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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 9171116" data-attributes="member: 996">Yeah, evolution isn't the word, technically. It's an OK analogy, maybe?&nbsp; Or just a common misuse......so development, refinement, incremental improvement...It wasn't consistently any sort of development or improvement, but while they were working for the same corporation, each design team had a different goal they were working towards with their new versions.&nbsp; 3.0 was to white-knight D&amp;D, saving it from the death of TSR and immortalizing it for posterity, prettymuch at the whim of the then-head of WotC, which made the OGL a great idea. Then Hasbro wanted to flog more revenue from it, so 3.5 was designed to be just different enough to sell the core books again.&nbsp; But, that wasn't enough, Hasbro didn't like 3pps taking their money and wanted to kill the OGL with the GSL and rake in MMO level revenue off a vaporware DDI - that meant the new ed had to not just be utterly different, but a great deal better, to force 3pps to give up the favorable OGL for the lethal GSL, thus the design team went big with 4e.&nbsp; When no 9-digit revenue materialized and the backlash against a balanced/different/not-D&amp;D threatened to poison the IP, the goal was to retrench, calm the nerdrage, and do it cheap, 5e was the result.&nbsp; Then the 80s in general and D&amp;D in particular finally came back, and One D&amp;D's goal became don't rock the boat, and One D&amp;D became fully-backwards-compatible 5e.2024.&nbsp; Different corporate goals, different games.&nbsp; But, no not figuratively evolution, the changes weren't incremental, they didn't build on those before (much), and they were very top-down goal-driven intentional.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 9171116, member: 996"] Yeah, evolution isn't the word, technically. It's an OK analogy, maybe? Or just a common misuse... ...so development, refinement, incremental improvement... It wasn't consistently any sort of development or improvement, but while they were working for the same corporation, each design team had a different goal they were working towards with their new versions. 3.0 was to white-knight D&D, saving it from the death of TSR and immortalizing it for posterity, prettymuch at the whim of the then-head of WotC, which made the OGL a great idea. Then Hasbro wanted to flog more revenue from it, so 3.5 was designed to be just different enough to sell the core books again. But, that wasn't enough, Hasbro didn't like 3pps taking their money and wanted to kill the OGL with the GSL and rake in MMO level revenue off a vaporware DDI - that meant the new ed had to not just be utterly different, but a great deal better, to force 3pps to give up the favorable OGL for the lethal GSL, thus the design team went big with 4e. When no 9-digit revenue materialized and the backlash against a balanced/[I]different/not-[/I]D&D threatened to poison the IP, the goal was to retrench, calm the nerdrage, and do it cheap, 5e was the result. Then the 80s in general and D&D in particular finally came back, and One D&D's goal became don't rock the boat, and One D&D became fully-backwards-compatible 5e.2024. Different corporate goals, different games. But, no not figuratively evolution, the changes weren't incremental, they didn't build on those before (much), and they were very top-down goal-driven intentional. [/QUOTE]

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