D&D (2024) RD&D MM will have nearly 500 Monsters, and new NPCs.

[Emberashh]

I don't know what you were doing in January of this year, but WotC has a demonstrated history of being really, really bad at communications.

Oh im aware. I still don't believe that their assertions now are what they were thinking originally, and their terrible communication is only further confirmed by them leaning on it to get out of controversy.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I wish they'd just give a damn name for it lol. I'd be fine with RD&D if they wanted that. I'll stick with 1D&D until they ditch that branding like they did with D&D Next.

Yes. At the moment, we're still only looking at the OneD&D UA stuff, so we can probably call what we're looking at now "OneD&D".

We really don't know what 50th Anniversary D&D will look like, other than some hints and guesses!

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Not that Im trying to take the convo political, but this to me feels like an identical situation to the $1400 vs $2000 debacle from during the pandemic in the US.

They may well have said it one way, but they were not doing a thing to address just how many people were interpreting it very differently, and Id argue that like that stimulus debacle that some of that was deliberate on their part.

If you're just updating the game, its a bit unnecessary to go out of your way to assure people that 5e content will still be compatible with, if we take their word, 5e itself.

There was no "separate" version all along, thats why they presented it as this separate thing and assured everyone this new thing, that isn't new, will be compatible with all these old things, which aren't actually old.

I get where you're going with this, but I don't think it's anywhere near that insidious. I think that they thought that they were clear - that "OneD&D" was akin to "D&DNext" which was ALSO never, at any point, going to be the name of 5e. They used that idea again, and probably spent a lot of time scratching their heads as to why people were talking about it as if that was the name of the game going forward. AND they said that it would be backwards compatible right at the start. We just didn't believe them. Even now that it's becoming clearer as to what they mean by backwards compatible, we're all still arguing over what it means, and if it's even true.

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.

I think they thought they were clear. They obviously weren't. It took them quite awhile to understand that they need to do more to talk to their audience. In particular in a day-and-age where if there's any way you can be taken in the worst possible light, someone somewhere will make a video saying that that was what you meant all along.

 

[Emberashh]

The problem with that is is that DND Next was explicitly always going to be a new edition regardless of what they called it, so invoking the same idea while, as said, going out of their way to distinguish between OneDND and 5e as separate things, is what results in people seeing it as a new edition.

What they say now doesn't really confirm anything other than what their plans are now, and there is little reason given everythings thats happened to just trust that it was merely a miscommunication.

They clearly intended this to be a new edition, they presented it as one, and they're backtracking on anything even remotely controversial now that they got their ass handed to them over the OGL debacle.

If they truly wanted this to just be an update to 5e, they could have just presented it as just that.

"In tandem with the 50th Anniversary we're going to release an updated Core Book set to address all those happy little problems people have with 5e."

It would have been that simple. But that isn't what they did at all, and miscommunication or not, it clearly wasn't what people were understanding with what they did say, so that should have prompted an immediate correction.

Not a correction 4-5 months later after a buttload of controversies that made them reverse the bulk of their business plans.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

We really don't know what 50th Anniversary D&D will look like, other than some hints and guesses!

That is very true. Especially given D&D Next did a bunch of last minute and fairly big changes, most of them which weren't in any playtest packet, let alone the last playtest packet.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

That is very true. Especially given D&D Next did a bunch of last minute and fairly big changes, most of them which weren't in any playtest packet, let alone the last playtest packet.

I think some of the things I like least about 5e were things that were added/changed last minute. It's quite possible that those things were rushed.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

They clearly intended this to be a new edition, they presented it as one, and they're backtracking on anything even remotely controversial now that they got their ass handed to them over the OGL debacle.

I would slightly question this, given they quite recently referred to the new edition as "Compatible with 5th edition" or very similar language to that. Which seems to show them still positioning it as a new edition.

I think some of the things I like least about 5e were things that were added/changed last minute. It's quite possible that those things were rushed.

Yeah it seems likely. Hell the whole of the DMG screamed "RUSHED", let's hope they're already working on the 1D&D DMG.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

They clearly intended this to be a new edition, they presented it as one, and they're backtracking on anything even remotely controversial now that they got their ass handed to them over the OGL .

This is clearly false. When they launched the playtest last year (and 1D&D) they clearly stated is was 5e. We have severally threads on these forums about it and the announcement videos and transcripts are still online. I in fact looked them up a couple of days ago.

Unless of course you’re claiming they were lying from the very beginning. Then I don’t know what to tell you

 

[FitzTheRuke]

They clearly intended this to be a new edition, they presented it as one, and they're backtracking on anything even remotely controversial now that they got their ass handed to them over the OGL debacle.

You see, I entirely disagree with you here. (Well, not on the ass handed to them part, that they DID!) But I've ALWAYS had the impression that they never intended to make a new edition as such. How much they were going to change was unclear, though.

If they truly wanted this to just be an update to 5e, they could have just presented it as just that.

I'm pretty sure they DID present it as a 50th anniversary revamp. We just didn't quite know what they meant by that.

"In tandem with the 50th Anniversary we're going to release an updated Core Book set to address all those happy little problems people have with 5e."

I'm pretty sure they said something very very close to this, we just didn't know exactly what they meant.

Heck, we (the ENWorld Community) have been arguing about what they meant ever since they announced it.

I've been in the "wait and see" camp, myself.

 

[Parmandur]

I would slightly question this, given they quite recently referred to the new edition as "Compatible with 5th edition" or very similar language to that. Which seems to show them still positioning it as a new edition.

Well, what they said in the creator conference was that character sheets can be used in a 2024 game, that a 2024 Class can pick a 2014 Subclass, that 2014 Raves could be picked as Species in a 2024 game, and that they maintaining the exact same CR for all Monsters so that no Adventure will need any tweaking to work with 2024 characters. If everything published from 2014 on can be used, that's pretty compatible. It's not an Edition the same way 3.5 was, even.