D&D General 6e guesses

[payn]

Maybe you look up first a bit on gamedesign before you insult me just because you dont know what elegance in gamedesign means? I know its trendy in RPGs to not understand gamedesign, but some people come from other genres of games like me and do.

"Elegant" design has an element of aesthetic that is useful to the user. Its not a good term to use when comparing entirely different systems in any way but "I like that one better" Its also been coded edition war speak since '08 in the D&D space.

 

[TwoSix]

This isn't a marriage, though. You are allowed to move on if it's not working for you any longer, especially since, with all the fantasy games out there, the style of play you're looking for is almost certainly available in multiple game lines today.

I play plenty of other games. I've advocated for many of them on these boards.

I'm not looking for A style of play. I'm looking for more new stuff, because I like new things. New stuff is fun!

I mean, this forum was way more fun in 2012/2013 when we were anticipating a new edition, that it was in 2022/2023 for the extremely muted changes of 5.5. Don't you want to be excited about a big new change?

 

[payn]

]
If you're still playing 3e/PF1, how is it NOT evergreen?

Both are past editions at this point. Evergreen in the sense that Next used it was that this is it. D&D from here on out will just be iterations of this system. That, hasnt been accomplished.

 

[TwoSix]

Both are past editions at this point. Evergreen in the sense that Next used it was that this is it. D&D from here on out will just be iterations of this system. That, hasnt been accomplished.

I thought it was a silly idea when they first announced it, and I still think it's just marketing-speak.

"Evergreen" is just an illusion of permanence, right up until it becomes obvious that it would be more profitable to make a change.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I mean, this forum was way more fun in 2012/2013 when we were anticipating a new edition, that it was in 2022/2023 for the extremely muted changes of 5.5. Don't you want to be excited about a big new change?

Given the state of 2026, I have more excitement (if that's the word) about big new changes than I can handle.

I just want to play RPGs with my friends. I don't care about the spectator sport of arguing about it.

 

[roger semerad]

WotC has kind of designed and marketed DnD into a corner, I have a hard time imagining it changing significantly. That makes me sad, I'm a huge fan of 4th edition and I like seeing bold new things. WotC has only reinforced the idea that DnD can't and shouldn't change over the years as an overcompensation for trying to bring in people who hated 4th. I don't envy the DnD designers, how the bleep do you address actual problems without fundamentally changing anything? For this reason, I don't think the designers themselves would be the driving force behind a 6th edition.

No, that would come from Hasbro corporate, and they really, really, really, really, REALLY, want deep digital integration with a mandatory subscription service. A 6th edition would be built entirely around that.

 

[Tigris]

"Elegant" design has an element of aesthetic that is useful to the user. Its not a good term to use when comparing entirely different systems in any way but "I like that one better" Its also been coded edition war speak since '08 in the D&D space.

Just because you dont have the ability to use the term elegance/understand what it means in gamedesign does not make it less useful.


I have it, if you dont understand gamedesign enough to understand that term, then dont reply to people using it. I also dont respond to people speaking chinese saying that their words are not useful because I dont understand them.


It is used since 2008 because 4E was the first edition to use modern gamedesign principles (similar to what Magic the Gathering uses since its change to the Modern frame), of which one is elegance, this means you would have had 18 years to learn the term since then...


I can tell you, many people understand what it means and one can also see elegance in games which one does not like. Like how I several times said that PF2 made the XP table really elegant. They took the ratio from 4E (divided by 2), but they managed to make a huge XP table more elegant by making it only depend on level difference of enemy to player.

Do I like PF2? Hell no its made by the 7th best 4E designer and it shows (and also has a different target audience with targeting people who want to feel clever by having systerm mastery), but this part of it is really elegant and I even tell people to use this simplification for 4E.


I also think that in principal only having advantage and disadvantage as modifiers is more elegant than having many small modifiers, but the problem is that this does not work. Thats why 5E had to add many unelegant solutions like adding 1dX to dice rolls, because advantage is too binary.


Thats where a 6E could learn from this mistake and implement an elegant system from ground up, which does not need many unelegant exceptions to make it work.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

WotC has only reinforced the idea that DnD can't and shouldn't change over the years as an overcompensation for trying to bring in people who hated 4th.

I don't think they're worried about 4E, per se. They just want to steady stream of revenue. Giving people an off-ramp by doing things very differently (before 4E, 3E did the same, and White Wolf did it when they wrapped up the Old World of Darkness by "giving people what they wanted") is bad for stock prices.

But yes, they're unlikely to do anything radical until/unless that changes, which is why you have people predicting, without evidence, that 5E will suddenly crater in a few years, because they want to give WotC the freedom to do something different.

In the meantime, those different games are already out there. People who are frustrated with 5E should play them. A lot of them are great!

 

[Scribe]

People like D&D for its D&Disms.

All of which exist in other games.

People want the name, or the appeal to authority, or even less useful things.

 

[mamba]

]If you're still playing 3e/PF1, how is it NOT evergreen?

I guess the argument is that if 3e had been evergreen for them, they would be playing 3e still, but they are playing PF1 instead