D&D 5E Asking for a bit of recent D&D history

[Zardnaar]

The other thing no one's mentioned.

Edition churn.

3.0 lasted 3 years in print, 3.5 five years, 4E four years (plus limited online support)

I think people over rated 3.5 brokeness online be. I don't think most players played that way or owned the books. 3E was very big at the time.

OSR started in 3E but really picked up in 4E. Two factors.

1. Rejecting 4E burned out on 3E. It was very easy to recruit 3E player (and 4E).

2. Kickstarter. You could download OSRIC or buy early Castles and Crusades but kickstarter funded a lot of OSR games (still does).

 

[TwoSix]

They use AEDU powers and retconned the entire lore.

Well, now I'm a lot more interested in the playtest!

 

[teitan]

WHat everyone said here. I was excited. I didn't participate in the playtest but I was burnt out on 3.5 that PF didn't appeal to me and 4e made zero sense because it needed so many core rules and the maths were off. The only irony is that people talk about how poorly 4e sold and how well pathfinder sold except... they sold the same. D&D outsold Pathfinder until 4e went into it's end of the line slow down and started releasing products every couple months and then edition neutral materials.

 

[darjr]

Well, now I'm a lot more interested in the playtest!

The playtests were a blast. I loved an early one where advantage was something everyone , especially fighters, were dropping left and right. So cool.

 

[guachi]

5e succeeded because of people like me, someone who completely skipped out on 3e and 4e, saw 5e was coming out, read the free rules before the PHB was even published, thought it looked good, made a thread on another RPG website about 5e from the perspective of someone with zero knowledge of 3e and 4e, got a lot of good response (many because they knew there'd be no edition warring from me), and have been playing on and off ever since.

Yes, 5e is as big as it is currently not because of people like me. But it succeeded initially because it really was good at what it was trying to be - one edition that could satisfy most players (both current and past). The fanbase was there, it just needed rules people could coalesce around.

 

[Guest 6948803]

The playtests were a blast. I loved an early one where advantage was something everyone , especially fighters, were dropping left and right. So cool.

To be honest, I DMed one single playtest session (it was first or second playtest packet) but my players, decided they rather want to play 7thSea campaign, we went with that and forgot about D&D for another few years.
However, Advantage mechanics was something we all praised and appreciated. Someone had great idea.