D&D (2024) Do you plan to adopt D&D5.5One2024Redux?

[Parmandur]

Everyone's spent twice the cost per book for 5E stuff

OK, looked it up,the 1989 PHB cost $20, which is $50 and some change now. So anyone who buys the new PHB from Amazon or Target will be paying less than someone buying new in 1989 did, and $10 difference for buying at the FLGS is peanuts.

 

[Oofta]

tl;dr: If 2E books were still in original printing quality, I'd still be buying those to this day. That was a fantastic collection, with plenty of resources for extremely high-quality games, without getting grossly overcomplicated by 395 base classes and 1,125 prestige classes of 3rd Edition.

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This may just be two cents from an old Grognard, but I have to say, I'm really disappointed by the support this movement gets. How millions of people can spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on a tiny handful of 5E books, then turn around and amicably start all over again just blows my mind.

I must not be made of money like everyone around me or something.

5E doesn't have even half of the number of sourcebooks and reference materials of 1e, 2E, and especially not 3E, but here we are. Everyone's spent twice the cost per book for 5E stuff, many paying double that because of physical plus digital copies, only to now start brand new with this essentially 6E stuff even though 5E is really still in its infancy, despite being 10 years old now.

It's even worse for online players and DMs. They wasted a veritable fortune— the equivalence of car and/or mortgage payments! —on stuff which will now be outdated and useless. How do they not see DnDBeyond/5E/et al now has a future of being discontinued, then fully unsupported, and finally completely inaccessible at all anymore online.

All because players gave in to the corporate greed and got suckered into 6E. 5E itself has already felt the fracture, with big names like Kobold Press abandoning D&D to make their own (arguably: terribly and cringey-named) RPG.

And just like 3.x, the new 5.whateverthehell books, adventures, and resources are going to confuse relatively new players and DMs, who won't know what goes with what.

TSR put out a lot of material, whether it sold at a profit or not. Good news is it's still widely available either online or in PDF format so it hasn't gone anywhere if it's the kind of thing you enjoy. That, and rule changes don't really affect lore.

 

[mamba]

How millions of people can spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on a tiny handful of 5E books, then turn around and amicably start all over again just blows my mind.

we will have to see how many buy the new ones, but even so, didn’t you buy 2e after having bought 1e? I know I did

It's even worse for online players and DMs. They wasted a veritable fortune— the equivalence of car and/or mortgage payments! —on stuff which will now be outdated and useless.

I’d argue the old core books are useless, nothing else yet is (the expanded core eventually will be), and I am pretty sure others will disagree with me about even the old core books (presumably mostly the old PHB)

And just like 3.x, the new 5.whateverthehell books, adventures, and resources are going to confuse relatively new players and DMs, who won't know what goes with what.

that is what compatibility is for, they all go together, and the old core will no longer be for sale, limiting the confusion

 

[Parmandur]

we will have to see how many buy the new ones, but even so, didn’t you buy 2e after having bought 1e? I know I did


I’d argue the old core books are useless, nothing else yet is (the expanded core eventually will be), and I am pretty sure others will disagree with me about even the old core books (presumably mostly the old PHB)


that is what compatibility is for, they all go together, and the old core will no longer be for sale, limiting the confusion

I would quibble about the old Xore being worthless, but actually I would point to the beautiful mess thst is the DMG: there is some solid gold stuff in there that I don't expect will be in the new DMG, even if the DMG is looking yo very better fit to purpose (particularly all tge tables in Chapter 5: I think the apparent loads of Adventure material will take their place).

 

[mamba]

I would quibble about the old Xore being worthless, but actually I would point to the beautiful mess thst is the DMG

I did not expect anything to be removed, just better organization, some updates (e.g. encounter building), maybe some Xanathar stuff and some new stuff, so a straightforward improvement. Ultimately I have no idea what we will get however

 

[Stormbow]

we will have to see how many buy the new ones, but even so, didn’t you buy 2e after having bought 1e? I know I did


I’d argue the old core books are useless, nothing else yet is (the expanded core eventually will be), and I am pretty sure others will disagree with me about even the old core books (presumably mostly the old PHB)


that is what compatibility is for, they all go together, and the old core will no longer be for sale, limiting the confusion

I actually went from the BECMI sets— which I had to steal; my family was that kind of broke and hyper-religious —to 2nd Edition. I was doing BECMI games from the very early 80's until high school where a bunch of classmates were running 2E, so I dove in on that one to play with them. Good times, for sure— before school; during lunch; after school; and then all weekend long. LOL

I didn't pick up any 1E books until later in the high school years to join yet another friend-group's games. I ended up with just a few of those, because mostly we all played 2E back then too.

 

[Parmandur]

I did not expect anything to be removed, just better organization, some updates (e.g. encounter building), maybe some Xanathar stuff and some new stuff, so a straightforward improvement. Ultimately I have no idea what we will get however

Oh, I may need wrong, but my impression from Perkins rundown of the co tents is that there is a bunch of stuff that won't be making the cut.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This whole "override the GM" thing is ridiculous. 5e was written to be a collaboration between players and the DM. But don't take my word for it:

L: How important is role-playing in Dungeons & Dragons? It felt to me like 4th Edition was basically a war game. There were so many powers and combat took forever. But now combat is very quick, and I think that feels more like the D&D that I grew up with.

JC: It's vital. D&D is, at its heart, a storytelling game where everyone at the table is a collaborator in the creation of the story. We felt it was important to embrace roleplaying and embrace it in a prominent way—not only on the character sheet, but also in the amount of pages we devoted to it in the Player's Handbook on personalities and backgrounds. Partially to wave the flag of storytelling and roleplaying, but also because if a group isn't into a lot of storytelling and roleplaying, and they really do want a more tactical "fight monsters, get experience," it is much for them to ignore the roleplaying material than it is for us to have a game that's serving just the tactical play and having to try to make it clear that there's still a roleplaying game.

Source

That's Crawford, right? I don't agree withbhis interpretation that the heart of D&D (and he clearly wasn't just talking about 5e) is "collaborative storytelling".

 

[Micah Sweet]

I did not expect anything to be removed, just better organization, some updates (e.g. encounter building), maybe some Xanathar stuff and some new stuff, so a straightforward improvement. Ultimately I have no idea what we will get however

To be fair, they're already removing half-elf and half-orc, according to recent reports.

 

[mamba]

To be fair, they're already removing half-elf and half-orc, according to recent reports.

that is a matter of perspective, there will still be both in 2024. I am not ruling out that they remove anything from the DMG, I just was not expecting it