D&D (2024) So Will 'OneD&D' (6E) Actually Be Backwards Compatible?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It's still impressive how much 3rd Party books you could get in the stores back than, compared to today where most of the stuff is only available through Kickstarter and Backerkit. But I guess merchants got hit badly by the edition changes as well.

The mainstream book store market is also very different now. The surviving FLGSes and comic shops are less changed, but there's also a lot fewer of them.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

To be clear, I expect them to market it as Dungeons and Dragons like they do now. They don't market 5e as 5th edition generally now anyway.

Yeah, at most, they'll advertise the new versions next year as the golden anniversary special editions, but once that special "collectors edition" trade dress sells out, they will just go back to calling it "D&D," except in a few small spots in and on some of the books. (It's on the back cover of the 2014 PHB, for instance.)

 

[Iosue]

Hell, 3.5 is the only case of Wizards of The Coast claiming compatibility and that being false/questionable in the end.

I would even argue that the incompatibility of 3E and 3.5 is somewhat overstated. To be sure, 3.5 left a lot of 3PP works in a lurch, and from a "system mastery" standpoint, many builds and mechanical synergies were invalidated. But the core engine was still the same, and I daresay for most tables, 3E adventures could certainly still be played using 3.5 core rules with a minimum of fuss.

But then, cards on the table, I consider B/X, 1e, and 2e to be essentially compatible, at least at their core.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I would even argue that the incompatibility of 3E and 3.5 is somewhat overstated. To be sure, 3.5 left a lot of 3PP works in a lurch, and from a "system mastery" standpoint, many builds and mechanical synergies were invalidated. But the core engine was still the same, and I daresay for most tables, 3E adventures could certainly still be played using 3.5 core rules with a minimum of fuss.

But then, cards on the table, I consider B/X, 1e, and 2e to be essentially compatible, at least at their core.

The question is whether or not adventures and core math are all that's important to compatibility. Clearly WotC thinks so.

 

[Hussar]

The question is whether or not adventures and core math are all that's important to compatibility. Clearly WotC thinks so.

What else is there?

 

[Micah Sweet]

What else is there?

Races, classes, archetypes, spells, monsters, any rules not directly affecting or affected by the base math. In short, the most visible parts of the game when you're creating characters or in play at the table.

 

[Hussar]

Races, classes, archetypes, spells, monsters, any rules not directly affecting or affected by the base math. In short, the most visible parts of the game when you're creating characters or in play at the table.

But the only compatibility element of nearly all of those is the math behind them.

I have a sneaking suspicion you’re referring to fluff and lore and, well, there aren’t any compatibility issues to be found there. There’s only personal preference.

If you had no problems with the massive changes 5e made to DnD lore in 2014, you really can’t complain about changes now on the basis of compatibility.

 

[mamba]

Races, classes, archetypes, spells, monsters, any rules not directly affecting or affected by the base math. In short, the most visible parts of the game when you're creating characters or in play at the table.

monsters are compatible, or you run into issues with adventure compatibility

The general balance will be compatible for the same reason.

Taking e.g a subclass and feat from 2014 and dropping them into a 2024 class I doubt will always work, but I also do not consider this necessary for compatibility. If you can have one player using a 2014 char play alongside another using a 2024 char without hickups, then the two are compatible.
If you can have a group of 2014 chars play a 2024 adventure, and vice versa, without having to adjust things (outside of using the corresponding base monsters, and even that is optional), then the two are compatible

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Right. There's an entire generation of gamers who already hate Bargle. All they have to do is make a movie with him as the villain and they'll fill seats and/or sell books. They're sitting on dozens of worlds each with casts of thousands of characters. And the best they can come up with is "gotta protect the non-copyrightable mechanics from...lol...Disney."

There are probably less than half a million people with any clue what a Bargle is.

Actually, you are saying all this. He certainly did not say it was just a "tweak". What a waste of time if it was. But people can listen to the interview and draw their own conclusions.

Well he called it an evolution, not a change to the core game. He also explicitly said “100% compatible” and “we don’t think of it as separate from 5e”.

But I don't believe this. It's 101 corporate naughty word. They fully knew what they were doing. The second words of the plans would have been communicated (apparently up to two years ago?) the people in charge would have been informed that they were possibly about to create something bad. They just didn't care. They wanted the movie, the lifestyle brand, the plushies, the VTT, the subscriptions, the tie-in with their video games, the microtransactions and all of that.

Nah, it all tracks.

If I create a subclass based on the 5.1 SRD it won't work seamlessly with the way 1D&D subclasses are currently supposed to work, so "100% compatible" wouldn't be my words of choice.

Guess your threshold for “seemless” is different from mine.

He did specifically mention it as being like a 5.5 too though (IIRC). I took that, from context, to mean that he sees it as 5e, not a new edition (i.e. 6e).

Exactly.

Your view of the corporate world does not match my experience. I've spent 30 years working primarily for Fortune 500 companies including the last 20 years as a consultant at some of the biggest companies in the world.

Corporations are not monolithic Borg-like entities working to achieve the single goal of maximizing profit at all costs. What Kyle described as his team "not being at the table" to share their view about how the OGL will affect creators rings true. I've been in those meetings where we made stupid decisions because we didn't consult the right stakeholders, and I've been the "little people" not consulted about other stupid decisions. It's actually pretty rare that a team "fully knew what they were doing" when they make some really big decisions.

People make multimillion dollar mistakes every single day in the corporate world, and often it's because someone failed to inform and/or consult the right people due to ignorance or laziness. You don't have to be malicious or ill-willed or even greedy to do something dumb that hurts other people.

This.

I think it was 3.5 he compared it to. So basically 1D&D will be a half-edition, which means half the community will consider it a new edition, and half will say it's still the same.

Well, he said people might call it 5.5 because it’s closer to that [than to a real edition change]. He didn’t say that it actually is a “half edition”.

I would even argue that the incompatibility of 3E and 3.5 is somewhat overstated. To be sure, 3.5 left a lot of 3PP works in a lurch, and from a "system mastery" standpoint, many builds and mechanical synergies were invalidated. But the core engine was still the same, and I daresay for most tables, 3E adventures could certainly still be played using 3.5 core rules with a minimum of fuss.

But then, cards on the table, I consider B/X, 1e, and 2e to be essentially compatible, at least at their core.

Sure. Like I said, questionable or false. Depends on perspective I guess. I didn’t like either version of 3e so I’m not trying to be authoritative about it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But the only compatibility element of nearly all of those is the math behind them.

I have a sneaking suspicion you’re referring to fluff and lore and, well, there aren’t any compatibility issues to be found there. There’s only personal preference.

If you had no problems with the massive changes 5e made to DnD lore in 2014, you really can’t complain about changes now on the basis of compatibility.

Oh, I absolutely did have problems with 5e's lore from the beginning. My lore pretty much ends with 2e. The thing is, 5e's lore has always been sparse, easy to ignore, and didn't really start pushing against what I liked until a couple years ago.

The aspects of the game I mentioned form what actual players interact with, so yeah, I think they are pretty important compatibility factors.