D&D (2024) Does anyone else think that 1D&D will create a significant divide in the community?

[Ogre Mage]

I have seen a "significant divide" with the release of 3.X, 4E (a gigantic divide in this case) and 5E. If the World Wide Web had existed when 2E came out I strongly believe I would have seen a divide as well.

I expect there will be divide with the new edition and we will have 5E grognards. There's no reason One D&D should be an exception.

 

[tetrasodium]

I have seen a "significant divide" with the release of 3.X, 4E (a gigantic divide in this case) and 5E. If the World Wide Web had existed when 2E came out I strongly believe I would have seen a divide as well.

I expect there will be divide with the new edition and we will have 5E grognards. There's no reason One D&D should be an exception.

Possibly but I think the lack of useful gm guidance combined with "you can do whatever you want in your <distasteful tone>home game</distasteful tone>, but officially it should be..." & the munchkin levels of design present in some area of the rules creates constant pressure for the one true way of 5e. With at least two of those three changing with 6e it diverts that internet pressure that you note.

 

[overgeeked]

I'm not saying it will but that it could. Part of me thinks that the changes we are seeing will be scaled back due to negative feedback and not be as many big proposed changes that we have seen so far in the playtest material.

I don't believe this is an actual playtest in the vein of D&D Next or any other playtest. They've more than likely already decided what changes they're going to make and will massage the released "playtest" documents to generate the feedback they want or simply ignore feedback that goes against what they've already decided. They released Experts 4 October, opened the survey 20 October and it will close after 14 days. So a whopping 16 days to use it before the survey opens and a total of 30 days to use it before the survey closes. The responses they're getting are not playtest responses, rather they're gut reaction, reading it a few times, and maybe...maybe trying it once or twice at the table.

But if the level of changes (or something close) that we are seeing go through, the game will be changed quite a bit. It will still have the same basic structure/mechanics but there will be limits to how much mixing and matching can happen between 5e and 1D&D.

Currently you can't use the more powerful Races from 5e (which provide Ability increases) with the Backgrounds from character origins playtest (which provide Ability Increases and a feat) and pick a Class from 5e with a subclass from 1 D&D (or vice versa) that have a different number of subclass features at different levels. And yes they cover the ability score increase in a sidebar and can make conversion rules for other things. But freely mixing and matching will through off the balance of things.

Backwards compatibility is a marketing gimmick to soften the drop in sales the announcement of a new edition brings.

But with the amount of changes we are seeing (if a similar amount make it into the final product) I know there will be groups that don't change to the new rules and am sure there will be groups that will abandon all the old rules and just stick to just the new. Other groups may use a houseruled mix of the 2.

It happens every edition.

It is possible this with will create a divide in the community where some people are not buying the new material that is being produced by WotC and maybe even being supported by some 3rd party publishers that stick with 5e.

The vast majority of players will switch over to the new. Especially with the new stuff being inherently more powerful than the old stuff.

So while there is certain to be a divide, how significant do you currently think it will be? It might only be a small number of groups that don't convert to the new rules and stop buying any new books from WotC. Just like with every edition change some groups will remain with the edition they are used to/like. But will the size of this 5e only community be significant? Could the divide be big enough that 1D&D actually, ironically, creates a need to make a new 6e to reunite the community? (Probably not?)

The holdover fan community will likely be bigger than any other previous edition, except maybe AD&D and the variations of Basic. Maybe. It will definitely utterly dwarf most other non-D&D communities. Edition changes cause fandom splits. The best WotC can hope for is that the split will be small. It all depends on how significant the changes are and how invested players are. The bigger the changes and the more invested the player, the less likely they are to switch. Unless they happen to have heaps of disposable income.

And with the changes you have seen so far, if they all pretty much make it into the finished 1D&D release, would you and your group change to the new version?

My main D&D group is switching to DCC for the time being. We might go back to AD&D. We might pick up OSE. Who knows. We're incredibly tired of the fantasy superhero, no challenge, cakewalk nature of 5E. We'll look at 5.5 after it drops and go from there. Unless there's a serious shake up in direction, the chances of us playing 5.5 are negligible.

What are your thoughts so far about this?

Some people love it and good for them. I don't think the minor tweaks they've released so far are enough to make me and mine enthusiastic about 5.5. Kinda the opposite. Power escalation, more feats, 1st-level feats, feat chains, clear drive and focus on digital...it's going the wrong direction for us. But that's what sells, so that's what WotC chases.

 

[Marandahir]

I don't believe this is an actual playtest in the vein of D&D Next or any other playtest. They've more than likely already decided what changes they're going to make and will massage the released "playtest" documents to generate the feedback they want or simply ignore feedback that goes against what they've already decided. They released Experts 4 October, opened the survey 20 October and it will close after 14 days. So a whopping 16 days to use it before the survey opens and a total of 30 days to use it before the survey closes. The responses they're getting are not playtest responses, rather they're gut reaction, reading it a few times, and maybe...maybe trying it once or twice at the table.

Survey is closing on November 10th - that's 21 days after opening and 37 days after release. You're welcome to your own conspiracy theories, but don't be surprised if most of us are going to take WotC at their word, if somewhat skeptically. After all, many UAs in the past have seen major revisions based on negative feedback from players.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Survey is closing on November 10th - that's 21 days after opening and 37 days after release. You're welcome to your own conspiracy theories, but don't be surprised if most of us are going to take WotC at their word, if somewhat skeptically. After all, many UAs in the past have seen major revisions based on negative feedback from players.

I think it is indeed not a real playtest. It is more of a feeltest.
But calling it a marketing ploy is most probably... just forget it. Won't convince anyone.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I think "playtest" is probably the wrong word to use actually (based upon traditional usage.) All of us in the general public are not meant to be "testing" the "game" part of these rules to make sure the rules work 100%. They have their own internal and external alpha and beta testers for that. This was true for D&D Next, has been true through all the UAs, and is true for One D&D. We are not here to make sure the rules "work".

What we are here for is to give our impressions of interest and usability of the rules they present us. Do we like these ideas they are putting forth? Do they make us say to ourselves "Hmm! That's a good change! I like that idea!"... or do we say "Ugh! Why the heck are they doing that?!?" And they are using those responses to determine whether or not to continue down the paths they have been looking.

We don't need to create Bard PCs and "test" in actual games whether or not we like the Arcane / Divine / Primal spell list switch, and the Bard's use of only certain schools from the Arcane list. We get our reactions immediately upon reading the playtest packet and can say to them without much thought at all whether or not we think that change is a good idea. Hopefully everyone who did or did not like the change from Class spell lists to Power Source spell lists actually said so in the survey (I know I certainly did) because that's the way WotC will know whether or not to continue using it for the next packet.

Yes, some of the more cynical among us will believe that the Power Source spell lists are here to stay because WotC wants it and no responses to the playtest packets will ever change that because the "playtest" isn't "real". Frankly though, I think those people are being silly. Because there is absolutely nothing for Jeremy, Chris et. al. to gain by ignoring what people's responses in the surveys are. Waste of time spent designing the rules that we then say we don't like? These people write and design rules all the time-- that's most of their jobs! They create rules and ideas that don't get used constantly every day... so why would these rules in these playtest packets be so sacrosanct that they'd ignore our statements of displeasure and keep using them even though a lot of us said they didn't work? That's just dumb. And I do not believe Jeremy, Chris et. al. are dumb.

Of course... this belief won't matter if it turns out that enough actually liked or were ambivalent to Power Source spell lists that WotC felt comfortable continuing down that road... which will of course result in those cynics who didn't like them to keep screaming "See! They are ignoring these playtest surveys!" Because of course some folks here on the boards refuse to accept that their own preferences to how D&D should be are not widely held (and in fact might actually be outright stupid). So for those people... c'est la vie!

 

[Bedrockgames]

I have seen a "significant divide" with the release of 3.X, 4E (a gigantic divide in this case) and 5E. If the World Wide Web had existed when 2E came out I strongly believe I would have seen a divide as well.

I remember there being a divide when 2E came out. I think the backwards compatibility and the fact that you often could still buy most of the 1E stuff easily at stores made it a little different. But there was a pretty big gulf stylistically between those two editions and in how they approached things like running the game. I knew lots of groups who wouldn't play 2E after (and I knew a lot of GMs who stuck with basic D&D after 2E came out). Something to keep in mind too that is a little different in that era from now: there were effectively 3 editions available at that time. I don't know when they stopped printing the 1E books, but well into 2E I still remember being able to buy those and I remember players picking them up for inclusion in our 2E game. But there was also stuff like the Mentzer boxed set still widely available in major outlets (it was in book stores, toy stores etc) and there was the D&D rules cyclopedia. So when I played with a new group, I'd often find myself playing 1E or basic D&D using the rules Cyclopedia (and virtually everyone had the Mentzer boxed set).

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think "playtest" is probably the wrong word to use actually (based upon traditional usage.) All of us in the general public are not meant to be "testing" the "game" part of these rules to make sure the rules work 100%. They have their own internal and external alpha and beta testers for that. This was true for D&D Next, has been true through all the UAs, and is true for One D&D. We are not here to make sure the rules "work".

What we are here for is to give our impressions of interest and usability of the rules they present us. Do we like these ideas they are putting forth? Do they make us say to ourselves "Hmm! That's a good change! I like that idea!"... or do we say "Ugh! Why the heck are they doing that?!?" And they are using those responses to determine whether or not to continue down the paths they have been looking.

We don't need to create Bard PCs and "test" in actual games whether or not we like the Arcane / Divine / Primal spell list switch, and the Bard's use of only certain schools from the Arcane list. We get our reactions immediately upon reading the playtest packet and can say to them without much thought at all whether or not we think that change is a good idea. Hopefully everyone who did or did not like the change from Class spell lists to Power Source spell lists actually said so in the survey (I know I certainly did) because that's the way WotC will know whether or not to continue using it for the next packet.

Yes, some of the more cynical among us will believe that the Power Source spell lists are here to stay because WotC wants it and no responses to the playtest packets will ever change that because the "playtest" isn't "real". Frankly though, I think those people are being silly. Because there is absolutely nothing for Jeremy, Chris et. al. to gain by ignoring what people's responses in the surveys are. Waste of time spent designing the rules that we then say we don't like? These people write and design rules all the time-- that's most of their jobs! They create rules and ideas that don't get used constantly every day... so why would these rules in these playtest packets be so sacrosanct that they'd ignore our statements of displeasure and keep using them even though a lot of us said they didn't work? That's just dumb. And I do not believe Jeremy, Chris et. al. are dumb.

Of course... this belief won't matter if it turns out that enough actually liked or were ambivalent to Power Source spell lists that WotC felt comfortable continuing down that road... which will of course result in those cynics who didn't like them to keep screaming "See! They are ignoring these playtest surveys!" Because of course some folks here on the boards refuse to accept that their own preferences to how D&D should be are not widely held (and in fact might actually be outright stupid). So for those people... c'est la vie!

I don't think my beliefs are particularly widely held. But that really doesn't matter to whether or not I'm going to like/play/buy new rules, or whether or not I'm going to talk about my likes, dislikes and speculations. All we have are our opinions, and whether or not we expect disappointment.

 

[Fifth Element]

I don't think the minor tweaks they've released so far

If you believe they are minor tweaks then your assertion that it's not really a playtest because of the short time frame isn't even internally consistent (leaving aside all of the other baseless speculation and conspiracy theorizing in your post). Why would they need an extended playtest for "minor tweaks"? A short playtest timeframe is absolutely consistent with minor tweaks. So you're arguing against yourself here.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I don't think my beliefs are particularly widely held. But that really doesn't matter to whether or not I'm going to like/play/buy new rules, or whether or not I'm going to talk about my likes, dislikes and speculations. All we have are our opinions, and whether or not we expect disappointment.

Of course. I would expect nothing less from you, Micah.