D&D General Making and surviving the break…

[EzekielRaiden]

I would never describe the original 4E books as bursting at the seams with flavor and mythic resonance.

Okay. I find the Dawn War, most of the deities, the ancient kingdoms (Bael Turath vs Arkhosia, Cendriane), the Feywild, the Shadowfell, and the Elemental Chaos simply dramatically better for adventure, flavor, and (very intentional) mythic stories than anything produced before or since. And that's just scratching the surface.

 

[payn]

I think you are discounting the fact that eventually Perkins, Merls, and Crawford will retire. Some new young blood will come in and want to make it their own. They will have enough sway to convince everyone to get on board, and voila, you will have a new edition. It may not be in the next three or four years. But once leadership leaves, things can change pretty drastically over a short period of time.

I do not think so. I believe it will be UA update 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 yadda yadda. Mostly online with an occasional hardcover every few years to cover the changes. In 10-20 years some pretty big departures might happen, but it will be boil frog in pot instead of toss frog in boiling pot change.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I do not think so. I believe it will be UA update 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 yadda yadda. Mostly online with an occasional hardcover every few years to cover the changes. In 10-20 years some pretty big departures might happen, but it will be boil frog in pot instead of toss frog in boiling pot change.

Given how significantly things have diverged in the past when leadership changes, I think your skepticism of such things is excessive. Especially if you think D&D is going to remain effectively unchanged for 20 further years.

 

[payn]

Given how significantly things have diverged in the past when leadership changes, I think your skepticism of such things is excessive. Especially if you think D&D is going to remain effectively unchanged for 20 further years.

You are not listening. I'm not saying it wont change, I'm saying its going to happen gradually instead of abruptly.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I do not think so. I believe it will be UA update 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 yadda yadda. Mostly online with an occasional hardcover every few years to cover the changes. In 10-20 years some pretty big departures might happen, but it will be boil frog in pot instead of toss frog in boiling pot change.

Given how significantly things have diverged in the past when leadership changes, I think your skepticism of such things is excessive. Especially if you think D&D is going to remain effectively unchanged for 20 further years.

I think with how successful 5e was/is, Jeremy et. al will be around for a while yet. So I think I agree with payn in that we'll see incremental changes rather than wholesale that we see when a leadership&design team is replaced.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You are not listening. I'm not saying it wont change, I'm saying its going to happen gradually instead of abruptly.

What you describe is leaving it effectively unchanged.

 

[schneeland]

So to the original question:
This was posted in the D&D section, but contemplating the answer, I came to think about other games which are big or long-lived enough to have multiple editions (most of the games I own don't have multiple editions), and realized that there is a rather high chance that I will not move on to the newest edition at some point.

The general pattern for edition change is that I will probably move on to the next edition:

• If the rules either receive only minor corrections or improve in areas that bother me, while not changing in areas that I like
• If the corresponding setting(s) either receive gradual continuation or improve in areas that I dislike or that have become stale over time, while not changing the key properties I like

Naturally, if either the rules or the setting change in ways that I disapprove of, there is a good chance that I will either simply abandon the game and move on to something else or remain on an older edition in some way. "Some way" here could mean that I run the game, at least for a while, beyond the end of its publication, but also that I just use setting and adventures, but run them with different rules.

Speaking of concrete examples:

• For Call of Cthulhu, edition changes are small enough that I have no reason not to run the latest edition
• For Shadowrun, I like the setting until the late 2050s/early 2060s (basically until the Year of the Comet); rules-wise, I started with 2e and might have moved onto 3e if we didn't stop playing. I looked at 5e and 6e, but found them much too cumbersome (and in the case of 6e also half-baked) and I dislike the meta plot after 3. But even 2e rules seem to complicated to me these days, so I now play in a group running 1e and 2e adventures with Savage Worlds and the Sprawlrunners supplement.
• For Warhammer Fantasy, I liked started with and like 2e, ignored 3e and checked out 4e, but found it too crunchy, so if I would ever run it again, I would probably either use 2e rules with 4e adventures/campaigns, or run them with Warlock!
• For D&D, I started playing with 2e, but 3e with its unified core mechanic easily felt like an improvement (and it's weaknesses only showed much later) and settings didn't change too much; I skipped 4e both due to the rules not resonating with me and the way it introduced massive changes to the Forgotten Realms. We kept playing 3e until 5e came out. 5e had much less staying power than 3e for me and I have abandoned it now. There's a good chance I will run B/X in the form of Old-School Essentials in the future, but since I didn't play B/X before, this is probably a little different. Other than that, D&D is basically in the same place as Shadowrun now, and if I run it again, it will probably be 2e settings with some form of unofficial rules (either from the OSR space or something fully homebrewed).

 

[payn]

What you describe is leaving it effectively unchanged.

No it's not, but its not worth it to keep rehashing. What I do have hope for is perhaps some of that modularity they abandoned with D&D Next. I think having a digital playground would make it easier to swap in and out modules of game rules and systems.

 

[Shardstone]

Okay. I find the Dawn War, most of the deities, the ancient kingdoms (Bael Turath vs Arkhosia, Cendriane), the Feywild, the Shadowfell, and the Elemental Chaos simply dramatically better for adventure, flavor, and (very intentional) mythic stories than anything produced before or since. And that's just scratching the surface.

I agree.

 

[Scott Christian]

I do not think so. I believe it will be UA update 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 yadda yadda. Mostly online with an occasional hardcover every few years to cover the changes. In 10-20 years some pretty big departures might happen, but it will be boil frog in pot instead of toss frog in boiling pot change.

That's a fair take. So they will keep 5e at its heart, but make 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 until eventually 5.9 is a different game. Will they do that instead of making a new edition? Only time will tell. I'm still sticking with my guess, but yours could be just as correct.