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

[Minigiant]

Or simply reduce the amount of first and second tier core content and make everything else purely and blatantly optional.

Core:
PH: 10-15 classes, 5-7 species, char-gen rules and charts, mundane equipment lists and prices, short-form spell write-ups
MM: all the monsters you can fit, written up in short form with no wasted space nor words
DMG: game-mechanical rules-charts-tables, guide to how to run a campaign including some corner cases, guide to worldbuilding, dials and levers to tweak difficulty-lethality-advancement rates-campaign length
About ten good well-written standalone adventure modules, roughly one per level for the first ten levels.

Optional books (for optional things):
Pantheons and deities
Feats and abilities
A complete setting book/guide
Extra species and-or classes, also sub-classes
Etc. etc. etc. - the sky's the limit here.

Which would be fine were those things labelled optional; I could choose not to buy them (I've no use for Warlock if there's a Sorcerer-like class already there; and no use for Dragonborn at any time) while you could buy them to your heart's content.

Too late to label half those things as optional.

The community wants them. And wants them fast.

That's why I said D&D and it's clones is too big a community for incremental RPG design.

It only works for hard IPs or settingless games with no baggage.

 

[mamba]

1 book a year is not enough to be the top RPG. Too slow to get everything out.

It would be like 4e where you had to wait a long time to play a monk.

And if you produce 1 stinker, you are screwed.

you would start with PHB, DMG and MM. We have monks in the PHB, there is no reason that this would not be true here either.

After that you release crunch slowly, no one wants there to be 8 crunch books that you should have to even start playing (or even the impression of that). At that point your game will have a hard time attracting new players

 

[Minigiant]

you would start with PHB, DMG and MM. We have monks in the PHB, there is no reason that this would not be true here either.

After that you release crunch slowly, no one wants there to be 8 crunch books that you should have to even start playing (or even the impression of that). At that point your game will have a hard time attracting new players

Again.

Where is the publisher's money coming from if they don't print many crunch books?

That's what I've been saying?

What about the publisher?
What about the rest of the community?

I keep reading this thread and I keep getting the "I only care about these 3 things so put them in the core books and drip feed everything else I don't care about and never reset the core books. Screw everyone else." Vibe.

You only need 4 classes up front
You only need 10 classes up front
You only need 4 races up front
You only need 10 races up front
You can paste Feats on later as optional
You can paste Subraces on later as optional
You can paste Skill on later as optional
You can paste Multi/Dual classing on later as optional
I don't care for (Core Class in 3e/4e/5e) so you can print them later
I don't care for (Core Race in 3e/4e/5e) so you can print them later
The Feat rules don't have to be balanced if optional
The Multiclassing rules don't have to be balanced if optional
The Magic Item rules don't have to be balanced if optional
Etc etc

You know what I'm not gonna do if you don't put a bunch of favorite aspect in the game and tell me that you won't add or support them for 2-4 years...

Buy your book.

I barely tolerate 5e's slow schedule due to 3PP and only WOTC could afford so many 3PP eating off their game. And it takes WOTC taking money from DMGuild and PHB/MM/DMG selling like gangbusters. And even that wasn't enough.

Imagine a publisher that breaks even with only $2M revenue? You cant live forever on that.

 

[mamba]

Where is the publisher's money coming from if they don't print many crunch books?

adventures and settings. Too many crunch books just scare people away from trying, and for existing players it becomes too complex.

I keep reading this thread and I keep getting the "I only care about these 3 things so put them in the core books and drip feed everything else I don't care about and never reset the core books. Screw everyone else." Vibe.

well, keeping the old books usable means not resetting the core books. At least not to the point of making them incompatible

I barely tolerate 5e's slow schedule due to 3PP and only WOTC could afford so many 3PP eating off their game.

for crunch? I think PHB, Xanathar and Tasha are about as much crunch as an edition can reasonably handle. More books and you start losing sales because people do not want more

The new PHB and a revision of what was left out plus some additional subclasses in 2026/7 will probably be all the 2024 books get, and that is certainly enough from my perspective

I keep reading this thread and I keep getting the "I only care about these 3 things so put them in the core books and drip feed everything else

funny, you do the exact same thing when you say the current schedule is too slow for you, so you release crunch books every year

 

[R_J_K75]

Why should they make such radical changes? There are plenty of other games that include the kind of elements you're talking about. Why does D&D need to do it?

My feelings from what I've seen of the playtest are that the changes they are making in 2024 are not enough and to really move the game forward. But that's just my opinion.

The d20 system is best for D&D.

The issue is that D&D designers just do the modifiers, sets, and addition wrong every time because they design on looks and feels..

D&D has Ability Scores but D&D designers refuse to use them.

This is why an incremental D&D would have issues. It requires the designers to design to match the tropes and leave leeway for change. Something RPG designers still don't do.

Kind of seems the designers are sitting on their laurels, complacent and falling back on previous design tropes. But Im not a game designer so what do I know.

why not just a classless fantasy RPG? It would not really be similar to today’s D&D anyway.

There is at least one OSR based one, so probably as close to D&D as you will get

I may look into Knave

And to many, a classless D&D would not be D&D.

This may be true, but I really liked the 2E Skills & Powers and it felt like D&D to me

You do at least have to ask what that would even mean. I think there was an attempt at a classless (or at least build-a-class) Pathfinder at one point (I want to say Wayfinder?) but it never really seemed to take off.

I think a classless system could look like a bunch of options players can select for their characters and have it still feel like D&D (within reason). I agree it will probably never be done but myself personally I'd prefer it.

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.

You make a good point, if a classless system doesnt happen, secondly I'd prefer less classes that are more niche as you say and dont step on the toes of other classes.

I've always been pretty loyal to D&D, I've switched with every edition and if I had my way, I'd still be playing it but I dont think 5E is the best edition of the game I've become bored with it and stopped playing it. I would like to have seen a new edition rather than an update. But oh well, life goes on

 

[Minigiant]

adventures and settings. Too many crunch books just scare people away from trying, and for existing players it becomes too complex

Sure I know.

But you still have to get the crunch in.

well, keeping the old books usable means not resetting the core books. At least not to the point of making them incompatible

Again

But you still have to get the crunch in.
So how many years must I wait?

for crunch? I think PHB, Xanathar and Tasha are about as much crunch as an edition can reasonably handle. More books and you start losing sales because people do not want more

The new PHB and a revision of what was left out plus some additional subclasses in 2026/7 will probably be all the 2024 books get, and that is certainly enough from my perspective

So doing all the crunch in 3 years is supposed to sustain WOTC for 10 years? 20 years?

funny, you do the exact same thing when you say the current schedule is too slow for you, so you release crunch books every year

I'm saying I'm not getting the stuff I want at all because 5e is restarting before I get it.

 

[mamba]

But you still have to get the crunch in.

the crunch is in the PHB and the few crunch books after it. We simply disagree on the amount of crunch it takes

But you still have to get the crunch in.
So how many years must I wait?

apparently forever, because the amount of crunch I proposed would be it

Maybe without resets they would add some additional crunch eventually, but I am not sure it would be worth their time (ie a setting / adventure they could create for the same effort would sell better)

So doing all the crunch in 3 years is supposed to sustain WOTC for 10 years? 20 years?

not sure where 3 years came from. WotC released three books, but spread them out over more years, and yes, you cannot pile crunch on indefinitely. At least not if you want anyone to buy it rather than be turned away by it

I'm saying I'm not getting the stuff I want at all because 5e is restarting before I get it.

5e is not restarting, this is your iterative approach now, where things stay compatible

Not sure what crunch you are looking for, more races / classes / spells / magic items, or whole new systems for exploration or how to build castles and rule domains, etc?

WotC doesn’t do these niches because they are not worth their time, so if it is the latter, you will need to resort to 3pp

 

[Vaalingrade]

I keep reading this thread and I keep getting the "I only care about these 3 things so put them in the core books and drip feed everything else I don't care about and never reset the core books. Screw everyone else." Vibe.

I mean yeah. At its very core, the idea of never having a new edition is about putting the game in stasis once it produces what the theorist wants and no more. Business realities and other people don't factor into it: it's a fantasy of being catered to directly.

 

[Minigiant]

Kind of seems the designers are sitting on their laurels, complacent and falling back on previous design tropes. But Im not a game designer so what do I know.

Not much as much as TSR and WOTC head their teams with traditionalist who struggle with coming up with new ideas and are too old school to understand the concepts of "da youth".

the crunch is in the PHB and the few crunch books after it. We simply disagree on the amount of crunch it takes

I'm not disagreeing with the amount of crunch.

I'm disagreeing on whether it's a viable business plan.

A business plan that doesn't have 10 years of product and 10 years of sales is canceled by WOTC or TSR.

 

[Retreater]

I like edition resets. I think every generation of players (and designers) should be able to change the games to fit their tastes and popular zeitgeists.
For example, even if it was somewhat maligned, I think 4E was an important step in the hobby industry. It took a lot of the design and what was popular circa 2005 and tried to put it in D&D.
Conversely, I think the mild edition refreshers (like we're getting with 2024 D&D) isn't as good. It's like when video gamers got the PS4 Pro. It's not a new generation, it doesn't reinvigorate the design space. It's like releasing Monopoly with the thimble replaced with an iPhone.
If we truly want our hobby to die, it's with "evergreen" editions. The design space risks becoming stagnant.
I sense that some will counter with games that have remained very similar, such as the editions of Call of Cthulhu. I like CoC (for short adventures and one-shots, mostly - though I did run a lengthy Masks of Nyarlahotep campaign). It's a very specific game meant to evoke a particular play pattern that hasn't adapted since the 1980s.
If the core D&D experience hadn't changed since the 1980s, we'd all be playing OSR (which is fine, but hardly enough to sustain the industry and playbase of D&D).
Not only has D&D changed since the 1980s, I'd argue it's changed since 2014. In 2014, the design of D&D was to bring back lapsed fans and old-timers (like me). 2024 should be thinking about the fans D&D gained from 2014-2024 and the direction the hobby is going for the next 5-8 years.
What should it look like? (Well, these points are from me, a random middle-aged dude on the Internet who is only a part-time designer. This is based only on what I'm gathering running for teenagers.)

• Gamify background and story - make it more significant to the game
• Speed up advancement to run a full 1-20 level campaign in 9-12 months
• Make classes better able to operate outside their structure (for example, allow *good healing outside of clerics/druids - because every party configuration should be able to accommodate the unique play desires of the group)
• Give good rules for travel and other montage-based encounters (to allow groups to get to the "big scenes" of action and roleplay)

So my prediction of 2024 D&D is that it won't seem "new enough." Newer fans will lose interest and D&D will be considered a "fad." This is what happened with TSR D&D through the 1990s, when it was basically stagnant from 1974-1999. People turned to White Wolf and TSR got bought out by WotC. I can see history repeating itself if we don't have innovation...
(Perhaps that innovation comes with the VTT, online play, etc. That's a possibility. However, for me, I'd rather have a new and improved system with bold, new directions. I already have the 2014 books - I don't need them again with a fresh coat of paint.)