Why 5E may be the last edition of D&D

[Guest 6801328]

2024 would also be the 50th Anniversary -- a good time for a major release.

Yeah but "6e" doesn't have much panache.

Maybe they should call it "666e: the Game of the Beast"

 

[Parmandur]

its just been 4 years. I think they will start thinking seriously about 6e in the next couple of years, and we would see it around 2024, restoring the 10 year edition cycle.

I think it is very likely we won't even see 6E for the 50th.

 

[dave2008]

I think it is very likely we won't even see 6E for the 50th.

I agree, but we might see something major for the 50th. Some cleaning up the rules maybe?

 

[aco175]

If the popularity and sales keep going up or they keep making money, then there is no reason to change. You ride the formula until you need to change. Even if you have the perfect 6e system- you keep 5e until the sales drop. That is just business over what we fans would want. I do not think that makes them bad.

 

[Parmandur]

I agree, but we might see something major for the 50th. Some cleaning up the rules maybe?

Probably not: they'll definitely do something for a 50th anniversary, but nothing says it has to involve redoing any rules to sell well.

 

[77IM]

Yeah but "6e" doesn't have much panache.

Maybe they should call it "666e: the Game of the Beast"

That would certainly be a nice callback to an important episode in the game's history! ...Cover art by Jack Chick?

In all seriousness, they don't refer to 5E as "5th Edition" anywhere in the actual game materials. It's just D&D. So I suspect they'll do something similar and not give the next edition a number. "D&D Golden Anniversary Edition" has a nice ring to it.

 

[dave2008]

Probably not: they'll definitely do something for a 50th anniversary, but nothing says it has to involve redoing any rules to sell well.

I wasn't trying to equate changing rules = more sales, I was suggesting they might use the 50th as an excuse to clean up things. Mikes has talked about wanting to get rid of bonus actions, maybe the 50th is just the excuse he needs.

 

[Parmandur]

I wasn't trying to equate changing rules = more sales, I was suggesting they might use the 50th as an excuse to clean up things. Mikes has talked about wanted to get rid of bonus actions, maybe the 50th is just the excuse he needs.

He's changed his mind about that, actually: his thinking now is that he would make two-weapon fighting live in weapon properties, which fixes all of his concerns about bonus actions.

But he has also said that cleaning up the rules isn't worth it unless there is a critical mass of popular opinion that they are broken. So I doubt they would do that based on their current thinking.

 

[Parmandur]

That would certainly be a nice callback to an important episode in the game's history! ...Cover art by Jack Chick?

In all seriousness, they don't refer to 5E as "5th Edition" anywhere in the actual game materials. It's just D&D. So I suspect they'll do something similar and not give the next edition a number. "D&D Golden Anniversary Edition" has a nice ring to it.

It is an important point that they literally never talk about "5E," they refer to 5E as simply "D&D." There will probably be a 6E sometime, but it is likely not going to be a focus of marketing anymore than the recent edition change of Monopoly was.

 

[oreofox]

2024 would also be the 50th Anniversary -- a good time for a major release.

I'll be really excited about 6E if it's largely the same as 5E, and completely compatible with all the 5E adventures. I suspect I'm not alone in that. For an example of a game that does this exactly right, look at the edition process for Savage Worlds. Each edition is mostly the same as the previous, with incremental improvements to problematic rules, and you can run adventures written for previous editions with almost no conversion needed (very old adventures use a slightly different system for melee damage, so you have to covert 1d8+2 into 1d8+1d6 on-the-fly, which isn't too bad).

I wouldn't hold my breath when it comes to the idea of WotC doing a new edition the way Savage Worlds does it. WotC has a tendency to drastically change things. 2nd -> 3rd was a huge change. 3rd -> 4th was a huge change (and one many thought wasn't needed, though I am sure if the internet was as widely in use in 1999-2000, it would have been similar with the change to 3rd), and 4th -> 5th was a rather large change as well. The closest thing to incremental and subtle changes WotC has done was the transition from 3rd to 3.5.

I would prefer them to do small changes, like from 1st to 2nd editions, or 3rd to 3.5. And I would want a 6th edition at the earliest 2024. Give us the chance to enjoy an edition for at least 10 years, Wizards. Hell, at the rate things get released, you could probably stretch 5th out for 20 years.