D&D 5E So, I have been out of town for a few weeks, did I miss something?

[Remathilis]

All I remember about PO was that they overhauled the psionics rules and in the process utterly ruined them. It was one of several changes that ruined our 2e Dark Sun campaign (since the new psionics rules were adopted after the Dark Sun Revised box came out).

Our group tried the following:

* Character-Point char-gen. Surprisingly, none of use abused this system too harshly, but we didn't go for outlandishly wild character either (our dwarven psionicist lacked infravision, but he justified it by his psionics affecting it). The big thing was most people traded followers for some minor perk. (Our fighter got the d12 HD, etc). So we only lucked out that nobody abused the system badly.
* Kits: PO kit system was great, but nobody used them for some reason. In our later 2e games, they replaced the Brown Book kits though.
* Proficiencies: Combat and Tactics introduced weapon mastery, an easier unarmed combat system, and a few weapon proficiency options (one of them gave non-single classed fighters a crippled specialization; which saw some use). This all hung around after.
* New Classes: A big like. The Crusader, Monk, and Shaman all slowly replaced specialty priests in some games, and the various specialist wizards were liked (shadow mage especially) but our group never liked specializing so mage was still the most popular class.
* Psionics: Never figured this one out. It was bad. We stuck to the Complete Psionics Handbook when applicable. (I believe the rules were built for Dark Sun, but put into PO first).
* Spell Points/Systems of Magic: Tried, and disliked. They ended up hard to do without a calculator or computer system (yay core-rules!) By the end, most of us were using the normal spells per day column anyway. (and giving a bonus spell for Int for Wizards). That said, some of the systems were cool and we attempted to try to convert them back to spell slots...
* Phase Initiative: OH MAH GAWDS. D&D combat could be slow; this dragged it down to a crawl. It lasted one session before going back to PHB initiative. Some of the grid combat lasted though, so we were not shocked by Attacks of Oppertunity in the 3e PHB.
* Critical Hits/Spell Criticals: Another Ones-and-Done. Again, dragged the game to a crawl. We used the default double-damage on a 20 rule.
* Additional Spell rules: Never used. Always forgot the existed.
* New Spells/Spell Lists: Mandatory. Cook wasn't thinking when some of those spells got assigned priest spheres, so PO went back and fixed spell access (stuff like giving druids, not clerics, access to reincarnate or giving priests with the healing sphere access to remove disease. So much common-sense fixes they were Cannon even in our "Core rules only" games).

Eventually, we condensed all our used PO stuff into like 60 pages of house rules in a binder (easy to do since the full text was on the Core Rules CD) that had the classes, kits, proficiencies, and spells from PO listed in it. Much of the other stuff went to dustbin. I could NOT imagine using character points, spell points, or phase initiative again (and the fact little of it saw the light beyond Dragon, a module, and Core Rules makes me think it wasn't all that well accepted.)

 

[TerraDave]

You used more then we did! At least for a while.

The extra complicated grid combat lasted. So it took me a while to realize how slow 3E or 4E combat could be...but I figured it out eventually.

In terms of character options...those brown books where actually in some ways better, but again did not feel that way at the time.

 

[Oldtimer]

Here it is in visual form. I'm sure someone, somewhere will find some way to be angry at this graph because - hey, internet! - but here it is!

View attachment 63840

While it's technically true that AD&D Monster Manual was released in 1977, I would personally count 1978, when the Player's Handbook was released, as the release year for AD&D 1st edition.

 

[Morrus]

Incidentally, I did post the graph on the ENW Facebook page and it drove a guy incandescent with rage. He accused me of insulting his intelligence with this deliberately false and misleading graph, and accused me of being nothing but a paid mouthpiece.

Ah, internet. Where merely posting some game release dates makes somebody angry. I'm still not clear what he was angry about, precisely.

 

[Remathilis]

You used more then we did! At least for a while.

The extra complicated grid combat lasted. So it took me a while to realize how slow 3E or 4E combat could be...but I figured it out eventually.

In terms of character options...those brown books where actually in some ways better, but again did not feel that way at the time.

Not a lot of it lasted; psionics, phase initiative and critical hits last a single session, and spell points slowly faded as we got higher level and had 50+ points to spend each day. Its hard to really tell how bad character points were since few of us got really crazy with it. So in the end, the books ended up being roughly equivalent to a good Splatbook in terms of content; just spread out over three books of subsystems we didn't use much of.

Still, in hindsight they share a lot in common with Tome of Battle or Complete Mage; you can CLEARLY see the beginnings of a new edition there, but you could completely ignore it and everything they put out would still be compatible with the normal core rules. Very different than say, Holmes/Moldvay (where stats for things were wildly different) or 3.5 (which largely invalidated 3.0's material due to major rule changes like DR).

 

[DMZ2112]

I love @Morrus' graph, but I think we need to differentiate between the two "streams" that came from OD&D - the Basic and Advanced lines.

My original list was tongue-in-cheek, but if you're going to include 3.5 then you might as well include "4.5" Essentials and "2.5" Skills & Powers. I know those are more like 4.2 and 2.2, but they're still revisions of sorts.

I both agree and disagree with Mercurius, in that I would say, "If you're going to include Basic and Advanced D&D in the same chart, you might as well include Essentials." If you're going to give the 1977-1977 gap between the initial release of Basic D&D and the initial release of Advanced D&D credit for being the "shortest gap" between editions, it doesn't /matter/ whether Essentials was a "new edition" or not -- you're obviously not concerned with whether the following product is intended to be a replacement for the preceding product.

This isn't a graph of supersession, it's simply a graphical list of primary releases.

 

[Mercurius]

I both agree and disagree with Mercurius, in that I would say, "If you're going to include Basic and Advanced D&D in the same chart, you might as well include Essentials." If you're going to give the 1977-1977 gap between the initial release of Basic D&D and the initial release of Advanced D&D credit for being the "shortest gap" between editions, it doesn't /matter/ whether Essentials was a "new edition" or not -- you're obviously not concerned with whether the following product is intended to be a replacement for the preceding product.

This isn't a graph of supersession, it's simply a graphical list of primary releases.

Well exactly. As far as I understand it, OD&D in a way "split" into the Basic and Advanced lines, which should be considered separately if we're looking at editions. So we have:

OD&D (1974)

Basic Line (1977-91)
1977 Holmes Basic set
1981 Moldvay Basic/Expert sets
1983-86 BECMI
1991 Rules Cyclopedia

Advanced Line (1977-present)
1977-79 AD&D 1E
1985 Unearthed Arcana
1989 2E
1995 2E, Player's Options
2000 3E
2003 3.5E
2008 4E
2010 4E Essentials
2014 5E

(I included "sub-editions" in italics)

Some might consider 3E and beyond as a new line, but I think its pretty clear they're far more descended from "Advanced" than "Basic" - and certainly the numbering implies they're a continuation from AD&D - although 5E seems to draw almost as much from both. I suppose, if you wanted to, you could add a "WotC D&D Line".

 

[Perram]

Incidentally, I did post the graph on the ENW Facebook page and it drove a guy incandescent with rage. He accused me of insulting his intelligence with this deliberately false and misleading graph, and accused me of being nothing but a paid mouthpiece.

Ah, internet. Where merely posting some game release dates makes somebody angry. I'm still not clear what he was angry about, precisely.

I don't agree with your chart for reasons others have mentioned, it is an interesting bit of factual data, but the presentation lends itself to what I consider a false conclusion. The OD&D line and the AD&D line should not be combined when talking about 'years between editions.'

And like others, I feel that if you're going to include 3.5 in the chart, Essentials and Skills & Powers need to be listed as well.

However... mad rage and insults? C'mon! We're way beyond this petty stuff, people.

 

[Remathilis]

I don't agree with your chart for reasons others have mentioned, it is an interesting bit of factual data, but the presentation lends itself to what I consider a false conclusion. The OD&D line and the AD&D line should not be combined when talking about 'years between editions.'

And like others, I feel that if you're going to include 3.5 in the chart, Essentials and Skills & Powers need to be listed as well.

However... mad rage and insults? C'mon! We're way beyond this petty stuff, people.

Here's why I say 3.5 is a different animal then Player's Options.

1. The last module I bought in 2e was the Apocalypse Stone. It ran perfectly well with my 1989 era core books. The last module I bought for 3e was Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. It was incompatible wIth my 2000 era core books.
2. To use PO with later material (settings, adventures and splat) I needed to convert the new material to make it PO compatible. To use 3.0 material with 3.5, I needed to convert the older stuff to 3.5.

PO had some radical options, but it didn't change the game in a noticeable way like 3.5 did. Most stuff put out as late as 1999 was still using the PHB rules. In 2007, nothing was using the 3.0 DR rules or ranger class.

3.5 counts because they sold me new books with updated rules and then referenced those new rules from then on. PO was a bunch of optional rules they sold me, barely referenced form then on, and then took the best ideas from to add to third edition.