D&D (2024) So IS it a new edition?

[KYRON45]

The worst punishment of all: this thread.

Seems much ado about nothing.
Call it what you want. When someone asks what edition you’re talking about…tell them.

 

[Daztur]

It's not really the Ship of Theseus. If anything it's the Sorites Paradox. But my point was that "edition" has a commonly accepted meaning in the book trade, and a related meaning in the board game trade. The RPG industry largely ignores both definitions and tries to make it mean something like "a new game" or a "a major enhancement of the game." In the first case, "edition" is misleading because a new edition is usually intended to update something, not replace it with something that may or many not be similar. In the latter case, it's arbitrary, because either fixing a section of the grappling rules with errata or adding a new class alone would be enough to justify calling something a new edition. Any time enough substantial errata is issued and they produce a new printing that incorporates it, that should really be called an edition. Knowing which edition you have should ideally tell you what rules it actually contains.

It's not really the RPG industry, just WotC-D&D specifically. 3e, 4e, and 5e all rebuilt the game from the ground up in a way that's very much not normal in the RPG market more broadly with a few exceptions like WHFRP. Different editions of CoC have been very much editions in the way that editions is used for book and board games. Same deal with 1e and 2e AD&D.

 

[Morrus]

It's not really the Ship of Theseus. If anything it's the Sorites Paradox. But my point was that "edition" has a commonly accepted meaning in the book trade, and a related meaning in the board game trade. The RPG industry largely ignores both definitions and tries to make it mean something like "a new game" or a "a major enhancement of the game." In the first case, "edition" is misleading because a new edition is usually intended to update something, not replace it with something that may or many not be similar. In the latter case, it's arbitrary, because either fixing a section of the grappling rules with errata or adding a new class alone would be enough to justify calling something a new edition. Any time enough substantial errata is issued and they produce a new printing that incorporates it, that should really be called an edition. Knowing which edition you have should ideally tell you what rules it actually contains.

A new edition of a book and a new editon of a game system are two different things.

The new PHB is a new edition of the PHB. It's literally a different book, from cover to cover.

Whether the D&D 2024 game systen is a new edition of D&D is a different question entirely.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You're free to do that. I feel the opposite. They're correcting a mistake, years in the making.

Don't get me wrong, it's ALSO marketing, but it's smarter, better marketing than they were saddled with once they started playing games with edition numbering (which was pretty much always). Getting off that bandwagon is difficult (as we can see by all the opinions) but it's not a bad idea, IMO.

Whereas, as far as I'm concerned, it is both simpler and more accurate to use the numbering scheme, even if that numbering scheme ignores other branches of the tree (such as Basic). 3.5e is precisely the kind and type of change they had before, and calling it "2024 D&D" is both cumbersome and, IMO, implicitly claiming something 5e has no right to claim--that it is the D&D, the only D&D, everything else is gone now.

Numbers necessarily recognize that there is stuff that came before. "2024 D&D" implies that 5e is all D&D. It is not. It has never been--despite the many, many claims made by its boosters and even by some of its designers.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

A new edition of a book and a new editon of a game system are two different things.

The new PHB is a new edition of the PHB. It's literally a different book, from cover to cover.

Whether the D&D 2024 game systen is a new edition of D&D is a different question entirely.

Absolutely. A game--something made with rules and instructions, rather than with factual information (nonfiction) or a rendition of a novelist's text (fiction)--is quite clearly more similar to software than it is to other forms of print media in this sense.

Hence why "3.5" made so much sense. It was an iterative update that did not totally replace the old software, but did make significant under-the-hood changes. Software uses this sort of naming all the time--because it is reasonable, convenient, and quickly conveys version information in a concise manner. You even get X.Y.Z sometimes, where you have within some specific patch smaller sub-patches that make only very small tweaks. While MMOs are obviously a famous example of this sort of thing, it runs the gamut from operating systems to individual applications all the way down to plugins or tools that only work by being employed by some other thing.

There's a reason the RULES of a game can't be copyrighted. Rules are a procedure. Procedures do, in fact, get version numbers as they get iterated upon.

Would it be better if D&D had used the term "version" rather than "edition" for its numbered entries? Probably. Blame Gygax--or I guess Zeb Cook?--for calling it "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition" rather than "2nd Version."

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Even if I'm willing to grant you that the Essential classes are just variant classes, how do you explain the changes to racial ASI (fixed to fixed/float) or powers like Magic Missile going from an attack roll to auto hit. Errata?

Yes. Every race received official fixed/float stats as errata, and changes to what any given power does were well-precedented in errata across 4e's lifespan. There were zero problems playing Essentials-only characters alongside not-at-all-Essentials characters, and with the sole exception of "internal" multiclassing (that is, a Slayer couldn't MC to a different Fighter subclass), Essentials options had 100% miscibility with non-Essentials options and vice-versa. Indeed, optimization for some Essentials classes, like Vampire and Hexblade, depended quite heavily on their ability to pick up "Original" 4e multiclass options, e.g. Vampires wanted a particular Sorcerer power (Flame Spiral). Essentials also added--not removed nor replaced--racial powers, such as Heroic Effort instead of the bonus at-will for humans...which had already been done in Dragon Mag, for dragonborn (Dragonfear as an alternative to Dragon Breath).

Even the "internal" multiclassing thing was addressed (IIRC within six months of Essentials' launch?), where "Weaponmaster" Fighters (aka "original" Fighters) could spend a feat to swap out an Encounter power for Power Attack and (I think?) Slayers could likewise give up a use of Power Attack for a Weaponmaster encounter power.

Nothing--not one thing--that Essentials did to alter the rules themselves was in any way unprecedented. All PHB3 races, for example, were published with flex stats, at least three months before Essentials--and the Changeling, from Eberron, had flex stats even earlier than that.

Essentials is not, and never was, an edition or a revision or any of that. It was just more options for the existing game. If Xanathar's and SCAG weren't a new edition or "revised" game, neither was Essentials.

 

[mamba]

Numbers necessarily recognize that there is stuff that came before. "2024 D&D" implies that 5e is all D&D.

5e means as much that there were earlier editions as D&D 2024 does, unless you somehow believe that D&D was invented in 2024

 

[EzekielRaiden]

5e means as much that there were earlier editions as D&D 2024 does, unless you somehow believe that D&D was invented in 2024

I fundamentally disagree. "This is D&D in the Year of Our Lord 2024" is not, at all, the same as saying, "This is the mid-revision of the fifth version of the rules." The former lays claim to the entirety of the legacy--tacking the year on does not recognize the steps it took to get here nor the history. The latter makes clear that it is simply the current iteration.

The fact that this is happening to the 50th anniversary edition is particularly galling. Like, this is supposed to be ABOUT recognizing and celebrating the history and past. Yet the naming could barely be working harder to pretend no such past existed.

Let me put it this way: What do we do when an actual 6th edition comes along? We can't just call this "2024 D&D" anymore. That would be inaccurate--it wouldn't be the same game.

 

[mamba]

I fundamentally disagree. "This is D&D in the Year of Our Lord 2024" is not, at all, the same as saying, "This is the mid-revision of the fifth version of the rules." The former lays claim to the entirety of the legacy--tacking the year on does not recognize the steps it took to get here nor the history. The latter makes clear that it is simply the current iteration.

yes, it makes it clear it is the current iteration, which by extension means there were previous iterations. You can argue that it does not tell you where it stands in relation to them or how many there were, but not that it is not clear that there were any

Let me put it this way: What do we do when an actual 6th edition comes along? We can't just call this "2024 D&D" anymore. That would be inaccurate--it wouldn't be the same game.

not sure what would be inaccurate about it, unless you expect 6e to also be released in 2024 and that to cause confusion

Apart from that I am not sure there will be a 6e, there might well be a D&D 2030 that for all intents and purposes is that and would have previously been called 6e however.

 

[Maxperson]

The 3.5 ranger and bard have entered the chat

Sure. I know about those. Two out of eleven is far less drastic than twelve out of twelve.