D&D (2024) Jeremy Crawford: “We are releasing new editions of the books”

[Velderan]

If they invented a new stat and made that key, yeah, that'd do something. Is there indications that they are doing that, though? Again, not sure I see how old adventures with new material or new adventures with old material are going to really be incompatible going forward.

Same, I haven't seen anything yet that seems to be cause for concern. It seems to be mostly balancing tweaks you can take or leave.

 

[Justice and Rule]

define support, they can use new adventures, setting books, monster manuals,… they won’t get any more subclasses. To me that is them being supported.

Yeah, and at the end I think they'll settle on the first three rather than needing to include all four that you mention. Trying to keep up class support, especially with subclasses being fitted across two different chassis, seems very optimistic even in the short-term, let alone the long-term. I think Wizards will settle on letting you use new material on the GM side as "compatibility" and phase out the player side. I mean, do we think they are going to continue to sell 2014 PHBs alongside the 2024 ones?

I think the number in itself has importance. Is that irrational? Sure, but plenty of things are and people make decisions based on them every day

I just don't think it does as much as people think it does. This isn't 2E-->3E-->4E-->5E. All these sorts of things are based around their environment, and I don't think that things collapse with an edition revision.

 

[Micah Sweet]

that is a you thing.

And considering you don’t even play 5e proper anymore…okay? It’s not gonna impact LevelUp so…

Meanwhile, the rest of us are gonna continue to enjoy 5e regardless of which printing of the phb we are using.

I'm not sure that is as much a "me" thing as you're assuming.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure. It allows people that want to DM a particular adventure to do so with minimal to no conversion regardless of whether they use the '14 or the '24 core rules. So, it's beneficial to the buyer (regardless of whether they buy into the revised edition) as well as the seller.

What conversion would they need to do? How different do you imagine they would make even a 6e? The adventures would likely still work regardless.

 

[Older Beholder]

Personally, I'm waiting until the books are released next year before forming an opinion on them.

I’m OK with slightly altered versions of classes, races etc, from a world building perspective it just gives you more options to play with. If you want to differentiate a race from an isolated region, use the 2014 rules, but more commonly the race will use the 2024 rules.

All the talk of mixing rule sets reminds me of a guy at work who has a TTRPG group that I often ask about his games and how they’re going. He once said one of the guys in his group was running a game where he had everyone play an elf from a different game system, so one player would be a D&D elf, another from Shadowrun, one from GURPs, etc… It still hurts my head just thinking about it.

 

[JEB]

Adventures are important because WotC doesn't have to stop printing the pre-24 adventures and keep making money from already published books.

It's pretty damn likely that any pre-24 adventures they still consider worth selling are going to get a revised release not long after the 2024 core, "enhanced" to encourage 2014-era players to buy them all over again. After all, Lost Mine of Phandelver, Curse of Strahd, and Tyranny of Dragons (twice!) got this treatment in the current era. I would expect the originals to go out of print with the 2014 books.

As for the stuff Wizards doesn't consider worth updating, I'll be interested to see how many stay in print after the 2024 core is released. Post-Tasha stuff seems the most likely, since it was designed to be forward-compatible; but I bet a lot of pre-Tasha stuff will just disappear after 2024.

 

[JEB]

All the talk of mixing rule sets reminds me of a guy at work who has a TTRPG group that I often ask about his games and how they’re going. He once said one of the guys in his group was running a game where he had everyone play an elf from a different game system, so one player would be a D&D elf, another from Shadowrun, one from GURPs, etc… It still hurts my head just thinking about it.

I toyed a while back with a game that mixed and matched all the obsolete editions of D&D (0e through 2014 5e) into a patchwork world that would let players be characters from any version of D&D. Kind of burned out once I started to prepare, and the massive scope of the effort became clear... still kinda attached to the idea, though.

 

[Azzy]

Sure, but do we actually see incompatibility with old adventures with 1D&D? Do we see likely incompatibility with new adventures with old 5E? The way I see things, I don't see WotC's class designs changing how the game functions at a base level as much as balancing things out across the classes. Whether you see it as a success or not might vary, but that definitely seems like the intent. So why would we assume that, if this is all they are doing with 1D&D, that calling it a new edition would make new adventures not work with the old rules and the old adventures not work with the new rules?

It's (probably) the psychology of the matter. Calling it a different edition comes with a lot of baggage as can be seen with just about every edition change have edition wars (to varying degrees—3.5e→4e being the biggest crapfest as far as edition wars go). There's also people that will automatically assume that if it's 6e it will be incompatible with 5e (which, to be fair, has been true with the different editions under WotC stewardship). WotC is trying to calm the masses as it were and trying to avoid fan backlash. Will they succeed? I dunno, but I don't blame them for trying.

 

[Hussar]

Personally, I'm waiting until the books are released next year before forming an opinion on them.

I’m OK with slightly altered versions of classes, races etc, from a world building perspective it just gives you more options to play with. If you want to differentiate a race from an isolated region, use the 2014 rules, but more commonly the race will use the 2024 rules.

All the talk of mixing rule sets reminds me of a guy at work who has a TTRPG group that I often ask about his games and how they’re going. He once said one of the guys in his group was running a game where he had everyone play an elf from a different game system, so one player would be a D&D elf, another from Shadowrun, one from GURPs, etc… It still hurts my head just thinking about it.

How dare you be so reasonable? You sir have failed this hobby.

 

[Hussar]

It's pretty damn likely that any pre-24 adventures they still consider worth selling are going to get a revised release not long after the 2024 core, "enhanced" to encourage 2014-era players to buy them all over again. After all, Lost Mine of Phandelver, Curse of Strahd, and Tyranny of Dragons (twice!) got this treatment in the current era. I would expect the originals to go out of print with the 2014 books.

As for the stuff Wizards doesn't consider worth updating, I'll be interested to see how many stay in print after the 2024 core is released. Post-Tasha stuff seems the most likely, since it was designed to be forward-compatible; but I bet a lot of pre-Tasha stuff will just disappear after 2024.

Well, yes. I’m not quite sure what the issue is. Books do go out of print. When they stop selling, they stop printing new ones.

This has nothing to do with editions at all. If Out of the Abyss isn’t selling, regardless of anything else, they’re going to stop printing more of them.

Stuff that is still selling strongly? Why wouldn’t they do updated versions? Tyranny of Dragons isn’t just a reprint. Each version is actually different.