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

[Thomas Shey]

IDK, maybe this is just my anecdotal but 5E is so simple you only need to reference the book for like 2-3 min to level up. So, its not like the old days where you had piles of them on the table. Also, SRD and DDB.

What about spellcasters? I'd assume they still need to reference spells with some frequency (we had to do that back in OD&D and those could be downright schematic). Good point about the SRD though.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Designing for teenagers (or younger!) is a fool's errand: they tend on average to have the attention span of chickens and - as noted in the quote - thus want a faster-paced and faster-running game BUT this same lack of attention span means that after that very short 9-12 month campaign is done they're liable to stop playing entirely and move on to something else.

As absolutory enjoyable and not at all nasty or grating belittling young people for no reason or prompting is, the average fandom formed at that age is nine years.

Not designing for them is suicide.

 

[haakon1]

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

Yeah. I read in The NY Times today about how Disney is blowing it on the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) by not only making too much content, but making it so complicated and obscure, it’s inaccessible to new customers, leaving an audience of only the ardent, and even they need refreshers at the beginning of each movie to remind them what happened in all the other products.

This seems a lot like what killed some earlier editions, especially 2e’s too many settings problem.

5e has done a much better job of limiting content, but it still feels like a lot to me.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/27/movies/superhero-fatigue-marvel.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

 

[haakon1]

They seem to have an aversion to publishing anything that you would want or need any material beyond the core three to use properly. This wasn't the case pre-5e, so it seems to be a relatively new phenomenon.

I went with “Core Rules only”, specific DM permission on request for any other ruled when I restarted D&D in 1996 (with AD&D because 2e annoyed me).

I suspect a lot of DM’s (no idea on percentage) have gotten fed up with rules bloat over the decades and appreciate WotC basically supporting that approach now.

 

[haakon1]

the "I'mma make corebooks, slow support to a crawl, and live off that" is one feasible for a small company with few employees that doesn't need much to keep going

How many people do you think are actually pen & paper D&D game designers on the WotC payroll as FTE’s? I think about 20-25. The deep kernel of D&D is a small company.

 

[haakon1]

My perhaps-hopeful guess is that forcing players to pay for DDB/VTT will cause a mass exodus.

I’m banned for life (or 18 years?!) by DDB because:
1) They had a link in my Facebook feed to see the character sheets “free” from the movie, I said, “Sure, I’ve got 3 minutes, could be fun like the sheets for the old TV show they had long ago.”
2) It led to a login page. I said, “Ugh, I don’t have time for this. Do I have an account on this thing? Maybe? Ugh, password isn’t on my iPad, if it ever existed. Freaking password recovery. This is a lot now.” I enter the most likely old email address.
3) No record, ugh, OK, create account I guess.
4) I scroll down past the birthday defaulting to today’s date.
5) Oh, now I can’t have an account, because as a 1 day old, I need parental permission.

I’m both annoyed and OK with never being able to use it.

 

[Remathilis]

They seem to have an aversion to publishing anything that you would want or need any material beyond the core three to use properly. This wasn't the case pre-5e, so it seems to be a relatively new phenomenon.

They did that in 3e to begin with, but abandoned the notion during the 3.5 run when it became too difficult to do.

 

[Micah Sweet]

They did that in 3e to begin with, but abandoned the notion during the 3.5 run when it became too difficult to do.

I see to recall multiple books for Dark Sun and the Realms in 4e...

 

[Micah Sweet]

I went with “Core Rules only”, specific DM permission on request for any other ruled when I restarted D&D in 1996 (with AD&D because 2e annoyed me).

I suspect a lot of DM’s (no idea on percentage) have gotten fed up with rules bloat over the decades and appreciate WotC basically supporting that approach now.

As I've said before, I don't believe in bloat. You don't want something, don't buy it and don't use it.

 

[Clint_L]

I dont think they will force anybody. They will just make the book items available online for folks who prefer them. Which these days is many.

As someone who uses DDB a ton, I don't see them forcing anyone to swap to DDB, at least not by stopping production of print books. Why would they do that when there's still lots of money to be made in traditional media?

Instead, they are making DDB really, really good value. So it is very enticing, particularly for younger players, those who play online, or those managing a bunch of different campaigns. Books are basically half-price, with regular sales on top of that, and with a DM-tier subscription you can share as many of them as you like with all of your players. Then there's all the features that make running the game much easier, like the Encounter Builder, searchable magic item and monster archives, character creator, and, most recently, the integrated maps.

I think there will be a profitable market for print media for the foreseeable future. But DDB will increasingly become the go-to tool for running games, often in conjunction with print media.

Edit: I also think that we can't have a meaningful discussion about what editions will look like going forward unless taking into account that the game is now built around DDB. Anyone suggesting a radical rules revision: it ain't going to happen. We might see significant change over time, in increments, but they aren't going to make any changes that break DDB and make my library obsolete overnight, like a 4e to 5e switch. It's just not a viable strategy anymore, if it ever was.