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

[nevin]

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.

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

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

they just reprinted the old TNMT games as a kickstarter. editions are only necessary for a company to push sells. The game can survive a very long time without editions. 1 edition D&D community is still quite strong. bigger than it's original community if you add the BECMI groups which are just 1e variants.

 

[Charlaquin]

they just reprinted the old TNMT games as a kickstarter. editions are only necessary for a company to push sells. The game can survive a very long time without editions. 1 edition D&D community is still quite strong. bigger than it's original community if you add the BECMI groups which are just 1e variants.

Indeed, I agree that games don’t need edition resets to survive. My thesis was simply that a lack of edition resets hampers the potential quality of a game’s design. Sales and design quality are only loosely correlated at best.

 

[Velderan]

they just reprinted the old TNMT games as a kickstarter. editions are only necessary for a company to push sells. The game can survive a very long time without editions. 1 edition D&D community is still quite strong. bigger than it's original community if you add the BECMI groups which are just 1e variants.

The TMNT game was out of print so long I’m not sure that qualifies as any evidence of edition swaps. I’d argue it’s more evidence nostalgia can sell if you strike while the iron is hot enough if anything.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Is there a way D&D could have been made additive rather than replacing itself every edition? I guess that's what 2024 is opting for. Or is RPGs one of those things that benefit from a good reset ever so often?

I 100% believe that a good reset every so often is in fact very, very good for the game. D&D would never have achieved the dominance it has with things like descending AC.

The problem is, there will never be a time at which the players can agree that such a thing is good or necessary. If the players do in general think such a thing is good and necessary, it's DEFINITELY been far too long. But they aren't wrong to want periods of stability and consistency either.

Being shackled to the design decisions of people from 20, 30 years before is, in a word, bad.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I think there is a big difference between an edition and a half edition so let me restate.

3.5 and 5.5 are not needed and really don’t push innovation. If there is an argument to be made for possible benefit to the game, it’s not o be found in 3e, 4e and 5e. And not I don’t like all of them equally but they went for it.

I player 1e until about 99/00. Had 3e not been so different and such it would have stayed that way.

5e spilt the difference so it’s where my group resides. None of us feel remotely like 5.5 is needed

 

[nevin]

I 100% believe that a good reset every so often is in fact very, very good for the game. D&D would never have achieved the dominance it has with things like descending AC.

The problem is, there will never be a time at which the players can agree that such a thing is good or necessary. If the players do in general think such a thing is good and necessary, it's DEFINITELY been far too long. But they aren't wrong to want periods of stability and consistency either.

Being shackled to the design decisions of people from 20, 30 years before is, in a word, bad.

If you are a developer yes. If you are a player I'd argue they'll leave once they feel "SHACKLED" or they'll just modernize thier table rules like we do with old versions of RPG's , monopoly etc. Once the developer is out of the loop, the players are generally better off with a stable product that they can just set down and play without worrying about the last patch or rules update. That's fine in a video game where it get's done in the background. It's very traumatic in an RPG where people just want to go to thier favorite game world and play the game they know.

 

[Remathilis]

Indeed, I agree that games don’t need edition resets to survive. My thesis was simply that a lack of edition resets hampers the potential quality of a game’s design. Sales and design quality are only loosely correlated at best.

Which is of course the big question: is having a radically different and innovative update to the mechanics worth the abandonment of all the books that came before?

I absolutely understand why 3e opted for the "roll vs d20" standardized system for attacks, skills and saves. It's a clean and elegant system to build off of compared to AD&D's myriad of roll over/under. But that innovation breaks a lot of things and effectively requires anything from the previous edition to be rebuilt using the original as inspiration.

I don't doubt that the changes were made thinking they were doing best for the game, but the cost of innovation is a lot of obsolete books.

 

[nevin]

I don't doubt that the changes were made thinking they were doing best for the game, but the cost of innovation is a lot of obsolete books.

Usually a statement like this is made by companies when they just want more money and don't really care about innovation. people have to pay bills I'm not bashing them for that. But far too many games get mangled far too often and sometimes completely destroyed to the point no one will play them any more because the word innovation get's thrown around interchangeably with profit.

 

[Remathilis]

Usually a statement like this is made by companies when they just want more money and don't really care about innovation. people have to pay bills I'm not bashing them for that. But far too many games get mangled far too often and sometimes completely destroyed to the point no one will play them any more because the word innovation get's thrown around interchangeably with profit.

I think that's conflating two different things. I genuinely believe that 3e (to keep my example) was made as an attempt to align the game with more modern design sensibilities. It wasn't necessarily a cash grab to sell more PHBs. The side effect was that a decade of 2e books I owned were rendered useless and 3e equivalents needed to be bought. You could cynically say WotC intended this to resell me all my books, but I feel that's partially a "happy" (for them) side effect of the changes they wanted to make. I certainly don't think they felt beholden to any sort of compatibility because of it.

 

[Charlaquin]

Which is of course the big question: is having a radically different and innovative update to the mechanics worth the abandonment of all the books that came before?

Depends on the innovation. There’s always a cost/benefit assessment to be done in deciding when to hit the big red “new edition” button.

I absolutely understand why 3e opted for the "roll vs d20" standardized system for attacks, skills and saves. It's a clean and elegant system to build off of compared to AD&D's myriad of roll over/under. But that innovation breaks a lot of things and effectively requires anything from the previous edition to be rebuilt using the original as inspiration.

I don't doubt that the changes were made thinking they were doing best for the game, but the cost of innovation is a lot of obsolete books.

Inasmuch as an RPG book can even be obsoleted. TSR-era D&D is still played by tons of people, and probably always will be. It’s available for you if you want it. On the other hand, 3e would not have been available for those who wanted it if WotC had decided never to reset the D&D rules. So I would say yes, the cost was absolutely worth it, no contest. And again, personally I value the quality of the artwork infinitely more than the longevity of the product, so for me, the cost of a new edition will almost always be worth the gain. YMMV if you value those things differently than I do.