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

[Micah Sweet]

Bloat's a difficult issue to perceive if you're in from the start and buy each release as it comes out without really noticing how many books you're accumulating.

Bloat is a huge issue if you're coming in new six years later and are faced with a wall of books to buy.

That's a good point. I've never jumped into a game late, so I've never experienced this.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The issue is that the design teams of game tend to be very conservative in view and tend to miss things or under/value things,

This can be dangerous in the wide and strong tropes of D&D. How do you balance Rage, Action Surge, Smite, and Favored Enemy individually outside the package.

By looking at the potential results, and weighing the limitations. This is not intrinsically impossible; its not even that intrinsically difficult (though assessing the limitations is fraught)

Classless games IMHO are better for generic low power setting like some generic Cyberpunk or Urban Fantasy world or definedworldwith strict IP restraints like ALTA, Warhammer, or Dresden Files.

If you think Urban Fantasy is intrinsically low powered, I have to conclude you have not read sufficient amounts of it.

its not a question of power. Its a question of building components to a common metric so you can compare them to each other easily, something D&D-sphere games have been allergic to for 40 years.

 

[Micah Sweet]

that will be hard to measure


agreed, that would be a failure, not sure the publisher disagrees either, because they will need to keep selling you something, and in that case it won't be new monsters / classes / adventures / etc. for that game, and I am not sure they can sell another new system to the same audience as easily again either.


Probably, if anyone who tries it sticks with it, then the failure is one of marketing more than design. On the other hand if 80% bounce off but you have 20% that love it, that to me is still a design failure.


I am not sure I want permanence, I'd rather see more changes to 2024 than what we are getting. That might end up being the reason why I do not get the books.

Are you happy with the current design? If not it's quite logical that you'd want more changes than WotC is planning on giving us next year.

 

[Micah Sweet]

When you're a player and the Fighter is in one book, the Bard is in another book, the Monk is in a third book and the Artificer is in a fourth book.

And the Swashbuckler hasn't come out yet.

Of if you're a DM and your campaign is about Dragons, Giants, Aberrations, and Fey but they are in different books

All those things are the MM though. Are you talking about different specialty supplements?

 

[Minigiant]

By looking at the potential results, and weighing the limitations. This is not intrinsically impossible; its not even that intrinsically difficult (though assessing the limitations is fraught)

Not impossible.

But the D&D designers and much of the active community are not willing to do it.

If you think Urban Fantasy is intrinsically low powered, I have to conclude you have not read sufficient amounts of it.

its not a question of power. Its a question of building components to a common metric so you can compare them to each other easily, something D&D-sphere games have been allergic to for 40 years.

Sounds like specific IP.

Generic Urban Fantasy tends to be low powered so the guns and cars and libraries and baseball bats still are still useful.

 

[Micah Sweet]

if I bounce off your system within a year, I am not interested in your shiny new system you are trying to sell me. I'd rather try a different system from another company. Maybe that is just me though.


that is a design failure to me, unless you knew that beforehand and were ok with it, i.e. still got enough customers despite this


Then you should continue to play 1e and whatever happens with 5e should not be important to you

This thread isn't about 5e 2024. I stopped posting in that subforum because I had nothing good to say and people complained.

 

[Minigiant]

All those things are the MM though. Are you talking about different specialty supplements?

I'm talking 4e. D&D first incremental RPG.

But the point is that a no reset RPG can't fit much in their core books and would have to spread first and second tier content over many books.

There is no Warlock or Dragonborn in the 1e or 2e or 3e PHB. You would have to buy another book to get it. Probabably 2.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm talking 4e. D&D first incremental RPG.

But the point is that a no reset RPG can't fit much in their core books and would have to spread first and second tier content over many books.

There is no Warlock or Dragonborn in the 1e or 2e or 3e PHB. You would have to buy another book to get it. Probabably 2.

Warlocks and Dragonborn didn't exist until mid-late 3e. Are you blaming them for not including something that hadn't been invented?

 

[mamba]

Those all seem like perfectly reasonable sales graphs to me.

100k in year one, 20k in year two, then nothing? So you need a constant churn of material, hoping that the buyers stick with it instead of just using what they already have or not liking the new ones.

Compare that to 5e, these are not healthy graphs…

Going by https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/16215/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_books Curse of Strahd (2016) is currently the best selling adventure, followed by Spelljammer, Shattered Obelisk, Tyranny of Dragons, Tales from the Yawning Portal (2017) and so forth, a healthy mix of old and new adventures.

When a thing gets published, it sells a lot in a short time, because people have been waiting for it and there's a pent-up demand.

and yet the 5e core sales keep rising for 10 years, while 2e core dropped to 1/3 after year one and then went to zero 6 years or so later (and I am counting the reprint here)

 

[Remathilis]

But the point is that a no reset RPG can't fit much in their core books and would have to spread first and second tier content over many books.

Pathfinder Remastered got some of that with the way they redid Player Core 1 and 2 and put some of the original 11 classes into book 2. Granted, all those classes exist so you can play a sorcerer while waiting for PC 2 (unlike in 4e, where you waited for three whole PHBs to get the 3e 11) and likewise, the cleric and wizard are losing 3-4 subclasses each in the 24 PHB. At a certain point, the things people consider to be necessary get to the point of unable to be contained in a single book