D&D General Reification versus ludification in 5E/6E

[ezo]

It's a new edition that started in 2020 though.

Certainly since Tasha's in many peoples' opinions.

 

[Remathilis]

Hey, if it works for you and settles your mind, great!

I, however, will continue to think WotC is just lazy and dropped the ball by not justifying things in a stat block as to why they are different from what we expect to see due to the other (PC-side?) mechanics of the game.

To be clear, I have no qualm with them being different, just with them doing it without any apparent rhyme or reason than "because we say so".

TSR did this, but WotC moved away from it (at least in 5E), and shifting back at this point is not a good look IMO anyway.

Arguably, the ONLY edition that bothered to show its work was 3e. AD&D certainly didn't (Justify ANY number in a monster stat block!) and 4e built monsters off tables and powers. 5e itself is full of these inconsistencies, but since they aren't any worse than what we had in AD&D, we ignored them.

 

[Remathilis]

Certainly since Tasha's in many peoples' opinions.

Yup. 5e lasted four years. Slightly better than 3.0.

 

[ezo]

Yup. 5e lasted four years. Slightly better than 3.0.

True. You could almost make the comparison:

2014 - 5E
2020ish - 5.5E
2024 - "6E"

when you think of what 2E was to 1E, "6E" is to 5E.

 

[Remathilis]

True. You could almost make the comparison:

2014 - 5E
2020ish - 5.5E
2024 - "6E"

when you think of what 2E was to 1E, "6E" is to 5E.

1e: OD&D (1974)
2e: B/X and BECMI
3e: AD&D
4e: AD&D 2nd Edition
5e: D&D 3.0
6e: D&D 3.5
7e: D&D 4th edition
8e: D&D 5th (2014)
9e: D&D 5th (2024)

It gets a little funky as Basic and Advanced existed concurrently, but they reunified in 2000.

 

[ezo]

1e: OD&D (1974)
2e: B/X and BECMI
3e: AD&D
4e: AD&D 2nd Edition
5e: D&D 3.0
6e: D&D 3.5
7e: D&D 4th edition
8e: D&D 5th (2014)
9e: D&D 5th (2024)

It gets a little funky as Basic and Advanced existed concurrently, but they reunified in 2000.

Yeah, really, why call 3E actually 3E... we were way past that point by then.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's an evolution of a philosophy that started much sooner. By your argument, 5e stopped being 5e sometime around 2020. The philosophy moved slowly across books like Eberron, Theros, and Tasha. It grew in MotM and Strixhaven. I would argue "5e" as it was originally envisioned only lasted five years, the second period of time was the move towards the 2024 books. Hell, Maxperson said MotM was a 2024 book published in 2022!

So, if it helps you sleep at night, it's a new edition. It's a new edition that started in 2020 though.

No argument. 2020 is around the time my dissatisfaction with WotC 5e became clear.

I do sleep better at night, thank you.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yup. 5e lasted four years. Slightly better than 3.0.

It's a shame. It was a good edition of D&D.

 

[ezo]

It's a shame. It was a good edition of D&D.

Like most people, my "2nd favorite" edition, despite its flaws.

 

[Remathilis]

It's a shame. It was a good edition of D&D.

I am reminded that 5e was supposed to be "evergreen" insofar as they felt that D&D was going into maintenance mode after 4e underperformed. Make an edition that feels like a greatest hits and support it with minimal output (a few sourcebooks, an annual module/AP). They said they had material prepped for up to 2018, and low-and-behold, starting in 2019, the product line shifted. The game was far more popular than they assumed it would be (due to the perfect storm of CR, Covid, and Stranger Things) and they suddenly had a budget. So they started experimenting, by choice and by force (such as the firestorm of controversy about its depictions of humanoids).

If D&D hadn't been popularized, I think it would have kept limping along as it was from 2014-2019. A sourcebook and one or two modules per year (focused primarily on Sword Coast/Faerun). Perhaps the lower-profile would have stopped or put off the eventual changes related to humanoids for a while. Then again, maybe we'd be even more worse off and D&D would be just a logo on mugs and retro T-Shirts.