D&D 5E (2024) What will D&D 6th edition be like?

[Mistwell]

I doubt that
5e is good but it isn't neither close enough to perfect nor modular enough to go on forever.
It's almost 5 years and it's not at the state it would need to be to stay evergreen.

Almost 5 years? D&D 5e came out in July 2014. It's selling more now than the day it was released and has increased in popularity every one of those 6 years. I can see arguing you don't think it's good enough, but I can't see arguing there is some modularity or readiness state that it's failing to achieve such that it would be a barrier to remaining evergreen. In fact I think the modular issue went out the window in year 1 for an overwhelming majority of D&D players.

 

[Panda-s1]

I still want to know what 3rd Edition will look like.

It's lonely here in 1996.

when you sleep you regain 1 hp per level, and everyone has thief skills, broken af man.

 

[Minigiant]

Almost 5 years? D&D 5e came out in July 2014. It's selling more now than the day it was released and has increased in popularity every one of those 6 years. I can see arguing you don't think it's good enough, but I can't see arguing there is some modularity or readiness state that it's failing to achieve such that it would be a barrier to remaining evergreen. In fact I think the modular issue went out the window in year 1 for an overwhelming majority of D&D players.

That's kinda the point.

5e is very popular now. And as it get popular, the newcomers will want things. And just like when I joined, people will see the limitation of the system to mimic the worlds, characters, and styles of the newcomers.

5e isn't that modular. It was built to be friendly to the classic D&D tropes of the past. 5e replicates the many nostalgic D&D tropes of the past and gets some of the past failures to work. It doesn't do new ideas that well though. Ideas from new comics, cartoons, books, tv, and movies, kinda fall apart and need a lot of work from the DM.

A player of mine who's character asked me how do you play a character with a stand. Now I over here trying to smash 5e books to make JoJo characters. Sure Johnathan would be easy but this bum wants to be Jotaro.

"Dee, you can't be Polnareff..".
"Then can I be Captain Elfmerica?"
"What is that, bro?"

Heck, it doesn't even do beastmasters right.

 

[abirdcall]

That's kinda the point.

5e is very popular now. And as it get popular, the newcomers will want things. And just like when I joined, people will see the limitation of the system to mimic the worlds, characters, and styles of the newcomers.

5e isn't that modular. It was built to be friendly to the classic D&D tropes of the past. 5e replicates the many nostalgic D&D tropes of the past and gets some of the past failures to work. It doesn't do new ideas that well though. Ideas from new comics, cartoons, books, tv, and movies, kinda fall apart and need a lot of work from the DM.

A player of mine who's character asked me how do you play a character with a stand. Now I over here trying to smash 5e books to make JoJo characters. Sure Johnathan would be easy but this bum wants to be Jotaro.

"Dee, you can't be Polnareff..".
"Then can I be Captain Elfmerica?"
"What is that, bro?"

Heck, it doesn't even do beastmasters right.

I think it is a feature that D&D is its own IP.

I don't want Fantasy GURPS.

I don't want D&D to try to be all things to all people. I think more people think this way and appreciate that it has its own voice.

 

[Don Durito]

Almost 5 years? D&D 5e came out in July 2014. It's selling more now than the day it was released and has increased in popularity every one of those 6 years. I can see arguing you don't think it's good enough, but I can't see arguing there is some modularity or readiness state that it's failing to achieve such that it would be a barrier to remaining evergreen. In fact I think the modular issue went out the window in year 1 for an overwhelming majority of D&D players.

Times change.

In the 80s and 90s it was considered pretty much essential for good systems to model reality and to have clear skill systems - it was rare to criticise a game because it's skill system was too long or too granular. This was pretty much state of the art. Ad&d was mocked for things like the fact that hit points meant that fighters could survive 100ft falls. This was regarded by many as self-evidently absurd.

In the early 2000s people hacked 3E to give more tactical options and make it more complex (Have a gander at Iron Heroes sometime - looking at it now - it seems like a clear mess - at the time it was widely praised and excited a lot of people). Many people argued (and some continue to this day) that 3.5 had no caster imbalance. People thought that things like rolling to confirm criticals were worth the trouble - because realism. D20 Conan had at least two extra forms of defence and thought that the ability to carry a knife in your teeth was actually a reasonable class feature to give a barbarian.

In the early days of 4E many of the less realistic elements of 4E were widely mocked and ridiculed and many people clearly couldn't get their head around how a game could function with so little attention to realism. Many similar elements either made it across to 5E or were re-introduced with Xanathar's Guide to little uproar.

Call it progress, or merely fashion (it's very much arguable) but trends in regard to what is desirable (as regarded by the majority) in rpgs change. Some of the design elements that seem perfectly reasonable in 5E may well come to seem old fashioned in another 10 or 15 years. Sooner or later D&D has to change or it will wither away like 2E was doing in the late 90s as other more 'modern' games start taking bigger slices of the pie.

At this point it's hard to see what 6E will look like because there isn't a clear identifiable lack amongt the community, nor has there been a noticeable movement of a large proportion of players towards some other hot new game. If you could have said one thing clearly prior to the release of 3E it would have been that some kind of skill system would definitely be introduced. If you could have said one thing prior to 4e it would have been that caster imbalance would be addressed.

 

[Minigiant]

I think it is a feature that D&D is its own IP.

I don't want Fantasy GURPS.

I don't want D&D to try to be all things to all people. I think more people think this way and appreciate that it has its own voice.

Oh of course
But again 5e edition has pulled a sudden and large influx of new fans to D&D. New Fans who see know of many other fantasy worlds and concepts. Fantasy concept that have been cultivated over a newly grewing fandom for fantasy.

So all these fans wil draw inspiration from the Harry Potter, Demon Slayer, Avengers, Teen Titans, Game of Thrones, Warhammer, etc and realize the defeciencies of 5th edition. And like a "smart" company, WoTC will attempt to give what they think could fit into D&D and still feel D&D. Either with more books or a new edition.

 

[abirdcall]

Oh of course
But again 5e edition has pulled a sudden and large influx of new fans to D&D. New Fans who see know of many other fantasy worlds and concepts. Fantasy concept that have been cultivated over a newly grewing fandom for fantasy.

So all these fans wil draw inspiration from the Harry Potter, Demon Slayer, Avengers, Teen Titans, Game of Thrones, Warhammer, etc and realize the defeciencies of 5th edition. And like a "smart" company, WoTC will attempt to give what they think could fit into D&D and still feel D&D. Either with more books or a new edition.

Is that actually what is happening though?

I don't think the population of players who want to emulate franchises is large enough to cater to.

It's been 5 years. I think we would see that if it were the case. I mean, it's possible WotC has that data and have plans about it that we have yet to see the result of.

All we have to go on right now is that every new year is D&D's greatest sales year. I think that speaks highly of player satisfaction.

 

[Mistwell]

That's kinda the point.

5e is very popular now. And as it get popular, the newcomers will want things. And just like when I joined, people will see the limitation of the system to mimic the worlds, characters, and styles of the newcomers.

"It's popular so it must change" seems a pretty poor argument to me. If it were unpopular or doing mediocre it seems you'd make the same argument, showing that the argument itself had no merit because you would answer that way regardless of facts.

5e isn't that modular.

Right, but the argument it needs to be in order to succeed went out the window long ago. It obviously doesn't. The overwhelming popularity of the game without that modularity has pretty much ended the argument it needs it. It doesn't. That's been demonstrated now.

You can add new subclasses to meet the needs of new concepts, without a new edition. That's what they've been doing. It seems to be working fine for that purpose.

 

[Don Durito]

Is that actually what is happening though?

I don't think the population of players who want to emulate franchises is large enough to cater to.

It's been 5 years. I think we would see that if it were the case. I mean, it's possible WotC has that data and have plans about it that we have yet to see the result of.

All we have to go on right now is that every new year is D&D's greatest sales year. I think that speaks highly of player satisfaction.

D&D doesn't emulate franchises directly. They bubble down through popular culture until they eventually shape the direction that D&D goes. But the actual influence of any single source at this point is fairly minimal. Harry Potter has been around for decades now, it hasn't had any clear influence on D&D other than the fact that a large number of people have probably at some point run campaigns based around wizard schools.

A Game of Thrones? The TV series is finished, if people were crying out to play D&D like Game of Thrones, than WOTC would have republished Birthright. I see more people still wanting to make D&D like Conan*. (But no doubt the tv series has shaped many peoples impressions of fantasy and this will have an impact somewhere - but it's just one of many, many influences.)

You probably have to be fairly deep into the hobby before the idea that a game should aim to faithfully emulate a narrative form of media at the level of its rules system really occurs to you. It took quite a while before it occured to the hobby in general.

 

[Minigiant]

"It's popular so it must change" seems a pretty poor argument to me. If it were unpopular or doing mediocre it seems you'd make the same argument, showing that the argument itself had no merit because you would answer that way regardless of facts.

It's more "it's popular so let's try to adapt it". If you have control of D&D'd rights and want to sell books, you'll try to adapt the popular media tropes to your game. There is some evidence of this already in the game.

Right, but the argument it needs to be in order to succeed went out the window long ago. It obviously doesn't. The overwhelming popularity of the game without that modularity has pretty much ended the argument it needs it. It doesn't. That's been demonstrated now.

Not exactly. I find that that players new to the game will go with standard tropes and go with the flow, by choice or force, at first.

It wasn't until several games in between the wacky characters and exported characters started appear. That's my experience so you can take it as anecdotal.