D&D General Does D&D (and RPGs in general) Need Edition Resets?

[Zardnaar]

I think the amount of modularity the fandom expected was far greater than WotC ever promised, let alone intended. I wager WotC thought that the fact that classes had different levels of complexity and options would scratch that itch.

Want a TSR easy class? Download the Basic Rules and rock a champion, thief, evoker, or life cleric.
Want that 3e feel? Pick feats and multiclass.
Want more 4e feel? Pick a warlock or monk and use options like faster short rests and healing surges.
I think there was some interest originally in doing some alternative rules (advanced tactical, Greyhawk initiative) but there wasn't enough demand to warrant further resources.

Even then I think it's mostly a few people online.

People don't seem to use said options they did offer.

 

[Minigiant]

I don’t know anymore than you do that any of those things will happen. What I do know is folks like the slower pace of 5E progress at the moment. You can ease in, there isn’t too much to learn, and it’s not going to pass you by.

I'm not saying people don't like it.
I am saying it wont last forever.

Eventually 5e will be the old man and it won't get the high levels of satisfaction and hype.

The premise is that you make an edition and never ever reset it. Even after 20 years or 50 years. Selling it to people not even born yet born yet irregardless to the changes on population, the emergence of new fads and fashions, and the creation of new fantasy series and RPGs.

You gotta change with the times.

That’s your problem, you don’t get that D&D and TTRPG market isn’t anything like those things.

I'm having this exact conversation on other tabs with 2 other entertainment fandoms.

It's the same.

 

[mamba]

So does 2044 version of 5e contain the popular ideas of Pathfinder 4e, Daggerheart 2e, MCDM 3e, Advanced Shadowdark, and Advanced 5e: Never Stop Leveling Up?

That's the question.

not if it is still 5e compatible

 

[Clint_L]

Folks keep saying incremental changes is equivalent to nothing and that's not correct.

Incremental changes amount to huge changes over time, which is why I hardly resemble my algae cousins.

 

[Clint_L]

I don't think 5e is as successful as it is entirely because of what it is; I think it's also very much a fortunate beneficiary of when it is, meaning our hypothetical evergreen 1e would have be reaping those same zeitgeist-based benefits over the last 10 years that 5e has enjoyed.

I think it's a little of column A, a little of column B.

I definitely agree that a significant part of the popularity of 5e is simple demographics. All of us kids who love AD&D got older, got busy, did a lot less gaming, had kids, got to a stage where we had a bit more free time again, more money...and there was a very familiar version of D&D waiting for us, just in time to make convenient X-mas gifts for our selves/kids/nieces/nephews, etc. And a few of us went into the entertainment industry and brought the stuff we loved from our youth as influences, so suddenly D&D became a generational touchstone that was popping up in all kinds of media. Add in the rise of social media and streaming technology, and you've got the conditions for D&D to make a massive comeback.

But 5e also made it very easy for us by being a version of the game that felt familiar while also being modernized in ways that made it a much easier sell to the next generation. The prose alone is far more approachable, but so are the mechanics. It got rid of things that bugged us back in the day, and in general is much more logically consistent and intuitive.

I don't think 1e would have fared as well. You're not going to get Gen Zers onboard with the random harlot table, or the arbitrary restrictions on classes and levels, or the weird randomness with game mechanics (to do this thing, you roll a D6, but for that thing it's a D20, and now you need some percentile dice...).

 

[Minigiant]

not if it is still 5e compatible

That's the issue.

The MCDM classes that gain resources over time is not 5e compatible.
The Daggerheart success with hope or fear is not 5e compatible.
The Pathfinder level feats is not is not 5e compatible.


People talk about 1e and 2e's variants and modules but those were relatively simple or drastically unbalancing. And that's before you realize RPGs was in its infancy and the truly innovative ideas were not created yet.

Even 5e a relatively new RPG system will be considered old and dated in 20 years..

 

[mamba]

Even 5e a relatively new RPG system will be considered old and dated in 20 years..

I am not sure it will be around that long, I am not even sure they won't start work on 6e in less than 10 years. That will entirely depend on how long 5e continues to sell in its 2024 incarnation.

 

[MichaelSomething]

RPGs don't need resets as long as there are DMs willing to run them!

How's the OD&D DM training infrastructure? I bet they're churning out new DMs this very minute to make up for not having the marketing power of a mega corp!

 

[Lanefan]

The only operations that are valid for AC are addition and its inverse, subtraction. You don't multiply ACs by anything, nor divide them by anything. Such concepts have no meaning. Hence, they are interval data. Interval data counts upward. That's what it's for.

The one--and only--context where "count up" is bad is stuff where having more of something is worse than having less of it, not where a small value is somehow greater than having a big value. Stuff like golf, where taking a single stroke to do something is clearly a display of better skill.

AC is not such a thing. The very fact that an "AC0" can exist, to say nothing of negative AC, is proof that it should not be structured the way golf scores are. With golf, there is a clear minimum stroke count: one per hole. AC doesn't work that way--and, as far as I can tell, essentially never did.

Ah, but if you instead look at AC as something being compared to a "par" value, it can work exactly like golf.

I think that might have been part of what inspired the THAC0 mechanic: par was set at AC 0 and the mechanics compared your to-hit against the par value modified by the target's AC variance from that par value.

 

[Lanefan]

I understand that you can make some changes, to me they are limited in scope however. As I said earlier, either the changes you can make are limited compared to new editions, or I fail to see a meaningful distinction between the two.

I feel like those arguing that 'you can make incremental changes for this' are blurring that line and just have a new edition without calling it that.

So let's see what you consider incremental change to BX and what not

1) not having races as classes
2) removing racial class limits
3) adding skills and feats
4) adding cantrips to vancian casting
5) unified XP progression
6) subclasses

1 and 2 are incremental.

4 is an open question; 1e added cantrips in UA (incremental) but they weren't anything like the cantrips in 5e (not incremental).

3 and 6 could be either incremental or not, depending how they were introduced; the question then becomes one of whether they are necessary to the game.

5 is incremental in itself but has knock-on effects elsewhere that have to be sorted.