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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 6936438" data-attributes="member: 37579">Okay.There are six real editions of D&D: 1-5 and Basic. 1e lasted from 1977 to 1989.BECMI D&D lasted from 1983 to 2000.2e lasted from 1989 to 1999 (or 1989 to 1995 and 1995 to 1999).3e lasted from 2000 to 2003.3.5e lasted from 2003 to 2007.4e lasted from 2008 to 2010. 4e Essentials lasted from 2010 to 2012. So the longest editions are, in order, BECMI, 1e, 2e, then 3.5e. BECMI didn't have any real accessories beyond the level increasing books (Companion or Immortals) and the Creature Catalogue as everything else was a some combination of world book or adventure. It's in super high demand. The books fetch a very high price on the secondary market. And the Red Box is arguably the best selling D&D product of all time. 1e only had the 8 accessories and a wealth of adventures. Even those were fairly small most of the time.In contrast, 2e only had a half-dozen hardcover expansions. But it had soooo many softcover books and TSR struggled for money and eventually went bankrupt. Given I'm separating Essentials, I could probably arguably separate the 1995 Revised 2nd Edition products.  The mid-edition relaunch which was an attempt to revitalize the game and boost sagging sales. It really served the exact same purpose as 3.5e and Essentials. And it launched with a whole host of new accessories and tweaks to the system.Following that were the four super short editions. Each edition grew shorter and shorter. Each edition had increasingly more "assumed" crunch. So the longest lasting versions of D&D are BECMI and AD&D by a wide margin, which are also the ones with the fewest waves of player accessories and splatbooks. Now, correlation does not equal causation. So the two examples could just be flukes. The short lifespan of 3e and 4e could be attributed to failures of those systems. However, it makes sense to try a lighter release schedule to see what happens. To follow a model somewhat simmilar to the most successful and longest lasting version of D&D: BECMI - albeit without separating the Core Rules into several different products. If the edition starts to fail, they can always add more content. But it's foolish to try what's been done four or five times in the past and expect a different result. Because once you introduce bloat you can't undo it.</blockquote>

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