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

[Remathilis]

No, I do not believe hard breaks are in the best interest of the game. I think they helped learn some good lessons about designing a better base that can carry the game forward. Change should be incremental.

I want to agree, though I think there would probably be some changes that ultimately invalidate some parts that came before. I once got into Vampire the Masquerade (3rd edition) and while it was close enough to 2e that I could use older supplements, I did realize several clans and powers were done different enough that it wasn't 100% compatible. Still, I think I would prefer that to having a shelf of 3e and 4e books that do nothing for me during most 5e sessions.

 

[Lanefan]

It's not a line of thinking. It's reality.

3 times in D&D's history did the designers try to make new changes to D&D that came form the collective design mind and the community/playtesters kill them... not because they didn't want them... but because they didn't want old product to be replaced.

Curious: what were these three times?

 

[Minigiant]

Your ruined, is our saved.

Oh I get it now. You're not understanding what I'm saying.

The company that goes with an incremental D&D would go out of business, sell it to someone who resets it, or lose majority market share.

I'm talking business. You might like incremental change as a design model.
I am saying business and creator wise, you'd sacrifice a lot of market share and hype once you hit a certain point were other RPGs are created or reset and pass you by.

 

[Minigiant]

Curious: what were these three times?

3e
5e
5.5e

 

[Remathilis]

It's more a ship of Theseus - you eventually get from what looks like one edition to what looks like another but there's no specific point where anyone can say "That was when the change occurred." as it's been gradual all along.

5e now is quite different than 5e on initial release, even before 5.5e.

For me, 2nd edition is a refinement of AD&D. It smooths out and standardizes a lot of things (like making initiative a d10 in all instances), changes some things (like the bard and ranger), added good ideas from the 1e era (spheres of magic, nonweapon profs) and removed some bad ideas (hello 1e bard). Yet most of 1e's stuff remains useable with a little work, enough so that you can blend those rules together even though a character built using the 2e PHB looks different than a character built using the 1e PHB.

3e made it so that was no longer possible. My AD&D books were built with wildly different assumptions on combat, skills, ability checks, even magic. You cannot take anything from AD&D and make it run in 3e without basically rebuilding it in 3e's rules. But potentially, there might have been a 3e that took a lot of the best ideas of 2e and built a compatible version of 3e that worked with your 2e material (and by extension, your 1e, though probably you'd need to do a lot more work to make that happen). Lather-rinse-repeat. Maybe we don't get 3e all at once, but I'm sure eventually we excise level limits, buff up weaker classes, clean up saves and skills, etc. etc.

 

[Remathilis]

Oh I get it now. You're not understanding what I'm saying.

The company that goes with an incremental D&D would go out of business, sell it to someone who resets it, or lose majority market share.

I'm talking business. You might like incremental change as a design model.
I am saying business and creator wise, you'd sacrifice a lot of market share and hype once you hit a certain point were other RPGs are created or reset and pass you by.

People have pointed out RPGs that have not radically reinvented themselves like D&D (or Pathfinder) have. I don't think there is causation there.

 

[Minigiant]

People have pointed out RPGs that have not radically reinvented themselves like D&D (or Pathfinder) have. I don't think there is causation there.

And people have pointed out that those RPGs have much much much smaller fanbases and customer bases.

That's the issue.
The top 3 all have resets.
The incremental RPGs are much much smaller.

 

[haakon1]

D&D needs those things to be the number 1 RPG.

To pick one, Goliaths. 5e would be #1 with or without them. No one would miss them if they were never put in D&D.

 

[haakon1]

Would you say that update was innovative or more like a revision of the past?

I’d say 5e was roughly 75% 3.5e or earlier (recalling a design principle of 3e was to retain the 10 core things that made earlier D&D versions “D&D”, some of which 4e dropped), 10% 4e, and 15% new stuff.

I hope 2024 is 90+% 5e.

 

[haakon1]

2014 5E to 2024 5E is incremental. 3E to 3.5E to PF1 was incremental. 3E to 4E to 5E were resets.

Agree on the past. I’m not sure I know precisely what may happen in 2024 though. You have 100% been paying more attention to that than me, but my Hasbro trust gauge is on “E”.