D&D 5E Do you think we'll see revised core books in 2024? (And why I think we will)

[Parmandur]

I don't think 2E is as similar to 1E as folks like to think. The entire aesthetic changes, the kinds of worlds and modules published were very different, and it shed a lot of fiddly Gygaxian rules. It is true that you can run 1E material easily with 2E but that isn't the same as saying 2E wasn't markedly different.

My understanding is that some people just brought 1E characters to 2E games with no changes. Most of what you are citing is game line and anesthetics, not the rules of the game.

 

[Parmandur]

Before the Millennials came along, Time Magazine, etc., was always full of articles talking about how Gen X were terrible for refusing to believe in the rat race.

As a Millenial, I was all ready to run the rat race, but it broke around the time I graduated College.

 

[Malmuria]

I prefer an approach of tackling some of the more racist tropes head-on. I think it can be done; though it might require changing some assumptions about what D&D worlds look like and hence how D&D typically plays.

That's actually what I mean. You can run a keep on the borderlands-esque scenario, but you don't have to just assume that the players are there to clear the area of the Bad Guys. Rather you have factions, different claims to land, recent and distant histories, and you dump 1st level characters into the middle of all that. The game would change a bit, because the players would have to debate who, if anyone, is in the 'right' and what, if anything, they can do about it. Zedeck Siew's Lorn Song of the Bachelor is a good example of how some authors are trying to take elements of classic play but take more seriously the ethics of the default situation (but in a way that is gameable).

 

[Malmuria]

Are you saying that all D&D worlds are "lazy worldbuilding," or just certain ones? Or just the default assumptions?

Part of what I mean is the implicit setting as laid out in the monster manual, which has all the well-know problems in the way they categorize humanoid groups ("savage," "feral," "bloodlust," etc). But patient zero for this kind of things is the Forgotten-f-ing-realms. There's not shortage of lore across several editions, along with an extensive novel series, and yet it continually defaults to one-dimensional, mono-chromatic fantasy tropes. Even the layout of the world is a lazy recreation of earth. As Gus L writes,

"Forgotten Realms was the worst thing to happen to D&D, a terrible setting that reeks of bathos and takes itself far too seriously. It plunders everything cliched and overused from Tolkien but abandons all the strange sadness and the mythological references. It fills the land with huge civilized bastions of good/order like Waterdeep and exhaustively defines their systems of governance, but allows these nations to be plagued by trifling enemies like goblin tribes. Forgotten Realms embraces a pedantic faux-medievalism, but then uses a contemporary positivist understanding to explain magic that allows for cutesy magical technology to gloss over the inconvenient aspects of the pre-modern. Most offensively, most objectionably, Forgotten Realms is a dense, full, world - so steeped in cliched lore and laid out so extensively in dull gazetteers that there is no room for a GM's creativity without excising some of the existing setting and map."

 

[Oofta]

That's actually what I mean. You can run a keep on the borderlands-esque scenario, but you don't have to just assume that the players are there to clear the area of the Bad Guys. Rather you have factions, different claims to land, recent and distant histories, and you dump 1st level characters into the middle of all that. The game would change a bit, because the players would have to debate who, if anyone, is in the 'right' and what, if anything, they can do about it. Zedeck Siew's Lorn Song of the Bachelor is a good example of how some authors are trying to take elements of classic play but take more seriously the ethics of the default situation (but in a way that is gameable).

All of that is fine if that's what your group enjoys. There's nothing stopping you from doing any of that with any edition of D&D.

However, for a lot of people D&D is all about escapism and entertainment. For the most part I don't want deep philosophical debates or dilemmas. The real world is messy, I play games to escape from the real world for a little bit. I think that's a big appeal of the game and a big part of why it's so popular.

 

[Malmuria]

All of that is fine if that's what your group enjoys. There's nothing stopping you from doing any of that with any edition of D&D.

However, for a lot of people D&D is all about escapism and entertainment. For the most part I don't want deep philosophical debates or dilemmas. The real world is messy, I play games to escape from the real world for a little bit. I think that's a big appeal of the game and a big part of why it's so popular.

To be clear, I don't expect WOTC to do any of this. This is why I think there will be a 5.1 edition rather than a 5.5 or 6e. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if for that edition they rewrite the PHB but not the MM, so as to not contradict existing lore.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

At this point, you seem to be willfully ignoring what I mean by "orcs raised by elves." Again, I did not suggest that they say that in the books. I used that an example of how race and culture are different, and that WotC should clarify that no race is inherently evil as a biological species, but cultures can be.

If you don’t disagree that it’s a bad idea to present the idea that orcs would be not evil if raised by non-orcs, why are you arguing with me?

 

[Mercurius]

That's actually what I mean. You can run a keep on the borderlands-esque scenario, but you don't have to just assume that the players are there to clear the area of the Bad Guys. Rather you have factions, different claims to land, recent and distant histories, and you dump 1st level characters into the middle of all that. The game would change a bit, because the players would have to debate who, if anyone, is in the 'right' and what, if anything, they can do about it. Zedeck Siew's Lorn Song of the Bachelor is a good example of how some authors are trying to take elements of classic play but take more seriously the ethics of the default situation (but in a way that is gameable).

"Don't have to" is the operative phrase. Meaning, why either/or rather than both/and?

WotC's approach of "one and done" settings fits this perfectly. Each setting can have its own underlying assumptions and tropes, all riffing off the core D&D mythos.

Meaning, I don't think it is a good solution to change the core assumption from one set of thematic assumptions to another, even a "nicer" one. Rather, open it up so that any and all thematic assumptions are possible - which is already the case, but WotC could make it more explicit.

Part of what I mean is the implicit setting as laid out in the monster manual, which has all the well-know problems in the way they categorize humanoid groups ("savage," "feral," "bloodlust," etc). But patient zero for this kind of things is the Forgotten-f-ing-realms. There's not shortage of lore across several editions, along with an extensive novel series, and yet it continually defaults to one-dimensional, mono-chromatic fantasy tropes. Even the layout of the world is a lazy recreation of earth. As Gus L writes,

Well, the Forgotten Realms isn't Harn, Tekumel or Talislanta. But it is playable -- I think that's the point. What it lacks for in artistry and realism, it gains by being a kitchen sink that works perfectly fine with "standard" D&D.

Again, I think the best path forward is both/and rather than either/or. There's no reason that D&D can't be a platform to embrace a wide range of play styles, be it endlessly killing things and taking their stuff or a quest to turn the land into a paradise or...anything you want.

I think WotC's main task, in this regard--or what I think there main task should be, is to provide options and examples of a diverse worlds and play-styles. In that regard, there's a place for the Forgotten Realms, regardless of how it fails to stand up to the Medieval realism of Harn or the thematic texture of Dark Sun or the psychedic creativity of Talislanta.

If you don’t disagree that it’s a bad idea to present the idea that orcs would be not evil if raised by non-orcs, why are you arguing with me?

I'd like to think that we're discussing, not arguing . But that particular line of discussion came about from Maimuria's suggestion about differentiation race and culture and my contention that a lot of confusion arises from conflating the two, and that differentiating them would go a long way to not throw the baby out with the bathwater, as far as races are concerned.

 

[Mercurius]

7%! Alright.

This is something where the crowd often gets it wrong, so, so far, so good.

The timing is just too perfetct. And they are telegraphing. More than just a 5.2.

It won't be like 4e. But there would be enough to call it a new edition.

Haha. Or it might be wishful thinking, on your part. Hey, didn't we go back and forth about a hypothetical "5E" way back in 2010-11, iirc?

But I agree with you, at least with the "more than 5.2" part. I voted 5.3 to 5.5 and have said that I think 5.3 is more likely, but that may be conservative. But I'd be very surprised if we saw more than 5.5 (or the shift from 3E to 3.5E). That would be foolish, given the popularity of the game. But for reasons already stated--the cash cow that are core rulebooks, 10 years of working over the game to find its strengths and weaknesses, and shifting socio-cultural attitudes--makes a revised edition a no-brainer (at least in my brain!).

But "enough to call it a new edition?" That really only makes sense if A) you considered 3.5 a new edition over 3, and B) they can find someway to make it easily backwards compatible...which brings us back to the 5.3-5.5 range.

I think where most agree is that whatever the changes are, it won't be called anything other than "D&D" and the books will, at most, say something like "50th anniversary" and/or "5E revised edition." They won't call it 5.5 or 6E, imo.

 

[Staffan]

Very interesting points. I was just discussing with my wife that 5e doesn’t actually include “getting loot” as anything other than a presented play expectation that no one really questions. There are literally no mechanics that require or even really even strongly incentivize the pursuit of coin.

You can run 5e without ever including a magic item, or giving out more gold than the characters would earn as skilled/expert laborers, and...nothing else about the game changes.

I definitely think this both informs and is informed by the gaming/storytelling assumptions and priorities of millennial and genZ gamers. I know I haven’t seen any characters in 5e that were motivated by loot.

Interesting point, particularly since one of the criticisms I often see levied against 5e from gamers raised on 3e and 4e is "There's nothing to do with gold!"

In the abstract, I do prefer to have magic items and other power-ups disconnected from the mundane economy. In practice, doing so would probably also require reducing the amount of expected loot, or at least provide a bunch of things to spend it on. There's also the issue that reducing the amount of magic items available generally hurts martial characters more than it does casters (because martials rely on items to do anything special), so you probably want to keep a fair influx of items into your game, but that then asks the question "If all these items are around, where do they come from, and why isn't there a market for them?"