Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 5373840" data-attributes="member: 14159">I've been thinking about the "edition treadmill", this idea that RPG's, especially D&D, MUST come out with new editions every so often.  This plan that D&D must produce a new edition every decade or so (very roughly) or perish.  The more I think of it. . .the more I think that is baloney.  I sometimes hear it stated that many types of games get new sweeping new editions and revisions all the time: baloney.  That's the RPG world, not board games, and not really CCG's.What got me thinking about this is that last month, I bought a bunch of board games for my 5 year old.   I went out and bought Sorry, Trouble and Monopoly.  Those games have the exact same rules and gameplay as they did when I played them a quarter-century ago when I was roughly his age.  I don't play CCG's (aside from a brief flirtation with L5R), but my wife got back into Magic recently, and found the game to be virtually the same as when she played it originally 8 or 9 years ago.  Yes, there are new cards, a few new mechanics here and there, but the learning curve is very shallow indeed.  Unless you're playing in a formal tournament, you can you the exact same decks and cards you used 10 years ago.  I know a gamer who has his "fun" deck for non-serious Magic games which hasn't changed in at least 12 years.D&D, on the other hand, is radically different than the game it was 25 years ago, or even 10 years ago.  If somebody went and bought their son the game they sell as D&D now and wanted to crack into it with his family and relive the adventures of their youth, they will not recognize the terminology, or the rules, or anything except a superficial resemblance (like the "red box" marketing) to the game they remember.  Somehow we're told by the gaming industry that it must be like this, that RPGs must have new editions every so often, and these editions so often seem to be vastly different with only token resemblances to what came before.It makes me think "why"?First, yes, game design does improve and evolve.  By the time 3rd Edition D&D game out, our group had house-ruled 2e AD&D beyond recognition to get it to run the campaigns we wanted to run.  Fortunately, the vast majority of those house rules had some equivalent or version in 3e, and 3.5 was mostly just an overzealous bug fix for 3.0.  But not every change was quite so needed, in the 1e to 2e AD&D switch, lots of popular and useful material was dropped for a variety of (mostly bad) reasons and the game was much worse for it, even if the rules were slightly cleaned up in presentation.  The 3.5 to 4e switch is one best touched on lightly, even years later it's a source of Instant Flamewar.  From my perspective the 1e/2e AD&D switch to the d20 based 3.x editions was the only one the game seemed to need to stay vital.So, rules do improve and evolve over time, but not enough to justify every single edition change we've had.So, is the edition treadmill just a relic of business plans?  Is it just a way for the company that runs D&D (be it TSR, WotC, or Hasbro) to ensure its bottom line, or is it progress incarnate as a way to keep the game constantly improving?Personally, I see it as about 90% profit motive, 10% evolution, but I'd like to hear other opinions on the issue.</blockquote>

Verification