D&D General There are no "Editions" of D&D

[Reynard]

It occurred to me after responding to another thread that it is actually sort of silly for us -- the D&D fan community, or at least a subset of it -- to talk about editions of D&D because really there aren't any.

In publishing, "edition" designates a particular editorial view an layout of a book. Between editions, the substantive content can be amended and expanded upon, even corrected, but otherwise remains largely the same.

Some RPG editions follow that rule. Call of Cthulhu is the best known example. But it's relatively rare, mostly because of D&D.

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (aka 1E) was not a "new edition" of Dungeons and Dragons. It was a whole new game. There was a huge lawsuit about it, even. 2E was similarly a new game, obviously owing much to its predecessor, and so on down the line.

That is, every so-called "edition" of D&D has in fact been a distinct game of its own, regardless of how much or how little it borrowed from previous versions. As such it doesn't matterwhether people want to call "OneD&D" 5.5E or 6E. Like the rest, it's going to be a new game with some degree of influence from and compatibility with previous games called Dungeons and Dragons.

 

[kenada]

Ideally, the 2024 version of the D&D rules will be a new “edition” in the traditional publishing sense. It would revise the current rules while remaining not just compatible with but recognizable as a form of them. If the changes are too significant, WotC risks not just fragmenting the player base but killing the golden goose.

 

[Maxperson]

This seems very semantical to me. Whether you call it an edition and think of the various "editions" as revisions of the same game, or each "edition" being a new game, it's all the same when it comes to discussion. We're just talking about the differences between them or what one or another does about a particular thing.

 

[Zardnaar]

This seems very semantical to me. Whether you call it an edition and think of the various "editions" as revisions of the same game, or each "edition" being a new game, it's all the same when it comes to discussion. We're just talking about the differences between them or what one or another does about a particular thing.

This.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It occurred to me after responding to another thread that it is actually sort of silly for us -- the D&D fan community, or at least a subset of it -- to talk about editions of D&D because really there aren't any.

In publishing, "edition" designates a particular editorial view an layout of a book. Between editions, the substantive content can be amended and expanded upon, even corrected, but otherwise remains largely the same.

Some RPG editions follow that rule. Call of Cthulhu is the best known example. But it's relatively rare, mostly because of D&D.

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (aka 1E) was not a "new edition" of Dungeons and Dragons. It was a whole new game. There was a huge lawsuit about it, even. 2E was similarly a new game, obviously owing much to its predecessor, and so on down the line.

That is, every so-called "edition" of D&D has in fact been a distinct game of its own, regardless of how much or how little it borrowed from previous versions. As such it doesn't matterwhether people want to call "OneD&D" 5.5E or 6E. Like the rest, it's going to be a new game with some degree of influence from and compatibility with previous games called Dungeons and Dragons.

Actually, if we are going to insist on a usage of the term from outside TTRPGs rather than using the term how it tends to be used in TTRPGs, this will be a new edition, rather than a new game.

It’s a revision, using the same system, compatible with secondary material from before the revision.

 

[Reynard]

Actually, if we are going to insist on a usage of the term from outside TTRPGs rather than using the term how it tends to be used in TTRPGs, this will be a new edition, rather than a new game.

It’s a revision, using the same system, compatible with secondary material from before the revision.

I mean, that's not what they said. They said it will be a new thing that is compatible with certain existing 5E products (adventures and supplements, specifically). Or actually even more to the point: existing adventures and supplements will be compatible with it. That doesn't mean it's just a spiffying of the rules. After all, for 8 years now we have been constantly told by certain 5E players that the game is completely compatible with earlier edition adventures and supplements, you just have to convert on the fly.

 

[Pedantic]

This seems very semantical to me. Whether you call it an edition and think of the various "editions" as revisions of the same game, or each "edition" being a new game, it's all the same when it comes to discussion. We're just talking about the differences between them or what one or another does about a particular thing.

Yeah, it's okay that we have our own argot that differs from the publishing terms for academic textbooks. Plus, this style of edition has a pedigree outside of (or possibly, because of) how D&D has done it. The board game Descent has multiple editions that are not compatible and use entirely different rules. Moreover, the 2nd edition is literally called Descent: Second Edition down to the text on the box art.

 

[aco175]

And... this is why we get people correcting others when someone says that "They would just cast xyz." and someone needs to correct them and say that the player does not cast anything, the PC does.

 

[Echohawk]

It occurred to me after responding to another thread that it is actually sort of silly for us -- the D&D fan community, or at least a subset of it -- to talk about editions of D&D because really there aren't any.

In publishing, "edition" designates a particular editorial view an layout of a book. Between editions, the substantive content can be amended and expanded upon, even corrected, but otherwise remains largely the same.

Some RPG editions follow that rule. Call of Cthulhu is the best known example. But it's relatively rare, mostly because of D&D.

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (aka 1E) was not a "new edition" of Dungeons and Dragons. It was a whole new game. There was a huge lawsuit about it, even. 2E was similarly a new game, obviously owing much to its predecessor, and so on down the line.

That is, every so-called "edition" of D&D has in fact been a distinct game of its own, regardless of how much or how little it borrowed from previous versions. As such it doesn't matterwhether people want to call "OneD&D" 5.5E or 6E. Like the rest, it's going to be a new game with some degree of influence from and compatibility with previous games called Dungeons and Dragons.

I think you're right, but in a limited way. It is true that an edition of a particular book has that meaning, but in a D&D sense edition isn't generally referring to one particular book, but rather an edition of the game. The 2nd Edition Player's Handbook wasn't a new edition of the 1st Edition Players Handbook, rather it was a Player's Handbook for a second edition of the AD&D game. This too is, of course, semantics and doesn't detract from the silliness of arguments about exactly what counts as a new edition of the D&D game.

I think people frequently underestimate how much things change within each officially tagged edition of the game. Someone playing 2nd Edition with lots of the later accessory books is likely playing a game more substantially different to 2nd Edition with only the core books than someone playing 1st Edition. I remind myself of this whenever someone argues that the differences in the rules must be the basis for deciding if something is 6th Edition or 5.5 Edition. I think that's just one of any number of equally bad ways for deciding what counts as an edition of the game.

And don't get me started on the inconsistency of monster lore within editions...

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Didn't we have this very discussion like...two or three months ago?

Yes, it's a slightly idiosyncratic definition of "edition." That doesn't mean it is inappropriate or useless. For example, one of the terms for the version of a newspaper published very late in the day (and thus actually containing different news content) is "the late edition." "Edition" does, sometimes, refer to genuinely different content, not just reprints or slightly-tweaked/expanded updates.

An edition--version--of the game rules, in almost all cases, attempts to factor in understanding gained from the design of the previous edition--version--and how the players played and responded to it. For example, THAC0 was meant to be a simplification of the previous often-cumbersome table lookup stuff, even if it manifestly failed to actually simplify anything on that front for the vast majority of players. 3rd edition, despite all the reasons I happily rip into it, really was trying to do things like address some of the issues with caster power (again, hilariously abject failure) and "go back to the dungeon" amongst other concerns. Despite the criticism it received, 4e was welcomed with cheers when WotC said they were going to end Vancian spellcasting, and one can clearly see developments toward 4e rules (such as "reserve" feats and the Tome of Battle classes) in the later books of 3.5e.

Hell, the very term "3.5e" here is part of the anchoring. It was understood that 3.5e was not a truly new edition of the game, but rather...more like "we recognize a bunch of typos and poor editing, so we're fixing that and reprinting it" version.

In a very real sense, edition numbering is actually much more like program numbering than books. FFXIV 6.3 is not a completely different game rewritten from the ground up compared to 5.0-5.5, or even 2.0. Nor is it "essentially the same game with a few bugfixes and a new foreword." It's an expansion, a change, a partial rewrite. Likewise, each of the X.1, X.2 etc. patches makes smaller changes to the mechanics, iterative updates rather than the big chonky changes of the X.0 expansion packs.

Again: it's slightly idiosyncratic. That doesn't mean it's incorrect.