WotC D&D Comunity Update for June 8th.

[Oofta]

A lot of companies throw labels on big initiatives just to help with their own internal accounting and clarity for discussion. As the target gets closer, the detailed breakdown emerges and you get actual release names. The "One D&D" was just a label for the overall initiative, it was never going to be the label they slapped on the books. More important internally than anything.

I do think they're in a bit of a between a rock and a hard place though. The current edition continues to sell well which is amazing for how long it's been out. Meanwhile they had to do something for the 50th anniversary and they've had several years of experience with the current ruleset so it makes sense for them to make some modifications.

I guess I just don't see anything controversial here at all. People are making a mountain out of a molehill that because they are closer to the release individual parts of the overall initiative won't share the project label.

 

[codo]

A lot of companies throw labels on big initiatives just to help with their own internal accounting and clarity for discussion. As the target gets closer, the detailed breakdown emerges and you get actual release names. The "One D&D" was just a label for the overall initiative, it was never going to be the label they slapped on the books. More important internally than anything.

I do think they're in a bit of a between a rock and a hard place though. The current edition continues to sell well which is amazing for how long it's been out. Meanwhile they had to do something for the 50th anniversary and they've had several years of experience with the current ruleset so it makes sense for them to make some modifications.

I guess I just don't see anything controversial here at all. People are making a mountain out of a molehill that because they are closer to the release individual parts of the overall initiative won't share the project label.

Calling the playtest 1D&D also helps prevent future confusion when googling. If they just called the playtest revised 5e or something similar, in the future people googling for 5e would get playtest information in their search results. A codename just helps keep your goggle searches clean.

 

[darjr]

Wouldn’t be an enworld article submission without someone insulting people who disagree by pretending they are lying. (You know but not many)

I wasn’t talking about people here.

However I can see it taken that way. I’ll update it.

 

[HammerMan]

I wasn’t talking about people here.

Maybe we could just start all discussions assuming that people we disagree with are just disagreeing not being liers and dosengenuas.

 

[darjr]

Maybe we could just start all discussions assuming that people we disagree with are just disagreeing not being liers and dosengenuas.

That would be nice.

 

[Charlaquin]

Gosh, no, that would be a foolish way ro approach change.

Yeah, gotta agree with you on that one.

 

[darjr]

Loseing pact magic
Rewriting bard inspiration
Changing spell lists (although mostly this is bard and Druid/ranger issues… but also makes wizard less unique)
Removing subclass choices.

I think I see how some of that break backwards compatibility for you and maybe generally. But could you spell it out?

Edit: actually don’t do that here. That sounds like a good thread idea.

 

[Kalmi]

They have said it is a revision many, many times - how have you missed that?

Just because they don’t call it 5.5 or 6 (which I prefer over 5.5, but prefer just 5 more) doesn’t mean they haven’t be completely honest about describing it as a revision.

Yeah, fair enough. Ultimately this is just quibbling over terminology to a certain degree. I feel like their caginess over giving an actual name to revision will just be confusing however, not to mention futile. Nature and gamers alike abhor a vacuum, and if WotC refuses to actually name it ( I don't count "D&D 2024" as a name), it's probably just going to get called 5.5 by default.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Anecdote time. A few years ago (pre-pandemic) I was at a trade show hanging out with our company's president and someone from the marketing team. We were going over swag that we had seen or heard about, talking about what kind of stuff we could use for future shows. One of the ideas from the marketeer was this type of stretchy cloth band. She showed it to the president and started explaining that it could be used as a sweat band, or a hair band, or a bunch of other things, when he stopped her and said something along the lines of "If you have to explain it to me, it's already failed."

That's exactly what I think when I read this:



Holy moly, what a mess. What are we calling this new thing now? It's not an edition, it's a release year? But it also won't be a release year once it's released? How do we know when we use a VTT if it will pull up the original 5e barbarian or the new 5e barbarian? How do we tell our friends what book the DM is using? The purpose of a name, version, edition, game, whatever, is communication. It exists so that players can communicate to each other about what game they are playing, and agree on a common set of rules so that they can enjoy the game as a group.

At this point, it doesn't matter what WotC wants to call it. If they have to explain it to us, they've already failed.

This is absurd, and your pres kinda sounds like a stooge in this story.

To paraphrase a popular tweet: "My 'One D&D is not a new edition' t-shirt is raising a lot of questions already answered by my t-shirt."

I don't know if I fully subscribe to the idea that "If you're explaining, you're losing," but I feel the problem here is that the changes they've already presented are self-evidently in line with a revision of the rules. Perhaps not nearly enough to qualify for a new edition, as is typically thought of in D&D, but at least enough for the dreaded "X.5" moniker. It's understandable why they avoid that term-- another problem of their making, historically-- but trying to explain why their revision of the rules is not, in fact, a revision is going to be a tough sell in any context. And of course, the current context is a serious lack of trust in WotC leadership, which again, is a problem of their own making.

I personally would respect it more if they just came out and said this is 5.5, but they're trying to preserve as much compatibility as they can.

Why would they do that, when it isn’t 5.5?

Which is to say, you don't actively market a reprint, even if it has errata; you do actively market a new product, and when the new product is the Core Rules, then it's a new edition, either in whole or point-five.

Nah.

For WotC to then openly tell us otherwise smacks of being counterintuitive, which makes people skeptical; when there's a (perceived) mismatch between your actions and your claims, you're going to start receiving pushback.

This only works if you started from the assumption of a new edition in the previous wotc D&D sense.

We are getting new editions of the 5e core books, in the standard publishing sense.

I disagree with you, but I’m tired of arguing about it and I honestly don’t care what WotC or s as Niobe else calls it. All I know is we used playtest characters right with PHB characters and it worked great. So if that continues I’m happy.

Yep, I’ve seen plenty of characters use both in one character. Especially since we like very few of the revised subclasses lol

Loseing pact magic
Rewriting bard inspiration
Changing spell lists (although mostly this is bard and Druid/ranger issues… but also makes wizard less unique)
Removing subclass choices.

None of which is actually a problem or makes it necessarily a new edition.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Yeah, fair enough. Ultimately this is just quibbling over terminology to a certain degree. I feel like their caginess over giving an actual name to revision will just be confusing however, not to mention futile. Nature and gamers alike abhor a vacuum, and if WotC refuses to actually name it ( I don't count "D&D 2024" as a name), it's probably just going to get called 5.5 by default.

Microsoft used development years for quite some time... People used that name. Why is it so hard for RPgamers to just use the name presented to them?