D&D 5E Do we need a Fifth Edition Revival (5ER)?

[Shardstone]

By and large, an environment for 5E that mimics the OSR environment has long since been my dream as a game designer. However, what made the early OSR have staying power was that the many designers participating in it were coming together and working together, and that there was an open door policy on new creatives entering "the fold" so to speak.

I find that in the 5E ecosystem, there's a lot of different cliques, but none of these cliques are in communication with one another. There is no Blogspace unifying a 5ER. There are no strong personalities seeking to make a mega-community dedicated to exploring and experimenting with 5E. And there are no publishers paying people to break into the fold like there was for the OSR.

 

[Retreater]

I know I'm a frequent naysayer, but I don't find this the same situation that created Pathfinder in the wake of 4E.

• 4E was a big departure from 3.x. We don't see any evidence that 2024 D&D will invalidate the 2014 books. Therefore, it's not necessary to keep that version "in print" by third party publishers. Especially if those 3PPs are making sizable changes to 2014.
• The SRD is in the Creative Commons now, so we don't need a "lingua franca" to allow 2014 D&D material to be published. (This isn't like OSRIC needing to be published. Or Pathfinder to keep 3.x compatible material in circulation. Nor is there a very restrictive GSL for 2014.)

Honestly, I understand wanting to publish a game system to provide a different experience (MCDM RPG, Candela Obscura). What I don't understand is a very slightly altered version of 5e, designed to be compatible with 5e when WotC itself isn't releasing an incompatible game.
How many versions of 5e do we need? Why create like a dozen different versions of the same game?
It's all seeming like horror directors jumping to create movies based on Public Domain Winnie the Pooh and Steamboat Willy.

 

[overgeeked]

Given that the OGL survived, and we even have a CC SRD now, Kobold Press, Cubicle 7 and others would not really need to create their own systems to stay in business, they could continue releasing 5e content.

They are also not the only ones, just the most well known ones

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Sure. But the fans will determine the direction of things to come. It doesn't matter if you have a dozen or a hundred 5E clones. The fans will pick and choose what they want to buy and use. But the fan base will fracture. Most will follow WotC and the official releases. A few will refuse to move on from 2014 5E and whatever companies want to sell to that inevitably shrinking fanbase can. But that's also part of the "problem" with wanting an OSR-style creative DIY scene in 5E. The fans don't want that, seemingly. They want prepackaged content to buy and use or read. They don't want to DIY. They don't want the things that come with DIY projects, like less color art, etc. They don't want companies to veer too far from the core of 2014 5E. Those stances are fundamentally incompatible with a thriving DIY mindset and scene.

 

[SlyFlourish]

Everything you've purchased on D&D Beyond you access through the continued blessing and support of Hasbro. Any time you've read "they can't come in and take your books and keep you from playing the old games" - that is exactly the case of D&D Beyond. Hasbro already pulled access to 4e - and there's no reason to think that they won't do the same for 5e at their discretion.
You can't download or store it. It's in the cloud. If/when they shut down the servers, you've lost every item you've purchased. It's the same as if Chris Cocks or Cynthia Williams has come into your house and yanked every book from your shelf. It's planned obsolescence and an intentional way to get you to repurchase things in a cycle.

I a completely unrelated note, there are a number of great Chrome plugins that let you pull down web content in Markdown for archiving purposes.

I tried out Markdownload and it's pretty great.

MarkDownload - Markdown Web Clipper

This extension works like a web clipper, but it downloads articles in markdown format.

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Now back to your topic...

 

[Shardstone]

I know I'm a frequent naysayer, but I don't find this the same situation that created Pathfinder in the wake of 4E.

• 4E was a big departure from 3.x. We don't see any evidence that 2024 D&D will invalidate the 2014 books. Therefore, it's not necessary to keep that version "in print" by third party publishers. Especially if those 3PPs are making sizable changes to 2014.
• The SRD is in the Creative Commons now, so we don't need a "lingua franca" to allow 2014 D&D material to be published. (This isn't like OSRIC needing to be published. Or Pathfinder to keep 3.x compatible material in circulation. Nor is there a very restrictive GSL for 2014.)

Honestly, I understand wanting to publish a game system to provide a different experience (MCDM RPG, Candela Obscura). What I don't understand is a very slightly altered version of 5e, designed to be compatible with 5e when WotC itself isn't releasing an incompatible game.
How many versions of 5e do we need? Why create like a dozen different versions of the same game?
It's all seeming like horror directors jumping to create movies based on Public Domain Winnie the Pooh and Steamboat Willy.

Experimentation is fun. If all these systems are similar, you can combine different parts of them to finetune your tables experience. Its really cool, imo

 

[mamba]

What I don't understand is a very slightly altered version of 5e, designed to be compatible with 5e when WotC itself isn't releasing an incompatible game.
How many versions of 5e do we need? Why create like a dozen different versions of the same game?

different emphasis, why do we have 20 versions of BX…

I certainly would like a grittier 5e spinoff. WotC won’t provide that, others might

 

[mamba]

Sure. But the fans will determine the direction of things to come. It doesn't matter if you have a dozen or a hundred 5E clones. The fans will pick and choose what they want to buy and use. But the fan base will fracture.

let it fracture, as long as they remain largely compatible that is not a problem, heck some moving away from compatibility is not a problem either

But that's also part of the "problem" with wanting an OSR-style creative DIY scene in 5E. The fans don't want that, seemingly. They want prepackaged content to buy and use or read. They don't want to DIY.

which probably means the 3pps should remain mostly compatible, that way there is a lot of stuff to use with their games

They don't want the things that come with DIY projects, like less color art, etc.

maybe controversial, but with AI art, that is not really a problem for one person 3pps, and it already wasn’t one with real artists for the larger 3pps

I am also not sure how important art really is, the Manual of the Planes on DMsG had none, and is selling pretty well from what I’ve heard

 

[DEFCON 1]

By and large, an environment for 5E that mimics the OSR environment has long since been my dream as a game designer. However, what made the early OSR have staying power was that the many designers participating in it were coming together and working together, and that there was an open door policy on new creatives entering "the fold" so to speak.

I find that in the 5E ecosystem, there's a lot of different cliques, but none of these cliques are in communication with one another. There is no Blogspace unifying a 5ER. There are no strong personalities seeking to make a mega-community dedicated to exploring and experimenting with 5E. And there are no publishers paying people to break into the fold like there was for the OSR.

I think this is spot on. The OSR is a small pond, with a small amount of ducks that swim in it and are interested in it. So all those ducks can hang there and talk there and produce there and learn from each other there as much as they want and have no worries or distractions of anything that is outside of that OSR pond.

But right now Dungeons & Dragons 5E is Lake Superior by comparison. It is so huge that (general) you can't even see the far side of it, let alone every single duck that is swimming in it. And even if (general) you find those few ducks you like... they are surrounded by thousands of other ducks all quacking about their own 5E stuff and you'll never be able to just focus on those few you want.

Like if anyone actually wants to find 5E Revival-like places to talk seriously with other people who want to focus on it... places like here at E.N. World in the general Dungeons & Dragons thread sure as heck ain't the place to do it. Cause any thread they make here there is going to be at minimum 6 to 10 other posters who show up to tell them why they're wrong. Or people wanting to use DMs Guild as their publishing location for their Revival material... that's not going to work to their satisfaction, because it'll just get lost amongst the thousands of other products that are made for 5E-- most of which are done with the expressed purpose of making money and not for some sort of creative epiphany kind of thing.

So any 5E Revival thing has to go find some little obscure corner of the internet and lock themselves off away from everyone else who plays 5E-- put up that red velvet rope and only allow those in who actually think more "esoteric" DIY 5E design is needed or cool or better or whatever. Because if they don't... all their stuff is going to just get swallowed up and lost in the shuffle like everything else 5E related, and the people involved will get surrounded by the thousands of other 5E enthusiasts who just don't care about the Revival like they do.

It can maybe work... it just can't work in places like this.

 

[overgeeked]

let it fracture, as long as they remain largely compatible that is not a problem, heck some moving away from compatibility is not a problem either

which probably means the 3pps should remain mostly compatible, that way there is a lot of stuff to use with their games

Both of which will directly prevent the kind of wild creativity we're seeing in the OSR. That's the problem.

maybe controversial, but with AI art, that is not really a problem for one person 3pps, and it already wasn’t one with real artists for the larger 3pps

Quite controversial considering generative "AI" art programs violate copyright.

I am also not sure how important art really is, the Manual of the Planes on DMsG had none, and is selling pretty well from what I’ve heard

To 5E players, a lot of them at least, it's quite important. As I said, I've seen quite a few posters on here say they won't even look at a book that's not full-color art. They could be the vocal minority of players, granted.

 

[Retreater]

different emphasis, why do we have 20 versions of BX…

I don't think we do, if I'm being honest. I think many of them are vestigial from a time before B/X was able to be purchased (in PDF or POD).
Also, it's probably the easiest game to produce: low-fi art, copy/paste the majority of rules with little modification, a built-in market of old-timers, all with the blessing of the OGL (until maybe last January).
That's at least how I view it, having followed the OSR since the beginning.