D&D General 5.5E--new edition or not?

[Jahydin]

We did fine. We sold a ton of stuff. It was our best UKGE ever. So this isn't a 'woe is me' story; we did great. But you know what we couldn't sell? Not a single copy?

Our 5E stuff. Without fail, people would ask "is this for 5.5E?" We'd answer "it was originally written for 5E, but 5.5E is fully compatible" and they'd pull a face and walk off. Over and over again.

Of course, we could have lied and just said yes, and because it is compatible, they'd be just fine with their purchase. But we're cursed with that honesty bug. So we sold exactly ZERO produces for 5E. We sold lots of other stuff. We sold 5.5E stuff. We sold WOIN and ACE stuff. But '5E' was dead in the water. In three days, over hundreds of sales, not a single 5E item could we sell.

This is exactly what happened with 3.5 and why WotC has been so careful not to repeat the same mistake. They've had two chances now and I think both were unsuccessful in convincing customers they were the same.

For insight, as a customer, my thought process with these half-step editions is reassurance that the product I've already bought is still good to go. That being said, my desire to purchase new (to me) product for the "old" system plummets. It's 100% not fair to designers, retailers, and the 3rd party game companies, but it's just the truth with how these things go. It's one of the reasons I really dislike roll outs like these, they just never seem successful. The complete upset to the ecosystem just isn't worth whatever minor changes they've came up with. This isn't even D&D exclusive, Savage Worlds, GURPS, and Pathfinder 2e have all went through these huge upsets for minimal rule changes and it just doesn't seem to every work out for anyone.

Not sure what the right move for companies in this situation, but if they think there's still a market for their product, mimicking the 3rd party Savage Worlds companies is probably the best route. They bit the bullet and revised their products with the tiny tweaks needed to get it completely compatible with Adventure Edition so they could slap the logo on the front and be done with it. Maybe just offering a free digital product for compatibility that's free with purchase of the "old" books would suffice? I know it would for me.

 

[Imaro]

3.5 pretty much did it too & nobody's even hinted at it despite all of the 3.5 talk earlier in the thread.

Im a little confused...did what?

With 5e having an effectively frozen codebase of a system for everything but options for players to put on their character sheet it ultimately made the 2024 changes more monumental than doing some fraction of it bit by bit over the decade prior

Im also confused by this, other than monster math what are these monumental changes?

 

[Morrus]

Talking to everyone here, not you in particular. As I can see from replies to this, there is even disagreement on that.

I’ll rephrase. What matters to me, selling the games, is customer behaviour.

 

[Deset Gled]

Im a little confused...did what?

Did game updates through errata rather than a new edition (or half edition, etc). There's even a 3.5e Rules Compendium that was released late in the product cycle with all the errata and updates, but was clearly marketed as a reprinting of the 3.5e rules, not a new edition.

There's also the 2e Rules Cyclopedia. But 2e was always much more of a splintered rules system, so it's not a great comparison.

 

[abazaba]

Given the compatibility of D&D 5E, D&D 5.5E, Level Up, Tales of the Valiant, and whatever else, it seems bizarre to me that people were pulling faces and harumphing off.

Is there some feeling out there that 5E and 5.5E are not compatible? Or not compatible enough? Or do these folks simply not know how compatible they are, or assume they aren't compatible enough to bother with?

Weird.

For me personally, 5e and 5.5e are different enough to not make them compatible. The rules , feats, spells, monsters, class and subclasses all changed so much it makes me feel that they are not compatible.

I get what you're saying though (even if I don't agree): I think I heard @SlyFlourish state on his 'Lazy RPG Talk Show' that he once mixed all of 'D&D 5e 2014', 'D&D 5.5e 2024', 'Level Up A5E', and 'Tales of the Valiant' in the very same campaign, and it all turned out just fine for him.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think the subjectivity of whether corebooks can be made obsolete us where we might disagree... again, looking at 4th...many and some pretty massive changes but never called out as a new edition.

I was absolutely called out as a new edition though, that’s my point. People debated about it just like they debate about 5.5, but the consumer behaviors followed the same pattern - once the revised core books were out, nobody wanted to buy material that was designed to work with the pre-revision core books. Granted, apparently nobody wanted to buy 4e anyway, but among those of us who were playing 4e, Essentials divided us the same way new editions always divide their playerbases.

 

[tetrasodium]

Im a little confused...did what?

It was so common for 3.5 books to have minor clarifications & modifications either outright in text or with behind the curtain sidebars that I doubt there are many that didn't... For example I assumed BoVD's liquid pain would be with one but instead it references the chapter3 evil spell components section & the book itself has "variant rules" as chapter2, that was not at all uncommon. Book of exalted deeds likewise has a variant rules ch2 while complete warrior has a ch3 "supplemental rules"

Im also confused by this, other than monster math what are these monumental changes?

You can go further though & kiij at things like phb2 , unearthed arcana(it literally had a ToC note that differentiated 18 distinct new "house rules" & 29 "behind the curtain" sections).

I want to say magic item compendium had a bunch new wrt crafting magic items & some new types of items, plus tons & tons of stuff like that extending and hooking into existing mechanics in new ways across many many books. I'm not even getting into book of 9 swords tome of battle otherwise known as proto-4e in 3.5 & similar Then there was alllllllll the errata

Edit: in fact 3.5 did such a good job of doing it beneath the radar that I got called out and questioned for details when I mentioned it

 

[Scribe]

Is there some feeling out there that 5E and 5.5E are not compatible? Or not compatible enough? Or do these folks simply not know how compatible they are, or assume they aren't compatible enough to bother with?

The math is different, the balance is different. Sure, you can mix and match a lot at the table, but 5 is not 5.5, fundamentally.

 

[Belen]

Really? I yell at my computer all the time. Stupid thing.

Same. I just finished setting up a new router and updated mesh network and it was a cluster. It did not help that their own diagrams were wrong for connecting the modem and the mesh network was showing weak in places it used to be strong

 

[Retreater]

Our group switched from 5e to 5.5e once our 5e campaign finished, and never looked back. We do not use (or buy) anything that was originally designed for 5e, despite the claims of it all being 'compatible'. If the cover does not explicitly say '5.5e', it gets ignored/skipped.

Ok, so I've barely been following 5.5, but is there anything for it yet?
In my mind there's the core books, a starter set with about two sessions worth of adventure (from what I've heard), a few campaign setting books (Forgotten Realms, Eberron, and Ravenloft - which I've heard are mostly reprints or fluff), and a disconnected anthology of dragon adventures.
Anything by 3rd party is probably not actually 5.5 because the system hasn't been out long enough for anyone to actually publish anything with it.
Like, for me there doesn't seem to be enough content for a month of gaming with official 5.5 stuff.