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

[Micah Sweet]

one could argue that all of them made some form of progress in game design over their predecessor

And one can argue the opposite. Even granting your claim, sometimes it's not worth the juice, especially since every time they re-work the game the community follows them.

 

[Remathilis]

It's because of edition change we lost gold for exp, racial level limits, 3d6 stats rolled on order, the commoner class, material components, d4 hit dice, and true Vancain casting. How much more lost can we stand???

Yeah, next time we might lose something of value! [emoji6]

 

[Micah Sweet]

Xp for gold is inda fun as I didn't experience it in the 90s. 2E didn't use it and our BECMI DM household it out. Bastard.

2e made it optional, but it was still right there in the book.

 

[Shardstone]

It makes more sense to create new games. If WotC had an osr game. 5e, and a 4e game, each a separate line, they'd wipe out a lot of competition.

 

[Remathilis]

Sort of allthe editions have issues.

Few get revised.

Big rewrites "solve" some problems but create new ones espicially WotC rewrites.

I think 3e to 3.5 to Pathfinder shows what a world where the 3e engine remained in place over multiple revisions. It's interesting to wonder how a 4e that hewed closer to 3e rather than reinvent the game.

 

[AnotherGuy]

For some of us the OP got the question wrong
It is not so much if we think D&D requires updates/cleanups (2e, 3.5e, Pathfinder), or if resets are the better way (3e, 4e, 5e) - I think something games with archaic design such as D&D require complete overhauls.

Both the above two sets, for me, suffer from the adherence to the bad initial design principles, one of which is the insistence of making the d20 the primary die, which, I believe, is VERY limiting.
And then we have D&D struggling to emulate its own novellas nevermind that of general fantasy literature.
You literally have classes that are able to break fantasy settings.

Game design has improved plenty...but you wouldn't think so if you've only played D&D.

My opinion ofc.

 

[nevin]

No. Call of Cthulu has had new editions and refreshes, but for 40 years has remained completely compatible. The D&D approach to Editions was only ever a shady money making scheme from TSR thst WotC early on thought sounded great. But it turns out to be more damaging to profits than helpful. I heard Mearls ipine that if Moldvsy Basic had ascending AC and Race and Class in one box for both Basic and Expert....that TSR could have basically sold it as is forever.

So, now that WotC has learned their lesson, I doubt we shall ever see a "New Edition" with capital N and capital E again. Periodic cleanups and art refreshes, changing things here and there to fit the zeitgisst...but no rules changeover.

I suspect this depends on how well Hasbro can monetize, media. If they can monetize movies, tv shows, youtube etc then it may be a very long time till they do an edition reset. If that fails, get on the treadmill.

 

[Charlaquin]

For a game thwt needs to be played at a table to be actuated, I don't really see those as two different things in opposition.

They aren’t necessarily. But in this particular case, not having edition resets is in opposition to the game being the best version of itself it can be, and longevity is the reason one might choose mod to have them anyway.

The longevity is a strong measure of the design merit.

I fundamentally disagree. It’s correlated, but not very closely.

Chess is a great game, with massively solid design. And it has changed over time...but has stabilized at a certain point.

There are actually also tons of modern chess variants. But also, chess isn’t an RPG.

 

[Charlaquin]

To be fair, it is realistic to have every one of those skills be separate.

I didn’t claim it was unrealistic. Although, the fact that having a better credit rating limits how good you can be at shooting guns certainly is.

I heartily object to the bald claim of being outdated. It's just preference on your part. You prefer other ways of handling skills.

Both are true. It is very literally outdated - new games haven’t been designed that way for a long time. That I like more modern approaches to skill systems is a preference.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

The idea that suits are sitting around debating the short comings of a profitable product (and are inspired to solve no problems) seems a bit silly to me.

Enter the profit motive…”how can we convince people what they are enjoying is obsolete and needs a reset?”

I fault them not at all for this. It’s business and it cyclical. When things slow down or are projected to slow down they suddenly have problems to fix.

If more books was the key, they would just pump out more content but the core stuff is what moves units.

Any “minor tweak” you need can be done at the table. The new printing is about money. And I am ok with it. Might not buy it…will see what it is. But there is no giant problem it’s going to address. Folks were not rubbing their hands together about things not working no matter what a subset of us on a forum might think about it.