Sequel game systems?

Some have theorized that White Wolf's Exalted was intended to be a mythic prehistory for the World of Darkness the way Earthdawn was super distantly connected to Shadowrun. I don't really see any setting or NPC connective tissue between the two besides the d10 rule system, but I am not a comprehensive master of deep cut lore on both that might show such a connection.

In addition to potentially going from Dark Ages Vampire to Victorian Ages Vampire to modern Vampire the Masquerade with potentially the same character, you could go Ars Magica to Dark Ages Vampire with their shared setting and history, switching from one game rules system to the other if the party of mages get turned into vampires.

There's a notation in AD&D 2E's Arcane Age: Netheril: Empire of Magic (affiliate link) which says that you should use its alternate rules for the Forgotten Realms campaign setting prior to the Fall of Netheril, after which you should use AD&D 1E up until the Time of Troubles (which were a trilogy of novels as well as a trilogy of adventures), after which you should use standard AD&D 2E.

This should be just one of several instances of settings having in-game instances of major upheavals being the justification for new editions:

• WG8 Fate of Istus was Greyhawk's justification for moving from AD&D 1E to 2E.
• Die Vecna Die! would be an AD&D 2E to D&D 3E update for the main D&D multiverse, whereas The Apocalypse Stone was meant to be the changeover for homebrew campaign worlds.
• The Spellplague updated the Forgotten Realms to D&D 4E; it had several novels, but no modules set specifically during the changeover. The same formula would follow for The Sundering, which brought FR into D&D 5E.
• Dragonlance would be converted from AD&D 2E to the SAGA System during the events of the Summer of Chaos; this was mostly covered in the novel Dragons of Summer Flame, though there'd be a few adventures (e.g. Seeds of Chaos and Chaos Spawn) set during the same events, albeit not with central roles in what was happening.
• The War of Souls trilogy of novels would bring Dragonlance back to D&D 3E.

An interesting notation is that Pathfinder 2nd Edition could be considered a sequel to Pathfinder 1st Edition due to the campaign world (Golarion) being presented in PF2 as if all of the adventure paths written for PF1 had already happened.

A fun little side note is that, while there was no in-game upheaval event to mark the change from the PF1 to PF2 rules set (Doomsday Dawn is the closest there was, being a "playtest adventure" for the new edition), Legendary Games published their third-party adventure Sentence of the Sinlord (affiliate link) which presented an alternate ending for the Return of the Runelords adventure path (the second-to-last AP for PF1) where it creates an in-game justification for changing various aspects of the rules (proposing that it could function for introducing third-party magic systems which hadn't been used previously, or changing the game rules altogether to mark the beginning of using PF2).

You could make an argument for this for various editions of Shadowrun.

Voadam said:

Some have theorized that White Wolf's Exalted was intended to be a mythic prehistory for the World of Darkness the way Earthdawn was super distantly connected to Shadowrun. I don't really see any setting or NPC connective tissue between the two besides the d10 rule system, but I am not a comprehensive master of deep cut lore on both that might show such a connection.

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The big hint is the back copy on the original Exalted book, which starts "Before there was a World of Darkness, there was an age of savage adventure."

But that said, you have to squint pretty hard to see the connections. The strongest thematic connections are probably the shape-shifting Lunars and the potentially vampiric Abyssals, but you also have some in the reality-warping Sidereals who are supposedly the connection to Mage. But the connections are more thematic echoes than being a direct prequel – I understand the original plan was to make the connections more explicit, but at some point they decided the game was better off standing on its own.

However, there were multiple games released that were direct prequels of the modern World of Darkness games. Vampire: The Dark Ages is probably the best known, but you also had Mage: The Sorcerers' Crusade and I think there was also a Wild West version of Werewolf. In addition, Vampire/World of Darkness itself was a potential sequel to Ars Magica: one of the vampire clans is named after one of the Houses of Hermes in Ars Magica (Tremere) and they deal in weird blood magic that most other vampires don't have any truck with, and the Order of Hermes is one of the Traditions in Mage, and I think some of the background lore refers back to Ars Magica.

Aldarc said:

I know of a prequel game system that fits the description. Young Centurions is meant to be a Fate Accelerated prequel for Spirit of the Century (Fate), with neither meaning to replace the other.

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Likewise, The Fall of Delta Green is in the DG setting but set in the 1960s. I have a player who has used the same character in both settings (although I'm only involved in one of them).

Both Traveller and Ars Magica have set new editions of the game at differing points of their timeline. And for a while, the third edition of the latter was part of the World of Darkness if you squinted at it the right way.

Umbran said:

Deadlands, Deadlands: Hell on Earth, and Deadlands: Lost Colony might fit the bill.

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There's also Deadlands Noir set in a 1932 New Orleans, which fits between Deadlands and Deadlands HoE. Also the SW Weird Wars series, which begins with WW Rome and concludes with WW Tour of Darkness (Vietnam.)

Traveller...
CT was in print 77 to 88, and 2000-2002. IY 1100 to 1115. One new book (Book 9: Pirates) in 2025.
MT was in print 87 to 92. IY 1115 to 1135 or so.
TNE was 1996-1996. IY 1200-1245
T4 was 1997 to 2000. IY 0-100
T20 200
GT, a licnsed game usng the CT setting and GURPS rules 1998 to 2016?, IY 1116 to 1130, alternate universe of the CT/MT setting.
HT, 2008-2008. HSR5 port of the setting, covering all the above timeframes.
GTIW, 2006 to 2016? Uses GURPS rules. IY -2000 or so. Yeah, a couple thousand years before the third imperium.
Mongoose 1e 2008-2016 or so
Mongoose 2e 2016ish to present.

All GDW and SJG editions (plus 2300) available on CDROM or thumb drive from FarFuture.net

DGP materials for CT and MT not available in legit PDF for consumers.
Some 3rd party stuff for CT/MT available from FFE at Far Future.net.


A better case can be made for R. Talsorian Games' Teenagers from Outer Space and its timeline sequel from Ianus Games, Star Riders. No mechanical changes other than species available, and ships, but a timeline advance to a post earth setting.

There is an interesting case of two "editions" remaining in print without changes to the setting...
Let's look at Pendragon:
1st Edition was version 1 of the mechanics.
2nd Edition (when they counted to label 3rd ed) was a reprint of 1st ed, so version 1
3rd edition was a slight revision of mechanics, a rather important change to character gen, and integration of some 1e supplement options. So, Version 2.
4th edition was an expansion of 3rd ed, with minor economics changes, and incorporating all but one table of the supplement Knights Adventurous, so essentially version 2.1. 3rd ed was still in distribution.
4½ ed was a small but potent change in Character Generation and expands combat options, but the released core, Book of Knights, lacks the non-CGen, non-combat, non-advancement mechanics. Essentially, a player's handbook to 4, call it 4.5. 4E remained in print, as well. This is truly a version 3, as the changes to character gen and combat are profoundly impactful on play.
5th Ed: Greg returned to design, made major changes to Character Gen (deleting the entire squire period), and his new math was, in essence, the same change to average outcomes as 4.5, which said, greg was VERY adamant it wasn't similar in outcome at all, that random in character gen was bad. (We exchanged about 6 long emails about it.) It's the fourth version of the rules.
5.1 was minor changes to 5.0, so version 4.1
5.2 was further minor changes to 5.1, so version 4.2 of the rules
6? I haven't checked.

A side branch, Paladin uses 5.2 as a baseline.

None of those editions are sufficiently different to be unable to use the characters of other editions, so adventures are usable... and hence ALL editions are "compatible"... but where it differs can dramatically alter the outcomes.

There is one element of 4.0 that isn't in any other edition: magic as a mechanic. And, per Greg, that was the worst edition addition ever; Me, I think it the best addition. YMMV... but, when 5th came out, 1st, 4th, and 4½ hit DTRPG.

Economics in editions: In KAP 1e, only bachelor knights are covered in Core; Nobles Book adds landholding.
KAP 3/4/4½ use a simplified single manor in core; The book Lordly Domains is a different mechanical approach from NB, and much more abstract, but also better at larger domains
KAP5.x has a single manor ruleset in core (pretty close to that of 4), plus Book of the Manor and Book of the Estate, for various more detailed and historic larger estates.

It should also be noted: 4½ was Green Knight Publications' edition. They were working on a lighter edition, but they only got the core and 3 adventure books out (The Tales of series). I don't know if they were going to do a magic book or not, but there was fan interest in a simpler one, especially one not using up to 10d20...