Will there ever be new editions of the major systems?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

We're getting Toon 2.0, and nothing's more major than that.

 

[Morrus]

Pathfinder released 2E not all that long ago. And then a Remastered Edition. D&D has its 2024 edition. I don't think publishers have stopped doing new editions--they've just stopped calling them new editions, as that kills their back catalogue (and any sales in the 1-2 year run-up to the edition).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Super hero analogy: Throughout the 30s-50s the big companies (Marvel/DC) kept adding new heroes and villains. But now we're stuck with the same old heroes. (How many times will we get Batman's origin story!)

Deadpool and Harley Quinn are some of the most popular characters in mainstream superhero comics today and both of them were created in the 1990s. There's more churn than you're giving credit for, even if the corporations will never let go of Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, Peter Parker and Princess Diana.

 

[Morrus]

both of them were created in the 1990s

I hate to break it to you, but you're old. 1990 was 35 years ago!

 

[schneeland]

I tend to agree with @Morrus : for the games and companies that have done new editions in the past, I feel we are still seeing them roughly in the expected cadence - D&D has a new edition, Pathfinder got one not so long ago, and Warhammer Fantasy is getting one soon. Even Runequest will get a new edition soon (even though, to my knowledge, it's meant to be backwards compatible). Now I'm not sure when we will see a new edition of Call of Cthulhu (maybe not in the next decade), and some companies - e.g. Free League or Modiphius - typically do new games rather than new editions, but overall the cycle largely seem intact.
Now where I'm less sure is how much appetite there is for new editions that are radically different from old ones, but even that was probably always the case.

 

[coyote6]

Marvel and DC do add new characters, they very often just don't become popular enough to last and join the ranks of the famous characters. Most of the more recent superheroes that seem to have some stickiness are versions of previous characters - e.g., Miles Morales Spider-Man, Ghost Spider/Spider-Gwen, Ms Marvel/Kamala Khan, the Damian Wayne Robin, X-23, etc.

(None of those are actually recent; I haven't been reading comics as much, so I haven't noticed any new characters, beyond new X-Men. Also, it takes years to see if a character is actually going to stick around, and decades to see if they'll really stick around.)

Back on topic, all of those games will have new versions eventually, if just to refresh things. But I'd think you'd always look to new games for whole new mechanics - if a new edition of an old game has whole new mechanics, then it isn't really a new game dressed up as an old game, rather than a new edition of the old game?

 

[HatWearingFool]

I believe if it wasn’t for the stranger things effect on D&D sales we would already have a 6e.

But stranger things juiced sales so much it didn’t just delay the long tail effect in sales in made sales bigger than ever, pretty much resetting this version. Hence 2024.

 

[The Soloist]

I believe if it wasn’t for the stranger things effect on D&D sales we would already have a 6e.

But stranger things juiced sales so much it didn’t just delay the long tail effect in sales in made sales bigger than ever, pretty much resetting this version. Hence 2024.

As stated above my Morrus, naming conventions have changed.

In 6 to 8 years the next D&D edition will still be 5e, with updates, and we will call it 5e [insert year].

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I hate to break it to you, but you're old. 1990 was 35 years ago!

I was responding to the assertion that comics is all stuff from the 1930s through the 1950s.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

As stated above my Morrus, naming conventions have changed.

In 6 to 8 years the next D&D edition will still be 5e, with updates, and we will call it 5e [insert year].

I don't think it's just naming conventions that will factor into that. I think WotC got burned so badly by making a major break with 4E that, unless something dramatically changes (like sales drop to zero dramatic), they will want to have more continuity with the current version each time they push out a new iteration.

So we'll see stuff like the 1E/2E or 3E/3.5 transition, but those are editions where people quite easily used material from either side of the line interchangeably, although the market largely moved forward to the newest version over time.