Mercurius
Legend
This was vaguely inspired by the adventure saturation and What Does The Game Need Now? threads. The basic question is this: What now for 5E, and has it reached "peak edition?"
Think of the concept of "peak oil" and apply it to a D&D edition. I am not talking about output of production as much as the arc of the edition as a whole. It is that point beyond which everything is a general trend of inevitable decline...maybe not quickly, but it is the high-point. You could also look at professional athletes and pin-point the year in which that player was at his or her very best. Maybe there were ups and downs after, and certainly many athletes have multiple peaks interspersed by valleys. But many also have a highest peak.
So have we reached peak edition with 5E, or is the best still to come? It has now been 4 years and 4 months since the Starter Set came out in July of 2014; by comparison, here is where previous editions were at 4.33 years in:
4E: Sept-Oct, 2012. The edition was defunct, with 5e having already been announced at the beginning of the year and the "D&D Next" playtest well underway.
3.5E: Nov, 2007. 4E had already been announced, a few months previously. 2007 saw a flurry of releases, but down from "peak production" of 2006, and WotC had started to move into compilations (Rules Compendium), homage/legacy products (the Expedition books) and edition-neutral products (e.g. Grand History of the Realms). I believe the last official 3.5 book was City of Stormreach for Eberron, published in February of 2008. So essentially 3.5 was also dead, or almost dead, 4.33 years in.
3E: Dec, 2004. 3.5 had been out for a year and a half, and was in high gear. So depending upon how you look at it, 3E was either dead or thriving in a new, improved form.
2E: July, 1993. Oh, a bygone era. The mid-90s saw more official D&D product published than in any other era, and it isn't particularly close. By my calculations, 1995 was the peak of 2E production, so 1993 was still a couple years shy of that. This was also the Golden Age of D&D settings, with a bunch of settings supported and Planescape on the horizon (1994).
1E: c. 1981-82. Hard to pinpoint an exact date, as the 1e Monster Manual was published in 1977 and the PHB in '78. But 1981 saw the publication of FIend Folio; 1982 was a light year, but then 1983 saw 1E hit its peak - with MM2, the new covers, Dragonlance, and probably the start of decline shortly thereafter.
OD&D: c. 1978. Well, we saw Holmes in '77 and 1E in '78, so OD&D was phased out as the primary form of D&D. B1: In Search of the Unknown was also published in '78.
Now obviously we cannot look to the early editions for how 5E might unfold; really, only 3E and beyond are relevant, as everything before was in the "Dark Ages" before the ubiquity of the internet.
So the questions, again:
- Where is 5E within its edition cycle?
- Has it reached "peak edition?"
- How might it age, relative to past editions?
- What do you see going forward, over the next 5-10ish years?
I'll offer some speculations, but will write them up in a reply.
Think of the concept of "peak oil" and apply it to a D&D edition. I am not talking about output of production as much as the arc of the edition as a whole. It is that point beyond which everything is a general trend of inevitable decline...maybe not quickly, but it is the high-point. You could also look at professional athletes and pin-point the year in which that player was at his or her very best. Maybe there were ups and downs after, and certainly many athletes have multiple peaks interspersed by valleys. But many also have a highest peak.
So have we reached peak edition with 5E, or is the best still to come? It has now been 4 years and 4 months since the Starter Set came out in July of 2014; by comparison, here is where previous editions were at 4.33 years in:
4E: Sept-Oct, 2012. The edition was defunct, with 5e having already been announced at the beginning of the year and the "D&D Next" playtest well underway.
3.5E: Nov, 2007. 4E had already been announced, a few months previously. 2007 saw a flurry of releases, but down from "peak production" of 2006, and WotC had started to move into compilations (Rules Compendium), homage/legacy products (the Expedition books) and edition-neutral products (e.g. Grand History of the Realms). I believe the last official 3.5 book was City of Stormreach for Eberron, published in February of 2008. So essentially 3.5 was also dead, or almost dead, 4.33 years in.
3E: Dec, 2004. 3.5 had been out for a year and a half, and was in high gear. So depending upon how you look at it, 3E was either dead or thriving in a new, improved form.
2E: July, 1993. Oh, a bygone era. The mid-90s saw more official D&D product published than in any other era, and it isn't particularly close. By my calculations, 1995 was the peak of 2E production, so 1993 was still a couple years shy of that. This was also the Golden Age of D&D settings, with a bunch of settings supported and Planescape on the horizon (1994).
1E: c. 1981-82. Hard to pinpoint an exact date, as the 1e Monster Manual was published in 1977 and the PHB in '78. But 1981 saw the publication of FIend Folio; 1982 was a light year, but then 1983 saw 1E hit its peak - with MM2, the new covers, Dragonlance, and probably the start of decline shortly thereafter.
OD&D: c. 1978. Well, we saw Holmes in '77 and 1E in '78, so OD&D was phased out as the primary form of D&D. B1: In Search of the Unknown was also published in '78.
Now obviously we cannot look to the early editions for how 5E might unfold; really, only 3E and beyond are relevant, as everything before was in the "Dark Ages" before the ubiquity of the internet.
So the questions, again:
- Where is 5E within its edition cycle?
- Has it reached "peak edition?"
- How might it age, relative to past editions?
- What do you see going forward, over the next 5-10ish years?
I'll offer some speculations, but will write them up in a reply.
