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

Are you a fan of 4e? Because I'm given to understand that the latter bit of 3.5 had a lot of 4e "testbed" stuff, so if you like 4e that might affect your opinion.
I am. I'm definitely a fan of a lot of the product that served as a testbed for some 4e ideas, most notably Book of Nine Swords. But books like Unearthed Arcana, the PHB II, Dragon Magic, Complete Mage, the Spell Compendium and the Magic Item Compendium, Heroes of Horror, and even the Tome of Magic and Magic of Incarnum had a lot of good, experimental material.
 

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I am. I'm definitely a fan of a lot of the product that served as a testbed for some 4e ideas, most notably Book of Nine Swords. But books like Unearthed Arcana, the PHB II, Dragon Magic, Complete Mage, the Spell Compendium and the Magic Item Compendium, Heroes of Horror, and even the Tome of Magic and Magic of Incarnum had a lot of good, experimental material.
I particularly liked Heroes of Horror.
 

I am. I'm definitely a fan of a lot of the product that served as a testbed for some 4e ideas, most notably Book of Nine Swords. But books like Unearthed Arcana, the PHB II, Dragon Magic, Complete Mage, the Spell Compendium and the Magic Item Compendium, Heroes of Horror, and even the Tome of Magic and Magic of Incarnum had a lot of good, experimental material.
I still have most of those 3.5 books in my D&D collection. I no longer have the Book of Nine Swords or the Magic of Incarnum.
 

Like Zardnaar said on page 1 the economics encourage edition changes all on their own. There is another reason however that I believe substantial edition changes are necessary to D&D specifically. That reason is what I'd call the funnel. The thing that makes other rpgs that have a more iterative design work is that they cater to a specific fanbase that groks what they are doing. D&D is deferent, it's overwhelmingly the first, and often the last, TTRPG someone plays. There are so many different ways that you might get interested into TTRPGs - from books, to board games, to t.v. shows, to video games as diverse as Baldur's Gate, Elden Ring, Disco Elysium, The Legend of Zelda, and Final Fantasy 14. All those possible entry points funnel down to the current edition of D&D. This results in a in a pool of players forming a very diverse amorphous blob that pulls, pushes, and stretches itself in countless and often contradictory ways. That metaphorical blob does occasionally form consistent patterns over time though, as the tastes of the nebulous 'overall TTRPG' community changes. This is why I think D&D specifically does need to periodically change fundamentally. Sometimes the tastes of that blob just gets too far out of step with the game that exists.

Now you might say that the problem is the funnel itself, and there's some truth to that. The thing is that many players have difficulty learning a new system, or even learning their first. Having a go to game also greatly increases the chances that there is a game locally that you could join. Finally, Hasbro definitely likes the funnel and has every possible motivation to keep it going. So I think the funnel complication is something D&D is just going to live with for many years and even decades to come.
I agree with this. I think you can see it as far back as the transition from very early D&D through Dragonlance and into AD&D second edition, where the assumed activity changes from deadly dungeon heists to a more Tolkienesque/epic fantasy quest structure in response to what the broader market of non-wargamers seemed to be looking for from it.
 

I am. I'm definitely a fan of a lot of the product that served as a testbed for some 4e ideas, most notably Book of Nine Swords. But books like Unearthed Arcana, the PHB II, Dragon Magic, Complete Mage, the Spell Compendium and the Magic Item Compendium, Heroes of Horror, and even the Tome of Magic and Magic of Incarnum had a lot of good, experimental material.
Good with the bad.

Bo9S is the second best book of 3x (AEG being the best), US and PHII being solid, but ToM... having the class that literally makes itself unplayable. Like all D&D, it's a mixed bag.
 

I think that edition changes are fundamentally a bad thing. Corrections, slight revisions, new covers? Cool. Big changes that invalidate previous material and/or playstyles? Not cool
I think editions changes, for D&D have been absolutely essential. Sure, you can still play OD&D or even 2E, but those systems are fundamentally flawed and would never be able to support the mass casual market that 5E is today.

So sure, we could still be playing Holmes, but then we would still be the weird geeks in the closet instead of a major almost mainstream cultural sub-genre.
 

I think editions changes, for D&D have been absolutely essential. Sure, you can still play OD&D or even 2E, but those systems are fundamentally flawed and would never be able to support the mass casual market that 5E is today.

So sure, we could still be playing Holmes, but then we would still be the weird geeks in the closet instead of a major almost mainstream cultural sub-genre.
What point of view are you looking at? I for one am not prioritizing supporting a mass casual market.
 




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