated (interrupt speed?) or designed with different assumptions, or just generally power-crept out, but they all WORK with the game and using Oracle text, you can play that deck.

You cannot, with, any number of workarounds, use The Complete Psionics Handbook with in 5e. The base game is too radically different. The game parts are no longer usable except to laugh at the art or as a paperweight. Which was the point of my comparison. My old Magic Cards, in the right context, work alongside my new cards. My old D&D books do not work alongside my new ones.

Which lead to my question if that was a good thing or not...

See, I've somewhat recently run several old 2e adventures I first ran back in the 2e era. I converted them to 5e - some entirely by myself, some with the assistance of other people's conversions.

Could I convert old magic card to make them fit the current meta? It would be much, much more challenging. And because it's a competitive game, everyone would have to agree, which is not likely. It is true that some aspect of the game would be too hard to bring forward (I refuse to convert 2e psionics in 5e ha!), but a lot of the old material is still usable.

 

[Minigiant]

Sure, but the idea behind modular design is that the fundamentals, whatever they might be, generally don't change or some change while they majority stay the same. A ship isn't the best simile for this. It's more like a castle that gets built with A) the same plot of land, B) the same curtain wall, C) the same nobles in charge, D) the same dungeon where rock was mined, or some combination of these. The rest of the game/castle gets built on these parts. Maybe not the best example, but I think this is sort of how GURPS works

My point point was that no RPG before maybe 2010 was ever designed with a fundamentals that would never have to be changed.

Because before maybe 10 years ago, no one really knew how to design an RPG because the industry was too new

I mean we still haven't figured out Unarmed Combat in D&D after 50 years.

 

[jgsugden]

Need? No. I could still run great games using the AD&D Rules.

Benefit from? Yes. 5E is a far superior game to AD&D. That is due to evolution. However, not every change is an improvement, and each generation allows them to fix errors made in a prior generation. Further, as technology evolves, and access to new gaming tools exists, new editions allow them to better rely upon the technology and resources of the day.

I could play 5E until my dying day and be content. It is my hope that the next edition will be truly compatible with it and include refinements that allow us to fix a few of the elements that would benefit from a tweak - but until we see the edition, we will not know if that is the case.

 

[Blue]

Whether or not a new mechanic is "better" than an older one is subjective. This assumption is IMO really twisting this discussion out of shape.

Since conclusion was that people can still play any and all of the older versions as well, if there are two different mechanics one will be better for you.

But yes, in general progress based on feedback and new ideas based on what people are doing for rules leads to improvements. Claiming that "twists the discussion out of shape" is a rhetoric-level statement.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

No, you really don't. I had no problem with THAC0.

I was implying that I don't believe there is one. Descending AC arose from a foolish way of viewing how defenses worked, trying to use ordinal data where cardinal data is clearly required. (You don't do calculations with ordinal data! It's literally not for that!) THAC0 arose as a kludge to avoid needing to do table lookups (or to memorize said tables) in order to continue supporting the ridiculous use of ordinals in calculations.

The game is objectively better for not using ordinal data for something that literally isn't ordinal.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Clearly
Obviously
Objectively

Q. What are three words no one uses correctly, Alex?