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

[Vaalingrade]

I think the big clue uis 10+ years later there's no retroclone

The GSL was never lifted.

Also, I'm pretty sure Orcus exists on this very board.

 

[Remathilis]

Well fair enough. Because I feel 1 is prioritized to the nth degree already, far more than it should be, and because I don't really believe in 2 as a problem (I don't really buy into the idea of bloat as a real issue), I far prefer to muck around with 3.

The issue I've seen is that they are all intertwined.

So WotC wants to put out a new Eberron book because Eberron has sold well in the past. What do they put out? Well, the Eberron Campaign Setting (ECS) sold well, as did some of the early supplements, but later supplements suffered diminishing returns. Lets look at the factors.

WotC would make maximum profit if it could resell us the ECS, preferably with enough mechanical differences to warrant us rebuying it. It did exactly that in 4e and 5e, relying heavily on the need to update core components (warforged, artificer) to the current game. That has meant that aside from minor changes (primarily relating to how new features fit) the last few Eberron books were essentially the same material.

If 3e/4e/5e were more mechanically closer, then WotC would have had less need to resell us the ESC twice. They could have focused on other continents, the planes, adventure paths, and other areas untouched. However, those books sell less well than the main campaign guide and ultimately add to the "bloat" (both mechanically and in terms of lore that needs to be remembered/kept straight, the Forgotten Realms effect). While a book about Sarlona might interest me (a player who has been using Eberron off-and-on since 2005) it doesn't have the same level of interest (and sales) as ECS. Plus, to use it, WotC would have to keep some version of the ECS in print (can't rely on people having access to an early 2000's book in 2023) which likewise becomes a niche product (only of interest to people who don't already own an older version and want to use that setting). You can start to see where there might be a lot of sunk cost for very little gain.

On the other hand, My 3e Eberron stuff sits in a box collecting dust because, outside of inspiration, it offers me very little. I'm not playing 3.5 (or any variant thereof) Lots of mechanical options from that book are unavailable because neither WotC nor KP made updates for it. That is a lot of money sitting there doing nothing for me. Then again, some of those mechanical options were bad. And maybe the game doesn't need a prestige class for every Dragomarked house, or 20 variants of Dragonmarked magic items. Trying to account for 20 years worth of options seems like a nightmare.

 

[Lanefan]

that works with evolution, but not with a design that has maintaining compatibility as its goal.

To me the OP’s question is, could BX (or 1e) have survived, basically unaltered, until this day.

If your question is whether we make essentially the same changes either with editions every 10 years, with slightly altered rulebooks every other year (same changes over 10 years, but in increments), or over a much longer timeframe, then that is a very different question.

A good example of incremental design that maintains (and better yet, can measure) backwards compatibility is baseball.

Baseball has changed over the 130-ish years it's been played but is and always has been clearly recognizable for what it is. More to the compatibility point, records set 80 or even 100 years ago are still valid today. A big-league player from 1955 could step out on Wrigley field today and still pretty much know what to do, though would have to adjust to some modern rules such as the pitch clock.

D&D in a lesser sense had that same feel through the TSR years: you could roll up an OD&D character and (with a few exceptions e.g. race-as-class) put it into play in a 2e game; and while it might not have all the modern bells and whistles, it would still be playable and the basics would still work much as expected. Same goes for a player jumping straight from one TSR version to another: they're all close enough in the basics to make the fiddly bits easy to figure out.

Each WotC edition has been designed such that a character rolled up in any other edition (or a player jumping editions) is much more a fish out of water.

 

[Lanefan]

I want a classless D&D system is my oint

I'll oppose your point, by saying I'd rather see a D&D where classes were more divided and niche-coded than they are now, with little or no multi-classing and very few if any ways for any class to bleed over into the niche of another class.

 

[Minigiant]

Each WotC edition has been designed such that a character rolled up in any other edition (or a player jumping editions) is much more a fish out of water

I think this because WOTC realized that most editions are not near perfect and had serious issues for long term sales.

Unfortunately they aren't great at designing solutions for those issues for several different reasons.

 

[Lanefan]

which objective factors would you suggest in order to answer the OP’s question?

One objective factor - though damn hard to accurately measure - would be "once people start playing a given system, how long do they stick with it?".

If a huge number of people buy and play a system but none of them are still playing it a year later, I'd call that a design failure. The game's author and publisher would not, however, as they made loads of money selling all those copies that people only played for a year.

Conversely, if pretty much everyone who tries a given system ends up sticking with it for life I'd call that an off-the-charts design success, even if the actual number of those people is quite small and thus the author and publisher didn't do very well financially out of making that game.

And so there's cross-purposes at work here just like in so many other industries: the business side wants disposable, the consumer side wants permanence.

 

[Minigiant]

I'll oppose your point, by saying I'd rather see a D&D where classes were more divided and niche-coded than they are now, with little or no multi-classing and very few if any ways for any class to bleed over into the niche of another class.

I've always been in the opinion that D&D was designed around 30 very narrow niche and tropey classes from the start.

That's why I think incremental D&D will never happen or work. Because the designers arnd a loud chunk of the community only want to design the game around the classic 4.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't really believe in 2 as a problem (I don't really buy into the idea of bloat as a real issue),

Bloat's a difficult issue to perceive if you're in from the start and buy each release as it comes out without really noticing how many books you're accumulating.

Bloat is a huge issue if you're coming in new six years later and are faced with a wall of books to buy.

 

[mamba]

D&D in a lesser sense had that same feel through the TSR years: you could roll up an OD&D character and (with a few exceptions e.g. race-as-class) put it into play in a 2e game; and while it might not have all the modern bells and whistles, it would still be playable and the basics would still work much as expected. Same goes for a player jumping straight from one TSR version to another: they're all close enough in the basics to make the fiddly bits easy to figure out.

Each WotC edition has been designed such that a character rolled up in any other edition (or a player jumping editions) is much more a fish out of water.

I agree that D&D, 1e and 2e are largely compatible, I don't think that through evolution they would ever turn into e.g. 4e however. For that you need a redesign and break compatibility. The same is true with 5e, 2e does not get us there while maintaining compatibility.

To make big steps in any direction, you need to sacrifice compatibility. Some of these steps may turn out to be missteps, but if you learn from them and course correct, you still move forward. I'd rather see D&D continue to do that than stagnate.

 

[mamba]

One objective factor - though damn hard to accurately measure - would be "once people start playing a given system, how long do they stick with it?".

that will be hard to measure

If a huge number of people buy and play a system but none of them are still playing it a year later, I'd call that a design failure. The game's author and publisher would not, however, as they made loads of money selling all those copies that people only played for a year.

agreed, that would be a failure, not sure the publisher disagrees either, because they will need to keep selling you something, and in that case it won't be new monsters / classes / adventures / etc. for that game, and I am not sure they can sell another new system to the same audience as easily again either.

Conversely, if pretty much everyone who tries a given system ends up sticking with it for life I'd call that an off-the-charts design success, even if the actual number of those people is quite small and thus the author and publisher didn't do very well financially out of making that game.

Probably, if anyone who tries it sticks with it, then the failure is one of marketing more than design. On the other hand if 80% bounce off but you have 20% that love it, that to me is still a design failure.

And so there's cross-purposes at work here just like in so many other industries: the business side wants disposable, the consumer side wants permanence.

I am not sure I want permanence, I'd rather see more changes to 2024 than what we are getting. That might end up being the reason why I do not get the books.