D&D (2024) We’ll be merging the One D&D and D&D forums shortly

[doctorbadwolf]

No, it isn't.

Not gonna rehash this. I showed last time it came up what rules were updated literally as part of rolling out the essentials books.

If you want to argue with yourself about 4e as if it weren’t over a decade since the argument mattered, leave me out of it.

 

[Parmandur]

Not gonna rehash this. I showed last time it came up what rules were updated literally as part of rolling out the essentials books.

If you want to argue with yourself about 4e as if it weren’t over a decade since the argument mattered, leave me out of it.

4E is so long ago now that a child born the day WotC formally canceled it and announced D&D Next is now old enough to be in the core audience of the game.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I think thisnis a vital point: SotC isn't desperately trying to prove anything, they have made it clear what they are doing and are just rolling with it.

Absolutely.

They haven’t obfuscated or danced around it at all, they’ve said what they are doing pretty clearly.

 

[Parmandur]

Absolutely.

They haven’t obfuscated or danced around it at all, they’ve said what they are doing pretty clearly.

I honestly think it's been nearly a year since they even brought it up, thisnis exclusively Fandom argument for segments sake.

 

[Kurotowa]

4E is so long ago now that a child born the day WotC formally canceled it and announced D&D Next is now old enough to be in the core audience of the game.

It's not the first time I've observed that long time fans are far more invested in the topic's history than the actual creators are. I saw the same sort of thing when a new World of Warcraft expansion was due and the Internet was flooded with fake leaks. A lot of the fakes were easy to spot because they bundled up seven different loose ends from across the decades and tried to tie them all together into one big payoff. Meanwhile when the actual new expansion was announced, it was usually doing brand new stuff because the creators wanted to create and not win fandom trivia contests.

So with the revised 5e, I see a lot of people assuming it's a copy of some event in D&D's past. Especially here on ENworld, where the long time players hang out. It's 3.5e again! It's 4e Essentials again! If we had an even older demographic, maybe they'd be saying it's 2e Skills & Powers again, or 1e Unearthed Arcana again.

Really, this isn't any of those things. It's a new thing that takes lessons from the past, and therefore tries to do something different. They're trying to do a mid-edition rules update without forcing a hard reset. A mega-errata that updates the core books without fully invalidating the old supplements. That's a first, and it may or may not work. But it's worth judging on its own merits, and not on the memories of things that happened far in the past.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Mod Note:

Expanding on Umbran’s note above, there’s more than one snarky provocateur in this thread. U’s message should be understood to address the posts of anyone & everyone contributing to this thread’s decline in civility.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Did I say it was a big deal?

I am simply saying that having simple, straightforward, descriptive names is useful. 5.5e is all of those, while also being precedented. Many of the proposed alternatives are not. Hence, I believe "5.5e" will predominate. Because it is useful to have a name, and simpler names are generally more useful than complex ones unless that complexity adds value. E.g., surnames are far too much complexity for casual conversation, but rather important when (say) at a high school where there may be several dozen "John"s or "Mary"s or what have you.

That's why I preferred 5.50(e) when I thought they were actually going to label it something like '5e, 50th Anniversary Printing" or something like that. But it seems they are just going to call it "5e" and try to pretend that it is perfectly identical.

Okay, sure, names are useful. But 5.5e isn't going to predominate. The "precedent" is a single edition, and notably an edition I often have often seen others refer to as 3.X, because they include both the before and after into a single group.

Meanwhile '24 DnD, OneDnD, anniversary edition, "the new rules", those are very viable contenders for simple, straightforward names that are descriptive and have a single, quite large advantage over the other two major contenders. And that is, unlike 5.5e or 6e, they don't have the baggage of a specific perspective/take on the game. Most everyone who I see using 5.5 tend to have very specific, often negative, views on the ruleset coming up, and the company in general. People who have picked up on that (like myself) are going to explicitly avoid using those terms. And since it is the people who like the new rules, and want to spread them who will be giving the name out to people, not those with negative views.... shrug I just don't see 5.5 catching on.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I'm talking about the people here, hence, "this site".

Well, I can't tell you whether or not "almost the entire community" on this site will buy the book or not. But, statistically speaking, more people who are fans of DnD will buy it rather than not. And many people on this site are die-hard collectors. So... yeah, the assumption that the majority of the people on this site will buy at least one of the new books isn't a bad one.

 

[Kurotowa]

Well, I can't tell you whether or not "almost the entire community" on this site will buy the book or not. But, statistically speaking, more people who are fans of DnD will buy it rather than not. And many people on this site are die-hard collectors. So... yeah, the assumption that the majority of the people on this site will buy at least one of the new books isn't a bad one.

A majority is a safe bet. How large a majority depends on how you filter the respondents. Because a lot of the posters I see expressing a vocal disinterest, both here and on other forums, are ones that I recognize as... not exactly what I'd call active 5e players. Many are ones who have previously expressed a preference for 4e, or OSR, or some variety of Pathfinder. Others have said they've got the 5e PHB, and maybe an early supplement or two, but they haven't kept up with books like Tasha's Cauldron or Monsters of the Multiverse and they haven't actually played 5e any time recently.

Altogether, these are the sorts I consider to be lapsed players. They still retain an emotional attachment to D&D, but they're not active players or purchasers of D&D 5e. So asking them if they plan to upgrade is a misplaced question. They haven't bought a new book in years, and the Revised PHB is not likely to be the book that's going to change that.

If there were a way to filter the responses to people who have bought a new D&D 5e book in, say, the last two years, that would be a very different picture. Because the Revised Core is the culmination of a direction change that was already apparent in Tasha's Cauldron and Monsters of the Multiverse. And seeing what people who have those books think about that direction, and if they want to keep paying for it or if they want to get off the ride, would be interesting.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Okay, sure, names are useful. But 5.5e isn't going to predominate. The "precedent" is a single edition, and notably an edition I often have often seen others refer to as 3.X, because they include both the before and after into a single group.

Meanwhile '24 DnD, OneDnD, anniversary edition, "the new rules", those are very viable contenders for simple, straightforward names that are descriptive and have a single, quite large advantage over the other two major contenders. And that is, unlike 5.5e or 6e, they don't have the baggage of a specific perspective/take on the game. Most everyone who I see using 5.5 tend to have very specific, often negative, views on the ruleset coming up, and the company in general. People who have picked up on that (like myself) are going to explicitly avoid using those terms. And since it is the people who like the new rules, and want to spread them who will be giving the name out to people, not those with negative views.... shrug I just don't see 5.5 catching on.

If you want to refer to both WotC 5e book sets collectively as 5.x, I'm down.