# Grognard view of One D&D?



## haakon1 (Aug 27, 2022)

So what do we, the Older Edition community, think of One D&D?

My initial thoughts on a new edition are:  Please don’t.  With the exception of 3 & 5, the number of players in new editions has been smaller than the edition before - 50/50 chance that it hurts the long term prospects for the game.  And new editions divide the community everytime it seems.

I’m not a 5e fan, but I’m hoping for their sake it‘s nearly unnoticeable like 3e to 3.5e.

I suspect WotC has absolutely no interest in Older Edition fans, so I don’t suspect it’ll bring us back into the fold (whichever Older Editions we prefer), but whatever One D&D is, I’ll buy the PHB and presumably play it occasionally with someone else DMing … and learn to convert some of the avalanche of new material backwards.

8 years between editions isn’t much when your campaigns last decades … yup, I’m definitely not the audience,


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## payn (Aug 27, 2022)

Well, 5E D&D is more popular than ever. During the playtest the designers painstakingly took down old gen gamers thoughts and preferences and weighed them against newer gamers. So, I do think they care about older gamers, but if "care" means just reprinting _Chainmail_, then you are probably right.


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## Kobold Stew (Aug 27, 2022)

haakon1 said:


> I’m not a 5e fan, but I’m hoping for their sake it‘s nearly unnoticeable like 3e to 3.5e.



I would not have said the transition from 3e to 3.5 was nearly unnoticeable. They are sayig that the transition from 5 to One will be smaller, which is what many of us are hoping for.


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## Dire Bare (Aug 27, 2022)

haakon1 said:


> With the exception of 3 & 5, the number of players in new editions has been smaller than the edition before . . .



This is simply not true. Each edition of D&D has outsold previous editions, and D&D has seen upwards growth since 1974. The current edition, 5th, has seen explosive growth like never before.

A new "edition", a 5.5E if you will, is not going to hurt the growth of D&D or book sales.


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## Bedrockgames (Aug 27, 2022)

Dire Bare said:


> This is simply not true. Each edition of D&D has outsold previous editions, and D&D has seen upwards growth since 1974. The current edition, 5th, has seen explosive growth like never before.
> 
> A new "edition", a 5.5E if you will, is not going to hurt the growth of D&D or book sales.




I don't know about the sales numbers but what he says largely matches my experience, which is the player base has shrunk or fragmented around editions. I don't it is always the case. 3E, with its back to the dungeon mindset, seemed to bring back a lot of people who had written off D&D as a dead brand (not sure if people remember the late 90s but it was pretty grim). Definitely remember it feeling like the 2E era, which I really liked, saw a shrinking base of players. I don't think it is very deniable that 4E split the player base and that allowed Pathfinder to grab a huge chunk of the D&D audience. The whole point of 5E was to bring people back together. I don't play 5E, like the OP, but it does seem they achieved that. I think the wild card here is D&D is exeperiencing very unprecedented popularity right now, and that might mean they don't have to worry as much. On the other hand, an edition break could be the sort of thing that disrupts popularity if its very divisive among current fans (I can't say whether One D&D would be or not as I am not familiar enough with 5E, so I can't really gauge all the proposed changes I have seen).


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## billd91 (Aug 27, 2022)

Dire Bare said:


> This is simply not true. Each edition of D&D has outsold previous editions, and D&D has seen upwards growth since 1974. The current edition, 5th, has seen explosive growth like never before.
> 
> A new "edition", a 5.5E if you will, is not going to hurt the growth of D&D or book sales.



Not if we believe Ben Riggs's stats. 2e rulebooks did not outsell 1e by the numbers we have from him as far as I can tell. We may not have numbers for 3e and 4e, just statements that the initial 4e print runs were doing better than 3e, but I don't believe for a second that 4e ended up with more players than 3e given the 4e controversy and success of Pathfinder as an alternative.

So I can see some room for concern given the track record of editions. But if the changes to 5e that come in One D&D are well-managed and not too drastic, I can see it being the most successful follow-up to an edition yet.


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## Malmuria (Aug 27, 2022)

haakon1 said:


> I suspect WotC has absolutely no interest in Older Edition fans, so* I don’t suspect it’ll bring us back into the fold* (whichever Older Editions we prefer),






haakon1 said:


> but whatever One D&D is,* I’ll buy the PHB* and presumably play it occasionally with someone else DMing … and learn to convert some of the avalanche of new material backwards.




Like everyone else, the grognards will complain about wotc and then buy the game anyway


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## Tutara (Aug 27, 2022)

This thread confuses me.

You don't think D&DONE will bring you 'back into the fold'.
You're 'not the audience'.
You're 'not a 5E fan'.

But you'll 'buy the PHB' anyway? Why? If you don't like something, why would you buy it? It makes no sense to me. If I don't like something, I don't buy it. Why would you?


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## Akrasia (Aug 27, 2022)

So far I dislike that feats look to be no longer optional and that inspiration no longer can be readily ignored. I play with neither feats nor inspiration in order to foster a "gritty" and "old school" feel to my game and that may not be possible with 5.5e. I also like to minimize the choices that players have to make at first level.


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## Akrasia (Aug 27, 2022)

Dire Bare said:


> This is simply not true. Each edition of D&D has outsold previous editions, and D&D has seen upwards growth since 1974. The current edition, 5th, has seen explosive growth like never before.
> 
> A new "edition", a 5.5E if you will, is not going to hurt the growth of D&D or book sales.



Now _this _is "simply not true."

2e AD&D core rulebooks had about 50% as many sales during its run than the 1e AD&D rulebooks did. (See Ben Riggs's data and book _Slaying the Dragon_.)

We don't have publicly available data on 4e, but I strongly suspect that given how quickly it wilted and was replaced by 5e, its sales were pretty terrible a year or so after the initial release.


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## bloodtide (Aug 28, 2022)

Old School Grognard here.

I don't expect much of One Six Edition, but then that was also true for 3E, 4E and 5E.  They will make a couple new rules.  They will change some rules.  And guess they will just make races a title?  "Just make a random character, whatever you want.....then just pick any race name and say your character is that."

Most modern gamers will love it.  They will read the new "power nap" rules....regain all your stuff every 15 minutes...and will be very much "wow!".

Does WotC care about older fans....well, not so much.  But then they don't care much about anyone.....that is not how companies work.  They just want random people to buy their random stuff.  After all, it would be SO EASY for them to make D&D:The Game Everyone Wants.  And yet they never do that.  

But it does not matter much.  I'll pick up One Six Edition, use the suggestions for a vague game framework......and then still play the same Old School, Hard, Harsh, Unbalanced, Unfair, Player Character Killing game that I always have..............


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## Blue Orange (Aug 28, 2022)

billd91 said:


> Not if we believe Ben Riggs's stats. 2e rulebooks did not outsell 1e by the numbers we have from him as far as I can tell. We may not have numbers for 3e and 4e, just statements that the initial 4e print runs were doing better than 3e, but I don't believe for a second that 4e ended up with more players than 3e given the 4e controversy and success of Pathfinder as an alternative.
> 
> So I can see some room for concern given the track record of editions. But if the changes to 5e that come in One D&D are well-managed and not too drastic, I can see it being the most successful follow-up to an edition yet.




So I guess this is the reverse of the old Star Trek movies where the even numbers are the _bad_ editions?


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## haakon1 (Aug 28, 2022)

Tutara said:


> This thread confuses me.
> 
> You don't think D&DONE will bring you 'back into the fold'.
> You're 'not the audience'.
> ...



I’ll buy a PHB to check it out and be able to play when someone wants to run the current edition.

There’s a big difference between buying a $50 PHB to be an occasional player, and actually supporting an edition.

For 3e, I have hundreds of books and have DM’d campaigns for 20 years with dozens of players.


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## kenada (Aug 28, 2022)

We’re too early in the playtest cycle for me to say where I think 6e is going, but if it’s like any of the modern incarnations, it’s not going to be for me. I expect I will continue doing my own thing and pay about as much attention to it as I do 5e, which is not much but probably still enough to know what it’s basically doing. However, I’m trying to get out of the habit of buying gaming books just to collect them, so I’d like not to buy the books this time around if I can.


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## John Lloyd1 (Aug 28, 2022)

bloodtide said:


> After all, it would be SO EASY for them to make D&D:The Game Everyone Wants.



I don't think that creating a game that everyone wants is that easy. If you tried to do that you would end up with a camel that no one wants.

The way I see it, there are three design goals for D&D:

*It needs to be a gateway game.* Because it is an order of magnitude larger that any other RPG, it can't get most of its new players from other RPGs. They need to be players who are new to RPGs.
*It should be sticky. *While you can't keep the same player base for ever (they die eventually), keeping them playing D&D (and buying books) is a good idea.
*It needs to feel like D&D. *This is a hard one because D&D is different for every player.
This means that is needs to:

be simple to pick up and learn but with enough complexity that people say with it.
allows casual play styles (without system mastery), but also some depth
supports modern fantasy sub-genres that are generally popular and not too niche
So, if your favourite edition and play style leans into those criteria, you may like it. If not, it may not be your up of tea.


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## Bedrockgames (Aug 28, 2022)

Malmuria said:


> Like everyone else, the grognards will complain about wotc and then buy the game anyway




I think a lot won’t actually. And even those who buy the book may not play it. There are just too many alternatives these days if you want a damn older flavor of D&D. The last official edition I played regularly was 3E. I bought 4E and had a few very short campaigns. I bought 5E and played a handful of times. I’m unlikely to buy 6E, as I just haven’t been that interested in WOTC D&D in over two editions. If I do though, it will just be out of curiosity about the system


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## bloodtide (Aug 28, 2022)

John Lloyd1 said:


> I don't think that creating a game that everyone wants is that easy. If you tried to do that you would end up with a camel that no one wants.
> 
> The way I see it, there are three design goals for D&D:



I'm sure Wizards and plenty of players think the way you think too.

Of course, my way is a bit different:   Make a Fun Game.  

See how mine is so simple?  Long, long ago, back in the Time Before Time, when D&D was created it was "make a fun game", not your paragraph of things.  And it worked.


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## haakon1 (Aug 28, 2022)

Bedrockgames said:


> I think a lot won’t actually. And even those who buy the book may not play it. There are just too many alternatives these days if you want a damn older flavor of D&D. The last official edition I played regularly was 3E. I bought 4E and had a few very short campaigns. I bought 5E and played a handful of times. I’m unlikely to buy 6E, as I just haven’t been that interested in WOTC D&D in over two editions. If I do though, it will just be out of curiosity about the system



Same experience for me, except I’ll definitely buy the 6e PHB.

If WotC wants more than my $50 for the PHB, ways to tempt me back:

1) Put out an Xbox or PC game with the *actual* rules and turn based, clickable to see the dice rolls and all the mods, and character creation that’s the same as the books.  Temple of Elemental Evil (real 3e rules) and Pathfinder: Kingmaker (real PF1 rules) are examples of this type of “teach the rules” games.

2) Make it very close to 5e.

3) Mean it that it’s the final edition.  Whenever I thought “maybe I should finally truly teach myself 5e”, I counterthought “bah, what’s the point, there’ll be a new edition soon”.

They have literally millions of 5e players, so obviously my choices are irrelevant, but how to convert people is a challenge.


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## Jack Daniel (Aug 28, 2022)

This grognard's view of One D&D is _complete and utter disinterest._ If there is a horizon to my radar, 5e is already a dim shadow skirting the edge of it; 5.5e will be well out of sight and therefore out of mind.



haakon1 said:


> I suspect WotC has absolutely no interest in Older Edition fans




And the feeling is mutual.


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## Geoff Thirlwell (Aug 28, 2022)

I’m D & DONE


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## John Lloyd1 (Aug 28, 2022)

bloodtide said:


> Of course, my way is a bit different: Make a Fun Game.



Of course D&D needs to be fun. 

But, what is fun for one person is not always fun for another. You can see that in the thousands RPGs, board games, books, media, etc. Most of them were fun for someone. None of them were fun for everyone. You can see that in the arguments between edition fans. You can see that in the arguments about what is OSR.

In a sense, they are trying to maximise total population 'fun-ness'. And, like speed of light, you will never reach 100% total 'fun-ness'.


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## GreyLord (Aug 28, 2022)

My thoughts on it...

"Yeah...Right."

Interpret it as you will.


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## Lanefan (Aug 28, 2022)

Tutara said:


> This thread confuses me.
> 
> You don't think D&DONE will bring you 'back into the fold'.
> You're 'not the audience'.
> ...



To mine ideas from, for my own game.  Spells and monsters, mostly.

I've bought the core three for each of 2e 3e 4e and 5e at around the time of their release, and have never* DMed any of them.  I have, however, swiped or tweaked some ideas from each, and having the core books gives me a better idea of what to expect when I convert that edition's adventures.  I didn't buy 3.5e or PF and probably won't bother with 5.5 unless it's hella different from 5e, which is not the current projection.

* - other than three sessions of 3.5e when I briefly took over an existing game as a shared joke on the other players by me and the main DM.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 28, 2022)

I’ll look at it.  But it’s facing 2 obstacles:

1) 5th was the first version of the game that I purchased _nothing_ of.  So if it’s too much like 5th, I won’t touch it. 

2) I’m not actively gaming right now (for several reasons, with 5Ed _not_ being one of them), so there’s less reason for me to buy it.

So, if I get into it at all, it probably won’t be within the first year of its release.


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## Jahydin (Aug 28, 2022)

I'm not so much worried about the rules, but the push to own it *all *in their monetized "walled garden".


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## Lanefan (Aug 28, 2022)

John Lloyd1 said:


> I don't think that creating a game that everyone wants is that easy. If you tried to do that you would end up with a camel that no one wants.
> 
> The way I see it, there are three design goals for D&D:
> 
> *It needs to be a gateway game.* Because it is an order of magnitude larger that any other RPG, it can't get most of its new players from other RPGs. They need to be players who are new to RPGs.



This can be achieved by releasing two versions - dare I call them Basic and Advanced - with Basic as the simple ready-to-roll gateway.


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## bloodtide (Aug 28, 2022)

John Lloyd1 said:


> Of course D&D needs to be fun.
> 
> But, what is fun for one person is not always fun for another. You can see that in the thousands RPGs, board games, books, media, etc. Most of them were fun for someone. None of them were fun for everyone. You can see that in the arguments between edition fans. You can see that in the arguments about what is OSR.
> 
> In a sense, they are trying to maximise total population 'fun-ness'. And, like speed of light, you will never reach 100% total 'fun-ness'.



Note in your whole reply in your last post, you did not type the word fun.....not even once.  You were much more concerned about so many other things.  You say it should be fun, but don't seem to have that on the mind.  

And it's still the problem:  just make a fun game and ignore the rest.


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## John Lloyd1 (Aug 28, 2022)

Lanefan said:


> This can be achieved by releasing two versions - dare I call them Basic and Advanced - with Basic as the simple ready-to-roll gateway.



Sure. It still wouldn't cover everyone's desires and wouldn't fun for everyone even if more people were pleased.

Supplements can address those niche desires without impacting the core. They don't need to meet those design goals and can focus on different things.


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## John Lloyd1 (Aug 28, 2022)

bloodtide said:


> You say it should be fun, but don't seem to have that on the mind.




It was an unstated assumption. I'll rephrase it if you like:


> I don't think that creating a game that everyone _finds fun _is that easy. If you tried to do that you would end up with a camel that no one _finds fun_.


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## Sacrosanct (Aug 28, 2022)

bloodtide said:


> I'm sure Wizards and plenty of players think the way you think too.
> 
> Of course, my way is a bit different:   Make a Fun Game.
> 
> See how mine is so simple?  Long, long ago, back in the Time Before Time, when D&D was created it was "make a fun game", not your paragraph of things.  And it worked.



And how do you do that, specifically.


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## Eltab (Aug 28, 2022)

If WotC puts a "Grognards had BadWrongFun" blanket disclaimer on the 5e material like they did for everything 3.5 and prior, I will conclude they are trying to drive me away. 

OTOH, if they can recognize that playstyles and materials have been a learning curve over time, I will be able to continue dealing with being part of the smaller-headcount group in the game.


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## Thomas Shey (Aug 28, 2022)

bloodtide said:


> Note in your whole reply in your last post, you did not type the word fun.....not even once.  You were much more concerned about so many other things.  You say it should be fun, but don't seem to have that on the mind.
> 
> And it's still the problem:  just make a fun game and ignore the rest.




This still attempts to ignore that what will make something a "fun game" is not the same for everyone.  There's no standard metric for what in game book will be viewed as "fun".


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## Smackpixi (Aug 28, 2022)

haakon1 said:


> So what do we, the Older Edition community, think of One D&D?
> 
> My initial thoughts on a new edition are:  Please don’t.  With the exception of 3 & 5, the number of players in new editions has been smaller than the edition before - 50/50 chance that it hurts the long term prospects for the game.  And new editions divide the community everytime it seems.
> 
> ...



Um, why with the, not exactly persecution complex but, the bizarre antagonism and expectation that there will be something new for fans of a game that hasn’t been published in 40, 30, or 20 years?

it‘s obvious if you didn’t like 5e, you’re not going to like what comes next, as they’re pretty explicit about it being more of the same.

it’ts real bizarre to me that “they don’t care about fans of older editions” is a thing.  Like, it’s like complaining in an Apple forum about, another year, another missed opportunity to release an update for the IIc operating system, why doesn’t Apple care about fans of their legacy products?

WotC has done more for fans of long forgotten products than most companies, they’re putting out pdfs and PoD for tons of old stuff that only weirdos play any more.  Saves you the effort of tracking down free online scans of them.

you’ll always be welcomed back into the fold if you ever want to stop being like those weirdo Japanese soldiers who fought in the hills for 20 years after the war was over.  Wanna play the game we’re playing now?

except you’re not alone, there’s plenty of people who want to play the game you’re playing and are making new stuff for it.  Have fun.

just stop bothering people with moping sadness about the equivalent of Nintendo not releasing new SNES carts.


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## Jahydin (Aug 28, 2022)

@Smackpixi 
Persecution complex? 

@haakon1 sounded pretty understanding and reasonable to me...


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## ThrorII (Aug 28, 2022)

A grognard here. Started in 1978 on Holmes. Played AD&D, then started again with v3.5, then 5E. 

We dropped v3.5 because of the crunch - especially at high levels, and that it took hours to prep a session as a DM. We went to Castles & Crusades and loved it. 

When 5E came along, we jumped in. While the core mechanics are probably the best ever, it was too high magic for us. Every class has a magic option, cantrips are everywhere and too useful. We were tired of every class having a new shiny tool every level. Healing was a joke to us. We ran it with just the Core Four races and classes, no feats. That still wasn't 'old school' enough for us.

We have been playing B/X for 5 years now, and will never play anything else.

So, no, I will not be buying it or playing it.


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## Smackpixi (Aug 28, 2022)

Jahydin said:


> @Smackpixi
> Persecution complex?
> 
> @haakon1 sounded pretty understanding and reasonable to me...



Reasonable? What’s reasonable about expecting a company to support your efforts to play a game they haven’t made in 30+ years?  What’s reasonable in being salty with them when thay actually have by making legacy products available?  What’s reasonable about expecting the company that’s moved on to cater to you when there’s a whole wide universe of others who are providing exactly what you want?  why complain when everything you want is available?


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## Tutara (Aug 28, 2022)

haakon1 said:


> I’ll buy a PHB to check it out and be able to play when someone wants to run the current edition.
> 
> There’s a big difference between buying a $50 PHB to be an occasional player, and actually supporting an edition.
> 
> For 3e, I have hundreds of books and have DM’d campaigns for 20 years with dozens of players.



My question was asked in earnest, so thank you for replying in the same vein. I can understand the pull of having something 'just in case', so fair enough.



Lanefan said:


> To mine ideas from, for my own game.  Spells and monsters, mostly.
> 
> I've bought the core three for each of 2e 3e 4e and 5e at around the time of their release, and have never* DMed any of them.  I have, however, swiped or tweaked some ideas from each, and having the core books gives me a better idea of what to expect when I convert that edition's adventures.  I didn't buy 3.5e or PF and probably won't bother with 5.5 unless it's hella different from 5e, which is not the current projection.
> 
> * - other than three sessions of 3.5e when I briefly took over an existing game as a shared joke on the other players by me and the main DM.



As to the other poster, thank you for the considered reply. I am actually the same but opposite - having got around to actual tabletop play later in life I mine the older editions and reverse-engineer bits and pieces I like for the newer versions of a game system,  so this also makes sense to me.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 28, 2022)

Eltab said:


> If WotC puts a "Grognards had BadWrongFun" blanket disclaimer on the 5e material like they did for everything 3.5 and prior, I will conclude they are trying to drive me away.



*Mod Note:*

Equating a disclaimer about some material being potentially racially insensitive/based on RW bigotry with “badwrongfun“ is a good way to get a vacation.

*ARE.  WE.  CLEAR?*


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## GuyBoy (Aug 28, 2022)

Played since 1976 so maybe a grognard in terms of time?
My grognard definition is more about warmth of nostalgia and memory than it is about rejecting anything new. 
I loved the White Box and 1E and have great warmth towards the early adventures (roll on that 50th Anniversary Greyhawk and Tsojcanth/Tharizdun super-adventure!) but I play 5E nowadays (and Level Up online, which is also great) and love the system. 
From what I’ve seen so far, I anticipate loving One D&D too. Looking forward to trialling the system in the Scarlet Citadel campaign I’ll be starting in a couple weeks time. 
To me, it’s easy enough to just agree a lower magic style or whatever you want, if that’s your bag. 

I understand that WOTC is a company out to make money but I’ve never felt abandoned by them even when our group decided against 4E and played Pathfinder till 5E came along. 
I’m a little saddened that some less pleasant people with an agenda have attempted to hijack aspects of grognard is to score anti-inclusive points (here’s looking at NuTSR), but that won’t stop me exploring White Plume Mountain......using the new rules system.


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## Jahydin (Aug 28, 2022)

Smackpixi said:


> Reasonable? What’s reasonable about expecting a company to support your efforts to play a game they haven’t made in 30+ years?  What’s reasonable in being salty with them when thay actually have by making legacy products available?  What’s reasonable about expecting the company that’s moved on to cater to you when there’s a whole wide universe of others who are providing exactly what you want?  why complain when everything you want is available?



None of those statements were made and there was only a pinch of salt. He even said he was going to purchase the book and give it a shot.

Good grief...


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## Li Shenron (Aug 28, 2022)

Malmuria said:


> Like everyone else, the grognards will complain about wotc and then buy the game anyway



Well I am a grognard by now, and I bought ZERO books for both 3.5 and 4e, so I wouldn't be so sure about that.


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## beancounter (Aug 28, 2022)

I'm hopeful that WoTC will not completely kill the golden goose that is 5E.

But I recognize that I'm not part of their target market anymore.


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## John Lloyd1 (Aug 28, 2022)

beancounter said:


> I'm hopeful that WoTC will not completely kill the golden goose that is 5E.



Why do you want that?


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## beancounter (Aug 28, 2022)

John Lloyd1 said:


> Why do you want that?



I don't want them to kill the golden goose. It was a typo I corrected.


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## John Lloyd1 (Aug 28, 2022)

beancounter said:


> I don't want them to kill the golden goose. It was a typo I corrected.



Good to hear.


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## TerraDave (Aug 28, 2022)

5,0 had many nods to older editions. The 2024 edition will clearly have fewer.  But it may still work for me.  And it will still retain many of the elements found in most editions. 

 I am running my 9th pre 1985 module converted to 5e. It works well. I get most of the complaints, and I have house rules. But those modules still work, and you can still challenge the player, and sometimes scare them, even in 5e. And there have been improvements over the deca, in player choice, rules coherence, and ease of DMing. There may be more improvements in 2024.


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## bloodtide (Aug 28, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> This still attempts to ignore that what will make something a "fun game" is not the same for everyone.  There's no standard metric for what in game book will be viewed as "fun".



I disagree, people are people and their are plenty of baselines that nearly everyone finds fun.



Sacrosanct said:


> And how do you do that, specifically.



Well, a whole game design would really need another thread.  



John Lloyd1 said:


> It was an unstated assumption. I'll rephrase it if you like:I don't think that creating a game that everyone _finds fun _is that easy. If you tried to do that you would end up with a camel that no one _finds fun_.



I agree it will be "hard", but anything worth doing is "hard".  And it won't be "everyone", per the 20% rule, that 20% will hate it no matter what.


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## Jacob Lewis (Aug 28, 2022)

For anyone that needs to hear it (again, if they seen me post it elsewhere) :

You can get on the bus to let someone else drive and hope that they take you where you want to go. But if you feel like you missed your stop, don't just sit there and get pulled away from your destination. Have the courage to say, that's far enough. Let me off here. This is where I want to be. This is where I belong. I can find my own way now.

I already have my One DnD, as do many others. Obviously, we are not interested in the next new thing because it fails to be our favorite thing. However, that doesn't mean we'll look to see if there's any new and interesting ideas we can steal for our own things. That doesn't make you a grognard, or whatever you want to call it, because that's how it's always been. That makes you a D&D fan. You only stop being a fan when you stop playing or taking an interest. Period.


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## haakon1 (Aug 28, 2022)

Lanefan said:


> This can be achieved by releasing two versions - dare I call them Basic and Advanced - with Basic as the simple ready-to-roll gateway.



Yes, I’ve thinking about that too.

A modified 3.5e (that is, the Core without the later excess that’s most of what people trash) with perhaps some 1e/2e & PF elements could be “forever advanced”.

And modified 5e (just to clean up) could be “forever basic”.  Which is perhaps close to the One D&D idea.

Perhaps the claim that One D&D is the final edition actually is trying to do more or less this.


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## Tallifer (Aug 28, 2022)

I wrote a witty post which I deleted to avoid rebuke from our higher powers. My grandmother (may she rest in peace) would sympathize at least with my anglo-saxon epithets conerning certain {redacted}

Here is a picture to make peace and lift the mood:


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## haakon1 (Aug 28, 2022)

Smackpixi said:


> just stop bothering people



I didn’t post my question in the D&D or One/5.5e forums because I’m aware this topic is likely irrelevant to  those audiences.

For the audience in the Older Editions forum, I thought what are other Older Editions fans thinking about One D&D was relevant to the audience.


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## haakon1 (Aug 28, 2022)

beancounter said:


> I'm hopeful that WoTC will not completely kill the golden goose that is 5E.
> 
> But I recognize that I'm not part of their target market anymore.



A much more succinct way of saying most of what I meant.


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## el-remmen (Aug 28, 2022)

Do I count as a grognard? I started in '83 with B/X and then moved on to AD&D1E. I played those games + BEMCI, 2E, 3.xE and now 5E (I sampled and discarded 4E).

Anyway, I think it will be fine. The direction of the D&D brand has not always been to my liking and precise desires for the game - but me and my groups have always found ways to have fun.

And I am not sure why we need to be limited to one rule-set. The One D&D announcement made me excited to see what there would be to adopt for my current 5E games, but also made me bite the bullet and dig into OSR gaming (DCC), which a friend is running because those are fun too.

Look, it is all D&D. . . WotC may own the license for D&D, but _actual_ D&D is whatever we play at our tables, however we play it. A rising tide lifts all boats and every new person who is introduced to the game via 5E and its iterations is one more person who might also discover so-called old-school gaming through that connection to the community that they very likely would not have discovered otherwise.

And never say never. When 3E came out I was over the moon about it and was like, "I can't understand why anyone would continue to play 2E when this was available." Now, 20 years later, I am _much_ more likely to go back to playing 2E than to try 3.xE again. My tastes have changed (again) and I figure they may change yet again. Who can say?


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## Reynard (Aug 28, 2022)

haakon1 said:


> 8 years between editions isn’t much when your campaigns last decades … yup, I’m definitely not the audience,



So, why do you care at all?


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## haakon1 (Aug 28, 2022)

el-remmen said:


> A rising tide lifts all boats and every new person who is introduced to the game via 5E and its iterations is one more person who might also discover so-called old-school gaming through that connection to the community that they very likely would not have discovered otherwise.



Totally.  I care a lot about the health of the game overall.  Which is why I’m happy for 5e‘s success (even though I rarely play it and never DM it) and hope the Golden Goose - the edition that went culturally mainstream and undoubtedly has the largest player base in history - doesn’t get derailed.

Though none of my current players came from 5e.
Campaign 1: 1 from Basic, 3 from 1e, 4 I was their first DM
Campaign 2: 1 from 1e, 6 I was their first DM



el-remmen said:


> And never say never. When 3E came out I was over the moon about it and was like, "I can't understand why anyone would continue to play 2E when this was available." Now, 20 years later, I am _much_ more likely to go back to playing 2E than to try 3.xE again. My tastes have changed (again) and I figure they may change yet again. Who can say?



I was a “Day One” adopter of 3 editions.

2e, I remember my friend who was later a game store owner and now is a game designer bringing the PHB he travelled many miles for into my room, as the group gathered rapt at these new delights.
… But I didn’t actually like it.  Within 1.5 years, I stopped playing D&D and was running unrelated games.  It took until 1996 (8 years after 2e) for me to dig out my AD&D 1e materials and start playing with friends who had all dropped.  I have never stopped DMing since.

3e, I ignored because I was happy with 1e and had a bad experience with 2e.  A friend who I’d brought back to D&D advised me to try it, I became a player in a 3e campaign I enjoyed, and I switched my campaigns about a year late.

3.5e, I switched _immediately_ and never looked back - still running it today.  My players complained about yet another edition change (1e to 3e to 3.5e), but it was largely painless.

4e, I was literally there on _Day One - _ at the launch event in Seattle, with a signed PHB to prove it.  I played for about a year - with the same DM who I’d first played 3e with - but I didn’t like.  I never switched what I DM’d.

5e, I largely ignored.  Since it and 3e were phenomenally successful, that was apparently a good omen.  I bought the PHB early but the only campaign I joined was short lived by a first time DM, and I never was inclined to learn it all to DM it myself.  The majority of my playing of 5e has been GenCon Online.  It was fun, but I noticed the DM’s were mixing in some earlier rules, which is great - I’m a firm believer in Rule Zero.  I remember one GenCon DM saying “huh, I don’t know the rule for this - does anyone know?“ I answered, “No idea in 5e, but in 3e the rule is X” and that’s what he decided.


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## Thomas Shey (Aug 28, 2022)

bloodtide said:


> I disagree, people are people and their are plenty of baselines that nearly everyone finds fun.




Which are necessary but not sufficient.  After a while I very much did not find OD&D fun, because it was not sufficient.


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## el-remmen (Aug 28, 2022)

haakon1 said:


> Though none of my current players came from 5e.
> Campaign 1: 1 from Basic, 3 from 1e, 4 I was their first DM
> Campaign 2: 1 from 1e, 6 I was their first DM




I am running two 5E groups currently:
In Game 1 (4 players), two have not played since 2E days and returned to D&D with 5E. The other two players are brand new to D&D with 5E.

In Game 2 (3 players), two of the players are folks I have gamed with on and off (mostly on) since the 90s (93 and 96 respectively) and that I ran games for (or played in games with) in 2E, 3E and now 5E. The other player is someone who joined up with us in the early 00s (returning to D&D after a decade break) to play 3E and now another 15 years later has joined us for a 5E game.



haakon1 said:


> I was a “Day One” adopter of 3 editions.
> 
> 2e, I remember my friend who was later a game store owner and now is a game designer bringing the PHB he travelled many miles for into my room, as the group gathered rapt at these new delights.
> … But I didn’t actually like it.  Within 1.5 years, I stopped playing D&D and was running unrelated games.  It took until 1996 (8 years after 2e) for me to dig out my AD&D 1e materials and start playing with friends who had all dropped.  I have never stopped DMing since.
> ...




I was resistant to 2E but ended up adopting it within a year of its coming out. I was a 3E adopter from BEFORE Day One, greedily soaking up every leak and preview that was shared on this site back when EN still stood for "Eric Noah." I picked up my 3E PHB at GEN CON 2000 where it was first dropped. But was not happy with 3.5 and only adopted a handful of its rules (never even bothered with the 3.% DMG or MM) or some half-measures when I agreed with the premise for the change but not the change itself.

4E we tried a playtest when the books came out but all agreed it was not for us (though we did adopt the idea of a second wind to our 3E games). I would give away my 4E books soon after.

For 5E, I had not run D&D in a decade, when I was talked into it by members of the first group mentioned above - so I bought 5E with blind faith (knowing it was popular) and thought it was a great half-step back from 3E towards 2E and I liked that). It still had a little of the assumptions of (super)heroic play I did not like from 4E (and 3E) but I find that was easy enough to adjust.

Ultimately, the people I play with care more about the experience than the rules (with some exceptions) and are happy to go along with almost anything I suggest.


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## Lanefan (Aug 28, 2022)

Jacob Lewis said:


> For anyone that needs to hear it (again, if they seen me post it elsewhere) :
> 
> You can get on the bus to let someone else drive and hope that they take you where you want to go. But if you feel like you missed your stop, don't just sit there and get pulled away from your destination. Have the courage to say, that's far enough. Let me off here. This is where I want to be. This is where I belong. I can find my own way now.



Problem is, if all your friends decide to stay on the bus, then what?  

You're standing there on the roadside right where you want to be, by yourself, as the bus pulls away with your friends still aboard.  That's the problem many face every time there's a major update or edition change, and the only perfect solution is to never again change editions.

I don't think WotC is going to go that route, somehow.


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## Reynard (Aug 28, 2022)

Lanefan said:


> Problem is, if all your friends decide to stay on the bus, then what?
> 
> You're standing there on the roadside right where you want to be, by yourself, as the bus pulls away with your friends still aboard.  That's the problem many face every time there's a major update or edition change, and the only perfect solution is to never again change editions.
> 
> I don't think WotC is going to go that route, somehow.



But 5E is the last edition!


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## Lanefan (Aug 28, 2022)

Reynard said:


> But 5E is the last edition!



Of course it is.

Until the next one.


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## Thomas Shey (Aug 29, 2022)

Lanefan said:


> Problem is, if all your friends decide to stay on the bus, then what?
> 
> You're standing there on the roadside right where you want to be, by yourself, as the bus pulls away with your friends still aboard.  That's the problem many face every time there's a major update or edition change, and the only perfect solution is to never again change editions.
> 
> I don't think WotC is going to go that route, somehow.




I don't even think that's a perfect solution; its always possible a group will end up getting on an entirely different bus.  Many decades ago, we had one player who was really grumpy when our group largely en-masse moved from D&D to RuneQuest, but he just had to go off and find another D&D group because we were all pretty firm about it.  So you not only have to never have a new edition, you have to have a group that never loses interest in the system you're playing in general.


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## Citizen Mane (Aug 29, 2022)

Lanefan said:


> This can be achieved by releasing two versions - dare I call them Basic and Advanced - with Basic as the simple ready-to-roll gateway.



If they didn't make everything that was published compatible with both versions, they'd end up splintering their market.   It's likely to happen anyhow as some people stick with 5e or migrate to other games, but doing it intentionally seems like it would end badly for WotC.  I also wonder if there's room for a Basic game on the market that would function as its own game and not a funnel pushing players into an Advanced edition.


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## Jacob Lewis (Aug 29, 2022)

Lanefan said:


> Problem is, if all your friends decide to stay on the bus, then what?



Find more friends (or new ones) to share your interests. You are allowed to have more friends, play more games, and meet with other groups.


Lanefan said:


> I don't think WotC is going to go that route, somehow.



I don't let WotC determine my path anymore.


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## Smackpixi (Aug 29, 2022)

Lanefan said:


> Problem is, if all your friends decide to stay on the bus, then what?
> 
> You're standing there on the roadside right where you want to be, by yourself, as the bus pulls away with your friends still aboard.  That's the problem many face every time there's a major update or edition change, and the only perfect solution is to never again change editions.
> 
> I don't think WotC is going to go that route, somehow.



So, I liked this post even though I don’t exactly understand where you’re coming from.  It’s sad and I appreciate sad, but what it‘s sad about I just don’t truly get.  I haven’t played this game for decades, and I’m surely less attached to it than many here, but to me, the most important thing about it is who you play with, that being so vastly more important than anything else, how you play seems insignificant.

it’s, for me, a game about sitting around a table, or computer screen now, and pretending to be someone or something you’re not.  For me, that requires a level of trust I just don’t have with everyone in this world.  If I’m going to play act as an elf, who lost their mom when they were young, and is questing to find the orcs responsible, hates all orcs because of this, but struggles with their racism toward orcs…if I’m going to do this, and do it seriously, I’m going to need to be around awesome people I love and trust to not feel absolutely ridiculous doing it.

how crossing the broken bridge and owlbear attack are resolved is important, but secondary to being around the right people.  

And I feel like being around the right people allows post session, between session, discussions to happen like, “did anyone else think the 30 minutes we spent resolving that broken bridge situation really torturous?” to happen.  And we decide if it was torturous or the epitome of gaming fun, and decide how to do it the same or otherwise next time.  And we thus, over time, make our own game using or not, the published rules that change over time.

maybe I’m weird, but I find the rule systems just a framework to help people tell their stories and have adventures.  And those rules will evolve according to the stories and battles that the group has and wants to have.

i get having more experience or believing what your group is up to could be resolved in more or less gamified ways, but at the end of the day, being around a trusted group matters more than how we resolve crossing the broken bridge.


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## MNblockhead (Aug 29, 2022)

I played Red Box D&D and AD&D 1e starting in the early/mid 80s, skipped 2, 3, 3.5, and 4, and started playing again with 5e. I've really loved 5e but would appreciate a few tweaks here and there. I'm cautiously optimistic about One D&D.  If it gives some new options, has some new ideas for making aspects of game easier to run, and provides increasingly useful digital tools--all while allowing me to continue to run years worth of adventuring and setting material I've bought and a homebrewed--then I'm all in. 

I've never felt abandoned or ignored by WotC as an older player and appreciate them making a game that rekindled my love for TTRPGs. 

Now, if they change the game so much that it makes all my existing material unplayable with the new rule, I'll just stick to 5e with some home-rules. I've bought enough material to keep my playing into retirement. But from what I've seen so far, it doesn't look like that will be the case. 

Note that this is all from the perspective of a DM. As a player, I'll play whatever rules the DM is using. If I like the DM and his or her style, I rarely find that the rules get in the way of my enjoyment of playing. 

Glad I missed all the earlier edition wars. I find it hard to relate. The only gaming-related battles that challenge me are finding the time to game as much as I would like.


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## Lanefan (Aug 29, 2022)

Citizen Mane said:


> If they didn't make everything that was published compatible with both versions, they'd end up splintering their market.   It's likely to happen anyhow as some people stick with 5e or migrate to other games, but doing it intentionally seems like it would end badly for WotC.  I also wonder if there's room for a Basic game on the market that would function as its own game and not a funnel pushing players into an Advanced edition.



Being a funnel into the Advanced version would be most of the point of Basic, though ideally it would and could also be played as it's own thing without ever moving to Advanced if that's what the group wanted from it.


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## Lanefan (Aug 29, 2022)

Jacob Lewis said:


> Find more friends (or new ones) to share your interests. You are allowed to have more friends, play more games, and meet with other groups.



I was using "friends" as an analogy for the greater D&D community, rather than referring to one's specific personal friends.

I've never understood the groupthink among so many people that says they have to have the latest new thing even if it doesn't function as well as what they already have; and this is true not just of D&D editions but also of cars, technology, fashion, and a gajillion other things.  Corporations love it as it keeps the treadmill going, but it often makes no sense for the consumer/end user.

Someone deciding to stay put with what they have gets, in effect, left behind as the spotlight of official support and hype moves on to the newer version.


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## payn (Aug 29, 2022)

Lanefan said:


> I was using "friends" as an analogy for the greater D&D community, rather than referring to one's specific personal friends.
> 
> I've never understood the groupthink among so many people that says they have to have the latest new thing even if it doesn't function as well as what they already have; and this is true not just of D&D editions but also of cars, technology, fashion, and a gajillion other things.  Corporations love it as it keeps the treadmill going, but it often makes no sense for the consumer/end user.
> 
> Someone deciding to stay put with what they have gets, in effect, left behind as the spotlight of official support and hype moves on to the newer version.



"The only thing constant in life is change" -Heraclitus


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## Jacob Lewis (Aug 29, 2022)

Lanefan said:


> I was using "friends" as an analogy for the greater D&D community, rather than referring to one's specific personal friends.



Oh, I see what you're saying.

Still, the "greater community" isn't someone that I personally need to appease or cater to, unless I am running a business. I can assure you that, currently, I am not.


Lanefan said:


> I've never understood the groupthink among so many people that says they have to have the latest new thing even if it doesn't function as well as what they already have; and this is true not just of D&D editions but also of cars, technology, fashion, and a gajillion other things.  Corporations love it as it keeps the treadmill going, but it often makes no sense for the consumer/end user.



100% agreed. 


Lanefan said:


> Someone deciding to stay put with what they have gets, in effect, left behind as the spotlight of official support and hype moves on to the newer version.



Maybe. I think the OSR movement might say otherwise. Nostalgia can be a powerful thing.


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## AnotherGuy (Aug 29, 2022)

bloodtide said:


> They will read the new "power nap" rules....regain all your stuff every 15 minutes...and will be very much "wow!".



The difference between a grognard and not-a-grognard is the number of power naps the player needs as opposed to the character.


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## haakon1 (Aug 29, 2022)

Citizen Mane said:


> If they didn't make everything that was published compatible with both versions, they'd end up splintering their market.   It's likely to happen anyhow as some people stick with 5e or migrate to other games, but doing it intentionally seems like it would end badly for WotC.  I also wonder if there's room for a Basic game on the market that would function as its own game and not a funnel pushing players into an Advanced edition.



True, but what if modules and settings have support for multiple versions/editions?  When everything is electronic, having “dual rules” is possibl, though not as cheap as single rules.

So, yeah, they almost certainly won’t do this.


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## haakon1 (Aug 29, 2022)

MNblockhead said:


> I played Red Box D&D and AD&D 1e starting in the early/mid 80s, skipped 2, 3, 3.5, and 4, and started playing again with 5e. I've really loved 5e but would appreciate a few tweaks here and there. I'm cautiously optimistic about One D&D.





MNblockhead said:


> Now, if they change the game so much that it makes all my existing material unplayable with the new rule, I'll just stick to 5e with some home-rules. I've bought enough material to keep my playing into retirement. But from what I've seen so far, it doesn't look like that will be the case.



That’s what most people wish with new editions, I think, but we don’t always get it.


MNblockhead said:


> Note that this is all from the perspective of a DM. As a player, I'll play whatever rules the DM is using. If I like the DM and his or her style, I rarely find that the rules get in the way of my enjoyment of playing





MNblockhead said:


> Glad I missed all the earlier edition wars. I find it hard to relate.



Suffice it to say, the versions you’ve played - Basic, 1e, and 5e - were not targets in the edition wars.

I’ve never played Basic, but someone wanted to run one of those 3 versions, sure, why not, is my attitude too, as a player.

Which is an interesting observation - edition changes put the vast majority of the work to learn and teach, and cost and annoyance of obsolescence of materials, and pain with pressure to switch or not switch, on the DM’s.


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## DarkCrisis (Aug 29, 2022)

Fun seeing the modern crowd deny what we've been through several times.  Especially with 3.5 ed.

"It's not a new edition!  WotC said so!"

"It's backwards compatible!"  Which has always been a half-truth.

As for the system itself.  Eh.  Just more changes that I think take some of the flavor of D&D away and/or change it to something I barely recognize.  From swords and sorcery to anime.  But thats the modern crowd and that's who's spending $.  I can't fault WotC for catering to the crowd who want a different flavor of game than I do.

Doesn't mean I have to like it.

Recently went back to DMing 2E after almost only  all 5E since it's release, and it's the best D&D related thing I've done in a long while.  Feels like the good old days when D&D made sense and not every little thing was questioned. "But why does my cleric have to have a deity?  Can you change the dungeon to be wheelchair accessible? Why are Orcs bad?  Etc"

Not to mention how much "easier" 5th ed is in terms of survivability. 

Again, glad D&D is at new heights of popularity, but it's no longer for me more or less (Ill still play 5E or One, but I will no longer DM it).  And thats fine.  I'm sure Ill buy at least the PHB for One.


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## Thomas Shey (Aug 29, 2022)

haakon1 said:


> True, but what if modules and settings have support for multiple versions/editions?  When everything is electronic, having “dual rules” is possibl, though not as cheap as single rules.
> 
> So, yeah, they almost certainly won’t do this.




You'd have to have a serious split base before a company is going to consider that worthwhile.


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## Thomas Shey (Aug 29, 2022)

haakon1 said:


> Suffice it to say, the versions you’ve played - Basic, 1e, and 5e - were not targets in the edition wars.




That might have been true with the first one (though there was always some weirdness about the offshoot line versus AD&D) but I think you're understating the other two.


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## overgeeked (Aug 29, 2022)

I came into the hobby in '84. I started with B/X and switched to AD&D fairly quickly. My longest standing D&D group is made up of mostly the same people we played with back then and some of our kids. We kept playing AD&D through 2E, 3E, and 3.5...utterly ignoring the edition churn. Though I absolutely love many of the 2E settings. For some reason we jumped on 4E and played it from launch to the start of the Next playtest. We've played 5E since...and are about to switch to DCC. Though I play and run a bunch of other games with other groups.

I consider myself a grognard even though I'm a bit of a late comer because I still prefer that earlier style of play. Zero to hero. The possibility of death around every corner. Hard scrabble adventures. Avoiding combat as much as possible because it's deadly. Combat as war. Characters starting weak and having to do things in the game to earn all the bells and whistles. Player skill. Emergent story. Etc. As much as I like the smoother bits of the 5E system, to get it to play how I want, i.e. for it to be a challenge at all to the PCs, I have to house rule the thing within an inch of it's life. That's not what I'm paying professional game designers to do. Which is one reason why the debacle that is Spelljammer 5E irritates me to no end. The whole premise of the setting is tall ships in space...and yet their ship-to-ship combat "rules" consist of a few lines mostly telling you not to bother and instead focus on boarding actions. There's nothing on making wildspace systems. Nothing on the various wildspace systems not directly related to the module. A few pages on Bral is the most you get. There's basically nothing there. The original is $10 as a PDF or $30 as POD and has an order of magnitude more useable information than the new one...which is $70. And that's the "professionals" who're putting out "professional products" at the biggest RPG company on the planet. LOL.

But...I'm also on the fence about a few things. I think the modern way of doing things is better in some areas. As much as I like the default to human feel of older editions, I was always trying to play goblins, drow, minotaurs, orcs, etc. I like that there are more and more varied race options now than there were before. But I also recognize that there's something lost in making the magical so mundane. You lose the wow factor. It's no longer a terrifying monster at the center of an endless maze when it's your friend Bob the minotaur's cousin.

What do I think of this new version of D&D? It will be great to mine for ideas. Not sure how much I'll actually play it. I expect the PC option power creep we've seen since 2014 will continue. It will now be baked into the revised PHB. Likely they'll power creep the base classes even more so that it will pull the power gamers in. It's a great marketing strategy to get people to buy the new stuff. It's terrible game design, however. I don't like feats no longer being optional. As much as I like the idea of ASI being flexible, I don't think the background is the right place for them. While it makes sense, they should more rightly be with race or class...and as I think through this stuff part of me is boggled at why I'm bothering.

If I want to play D&D I have B/X, AD&D, DCC, and OSE Advanced among so many others. There's so much great original old-school and OSR content out there. More than I'll ever be able to actually use at the table. And yet, whatever new edition of D&D WotC puts out is the supermassive black hole at the center of the RPG industry's galaxy.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 29, 2022)

Smackpixi said:


> Um, why with the, not exactly persecution complex but, the bizarre antagonism and expectation that there will be something new for fans of a game that hasn’t been published in 40, 30, or 20 years?
> 
> it‘s obvious if you didn’t like 5e, you’re not going to like what comes next, as they’re pretty explicit about it being more of the same.
> 
> ...



*Mod Note:*

Comparing other players to the post-WW2 Japanese “weirdos” is wrong on so many levels.  Accusing someone of having a “persecution complex” is also a bit of a personal attack.

Howabout you reconsidering the rhetoric you use when posting on ENWorld?  That’d be great.


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## Grogg of the North (Aug 30, 2022)

I'm not sure if I'm a grognard, though my user name is pretty close!

I started my D&D experience with 3.5. I loved it, problems and all. I eventually switched to 1E Pathfinder, which is now my preferred set of rules. 

5E has always been "meh" for me. It just wasn't the edition for me. Which is sort of my view of 5.5/D&Done/whatever. So I'm not too vested in the changes and new rules. If someone in my group wants to run a game using that rule set, awesome! I'll play! I just don't see myself rushing out to buy the books.


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## Mark Hope (Aug 30, 2022)

I'll no doubt treat 6e (or whatever it ends up being called) the same as I treat 5e - a source of cool ideas to steal, art to use, resources to plunder. It's all meat for the all-devouring machine that is my wildly houseruled AD&D2e system that keeps my games chugging along. In the larger scheme of things, a new edition should be interesting one way or the other. Glad that there is a new edition for people to dive into. Equally glad to be a weirdo still playing older editions


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## MNblockhead (Aug 30, 2022)

Lanefan said:


> I was using "friends" as an analogy for the greater D&D community, rather than referring to one's specific personal friends.
> 
> I've never understood the groupthink among so many people that says they have to have the latest new thing even if it doesn't function as well as what they already have; and this is true not just of D&D editions but also of cars, technology, fashion, and a gajillion other things.  Corporations love it as it keeps the treadmill going, but it often makes no sense for the consumer/end user.
> 
> Someone deciding to stay put with what they have gets, in effect, left behind as the spotlight of official support and hype moves on to the newer version.



Oh I understand and am guilty of it.  With some things, like my phone, I usually am one or two iterations behind. I am happy to let others discover and help workout the bugs and I will wait until the improvements will be meaningful to me. 

But for hobby things, like VTTs, I like to play around with the newest versions, features, and cool-looking community mods that I don't need and may never use. 

I guess I am kinda like that with my D&D.  I buy all the new rules and monsters books so that I have them in D&D Beyond. I generally do not buy adventure modules from WotC anymore but I will often buy just the character classes, backgrounds, monsters, and magic items -- again, just to have them in D&D Beyond.


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## haakon1 (Aug 30, 2022)

Grogg of the North said:


> I'm not sure if I'm a grognard, though my user name is pretty close!
> 
> I started my D&D experience with 3.5. I loved it, problems and all. I eventually switched to 1E Pathfinder, which is now my preferred set of rules.



For what it’s worth, I think you’re a Grognard.  Neither criticism nor congratulation, just observation of: stuck with an Older Edition.

I have only played PF1 at Paizocon (from the first in Redmond to the last pre-pandemic in Seattle) and on Xbox in Pathfinder: Kingmaker.  But I read and use PF1 ideas and adventures in my 3.5e campaigns.

I always wonder “what’s up with PF2”, but honestly, I haven’t checked it out at all.  I don’t even buy PF2 stuff, because I’m not sure if it works with 3.5e/PF1 or not.  Which makes me a bit sad/amused - to be out of current with both WotC and Paizo.


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## payn (Aug 30, 2022)

haakon1 said:


> For what it’s worth, I think you’re a Grognard.  Neither criticism nor congratulation, just observation of: stuck with an Older Edition.
> 
> I have only played PF1 at Paizocon (from the first in Redmond to the last pre-pandemic in Seattle) and on Xbox in Pathfinder: Kingmaker.  But I read and use PF1 ideas and adventures in my 3.5e campaigns.
> 
> I always wonder “what’s up with PF2”, but honestly, I haven’t checked it out at all.  I don’t even buy PF2 stuff, because I’m not sure if it works with 3.5e/PF1 or not.  Which makes me a bit sad/amused - to be out of current with both WotC and Paizo.



As a big PF1 guy, I can say the PF2 is an entirely different animal. Not likely compatible on most levels.


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Aug 30, 2022)

This is the best time in history to be a D&D gamer, of any edition. More 1E material is released every year than TSR did in their entire run, to say nothing of OD&D, BD&D and more.

If you aren't a fan of 5E or whatever version, great! You have so many choices, some of them super-finely differentiated from other products reprinting previous editions of rules. As far as I can tell, everything outside of 2E Players Option rules are out there somewhere, and in that case, you just have to settle for the original rules (not cleaned up and better organized copies), which are _also_ now widely available.

Honestly, whatever version of D&D you enjoy, I have a hard time seeing any reason for complaint.


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## DragonBelow (Aug 30, 2022)

haakon1 said:


> 8 years between editions isn’t much when your campaigns last decades … yup, I’m definitely not the audience,



5e came out in 2014, the next one will come out in 2024, that's 10 years. That's more than 3 times the amount of time between 3.0 (2000) and 3.5 (2003).


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## Grogg of the North (Aug 31, 2022)

haakon1 said:


> For what it’s worth, I think you’re a Grognard.  Neither criticism nor congratulation, just observation of: stuck with an Older Edition.
> 
> I have only played PF1 at Paizocon (from the first in Redmond to the last pre-pandemic in Seattle) and on Xbox in Pathfinder: Kingmaker.  But I read and use PF1 ideas and adventures in my 3.5e campaigns.
> 
> I always wonder “what’s up with PF2”, but honestly, I haven’t checked it out at all.  I don’t even buy PF2 stuff, because I’m not sure if it works with 3.5e/PF1 or not.  Which makes me a bit sad/amused - to be out of current with both WotC and Paizo.



And I take 3.5 ideas and use them for my PF1 campaigns! Are we an ouroboros yet? 

Now if you excuse me, there are young whipper snappers on my lawn that I need to chase off. Dang kids and their advantage, and short rests, and ... and um ... what was I talking about?


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## Volund (Sep 1, 2022)

I guess I'm a grognard. Started with Holmes Basic in 1979 and was playing wargames before that. The Tower of Zenopus and B1 were the first modules I ran. I have enjoyed playing and running 5e, but my reaction to 1D&D is that I don't really care. Nobody in my 5e group is talking about it either. I'm curious to see the new core books, like I was when 2e came out, but I don't know that I'll buy them. I remember seeing 2e in the bookstore, skimming through them, and deciding there wasn't anything there I needed. 

The main reason I don't care is that I just don't like the kind of adventures WotC publishes, so I don't need new rules to play them. There are enough players who like playing D&D as a dungeon delving, treasure finding game, more every year, and I have enough 5e, 1e, B/X, and OSE content to last the rest of my life. The last thread of hope connecting me to the new edition was that there would be an updated Greyhawk setting in 2024 for the 50th anniversary, but that doesn't seem to be happening.


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Sep 1, 2022)

Volund said:


> The last thread of hope connecting me to the new edition was that there would be an updated Greyhawk setting in 2024 for the 50th anniversary, but that doesn't seem to be happening.



We know nothing about what's happening in 2024, other than them issuing a new PHB, MM and DMG. For all we know, they'll be releasing a new setting every week. (JAKANDOR LIVES!)

I think we're almost defintely going to get either a big Forgotten Realms setting book or a Greyhawk one.


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## CleverNickName (Sep 1, 2022)

Just a few months ago, I ran a Roll20 game of D&D for some of my high-school buddies back home, using the B/X rules.  (I was the only person at the virtual table who was familiar with more than one edition of the rules, so I decided to just use the same rules that we played with in High School.)  It was just as easy to set up and run as any other RPG on that platform...the hardest part was converting the map from PDF to JPG format so that I could import it.   In other words, not really all that hard.

It was a lot of fun crawling around through Castle Amber and reliving some old memories.  More fun--and less work--than the Internet had led me to believe, anyway.  Thanks, Internet!

So my advice to all of my fellow Grognards:


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## MGibster (Sep 1, 2022)

haakon1 said:


> I suspect WotC has absolutely no interest in Older Edition fans, so I don’t suspect it’ll bring us back into the fold (whichever Older Editions we prefer), but whatever One D&D is, I’ll buy the PHB and presumably play it occasionally with someone else DMing … and learn to convert some of the avalanche of new material backwards.



I'm cool with that.  People in their twenties were raised on Dragon Ball, Pokemon, World of Warcraft, and other properties that didn't exist when I was a kid and they have different expectations than I had.  For D&D to remain relevant, WotC needs to cater to the changing desires of their audience.  What worked for me in 1992 might not work for as many gamers in 2022.  (And honestly, what worked for me in 1992 might not work for me today.)


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## Cruentus (Sep 4, 2022)

MGibster said:


> I'm cool with that.  People in their twenties were raised on Dragon Ball, Pokemon, World of Warcraft, and other properties that didn't exist when I was a kid and they have different expectations than I had.  For D&D to remain relevant, WotC needs to cater to the changing desires of their audience.  What worked for me in 1992 might not work for as many gamers in 2022.  (And honestly, what worked for me in 1992 might not work for me today.)



As a grognard, it takes me a very long time to realize that things aren't aimed at me anymore (games, TV, music, movies, technology, even DnD).  Once I finally realize I'm not the target audience, everything makes sense and then I can settle into what I want to do/enjoy doing, rather than fighting against it.  And its the same with DnD.  I started back in Basic into Ad&d, played 2nd, life got in the way of 3rd, 4th didn't stick, and I picked up 5th with my old gaming group (the one from Ad&d) as Covid got rolling.  So it was a long stretch of time between times I had actually played.  Played 5e a lot for a couple of years, liked it okay, but then didn't.  Started looking backward, testing things, and found my happy place back in Basic/OSE, and that's where I'm going to stay.  I have limited time/energy to play games, so I might as well do what I enjoy, and let those who enjoy 5e do their thing.


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## nevin (Sep 4, 2022)

MNblockhead said:


> Oh I understand and am guilty of it.  With some things, like my phone, I usually am one or two iterations behind. I am happy to let others discover and help workout the bugs and I will wait until the improvements will be meaningful to me.
> 
> But for hobby things, like VTTs, I like to play around with the newest versions, features, and cool-looking community mods that I don't need and may never use.
> 
> I guess I am kinda like that with my D&D.  I buy all the new rules and monsters books so that I have them in D&D Beyond. I generally do not buy adventure modules from WotC anymore but I will often buy just the character classes, backgrounds, monsters, and magic items -- again, just to have them in D&D Beyond.



I think a lot of experienced DM's do that.  I don't like to run modules or encounters because my players will read them and them plan for the encounters.   If I make my own encounters then i can plan for my party .


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## haakon1 (Sep 4, 2022)

nevin said:


> I don't like to run modules or encounters because my players will read them and them plan for the encounters.



Really?  I’d consider that cheating, and ruining the point of playing.


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## Lanefan (Sep 4, 2022)

haakon1 said:


> Really?  I’d consider that cheating, and ruining the point of playing.



Agreed; but if one is running a bunch of experienced old-school DMs as one's players it's inevitable that any classic module will almost certainly have been either played through or run by at least one of them and sometimes by all of them.

I'm a good example: there's a bunch of classic modules I'd never want to play in now as I just remember them too well through having DMed them.


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## MNblockhead (Sep 4, 2022)

haakon1 said:


> Really?  I’d consider that cheating, and ruining the point of playing.



Depends on the group(s) you play with.  In my experience it usually isn't that the players agree to play in a campaign, then run out and buy a book they don't have so they can read it to "win."

More likely, many players are also DMs or just fans and buy the books, read them because they enjoy them and some time later their group decides to run an adventure they have already read. Or you may have some very active players that played some or all of an adventure with another group or adventurer's league, but they still want to participate in your game. 

Many players are mature enough to not metagame. I'm fine if a player tells me "I read that adventure but I never got to run it. I would love to play in this campaign. I'll avoid metagaming and will let players who haven't run the game make decisions where my pre-existing knowlege of the adventure might be a spoiler."  As a DM I would likely make some changes anyway to mix things up. 

Currently, I typically run third-party adventures because I don't have the time to homebrew entire campaigns and the third-party adventures better match the style of game I want to run than the WotC games.  They also have the benefit of not being familiar to my players.


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## Man in the Funny Hat (Sep 4, 2022)

NO edition of D&D has an expiration date.  Doesn't matter why they might want old Grognards to drink the koolaid - they just don't have to buy into 5E if they don't want to.  Nobody does.  Everyone can play any past edition to their hearts content until they die.  The problem the old guard might face is finding people to play.  5E is the 800# gorilla and just doesn't need to care about grognards (old schoolers, or whatever you want to call them).  The NON-5E numbers of players are simply _insignificant_ to their success.

I have enjoyed playing 5E, but I have no desire to RUN it as a DM.  If players WANT me to run a game then they're certainly gonna be playing 3E E6 or house-ruled 1E.  I'd been thinking I might stoop to running a 5E Spelljammer game, but that's feeling less likely as time goes by.  Part of the problem IS that the people I want to play with aren't all in the same area.  The idea of a truly 3D VTT to run games on DOES have appeal to me.  WHEN I SEE IT, I will then assess if it's worth actually trying.  Until then it's all just everybody's WILD, largely baseless speculation.  They're also making rules changes.  I have no idea what effect those would have on 5E gameplay as it currently stands.  Frankly, I don't much care because I'm STILL more interested in running older editions and NOT in running 5E.  But if someone else invites me to play in a 5E game, or OneD&D game - I'll bite.  My enjoyment of such a game would not then hinge upon the system but upon the game as presented BY THAT DM.  That was always the case and always will be.  A good DM can run an enjoyable game of even not-very-good rules, but if the DM just has little or no interest in the underlying rules then the game they present will greatly suffer accordingly.  The rules matter a lot more for me as DM than they do for me as a player.

Frankly, the best outcome for me at this point is a new OneD&D VTT that I can use for OTHER editions as well and not have to commit to running ONLY OneD&D with it.  I don't see that as terribly likely.  Again - they don't have a REASON to care about older editions or those who might prefer them.  And in terms of programming a VTT, they're taking on a HELL of a lot bigger task to adapt it all to multiple rules editions and/or house rules than to cater only to the rules they WANT to cater to.  Herding everyone to ONE set of rules is better for them for sales.  They've been doing it since they bought TSR in the first place.  They tried a VTT once before back in the beginning in the 3E era and it failed quite hard.  I'm not convinced yet that THIS attempt will actually succeed to the degree they want people to believe it will.

I will wait and see, and hold my final judgements until then.


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## Thomas Shey (Sep 4, 2022)

Man in the Funny Hat said:


> NO edition of D&D has an expiration date.  Doesn't matter why they might want old Grognards to drink the koolaid - they just don't have to buy into 5E if they don't want to.  Nobody does.  Everyone can play any past edition to their hearts content until they die.  The problem the old guard might face is finding people to play.  5E is the 800# gorilla and just doesn't need to care about grognards (old schoolers, or whatever you want to call them).  The NON-5E numbers of players are simply _insignificant_ to their success.




This is really the issue with non-D&D games, too; if you don't have an established group you're going to move over to a new game (and know are not allergic to the whole idea) you just have to accept that you're fishing people out of the vast mass of D&D players, current and past.   Its just the gig.


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Sep 4, 2022)

MNblockhead said:


> Many players are mature enough to not metagame. I'm fine if a player tells me "I read that adventure but I never got to run it. I would love to play in this campaign. I'll avoid metagaming and will let players who haven't run the game make decisions where my pre-existing knowlege of the adventure might be a spoiler."  As a DM I would likely make some changes anyway to mix things up.



I run my main campaign in Ptolus, a setting _packed_ with major secrets, including earth-shattering ones about the nature of the world. Several of my players own the book and run games in it as well, and thus almost certainly know all the secrets I'm making relevant in the campaign. There has never been an issue in more than a decade of play.

However, I also knew everyone for more than a decade beforehand and we'd done collaborative works together, so I knew they'd be fine. If a random person wanted to join the campaign, I would ask them not to buy the book or read spoilers about it until I had a better sense of whether they would be able to not let their outside knowledge influence play.

Honestly, I don't think I've had an issue with players cheating this way -- and I do think of it as cheating -- since middle school, which is a bad standard to hold any adult to. I _hope_ everyone has grown since middle school.


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## FitzTheRuke (Sep 4, 2022)

It's pronounced groan-yard, right? Not grog-nerd?


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## GuyBoy (Sep 4, 2022)

FitzTheRuke said:


> It's pronounced groan-yard, right? Not grog-nerd?



I reckon so: French sounds better than Dwarvish.


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Sep 4, 2022)

FitzTheRuke said:


> It's pronounced groan-yard, right? Not grog-nerd?



"Jif."


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## Jack Daniel (Sep 4, 2022)

FitzTheRuke said:


> It's pronounced groan-yard, right? Not grog-nerd?




Probably closer to "gwãh-nyar" if you're trying to imitate the French accent, but most people just say "grog-nard."



Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> "Jif."




"How now, brown drow?" said the liches with stitches in their britches, while the kobolds cobbled cobblestones and the goblins gobbled gobbledygook.


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## haakon1 (Sep 5, 2022)

Lanefan said:


> Agreed; but if one is running a bunch of experienced old-school DMs as one's players it's inevitable that any classic module will almost certainly have been either played through or run by at least one of them and sometimes by all of them.
> 
> I'm a good example: there's a bunch of classic modules I'd never want to play in now as I just remember them too well through having DMed them.



Some old school adventures are so variable/up to the DM, that’s not a factor.

I recommend B1 In Search of the Unknown (ran it) and the Nodes from TOEE for that(running them now).  Original Adventures Reincarnated did a great job with both.

My two groups have old school players, but they weren’t DM’s back in the day.


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## Man in the Funny Hat (Sep 5, 2022)

FitzTheRuke said:


> It's pronounced groan-yard, right? Not grog-nerd?



gro·gnard | \ (ˌ)grō¦nyär \
plural -s
Definition of grognard
1: an old soldier
2 often capitalized : a soldier of the original imperial guard that was created by Napoleon I in 1804 and that made the final French charge at Waterloo

So, yeah technically it's more like GROWN-yar.  I say we get to mispronounce it as GRAWG-nard because the original definition was stolen and applied to a particular niche of people in the gaming community and it sounds more appropriately insulting.


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## Ken Spencer (Sep 5, 2022)

I’ve been playing since 1984, and have played every edition and found a reason to like each. Often, I find a different system to play, wandering away from D&D but always coming back. Will I follow along into this new not-6e?

Likely not. Here’s why:

1) WotC’s writing has been lackluster. Clear, easy to read, but uninteresting. It lacks pizzazz, power, and umph. It is not bad, just increasingly has become more and more bland over the past decade. I do not enjoy reading the books, which is one of my main draws to any text. 
2) Their adventures are not the type suitable for my play style. I like adventures that can be dropped into an ongoing campaign with ease, where the setting elements can be taken out and swapped for our table setting, the plots are self-contained or at the very least part of a series that leaves plenty of room for other adventures.
3) Unlike previous edition changes, I have more options here. I’ve replaced all of the 2e stuff destroyed by a leaky roof with reprints from DTRPG, and added some to the collection that I never purchased, only saw while reading Dragon. I play Castles and Crusades, adapt other OSR adventures to it for my home game, love DCC/ MCC and adapt those as well. There is a wealth of material at hand today. I do not have to stick with the new edition, or not-edition, just to keep up with new content. 
4) I am not a freelancer anymore, but have a permanent writing position. I don’t have to stay current to find work, so unless the boss says go learn this thing, I view One D&D with a resounding meh.
5) My wife loathes 5e. We don’t play it in our home game because of this. She came into the hobby with 5e, then discovered the OSR and never looked back.

I hope it does well for WotC and that people love it, that it draws in new players, that the brand continues to grow. I’ll continue to check out new D&D adventures and settings, and if there is one I like, I’ll pick it up and adapt it to my home game. But, I will not be buying the corebooks. I have enough PHB, DMG, and Monster Manuals with the same info but with different numbers.


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## MNblockhead (Sep 5, 2022)

Man in the Funny Hat said:


> gro·gnard | \ (ˌ)grō¦nyär \
> plural -s
> Definition of grognard
> 1: an old soldier
> ...



Besides, you can't have grognards without the grog.


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## DarkCrisis (Sep 6, 2022)

Ken Spencer said:


> I’ve been playing since 1984, and have played every edition and found a reason to like each. Often, I find a different system to play, wandering away from D&D but always coming back. Will I follow along into this new not-6e?
> 
> Likely not. Here’s why:
> 
> ...



if i may ask, what turned her off 5e and onto old school?


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## Sacrosanct (Sep 6, 2022)

DarkCrisis said:


> if i may ask, what turned her off 5e and onto old school?



The superior playstyle.


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## nevin (Sep 6, 2022)

MNblockhead said:


> Depends on the group(s) you play with.  In my experience it usually isn't that the players agree to play in a campaign, then run out and buy a book they don't have so they can read it to "win."
> 
> More likely, many players are also DMs or just fans and buy the books, read them because they enjoy them and some time later their group decides to run an adventure they have already read. Or you may have some very active players that played some or all of an adventure with another group or adventurer's league, but they still want to participate in your game.
> 
> ...



no one can not metagame.  Some of us  try very hard but the knowledge is there and it affects our decisions.


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## Ken Spencer (Sep 6, 2022)

DarkCrisis said:


> if i may ask, what turned her off 5e and onto old school?



She likes faster games with less rules, simpler character sheets, lower powered PCs, streamlined character creation, and greater freedom of play.


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Sep 6, 2022)

Ken Spencer said:


> She likes faster games with less rules, simpler character sheets, lower powered PCs, streamlined character creation, and greater freedom of play.



C&C has its issues, but the character creation is wonderful. In a better timeline, the class and a half system would be imitated throughout the D&Dsphere.


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## haakon1 (Sep 8, 2022)

Man in the Funny Hat said:


> gro·gnard | \ (ˌ)grō¦nyär \
> plural -s
> Definition of grognard
> 1: an old soldier
> ...



I knew the original meaning, and my wargamer buddy told me it’s literally old grumbler and probably from Napoleonic wargaming.  So older than Chainmai, circa the first GenCon.

It’s a proud tradition.


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## Man in the Funny Hat (Sep 8, 2022)

haakon1 said:


> I knew the original meaning, and my wargamer buddy told me it’s literally old grumbler and probably from Napoleonic wargaming.  So older than Chainmai, circa the first GenCon.
> 
> It’s a proud tradition.



Get off my lawn...


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## teitan (Sep 26, 2022)

Dire Bare said:


> This is simply not true. Each edition of D&D has outsold previous editions, and D&D has seen upwards growth since 1974. The current edition, 5th, has seen explosive growth like never before.
> 
> A new "edition", a 5.5E if you will, is not going to hurt the growth of D&D or book sales.



Say what? Demonstrably not true. 2e, in it's entire run, did not outsell 1e in it's first 3 years. Or even first year. 2e chugged along because it was a band aid through poor business decisions and bad communication between departments. Ben Riggs lays it out in his book. Initial sales were high but not like 1e sales and then tanked. Products would sell for a couple months and then bottom out. 

4e only outsold 3e in initial pre-orders and while it was still a success it wasn't a Hasbro level success and was dead within 3 years of release. 

3.5 lost gas after about 3 years on the market because the OSR was born and started the market split and the release of 4e caused an open wound in the market that Pathfinder bandaged up by being the new edition that 3.x players were wanting when 4e came out. 

That 5e has been the massive success it has been is a shock. They had essentially no budget, no team and very little backing from WOTC/Hasbro when it came out. The D&D team was on fumes compared to the past. Mearls, Crawford and Perkins caught lightning in a bottle and synergized, unknowingly, with an unsuspecting pop culture thanks to Stranger Things referencing D&D so much in season 1, Critical Role becoming a massive success, none of that was expected to happen and contribute to D&D business in a big way. 

So no, each successive edition did not outsell the previous edition. 3.x didn't even outsell 1e or basic, it's measure of success was 2e that's how successful 1e and the original Basic set actually were.


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## teitan (Sep 26, 2022)

I decided I won't be buying much beyond the PHB, we decided in my group to just play DCC. I haven't really liked the playtest as it seems to be adding to the complexity as opposed to just having a core and then optional complexity like 5e. That was what was great about 5e was a solid core game with optional rules that could complicate it however you liked but the playtest seems to be making those optional rules part of that core game which is a barrier to teaching the game to new people.


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## payn (Sep 26, 2022)

teitan said:


> Say what? Demonstrably not true. 2e, in it's entire run, did not outsell 1e in it's first 3 years. Or even first year. 2e chugged along because it was a band aid through poor business decisions and bad communication between departments. Ben Riggs lays it out in his book. Initial sales were high but not like 1e sales and then tanked. Products would sell for a couple months and then bottom out.
> 
> 4e only outsold 3e in initial pre-orders and while it was still a success it wasn't a Hasbro level success and was dead within 3 years of release.
> 
> ...



A question, you may or may not know, what exactly do people mean when they say "_each edition outsold the last_"? Are they talking about launch day printings of the core rulebooks?


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## Grogg of the North (Sep 26, 2022)

I am struggling to find primary sources regarding sales numbers. (Maybe my google-fu is weak?) Most of what I've found is either people on reddit or game forums claiming that WotC employees have stated things. So let's spread so more questionable assertions! 

Mike Mearls on Twitter in August 2016 said that hardcopies of the 5e D&D Player's Handbook had outsold the lifetime PHB sales of 4e, and 3.5e, and 3e. Note that that was individually, not more than all three of the latter combined.


In October 2007, WotC's Ryan Dancey claimed on a forum that:
Total lifetime sales of the 1E PHB over 10 years were roughly 1.5 million units.
Total lifetime sales of the 2E/2ER PHB over 10 years were roughly .75 million units.
Total lifetime sales of the 3E/3.5E PHB over 5 years were 1 million units.
On release, the 2E PHB sold ~250K units in 12 months. The 3E PHB sold ~300K units in 30 days.


However, back in 2011 TSR's Tim Kask pointed out that if you're only looking at PHBs while in search of the all-time champ, you're looking at the wrong spot:



> So, I went to Jim Ward, who certainly was in a position to know, and he concurs with my assertion. Consider this, and I am paraphrasing Jim a bit: Frank's Red Box set was selling 100K copies per quarter, just in the US. Both the German and the Japanese editions of the Red Box matched those numbers for several years, plus the other 8 or 9 language editions were also being sold at that time. ...
> 
> So, if we assume those numbers for just three years, that means 1.2 million US, 1.2 million Japan and Germany, and then all of the rest will probably account for another 500 or 600K. That makes roughly 3 million just for those three years.




So is 5E the highest selling edition? Who knows! I saw earlier a table from roll20 saying that 61% of the games on their platform are 5E. Of course now that I am looking for it again, it has vanished into the ether.


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## Thomas Shey (Sep 26, 2022)

Grogg of the North said:


> I am struggling to find primary sources regarding sales numbers. (Maybe my google-fu is weak?) Most of what I've found is either people on reddit or game forums claiming that WotC employees have stated things. So let's spread so more questionable assertions!




Its _extremely hard_ to find solid sales numbers on almost any RPG products, and when you do it involves taking the company involved at its word.  That's why you see so many attempts to use secondary metrics to determine popularity so often.


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## haakon1 (Sep 27, 2022)

Benjamin Riggs is the expert on TSR era sales, and actually had access to primary sources.  I look forward to a sequel, but sales data after the Hasbro acquisition I assume will never be released, unless the brand is owned by gamers again.

Anyhow, we don’t need sales data to see it’s not been from strength to strength with new editions.

1e is the edition that was a cultural phenomenon.

2e  the edition when TSR went bankrupt and stopped printing.  DOWN.

3e was a literal renaissance (rebirth, after bankruptcy). UP.

4e split the brand with PF taking a substantial part of the audience.  DOWN.

5e has been during a cultural renaissance for D&D, where it became nearly pop culture. UP.

What will happen with 5.5/6/One is unknown, but the chances look 50/50 on up or down to me.


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## CleverNickName (Sep 27, 2022)

So it seems that the even-numbered editions didn't fare as well as odd-numbered ones.


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## Haplo781 (Sep 27, 2022)

CleverNickName said:


> So it seems that the even-numbered editions didn't fare as well as odd-numbered ones.



But half editions do great.


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Sep 27, 2022)

CleverNickName said:


> So it seems that the even-numbered editions didn't fare as well as odd-numbered ones.



It's the reverse of the Star Trek movies!


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## teitan (Sep 27, 2022)

payn said:


> A question, you may or may not know, what exactly do people mean when they say "_each edition outsold the last_"? Are they talking about launch day printings of the core rulebooks?



I edited my answer but they didn't mean that


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## Jacob Lewis (Sep 27, 2022)

haakon1 said:


> Anyhow, we don’t need sales data to see it’s not been from strength to strength with new editions.
> 
> 1e is the edition that was a cultural phenomenon.
> 
> ...



This looks like fun! Let me try... ahem...

1e the edition your parents and your pastors warned you about. Most popular with cultists and kids on bikes.

2e the edition that took you everywhere you didn't know you wanted to go and forced you to make some tough choices like when your parents divorced. Most popular with college kids still trying to hang on to their adolescence while rebelling against their parents for forced visitations.

3e the edition brought to you by Pokemon and the people who made a fortune on those card games. Most popular with fans and hobby store owners who thought they had witnessed the demise of D&D; much less popular when Hasbro tried to hit the "reset edition" button way too soon.

4e the edition that tried to win back everyone, including the shareholders, by changing the game with more modern design ideas and digital tools while trying to claim it is still the same game. Most popular with new players who have no idea what D&D was like before, and old players who thought it was time for a change but felt it didn't go far enough.

5e the edition that unapologetically walks back to everything that was simultaneously good and bad in previous editions, but secretly built on some of the best ideas of the last edition hoping no one will notice. Most popular with people who believe it is meant to played in front of an audience, and those who don't care anymore. Whatever. Let's just play already!

OneD&D? It's already making the same promises that every other edition has made and failed to deliver. Who will enjoy it? Probably people who haven't grown tired of this treadmill yet.


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## Willie the Duck (Sep 27, 2022)

I think I'll jump in again before we jump further headlong down that rabbit hole and plead (again, not as a mod, just someone voicing a preference) with people to remember that the sales data tangent isn't the primary topic, and  if this thread is to be hijacked by relitigating it once again to please at least have some overarching point you feel those numbers show and explain what that is. We've been over this so many times and after people go AD&D vs BX/BECMI or 4E vs 3E or PHB vs total books or initial run vs lifespan or 5e vs anything before, people tend to leave of the, 'and from that, I believe that ______ {some specific point}.


teitan said:


> 3.5 lost gas after about 3 years on the market because the OSR was born and started the market split and the release of 4e caused an open wound in the market that Pathfinder bandaged up by being the new edition that 3.x players were wanting when 4e came out.



I have to say, I haven't heard many people suggesting that it was the OSR that did in 3e. Prevailing wisdom, so far as I've experienced, has been that it just lurched to a close as more and more expansions sold worse and worse mostly because people already had more books than they used.


FitzTheRuke said:


> It's pronounced groan-yard, right? Not grog-nerd?



For the English language to appropriate a word from another language but not replicate the pronunciation would be rather quixotic, wouldn't it?


Egon Spengler said:


> "How now, brown drow?" said the liches with stitches in their britches, while the kobolds cobbled cobblestones and the goblins gobbled gobbledygook.



And the flinds did reference wind, settling that particular question not at all.


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## Grogg of the North (Sep 27, 2022)




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## teitan (Sep 28, 2022)

Willie the Duck said:


> I have to say, I haven't heard many people suggesting that it was the OSR that did in 3e. Prevailing wisdom, so far as I've experienced, has been that it just lurched to a close as more and more expansions sold worse and worse mostly because people already had more books than they



The market began to split about and there was a definite change happening before 3.5 was coming to close. If you watch the development and rise of OSR it started in 2006 with OSRIC and 2004 Castles & Crusades and the explosion of BX variants before 4e is even hinted at but sales of 3.5 were obviously starting to hit a downward skid and D20 sales had stalled. Other examples of the nascent OSR movement include the Mongoose version of Runequest in 2006. So the market split was happening before 4e came it was just more pronounced by 4e’s launch and 3.5 players rejecting it. New adopters of 4e are largely ignored in the conversations because someone was obviously buying and playing it because it still led the market. I’m not saying the OSR was a massive threat like Pathfinder was to 4e but it was definitely the beginning of the market split as DMs became burnt out by the complexity of 3.5 and the sub-game of system mastery it encouraged. 3.5 was still THE game, as WOTC learned but the OSR was strong enough that WOTC was actively engaging OSR developers and fans in the development of 5e.


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## teitan (Sep 28, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> Its _extremely hard_ to find solid sales numbers on almost any RPG products, and when you do it involves taking the company involved at its word.  That's why you see so many attempts to use secondary metrics to determine popularity so often.



In this case there is a whole book of them mentioned in this thread.


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## Minigiant (Sep 28, 2022)

As time marched, trends within adventure fantasy changed. The main story of the WOTC era of D&D is how much the different styles grew and how WOTC dealt with it.

I think for the bigger companies and the biggest one WOTC,  focusing on one style of D&D just wont get the numbers "corporate" wants. It's make a lot of sales but wont hit the artificial benchmarks. The old school, the middle schools, and the new school will have to share or deal with smaller companies.

And in about 10 years, a newer school will be erected to split it more.


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## Man in the Funny Hat (Sep 29, 2022)

teitan said:


> The market began to split about and there was a definite change happening before 3.5 was coming to close. If you watch the development and rise of OSR it started in 2006 with OSRIC and 2004 Castles & Crusades and the explosion of BX variants before 4e is even hinted at but sales of 3.5 were obviously starting to hit a downward skid and D20 sales had stalled. Other examples of the nascent OSR movement include the Mongoose version of Runequest in 2006. So the market split was happening before 4e came it was just more pronounced by 4e’s launch and 3.5 players rejecting it. New adopters of 4e are largely ignored in the conversations because someone was obviously buying and playing it because it still led the market. I’m not saying the OSR was a massive threat like Pathfinder was to 4e but it was definitely the beginning of the market split as DMs became burnt out by the complexity of 3.5 and the sub-game of system mastery it encouraged. 3.5 was still THE game, as WOTC learned but the OSR was strong enough that WOTC was actively engaging OSR developers and fans in the development of 5e.



Correlation is not causation though.  That the OSR and the decline of 3.5 sales coincided doesn't have to mean that OSR prompted the decline.  Certainly little OSRIC didn't prompt it by itself.  It could well be the reverse - that the 3.5 decline itself prompted the growth of the OSR once OSRIC appeared.  Or it could be both - OR it might all be a massive coincidence.  One thing is certain though - 4E was a dud that drove a lot of people to other games and other editions, even if SOME people liked it.  It wasn't that it was inherently bad - it could have made a fine system with some other name on it.  It just wasn't what customers wanted for their D&D.

And yeah, I think 5E benefits more from good marketing and circumstances that managed to get people to look at it than from being all that spectacular of a system.  But it's hard for me not to be biased.  I still prefer 1 (and 3.5 when 3.5 sticks closer to lower levels).


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## Thomas Shey (Sep 29, 2022)

I think its more likely that the OSR was simply a slightly delayed reaction to 3e and any failure on the main line of D&D was largely unconnected, since most of the people who pursued the OSR were ones that had either not followed into the 3e era or had quickly peeled away anyway.

(For those who were not around at the time, there was a subset of D&D fans who were really, really hostile about 3e; some of them had already not been happy about the directions AD&D2 had gone in, and 3e was simply a bridge way too far.  The OSR and retroclones were a natural reaction to this group).


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## teitan (Sep 30, 2022)

Man in the Funny Hat said:


> Correlation is not causation though.  That the OSR and the decline of 3.5 sales coincided doesn't have to mean that OSR prompted the decline.  Certainly little OSRIC didn't prompt it by itself.  It could well be the reverse - that the 3.5 decline itself prompted the growth of the OSR once OSRIC appeared.  Or it could be both - OR it might all be a massive coincidence.  One thing is certain though - 4E was a dud that drove a lot of people to other games and other editions, even if SOME people liked it.  It wasn't that it was inherently bad - it could have made a fine system with some other name on it.  It just wasn't what customers wanted for their D&D.
> 
> And yeah, I think 5E benefits more from good marketing and circumstances that managed to get people to look at it than from being all that spectacular of a system.  But it's hard for me not to be biased.  I still prefer 1 (and 3.5 when 3.5 sticks closer to lower levels).



I didn’t say or imply it did.


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## Haplo781 (Sep 30, 2022)

Man in the Funny Hat said:


> Correlation is not causation though.  That the OSR and the decline of 3.5 sales coincided doesn't have to mean that OSR prompted the decline.  Certainly little OSRIC didn't prompt it by itself.  It could well be the reverse - that the 3.5 decline itself prompted the growth of the OSR once OSRIC appeared.  Or it could be both - OR it might all be a massive coincidence.  One thing is certain though - 4E was a dud that drove a lot of people to other games and other editions, even if SOME people liked it.  It wasn't that it was inherently bad - it could have made a fine system with some other name on it.  It just wasn't what customers wanted for their D&D.
> 
> And yeah, I think 5E benefits more from good marketing and circumstances that managed to get people to look at it than from being all that spectacular of a system.  But it's hard for me not to be biased.  I still prefer 1 (and 3.5 when 3.5 sticks closer to lower levels).



4e outsold every previous edition.


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## teitan (Sep 30, 2022)

Haplo781 said:


> 4e outsold every previous edition.



No. That is not correct. Preorders and release went well and then it went off a cliff.


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## CleverNickName (Sep 30, 2022)

teitan said:


> No. That is not correct. Preorders and release went well and then it went off a cliff.



For a couple of years following 4E's release, the D&D brand slipped so much that another game (Pathfinder) became the #1 RPG on the market.  It was the first and only time that has ever happened.


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## Haplo781 (Sep 30, 2022)

CleverNickName said:


> For a couple of years following 4E's release, the D&D brand slipped so much that another game (Pathfinder) became the #1 RPG on the market.  It was the first and only time that has ever happened.



False. It outsold 4e _in core game stores._


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## CleverNickName (Sep 30, 2022)

Haplo781 said:


> False. It outsold 4e _in core game stores._



I'm not making it up.  Here's my source:








						Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
					

This is a compilation of the icv2.com retailer surveys of Top Five Roleplaying Games. They are generally compiled quarterly (with some exceptions). ICv2 notes that "the chart [are] based on interviews with retailers, distributors, and manufacturers." Thanks to jodyjohnson for sterling...




					www.enworld.org
				




In Q1 2010, shortly after the release of 4E Essentials, Dungeons & Dragons lost the top spot for the first time ever, and kept falling.  It eventually dropped all the way to #5, behind Pathfinder, Star Wars, Fate, and Numinera.  D&D didn't get back to #1 until after the release of 5E.

Here are the relevant graphs:








I'm not trying to hate on 4E, it was what it was.  A lot of folks look back on it with rose-colored glasses, others look back with daggers in their eyes,  and both are valid.


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## Haplo781 (Sep 30, 2022)

CleverNickName said:


> I'm not making it up.  Here's my source:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



BASED ON DATA FROM ICV2


Maybe you should actually read links before responding to them.


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## billd91 (Sep 30, 2022)

CleverNickName said:


> I'm not making it up.  Here's my source:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Yeah, that’s about 4e’s performance in the markets ICv2 polls - mainly the game store market. That doesn’t cover direct orders, mass market bookstores like Barnes and Noble, or Amazon.
Exactly how things compare in those channels is anybody‘s guess since it isn’t public for most of the publishers. 
Now, whatever other sales are, this was NOT good news since it pointed to a failure in marketing to their core market. And that’s a big hit to the hardest core gamer mindshare.


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## Minigiant (Sep 30, 2022)

billd91 said:


> Now, whatever other sales are, this was NOT good news since it pointed to a failure in marketing to their core market. And that’s a big hit to the hardest core gamer mindshare.



I think it less displays a failure of marketing but a failure for designing for every major subcategory of D&D player.

D&D playstyles have more or less diverged into 4-5 different paths. WOTC's main struggle in 3e, 4e, and 5e is designing a D&D that is attractive every substype of D&D gamer. 4e sold a lot to 4e style gamers but the numbers Hasbro wanted required OS, 3e/PF, 4e, and the upcoming 5e players to all buy it.

5e was designed to snatch back the first 2 groups to hit projected numbers. However instead it pulled mostly 5e style players. What One D&D is shaping up is a strategy of being able to hit the numbers without the sales of the first wave of grognards and relying more of the coalition of post-2000  editions' fans.


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## R_J_K75 (Sep 30, 2022)

kenada said:


> We’re too early in the playtest cycle for me to say where I think 6e is going



Yep. I have a feeling that the playtest will last 12-18 months, then it will be closed and WotC will do whatever they want regardless of feedback. If OneD&D is just fixes and tweaks to a half version from 5E to "5.5E" why even bother having a playtest? My bet is that we will see an entirely new edition based on the d20 chassis of 3,x and 5E, but thats just my opinion.


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## Levistus's_Leviathan (Sep 30, 2022)

R_J_K75 said:


> Yep. I have a feeling that the playtest will last 12-18 months, then it will be closed and WotC will do whatever they want regardless of feedback.



They've literally already changed things in the playtest according to feedback. In D&DNext's Playtest, the feedback they got shaped the 5e we got in 2014. I see no reason to come up with baseless conspiracy theories about how WotC is pretending to "playtest" these things among the community but will ignore them and do whatever they want. 


R_J_K75 said:


> If OneD&D is just fixes and tweaks to a half version from 5E to "5.5E" why even bother having a playtest? My bet is that we will see an entirely new edition based on the d20 chassis of 3,x and 5E, but thats just my opinion.



Have you not looked over any of the playtest documents yet? There are some pretty major changes being tested out (Class Groups, Feats becoming core, Half-Casters getting cantrips and spells at level 1, new crit and inspiration rules, etc).


----------



## Lanefan (Sep 30, 2022)

Haplo781 said:


> BASED ON DATA FROM ICV2
> 
> 
> Maybe you should actually read links before responding to them.



Whatever that tweet says, I can't see it.  Summary, please?


----------



## R_J_K75 (Sep 30, 2022)

Levistus's_Leviathan said:


> I see no reason to come up with baseless conspiracy theories



From what I understand there was a lot of feedback in the 5E playtest that people liked but was removed, so I don't think its fair to say I'm coming up with baseless conspiracy theories


Levistus's_Leviathan said:


> Have you not looked over any of the playtest documents yet? There are some pretty major changes being tested out



Yes I have looked them over, which is why I said I think that we will end up with new edition as opposed to a revision. My opinion is that regardless, the final product we get in 2024 will look different from the playtest.


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## Levistus's_Leviathan (Sep 30, 2022)

R_J_K75 said:


> From what I understand there was a lot of feedback in the 5E playtest that people liked but was removed, so I don't think its fair to say I'm coming up with baseless conspiracy theories



Care to give a source? 


R_J_K75 said:


> Yes I have looked them over, which is why I said I think that we will end up with new edition as opposed to a revision. My opinion is that regardless, the final product we get in 2024 will look different from the playtest.



They have many, many reasons to try and prevent this "updated edition" from being widely called a "new edition" by the community (if they can). New editions scare people, especially newer players, which 5e has an abundance of. WotC pulling the rug out from under the feet of its millions of newer players would be a bad move, because it would lose them money and forever make them lose the trust of their fanbase.


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## R_J_K75 (Sep 30, 2022)

Levistus's_Leviathan said:


> Care to give a source?



Not off hand.


Levistus's_Leviathan said:


> They have many, many reasons to try and prevent this "updated edition" from being widely called a "new edition" by the community (if they can).



I guess we will just have to wait and see what the final product is and what it is called when its released in 2024.


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## Doc_Klueless (Sep 30, 2022)

R_J_K75 said:


> From what I understand there was a lot of feedback in the 5E playtest that people liked but was removed, so I don't think its fair to say I'm coming up with baseless conspiracy theories



What people and how many? A vocal minority does not a majority make.


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## kenada (Sep 30, 2022)

I don’t share the cynical take on the playtest. They’ve been doing the UA-survey cycle all throughout the life of 5e. It makes sense they would continue doing it for 6e, and it helps get people hyped about the new edition while assuaging any concerns regarding compatibility.

As for why I’m calling it 6e: I’m calling it 6e because I want it to be to 5e like 2e was to 1e. It may have been necessary eventually for a 3e-like break, but that shouldn’t be the standard approach for every subsequent edition. 6e should be (more or less) compatible with 5e, and _that_ should be the expectation going forward (for 7e, etc).


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## GreyLord (Sep 30, 2022)

CleverNickName said:


> For a couple of years following 4E's release, the D&D brand slipped so much that another game (Pathfinder) became the #1 RPG on the market.  It was the first and only time that has ever happened.




If I recall, Pathfinder overtook D&D once D&D after it was announced it would end and stopped being printed in prep for the next edition of 5e.

There normally is a drastic decline anytime a new edition is announced, and stopping the outpouring of new material almost always is a good way for sales to decline.

That's a situation which makes it easier for another brand to outsell it for awhile...especially if materials are being printed for it while none are being produced for D&D.  The fact that D&D didn't sink further is an attestation of how big D&D is on the market.

This doesn't mean that sales were lower than in earlier editions (my guess is that while 3.X had around 5 million, 4e had more like 2-3 million players, but that's a guess).

What I think was heard is that Hasbro set expectations for core brands to be selling at a minimum of 50 million dollars a year.  Some thought core brands should be at 100 million a year.  D&D wasn't making that much and Hasbro was a little disappointed in that aspect at the time.  This probably caused some difficulties and reorganization of expectations and how the brand was presented.  

I imagine the goal is still to somehow get the D&D brand (that's brand, not game) to attain a 50 - 100 million mark by various means and retain that each year.  Whether they are suceeding or not is probably only known by those in charge of that, but it would no longer have been expected to meet it immediately upon 5e's release (or so I would think).  

MTG is still the big money maker, and hence the bigger focus these days in any case.  D&D has a large interest in it's following, but I imagine MtG is the one which has a bigger interest from Hasbro these days.


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## GreyLord (Sep 30, 2022)

kenada said:


> I don’t share the cynical take on the playtest. They’ve been doing the UA-survey cycle all throughout the life of 5e. It makes sense they would continue doing it for 6e, and it helps get people hyped about the new edition while assuaging any concerns regarding compatibility.
> 
> As for why I’m calling it 6e: I’m calling it 6e because I want it to be to 5e like 2e was to 1e. It may have been necessary eventually for a 3e-like break, but that shouldn’t be the standard approach for every subsequent edition. 6e should be (more or less) compatible with 5e, and _that_ should be the expectation going forward (for 7e, etc).




This isn't 6e though, not that I have heard.  It's an anniversary edition which is compatible with 5e, hence it is all D&D and One D&D under One Umbrella.  

That's my understanding of it, though I could be wrong.


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## R_J_K75 (Sep 30, 2022)

GreyLord said:


> This isn't 6e though, not that I have heard.  It's an anniversary edition which is compatible with 5e, hence it is all D&D and One D&D under One Umbrella.
> 
> That's my understanding of it, though I could be wrong.



I'm pretty sure you are correct according to the video that was initially released announcing OneD&D. My gut tells me it will be backwards compatible, but I think they are going to give it an umbrella title to try and avoid calling it something that designates it as a new edition, but my feeling is that it will be different enough where fans may consider it new. Might come down to semantics and personal opinion whether it is or not.


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Oct 1, 2022)

The latest UA suggests that 1D&D won't be confused for a lightly errated 5E, but won't have quite as many changes as 3.5 did. I think it will definitely be technically backwards compatible, but there will still be plenty of people upset that the 1D&D ranger doesn't suck as much as the 5E did.


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## kenada (Oct 1, 2022)

GreyLord said:


> This isn't 6e though, not that I have heard. It's an anniversary edition which is compatible with 5e, hence it is all D&D and One D&D under One Umbrella.



Being compatible doesn’t preclude being a new edition. Many games retain compatibility in new editions. I’d like for D&D to be one of them again.



R_J_K75 said:


> I'm pretty sure you are correct according to the video that was initially released announcing OneD&D. My gut tells me it will be backwards compatible, but I think they are going to give it an umbrella title to try and avoid calling it something that designates it as a new edition, but my feeling is that it will be different enough where fans may consider it new. Might come down to semantics and personal opinion whether it is or not.



I expect they’ll do it like they did D&D Next and refer to the game as “Dungeons & Dragons” while making no mention of edition except in the marketing text on the back.

As to which: I don’t think 5.5e is likely. It’s too technical-sounding. I think it will be either 6e or anniversary edition with the edge going to 6e for being more timeless.

Update: Actually, they refer to 5e in the playtest material by year (e.g., the 2014 _Player’s Handbook_). I think there’s a possibility they’ll just call the next PHB the 2024 _Player’s Handbook_ and dispense with the edition moniker altogether. I wonder if the community and 3PP will follow suit or come up with an informal edition version.


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## haakon1 (Oct 2, 2022)

kenada said:


> Many games retain compatibility in new editions. I’d like for D&D to be one of them again.



Agree. 


kenada said:


> I expect they’ll … refer to the game as “Dungeons & Dragons” while making no mention of edition except in the marketing text on the back.



For sure, if they say the edition on the front, it’ll be small.  Which can confuse consumers.  I remember long ago trying to help a mom in a bookstore trying to buy “D&D” and not knowing which edition was which - her kid told her the edition they wanted, but the trade dress was confusing.


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## Haplo781 (Oct 2, 2022)

Minigiant said:


> I think it less displays a failure of marketing but a failure for designing for every major subcategory of D&D player.
> 
> D&D playstyles have more or less diverged into 4-5 different paths. WOTC's main struggle in 3e, 4e, and 5e is designing a D&D that is attractive every substype of D&D gamer. 4e sold a lot to 4e style gamers but the numbers Hasbro wanted required OS, 3e/PF, 4e, and the upcoming 5e players to all buy it.
> 
> 5e was designed to snatch back the first 2 groups to hit projected numbers. However instead it pulled mostly 5e style players. What One D&D is shaping up is a strategy of being able to hit the numbers without the sales of the first wave of grognards and relying more of the coalition of post-2000  editions' fans.



Hasbro wanted $50 million a year.

5e has never hit that benchmark. It's barely broke $40-45 million, once.

5e would have been considered a "failure" if it were held the the same standard as 4e.


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## Longspeak (Oct 2, 2022)

I guess technically speaking I'm a grognard. I never fully understood the appellation though. I'm old. I played D&D and AD&D1e when they were new. Does that automatically make me a Grognard?

D&D lost me in 2e. Part of this was the mess that was their core books. Part of this was all the kitchen sink stuff in the "Complete" books that, as a young gamer, I felt compelled to embrace. I ended up leaving for lighter games in the 90s. I peeked at 2e Revised, 3e, and 4e, but never came back. Then in 2018, I was introduced to 5e and it has since become my main game.

This is partly because I love role-playing more than I love spending six months trying to get critical mass on my out-of-the-mainstream games. I list a single opening in a D&D game and I have half a dozen application by morning.

It's also partly that I've grown over the years. 5e is even more kitchen sink than 2e was, especially with the free and open exchanges happening in homebrew and 3rd party realms. But I'm well able to pick and choose these days. Just because Tasha's Incomprehensible Mess of Atrocities lists something, I don't have to allow it. This was not a mindset I had back then, and that one change has made me a better DM, and a happier DM.

But 5e is also better organized and structured than 2e was (which isn't saying much. Seriously, it was a mess from an editing standpoint.)

But what does this mean for the next edition? I haven't a clue. I haven't been paying attention. From what I've seen...

Feats are not optional? Yes they are. I'm the DM. Everything is optional. Problem solved. (But also I like feats.)

Inspiration is mandatory? No it's not. I'm the DM, everything is optional. (But I personally love Inspiration and wish myu players would remember to use it more often so I can give them more of it!)

Ancestries are all open ended or something? Did I read that somewhere? No they're not. I'm the DM, everything is optional. And while I do love a lot of things I've seen regarding ancestry vs. culture vs. heritage, I will continue to say that elves all share a commonality, as do dwarves, orcs, etc. It's just that can easily fit within as framework that includes culture and heritage as separate components.

So... Am I a grognard? Is WotC catering to me? _Meh._ I don't care. If the book is pretty and has cool stuff in it, I'll buy it. If it doesn't, I won't.


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## Lanefan (Oct 3, 2022)

R_J_K75 said:


> I guess we will just have to wait and see what the final product is and *what it is called* when its released in 2024.



By us, the fanbase.

Doesn't matter a tinker's damn what WotC officially calls it.


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## TaranTheWanderer (Oct 5, 2022)

With WOTC buying D&Dbeyond and looking at integrating its own VTT, my impression is they will put most of the tools behind a subscription paywall.   Which, maybe, most Gragnards won't pay for because they're used to owning their own books rather than renting them with a subscription?

Or maybe WOTC isn't going that way...?


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## kenada (Oct 5, 2022)

After what happened to 4e with its online tools, I wouldn’t trust having all of my material behind a WotC-owned paywall.


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## Thomas Shey (Oct 5, 2022)

I don't trust that in general.  I'm still soggy about the fact there's no quick-and-dirty way to download my Kindle books for safekeeping.


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## Willie the Duck (Oct 6, 2022)

TaranTheWanderer said:


> With WOTC buying D&Dbeyond and looking at integrating its own VTT, my impression is they will put most of the tools behind a subscription paywall.   Which, maybe, most Gragnards won't pay for because they're used to owning their own books rather than renting them with a subscription?
> 
> Or maybe WOTC isn't going that way...?



I think WotC/Hasbro would be leaving a huge amount of good money on the table* if they were unwilling to continue to print out their game rules in dead-tree format. I don't see that changing unless some new and radical change to how people experience the written word sweeps through successfully**.
*the one thing I inherently trust them not to do. 
**and while both decent enough successes in their own right, neither books-on-tape/soundfile nor e-readers actually did a good job of making people not buy books, showing good examples of attempts at such a thing that did not succeed.

Mind you, if 60%+ of gamers start using digital systems to engage with the game, that could influence the design decisions  towards rules and mechanics which are easy to do on a computer interface but cumbersome or annoying with pencil an paper. I'm not overly scared of that for D&D, since 5e is honestly quite a bit less like that than previous editions of D&D* or many of the games of the 80s and 90s (where I guess the cumbersomeness was part of the challenge). The most I can imagine 5e or successive iterations derived from it doing along this trend would be having more and more 'Prof Bonus times per Long Rest' mechanics to be tracked, but even that really is 'notepad/sticky note tracking'-level complexity, not really 'cumbersome in a non-digital format.'
*3e, where suffering 3 points of temporary dexterity damage or running into an opponent with a brilliant energy weapon who catches you flat-footed will send you poring through your derived bonuses and checking the types on all your AC score components
**GURPS and the like mostly just work best with a spreadsheet during character creation/advancement, but something like Hero System, where END expenditures (for powers, or even swinging a fist) is based on Active cost of abilities which can be boosted or diminished greatly benefits from excel and a calculator during-play (to say nothing of any open-ended power frameworks or the like).


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## MNblockhead (Oct 6, 2022)

A significant amount of D&D fans are collectors.  As long as people buy expensive printed books, they will continue printing and selling expensive books.

There really is no need for me to buy the print books. I've not used the printed version of any WotC book during a game in a couple years. I use D&D Beyond.  For third-party books I almost exclusively use PDF versions when running games.

But I still buy lots of print books.  I like how they look on the shelf and when I have free time, I like to skim the spines, grab a book and flip through it. It might be my age, but I've yet to find a digital book that captures the feeling of "browsing" a shelf of books and flipping through a physical book.

For reference and reading, I prefer digital. For browsing and perusing rules and adventures in my solo free time, or admiring art, give me print.


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## Ruin Explorer (Oct 6, 2022)

MNblockhead said:


> A significant amount of D&D fans are collectors. As long as people buy expensive printed books, they will continue printing and selling expensive books.



That's absolutely true.

However collectors do not need up-to-date rules or the like.

So we may well see a 4E-ish situation, where the rules for 1D&D get frequently or at least seasonally updated, and where if your group wants to use any digital content, and/or the "right" rules, rather than outdated ones, they'll need to stay subscribed to D&D Beyond or whatever.

It's also entirely possible they'll increasingly move the books into luxury pricing (and I'm some increased quality too, or at least more art, and more "coffee-table"-worthy-ness). Which is fine if you're some late-30s or older middle-class dude with a bunch of disposable wealth, but that's not most of D&D's audience and never really has been. Doesn't matter though if you're getting most people to subscribe to your much-more-profitable subscription service.

Given that the new guy in charge of D&D is someone whose main background is transforming physical product customers into digital product users, I think we have the shape of WotC's plans here. My strong suspicious is that WotC's current vision for D&D (presumably not shared by Winninger) was that in say, 2032, or 2034, the actual people who play D&D are primarily accessing D&D through tablets/phones/laptops, and are subscribed to some version of D&D Beyond, and that D&D print rulebooks basically these attractive objects that are left on tables to be perused lightly, not used seriously.


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## TaranTheWanderer (Oct 7, 2022)

I think a lot more people are playing online as well - or, at least, accessing their character sheets via laptop, even in an in-person game, which makes digital copies of everything much more convenient and, for online games, necessary.

I have to agree with @Ruin Explorer that they will continue to errata rules just enough that hard copies will not be properly up-to-date.  I can also see them making it more difficult to use the system on roll20 without subscription in hopes to attract people to their own table-top.  

With Microsoft's success with X-Box Gold subscriptions, companies know the subscription model is a cash-cow.


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## Lanefan (Oct 10, 2022)

TaranTheWanderer said:


> I think a lot more people are playing online as well - or, at least, accessing their character sheets via laptop, even in an in-person game, which makes digital copies of everything much more convenient and, for online games, necessary.



We have all our spells online on our own website, along with our roll-up rules, pantheons, and setting info.  Character sheets are still on paper, as are most DM-side elements e.g. tables, charts, etc.

We access the spells through tablets or phones.  Laptops are a bit too cumbersome for our small table.


TaranTheWanderer said:


> With Microsoft's success with X-Box Gold subscriptions, companies know the subscription model is a cash-cow.



And that alone is a good reason to oppose the subscription model whenever possible.


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