# Does anyone else think that 1D&D will create a significant divide in the community?



## Lycurgon

I'm not saying it _will_ but that it _could_. Part of me thinks that the changes we are seeing will be scaled back due to negative feedback and not be as many big proposed changes that we have seen so far in the playtest material. 

But if the level of changes (or something close) that we are seeing go through, the game will be changed quite a bit. It will still have the same basic structure/mechanics but there will be limits to how much mixing and matching can happen between 5e and 1D&D. 
Currently you can't use the more powerful Races from 5e (which provide Ability increases) with the Backgrounds from character origins playtest (which provide Ability Increases and a feat) and pick a Class from 5e with a subclass from 1 D&D (or vice versa) that have a different number of subclass features at different levels. And yes they cover the ability score increase in a sidebar and can make conversion rules for other things. But freely mixing and matching will through off the balance of things. 

But with the amount of changes we are seeing (if a similar amount make it into the final product) I know there will be groups that don't change to the new rules and am sure there will be groups that will abandon all the old rules and just stick to just the new. Other groups may use a houseruled mix of the 2. 

It is possible this with will create a divide in the community where some people are not buying the new material that is being produced by WotC and maybe even being supported by some 3rd party publishers that stick with 5e. 

So while there is certain to be a divide, how significant do you currently think it will be? It might only be a small number of groups that don't convert to the new rules and stop buying any new books from WotC. Just like with every edition change some groups will remain with the edition they are used to/like. But will the size of this 5e only community be significant? Could the divide be big enough that 1D&D actually, ironically, creates a need to make a new 6e to reunite the community? (Probably not?) 

And with the changes you have seen so far, if they all pretty much make it into the finished 1D&D release, would you and your group change to the new version? What are your thoughts so far about this?


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## Bill Zebub

That's a bit like asking if the World Cup will cause a rift in Ukrainian-Russian relations this year.


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## Lycurgon

To answer my own questions currently I am thinking that I would stick with 5e rather than change to the proposed changes but would take a few things and use them in my games. One of the DMs I play with says that so far they think they will stick with 5e,they don't understand what WotC is thinking?


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## MacDhomnuill

I don’t think a divide is coming but I do think DnD is due for a recession just like the player down turn during late 3.5 and 4e. You can already see some of the hoards of 5e players piling into sub reddits looking for new games as they tire of dnds mechanics. I doubt it will be as big as the 3.5/4 one was but I do think a lot of 5e players will be looking to expand their range of games and the transition to One DnD will provide the opening for that to happen.


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## leonardozg

Wizards calling it a new edition or not, new rules always cause some division. The fact that these new rules are compatible with older ones will avoid a break like 3e to 4e, but there will be groups playing old and new rules and moving from one to another will require some adaptation, not to much different than conversion rules from edition to edition, just a little smoother.
In the end of the day, the new rules will be like a new edition.


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## Charlaquin

There are several different questions here.

Will most of what we see in the UA playtests make it into the 2024 core books? No, probably not.

Will the changes that do make it into the 2024 core books be compatible with all characters built with the 2014-2023 rules? No, absolutely not.

Will a lot of players decide not to buy the 2024 core books or play the rules in them? Yes, absolutely.

Will this constitute a significant divide in the 5e player base? Nope, not a chance.

Will I buy the new books and play with the rules in them? Still undecided. It’s much too early to tell if they’re to my liking.


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## Minigiant

D&Dis so old it literately has several subtypes of fans of different wants and desire.

Whether One D&D came or not, no one edition edition would provide the needs of even 75% of D&D fans. Division was coming in 5e or OneD&D.


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## doctorbadwolf

Lycurgon said:


> Currently you can't use the more powerful Races from 5e (which provide Ability increases) with the Backgrounds from character origins playtest (which provide Ability Increases and a feat) and pick a Class from 5e with a subclass from 1 D&D (or vice versa) that have a different number of subclass features at different levels. And yes they cover the ability score increase in a sidebar and can make conversion rules for other things. But freely mixing and matching will through off the balance of things.



Sure you can. If you are using a 2014 Race and a 2024 background you just…choose your ASIs. It’s not even a conversion it’s just…if your race and background both provide an ASI, you choose which to use, not both. A new rule to cover a broadening of options. This would fit just fine in an “of everything” book. 

The class/subclass does require a minuscule conversion, but it is still a very small amount of text. Ideally, it will eventually be, “if you are using a subclass that lists subclass feature levels that differ from the levels on your class feature by level table, you simply gain your subclass features in order at the levels listed on the table. If you reach such a level and have no more subclass features listed in your chosen subclass, you gain a feat for which you qualify instead.”

So far, they could have snuck everything but the new class writeups as optional variant rules in an “of everything” expansion book, and no one would be calling it 5.5. 

I think when we see the 2024 PHB, it will very clearly just be 5e, cleaned up, reorganized, clarified, and fairly mildly revised in the fine details. Closer to a new edition of the 5e rules than a new edition of D&D in the sense wizards has always used the term.


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## TheSword

Lycurgon said:


> I'm not saying it _will_ but that it _could_. Part of me thinks that the changes we are seeing will be scaled back due to negative feedback and not be as many big proposed changes that we have seen so far in the playtest material.
> 
> But if the level of changes (or something close) that we are seeing go through, the game will be changed quite a bit. It will still have the same basic structure/mechanics but there will be limits to how much mixing and matching can happen between 5e and 1D&D.
> Currently you can't use the more powerful Races from 5e (which provide Ability increases) with the Backgrounds from character origins playtest (which provide Ability Increases and a feat) and pick a Class from 5e with a subclass from 1 D&D (or vice versa) that have a different number of subclass features at different levels. And yes they cover the ability score increase in a sidebar and can make conversion rules for other things. But freely mixing and matching will through off the balance of things.
> 
> But with the amount of changes we are seeing (if a similar amount make it into the final product) I know there will be groups that don't change to the new rules and am sure there will be groups that will abandon all the old rules and just stick to just the new. Other groups may use a houseruled mix of the 2.
> 
> It is possible this with will create a divide in the community where some people are not buying the new material that is being produced by WotC and maybe even being supported by some 3rd party publishers that stick with 5e.
> 
> So while there is certain to be a divide, how significant do you currently think it will be? It might only be a small number of groups that don't convert to the new rules and stop buying any new books from WotC. Just like with every edition change some groups will remain with the edition they are used to/like. But will the size of this 5e only community be significant? Could the divide be big enough that 1D&D actually, ironically, creates a need to make a new 6e to reunite the community? (Probably not?)
> 
> And with the changes you have seen so far, if they all pretty much make it into the finished 1D&D release, would you and your group change to the new version? What are your thoughts so far about this?



Yes of course we would adopt the changes. They almost all make the game more fun and the ones that don’t aren’t significant enough to even houserule it. I wouldn’t refuse to download a game patch because I like the bugs/features of the current game.

I think the divide will be about as big as the divide between folks who say core only, and those that use Xanathar’s/Tasha’s. That is to say… not much divide.


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## TheAlkaizer

I think it will create a divide.

I know I am not going to buy the new books, not because of their content but just because I already own so many 5E books and I have no interest in a some update of the rules.

Anyway, I really doubt the new edition will be as compatible as they claim it will be. Their goal is to sell more books. They want people to buy the new core books. Some people will buy them, others will feel forced to buy them. You'll have table refusing to use new content, others not. There's already small divides between people having different opinions about mechanics and content introduced in later books. Hell, there's a divide in the reactions to the changes on this very forum.


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## SakanaSensei

I can only speak for myself and not any kind of broader trends, but at this point I'm feeling ready for something else. I was looking forward to what they would be putting out for 1D&D, but it's not changing up enough of what I want them to do, particularly as a DM.

Grabbed Kevin Crawford's Without Number books and plan to use them for a few years and maybe still peek at what DnD is doing over the same time period.


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## CleverNickName

If by "significant" you mean "noticeable," then yes, I agree.  It will be a noticeable split, and it will take some getting used to.  A lot of us will have to get accustomed to adapting newer material to the older books, and vice-versa.  I won't be buying new books and new electronic libraries on Roll20, for example, so I'll have to decide how much of the newer material I'm willing to convert and use.

But if by "significant" you mean "a repeat of the 3rd/4th Edition split," then no, I do not agree.  Wizards of the Coast is already doing a much better job with the roll-out than they did back in 2008, just in their marketing alone.


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## UngeheuerLich

The question is:

Is sticking to a system that shows signs of wear and is in need of some updates driving away more or less people. And which is able to generate more new players.
As already mentioned: some people are already looking for alternatives, some people really want classes to be better balanced and so on.

My guess: some people like the changes, some people hate them.
New gamers probably would be more happy with the overhauled game.

I for my part never played 1st edition. I have looked a bit into the rules however and think the 2e rules are better.


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## CleverNickName

UngeheuerLich said:


> My guess: some people like the changes, some people hate them.
> New gamers probably would be more happy with the [latest version of the] game.



Yep, this has been true for 40+ years.


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## Ath-kethin

I think the fact that there are groups still playing 1st Edition AD&D and other older editions answers this question better than any speculation possibly could.


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## Frozen_Heart

It will definitely cause a big community rift.


A chunk will stay was 5e as they like it and it's perfect for them.
A chunk (probably most) will jump across to the newer version with time. Lots initially, and then gradually more as 5e stops being supported.
Another bunch will go to pathfinder, other RPGs, or just stop playing. As they realise that 5e will never develop into what they want and the new edition certainly isn't that either.

Unlikely, but I do think that 5.5e/6e release or shortly afterwards could be a good time for a new competitor to try to jump onto the scene. Pathfinder 2e is still quite new while also has a lot of 3.5e rules holdovers. It's proved a bit too complex and messy to cut into the DnD market. And pathfinder 3e is probably 10 years or more away, so that won't be impacting things at all. A new system on a similar theme to DnD/Pathfinder, with the easy to grasp rules of 5e but impactful character options of pathfinder could take advantage of the newly formed community rift and lots of disillusioned players drifting around at that time.


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## Corinnguard

Frozen_Heart said:


> It will definitely cause a big community rift.
> 
> 
> A chunk will stay was 5e as they like it and it's perfect for them.
> A chunk (probably most) will jump across to the newer version with time. Lots initially, and then gradually more as 5e stops being supported.
> Another bunch will go to pathfinder, other RPGs, or just stop playing. As they realise that 5e will never develop into what they want and the new edition certainly isn't that either.
> 
> Unlikely, but I do think that 5.5e/6e release or shortly afterwards could be a good time for a new competitor to try to jump onto the scene. Pathfinder 2e is still quite new while also has a lot of 3.5e rules holdovers. It's proved a bit too complex and messy to cut into the DnD market. And pathfinder 3e is probably 10 years or more away, so that won't be impacting things at all. A new system on a similar theme to DnD/Pathfinder, with the easy to grasp rules of 5e but impactful character options of pathfinder could take advantage of the newly formed community rift and lots of disillusioned players drifting around at that time.



That system could already be here thanks to En Publishing's Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition. Like One D&D, it has moved the ASIs that normally would have gone to a particular race/heritage, and placed them into the various backgrounds. And each heritage in A5e has something of a 1st-level feat (their Gifts). Then there is A5e's Marshall class which could be the equivalent of the Warlord class that some of the 5e fans on this forum have mentioned in a couple of past forum threads. 

A5e could be the alternative for those 5e players who have wanted more crunch in 5e. 

Will A5e cause a divide in 5e D&D community? It's hard to say.


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## Mephista

Frozen_Heart said:


> Pathfinder 2e is still quite new while also has a lot of 3.5e rules holdovers. It's proved a bit too complex and messy to cut into the DnD market.



??  As near as I can tell, PF2 and Call of Cthulhu are the two biggest games after D&D 5e. In terms of amazon sale rankings, in terms of games at conventions or availabilty on digital platforms, in terms  of other media like video games.  Pathfinder is proving to be quite popular on its own.


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## Yora

What's significant?

60/40? 80/20? 90/10?

Also, what is "the community". Just groups that currently run 5th edition or all groups that play class-and-level type fantasy RPGs? Or just RPGs in general?


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## UngainlyTitan

It will cause a divide because there will be some that will not follow the new edition, but I really hope that people that stick with the old or move on with the new will not feel the need to engage in a pissing contest over it.


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## Frozen_Heart

Corinnguard said:


> That system could already be here thanks to En Publishing's Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition. Like One D&D, it has moved the ASIs that normally would have gone to a particular race/heritage, and placed them into the various backgrounds. And each heritage in A5e has something of a 1st-level feat (their Gifts). Then there is A5e's Marshall class which could be the equivalent of the Warlord class that some of the 5e fans on this forum have mentioned in a couple of past forum threads.
> 
> A5e could be the alternative for those 5e players who have wanted more crunch in 5e.
> 
> Will A5e cause a divide in 5e D&D community? It's hard to say.



I'll admit that I've not actually looked at advanced 5e. I know nothing about it.


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## Frozen_Heart

Mephista said:


> ??  As near as I can tell, PF2 and Call of Cthulhu are the two biggest games after D&D 5e. In terms of amazon sale rankings, in terms of games at conventions or availabilty on digital platforms, in terms  of other media like video games.  Pathfinder is proving to be quite popular on its own.



And neither have come close to what pathfinder 1e did to dnd 4e. They're still a very minor chunk of the market next to dnd 5e.


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## Corinnguard

Frozen_Heart said:


> I'll admit that I've not actually looked at advanced 5e. I know nothing about it.



Home | Level Up _Level Up is a deeper, more flexible version of the 5E ruleset which you know and love. If you love 5E but would like a little more depth to the ruleset, Level Up is the game for you! Developed by a diverse team of 5th Edition experts, and a two-year public playtest of thousands of people, this is the ultimate expression of the 5E ruleset.    _

I hope this helps.


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## DEFCON 1

No, there won't be a divide, because I suspect the new books will be just like Xanathar's and Tasha's-- you'll be able to pull the bits and pieces out of the 2024 books and use them with a 2014 game with very little issue.

I mean really... all we need is for diehard 2014 players who don't want to "switch" to look and see what the 2024 Ranger or 4 Elements Monk look like and decide "You know what?  I like that design.  I'll let players use it in my 2014 5E game."  And then voila!  The 2024 update will have done its job.

I personally think this "devotion" to certain parts or editions of D&D is really overblown.  There's never been any reason for anyone to make grand declarations of what they are or are not going to play, whether they are or are not going to "switch" games, whether they are or are not going to move on from D&D.  No one else ever cares what your feelings are about the game(s)... just like no one cares if you go back on your pronouncements and decide to actually buy new books or not switch editions or not change games.

Every single person will see these new books, see what has been added / removed / changed, and then decide "Do I want to drop $40 on this?"  And if you do or if you don't... it doesn't matter.  The only "divide" will be those folks who come onto the EN World boards all bent out of shape over whatever ridiculous thing has got that bee in their bonnet and they badmouth X thing repeatedly.  And the rest of us will spend the next several years rebutting or rolling our eyes at their constant caterwauling.


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## Mephista

Frozen_Heart said:


> And neither have come close to what pathfinder 1e did to dnd 4e. They're still a very minor chunk of the market next to dnd 5e.



No one did anything to 4e except what 4e did to itself.  Pathfinder was created as a _reaction to_ 4e's departure from the D&D norms and filled a need of the market. In fact, they still are filling a need that 5e isn't, which is where their game is thriving enough to expand into other media and niches. 

As for their marketshare? We don't have exact figures, no one does.  But its undeniable that they do have a presence and your most likely option for a game outside of D&D.


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## DEFCON 1

Mephista said:


> No one did anything to 4e except what 4e did to itself.  Pathfinder was created as a _reaction to_ 4e's departure from the D&D norms and filled a need of the market. In fact, they still are filling a need that 5e isn't, which is where their game is thriving enough to expand into other media and niches.
> 
> As for their marketshare? We don't have exact figures, no one does.  But its undeniable that they do have a presence and your most likely option for a game outside of D&D.



Yup.  And at the end of the day, who _really_ cares that Pathfinder exists or that Pathfinder has players?  Do some people play that instead of D&D?  Of course.  Does that matter in any meaningful way?  Not one iota.  Every game hopefully is serving somebody, and none of this is a zero-sum game.  A person that prefers playing Pathfinder (or Vampire, or Shadowrun, or West End Star Wars) is not crapping on D&D just by virtue of them playing that game... so no one should spend one second of their life irritated that those people or those games exist.

If you enjoy the game you are playing (whatever it is)... just be concerned about that.  And don't waste your time or energy being concerned what other people are enjoying.


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## Benjamin Olson

5e is not a perfect system, but the more questionable aspects generally seem to serve the causes of accessibility, bounded accuracy, or evoking (if not quite honoring) D&D traditions, all goals I believe in to various degrees, so even a lot of dumb rules are dumb rules I can at least respect the goals behind. 5.5 has yet to find a coherent goal that I can see, certainly none I support, and hence I just have very little respect for the efforts I've seen.

I don't see clear goals with OneD&D beyond change for the sake of making people buy new books. I think 5e D&D is currently in a messy, unsettled state so there is a legitimate basis for a revised PHB to codify the existing tweaks of Tasha's, etc. into the core rulebook, and I wholeheartedly support that (even if I don't love every tweak). *But* WotC's playtest ideas _beyond the changes already semi-implemented to 5e_ seem aimless and random. All they add up to is "minimum amount of change to make playing at a 5.5 table with a 5e PHB unteniable."

I'm not setting out to be upset. I _want_ to support WotC. But they've given me no reason to. So far they have just asked me to try new things with no convincing explanation of why they are better. I am not so set in my ways as to be opposed to new things because they are new. But so far the pitch I have _felt_ (fairly or otherwise) for supporting OneD&D is "here's a bunch of stuff we're changing for no particular reason; accept it or struggle to find new D&D groups come 2024." That's a threat, not a sale's pitch.

Also, while I appreciate that they have to shill for the brand, WotC's absolute conviction that an edition they haven't figured out the actual rules of yet is definitely going to be better than the wildly popular current edition that it is based on, (which is nonetheless perfectly good enough until 2024) just makes them seem more untrustworthy to me. 5.5 seems like a New Coke debacle in the offing.

So yeah, at the moment, this is probably the edition change where I get off the bandwagon. There's still plenty of time to convince me otherwise, but it will require a serious righting of course to... well... have an actual course I understand and support.


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## BookTenTiger

Anyone who switches to 1D&D is crazy, anyone who stays with 5e is stuck in the mud, and anyone who plays a different system is a real wackadoo.


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## Mephista

Benjamin Olson said:


> 5.5 has yet to find a coherent goal that I can see, certainly none I support, and hence I just have very little respect for the efforts I've seen.



the point of 1dnd so far is to throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks.  Right now, we're in the information gathering stages to confirm how fixing some things will test with the public.

Ultimately, new editions come out when the game has grown through supplements and really needs to reconsolidate itself and fix the problems that are growing into glaring flaws. 

Its like... are you familiar with operating system development by any chance?  They make one edition that's full of new features and new ideas, but they're all new and buggy as hell.  Then the developers spend the entire lifecycle of that edition fixing and tweaking those ideas into a stable version, that's then released as a new edition.  Then the devs go back to breaking things and making new features and implementing new ideas, which eventually leads to another another buggy but filled with shiny new stuff edition, which is followed by the stable edition, etc.

1dnd is building the stable version right now, and not the shiny new buttons stuff.  If that doesn't earn your respect, well, everyone's different. But its part of the cycle of development.


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## Tales and Chronicles

Divide is such a strong word.

Live and let live. If everybody would just let people play the game they wanna play, there would be no divide. I dont have to convince you that 1D&D is soooo much better than regular 5e. You dont have to insist every time how you think the new playtest is only a crash grab. 

There's no right or wrong, just preferences. So there's no need for a split. When I ask my friends what game they play, they answer: ''I play D&D'', I dont really care to know in ''which D&D team'' they are. I think there's a tendency to see the ''divides'' as way larger than they are in reality: its still one big team of D&D players.


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## Micah Sweet

Lycurgon said:


> I'm not saying it _will_ but that it _could_. Part of me thinks that the changes we are seeing will be scaled back due to negative feedback and not be as many big proposed changes that we have seen so far in the playtest material.
> 
> But if the level of changes (or something close) that we are seeing go through, the game will be changed quite a bit. It will still have the same basic structure/mechanics but there will be limits to how much mixing and matching can happen between 5e and 1D&D.
> Currently you can't use the more powerful Races from 5e (which provide Ability increases) with the Backgrounds from character origins playtest (which provide Ability Increases and a feat) and pick a Class from 5e with a subclass from 1 D&D (or vice versa) that have a different number of subclass features at different levels. And yes they cover the ability score increase in a sidebar and can make conversion rules for other things. But freely mixing and matching will through off the balance of things.
> 
> But with the amount of changes we are seeing (if a similar amount make it into the final product) I know there will be groups that don't change to the new rules and am sure there will be groups that will abandon all the old rules and just stick to just the new. Other groups may use a houseruled mix of the 2.
> 
> It is possible this with will create a divide in the community where some people are not buying the new material that is being produced by WotC and maybe even being supported by some 3rd party publishers that stick with 5e.
> 
> So while there is certain to be a divide, how significant do you currently think it will be? It might only be a small number of groups that don't convert to the new rules and stop buying any new books from WotC. Just like with every edition change some groups will remain with the edition they are used to/like. But will the size of this 5e only community be significant? Could the divide be big enough that 1D&D actually, ironically, creates a need to make a new 6e to reunite the community? (Probably not?)
> 
> And with the changes you have seen so far, if they all pretty much make it into the finished 1D&D release, would you and your group change to the new version? What are your thoughts so far about this?



Well, I can't speak for the community, but I am not buying any more of WotC's products, and turned to 3pp a little while back.  I'm mostly following 6e's development to see if they come up with any ideas I might want to incorporate into our home game.


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## MNblockhead

Not a significant split. I think the number of people who reject the new core books will not be much more significant than the number of people who stick with even older versions, switch to OSR games, or tire of D&D and move to a different system entirely. For me, a "significant" split would mean something like what happened with 4e and the rise of Pathfinder. 

I also don't think that D&D will hit a "recession" in the next 2-3 years. I think that even if the movie and TV show do not delight hard-core fans they are likely going to be popular enough--in addition to the success of the Vox Machina cartoon, continued popularity of live-stream games, and greater coverage in the media--to bring in a greater number of new fans than those who leave.


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## billd91

I think it all depends on just how much of a departure 1D&D is from 5e. If it's compatible to the point where the PCs are pretty much interchangeable from edition to edition, the split will be minor - probably limited to people allowing the change to get their noses out of joint over stuff that's relatively marginal. 
This isn't a major structural shift like 4e, it isn't coming ridiculously soon like 3.5 on the heels of 3.0, it isn't about snubbing Gygax like some people used as a reason to hate 2e. By the time 1D&D is out, 5e will be 10 years old and reasonably due a bit of a remodel to improve aspects of the game that didn't work as well as intended in 5e. Signs are that it won't be a terribly big departure in the way it works so far. So I'm optimistic that there won't be a significant split in the community.


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## payn

Frozen_Heart said:


> And neither have come close to what pathfinder 1e did to dnd 4e. They're still a very minor chunk of the market next to dnd 5e.



Actually, Paizo says PF2 is doing better than PF1 if you can believe that. All kinds of indie and D&D alternatives are doing very well right now. Of course, they pale in comparison to D&D and always have, but they are seeing a lot of desire for products. What it tells me is that a lot of folks playing 5E are likely also playing other games in addition to, as opposed to instead of.


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## Micah Sweet

billd91 said:


> I think it all depends on just how much of a departure 1D&D is from 5e. If it's compatible to the point where the PCs are pretty much interchangeable from edition to edition, the split will be minor - probably limited to people allowing the change to get their noses out of joint over stuff that's relatively marginal.
> This isn't a major structural shift like 4e, it isn't coming ridiculously soon like 3.5 on the heels of 3.0, it isn't about snubbing Gygax like some people used as a reason to hate 2e. By the time 1D&D is out, 5e will be 10 years old and reasonably due a bit of a remodel to improve aspects of the game that didn't work as well as intended in 5e. Signs are that it won't be a terribly big departure in the way it works so far. So I'm optimistic that there won't be a significant split in the community.



For my part, I'm just not going to spend $200 on a new set of corebooks for a game that isn't significantly better than what I'm playing now.  So far, it isn't, and I don't expect it to become so in a year and half, as the design goals of WotC have little to do with what I want from a RPG.


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## eyeheartawk

payn said:


> Actually, Paizo says PF2 is doing better than PF1 if you can believe that.



I like PF2 but from my, admittedly, anecdotal observations I have a hard time believing that.


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## Micah Sweet

payn said:


> Actually, Paizo says PF2 is doing better than PF1 if you can believe that. All kinds of indie and D&D alternatives are doing very well right now. Of course, they pale in comparison to D&D and always have, but they are seeing a lot of desire for products. What it tells me is that a lot of folks playing 5E are likely also playing other games in addition to, as opposed to instead of.



I would be very curious about the experience of someone playing two different D&D "family" games simultaneously.


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## payn

eyeheartawk said:


> I like PF2 but from my, admittedly, anecdotal observations I have a hard time believing that.



As a huge PF1 guy that did not transfer to PF2, I as well. Though the thing with Paizo has always been the AP subscription line. If that remains strong I guess then I can believe it. Though, I still think my point stands, games dont have to significantly impact 5E to prove they are popular.


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## payn

Micah Sweet said:


> I would be very curious about the experience of someone playing two different D&D "family" games simultaneously.



I played 5E and PF1 at the same time. I also played OSR games like DCC at the same time. What would you like to know?


----------



## eyeheartawk

payn said:


> As a huge PF1 guy that did not transfer to PF2, I as well. Though the thing with Paizo has always been the AP subscription line. If that remains strong I guess then I can believe it. Though, I still think my point stands, games dont have to significantly impact 5E to prove they are popular.



I agree with all of that. Like, DCC has been a huge success, but when weighed relatively against D&D 5e? It seems insignificant. 

As for PF2 I'm inclined to think that if PF2 was doing as well as they claim we wouldn't be seeing 5e conversions of adventure paths.


----------



## DEFCON 1

payn said:


> Actually, Paizo says PF2 is doing better than PF1 if you can believe that. All kinds of indie and D&D alternatives are doing very well right now. Of course, they pale in comparison to D&D and always have, but they are seeing a lot of desire for products. What it tells me is that a lot of folks playing 5E are likely also playing other games in addition to, as opposed to instead of.



It's the "floats all boats" theory and there's a lot of truth to it.  As more and more new people find D&D and roleplaying for the first time... many of those people will discover they can play this game in other genres and in other styles and pick up more books across all different brands.  Which of course then means those players need to find other players to play with them and thus introduce new folks to those other brands... which will make some of them then find their way over to D&D (and those grows the D&D audience further.)

It is never a bad thing when multiple types of a thing become a thing.  Because it just means word of mouth to those outside the circle just expands and expands, and those who are on the outside might find reason to move in.  And that makes all the things bigger.


----------



## Marandahir

Eh, there are already rifts between AL-legal rules and Core-Only rules, and Core+1 rules, and Core+Expansion rules, and anything-goes rules, and Pre-Tasha's rules only, and WotC+AL+DM's Guild Adepts rules, and WotC+AL+DMs Guild+ Keith Baker, Matt Mercer, and Ed Greenwood product rules, etc; the community is doing just fine defining which set of content is legal at each individual table. I doubt this will cause a serious rift.

The biggest thing here is that officially sponsored AL tables will be with One D&D Rules, and there won't be a separate running "official" League created by Fandom and/or DriveThruRPG just because WotC outsourced some of 5e to those companies (a la Paizo and the Pathfinder Adventures' Modules when 3.5e ended and WotC organized play was supporting 4e).


----------



## Micah Sweet

payn said:


> I played 5E and PF1 at the same time. I also played OSR games like DCC at the same time. What would you like to know?



What are you getting out of both systems that's it worth playing them at the same time?  Do you have any of the same players in both games?  Are you running either or both?  Is it difficult for either you or the other players to keep the similar but different rules straight?


----------



## payn

eyeheartawk said:


> I agree with all of that. Like, DCC has been a huge success, but when weighed relatively against D&D 5e? It seems insignificant.
> 
> As for PF2 I'm inclined to think that if PF2 was doing as well as they claim we wouldn't be seeing 5e conversions of adventure paths.



Its true, there has been a lot of shake up in the AP line over at Paizo. Some folks will point and say its proof things are going poorly, but going on 15 years now you'd expect so change regardless of success. Kingmaker was converted by third party, but Abomination Vault isnt. The second is half the size of Kingmaker and a pretty generic fantasy RPG concept. Perhaps, its the ease of conversion and mass appeal that makes it a good idea for some extra bucks. Or, its a test to diversify the AP line which is the real bread and butter for Paizo. I dont think it means the ship is sinking in any case though.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Marandahir said:


> Eh, there are already rifts between AL-legal rules and Core-Only rules, and Core+1 rules, and Core+Expansion rules, and anything-goes rules, and Pre-Tasha's rules only, and WotC+AL+DM's Guild Adepts rules, and WotC+AL+DMs Guild+ Keith Baker, Matt Mercer, and Ed Greenwood product rules, etc; I doubt this will cause a serious rift.



None of those things are asking you to re-buy the core books.  I think that will make a difference.


----------



## John R Davis

Absolutely it will 

Internetland in 2024 will be even more unpleasant than internetland 2022.


----------



## payn

Micah Sweet said:


> What are you getting out of both systems that's it worth playing them at the same time?  Do you have any of the same players in both games?  Are you running either or both?  Is it difficult for either you or the other players to keep the similar but different rules straight?



A little of all of that. In my 5E and PF1 shake up, part of the group wanted a simpler streamlined ruleset that 5E offers. I'd say those folks are less hardcore in just about every aspect of the game. For old school stuff its to dip our toes in nostalgia from time to time and diversify the experience.

I have decades of experience with 3E/PF1 now, so its pretty easy to run it exactly as I like. Though, everyone in 5E games still confuses rules from time to time. I think that is only natural for older gamers as they have gone through numerous edition churns. That doesnt seem to be a big enough issue for us to stop experimenting and chasing new experiences. There is no ruleset to stop all future progress, there will never be one to rule them all for us.


----------



## payn

John R Davis said:


> Absolutely it will
> 
> Internetland in 2024 will be even more unpleasant than internetland 2022.



On the bright side, I think internetland in 2026 will be a lot rosier.


----------



## Marandahir

Micah Sweet said:


> None of those things are asking you to re-buy the core books.  I think that will make a difference.



Are they asking us to rebuy?

I'm not sure they are, yet. They might just update the content for us in D&D Beyond, and provide errata, but if you WANT to buy the new books with the errata included, you can. MAYBE.

I'm not sure we know what this will entail, other than 3 new core rulebooks, and 1 new set of Basic Rules and SRD, existing. In fact, the very existence of the Basic Rules and the SRD means that you wouldn't need to buy ANYTHING. I imagine most players don't buy.


----------



## Clint_L

How many folks currently use DnDBeyond or will by 2024? Probably the majority of campaigns. So you will be heavily incentivized to go with the current edition.

But I am not seeing substantial changes that will cause a huge rift. Not so far. Seems more like tweaks.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Marandahir said:


> Are they asking us to rebuy?
> 
> I'm not sure they are, yet. They might just update the content for us in D&D Beyond, and provide errata, but if you WANT to buy the new books with the errata included, you can. MAYBE.
> 
> I'm not sure we know what this will entail, other than 3 new core rulebooks, and 1 new set of Basic Rules and SRD, existing. In fact, the very existence of the Basic Rules and the SRD means that you wouldn't need to buy ANYTHING. I imagine most players don't buy.



They are releasing new versions of the core books in 2024.  If people don't buy them then 6e will have failed.  That seems...an unrealistic move for a for-profit company to make.


----------



## Ringtail

I think it will create more of a "theoretical divide" than a divide at the table. 

Basically, there will be a divide, but it will mostly be players arguing on reddit and forums like this one about the superiority of one versus the other, whereas when you get to the table most players will just play whatever the DM is running, or mix both rules liberally. D&D is so house-ruled from table to table, that unless the changes are sweeping I doubt it will feel much different. But - regardless of what they want to call it - it is essentially a new edition and I don't think there's ever been a new edition that hasn't stirred up some amount of controversy among the players.


----------



## Frozen_Heart

What are the reasons behind Pathfinder 2e never managing to replace Pathfinder 1e that well?


----------



## payn

Frozen_Heart said:


> What are the reasons behind Pathfinder 2e never managing to replace Pathfinder 1e that well?



You are going to have to unpack that. Just recently Paizo staff came out and said that PF2 is doing better than PF1 had.


----------



## Clint_L

Micah Sweet said:


> They are releasing new versions of the core books in 2024.  If people don't buy them then 6e will have failed.  That seems...an unrealistic move for a for-profit company to make.



On DnDBeyond, after _Monsters of the Multiverse _came out you can still access and use your _Volo's _and _Mordenkanen's_, even though they are now listed as "legacy content" or some such and _Multiverse _is the default source, if you have it. It was a seamless transition - I didn't purchase _Multiverse _for awhile and there were no problems. Also, you can toggle on/off whatever content you want. I always have the Eberron stuff toggled "off" for example.

WotC have expressly stated that backwards compatibility is their priority and they want to stop thinking in terms of "editions" and instead shift to an ongoing, gradual evolution of the game. I think they are specifically looking at the rifts that happened between past editions and working as hard as they can to avoid that precisely because they don't want to create an easy jumping off point, such as by making players feel they have to buy hundreds of dollars of new books to continue to play. I think a lot of us are still thinking about OneD&D (_not _"6e") in terms of the old "editions" paradigm that they are expressly trying to replace.

Some skepticism is always warranted, but I think we also have to consider how much of it is rooted in our own paradigmatic thinking.


----------



## SkidAce

I think there will be a divide.

But I'm not going to be on the internet arguing about it in any fashion.  It seems that some folks think that if you see a divide, that means you are angry or bitter and argumentative. Some folks of course, see 3.0 > 3. 5 > 4e., will be.

Much like another poster above, we played several versions at the same time.  I preferred to DM 5e, another DM does PF1, and another does PF2, and finally our resident weirdo (j/k) does Shadowrun 5 >6. None of us play the "my version is better" card offline or online.

Speaking for myself (the 5e DM), I think if the casting/prep magic system changes as much as some are predicting, that will cause a larger divide than any of the fixing or fine tuning of other items could.


----------



## Corinnguard

Frozen_Heart said:


> What are the reasons behind Pathfinder 2e never managing to replace Pathfinder 1e that well?



Good question. I think it's because Pathfinder 2e is like 4e D&D in some ways. 4e's failing was that instead of keeping and improving what worked in 3.0/3.5 and fixing what didn't work, WoTC got rid of everything and created something that didn't look like D&D to older D&D fans. This misstep allowed Paizo to step into the breach and introduce Pathfinder 1e. 

When WoTC introduced 5e D&D in 2014, it proved to be very popular and put D&D back into the #1 spot. Paizo repeated 4e's mistakes when it created Pathfinder 2e. What RPG fans like to see from one edition to the next is a sense of gradualism. 4e and PF2 made too many changes in a short period of time. You can't make a new edition backwards compatible with a previous edition when you do that. 

Lastly, there are still some third party companies making Pathfinder 1e compatible products.


----------



## Campbell

Corinnguard said:


> Good question. I think it's because Pathfinder 2e is like 4e D&D in some ways. 4e's failing was that instead of keeping and improving what worked in 3.0/3.5 and fixing what didn't work, WoTC got rid of everything and created something that didn't look like D&D to older D&D fans. This misstep allowed Paizo to step into the breach and introduce Pathfinder 1e.
> 
> When WoTC introduced 5e D&D in 2014, it proved to be very popular and put D&D back into the #1 spot. Paizo repeated 4e's mistakes when it created Pathfinder 2e. What RPG fans like to see from one edition to the next is a sense of gradualism. 4e and PF2 made too many changes in a short period of time. You can't make a new edition backwards compatible with a previous edition when you do that.
> 
> Lastly, there are still some third party companies making Pathfinder 1e compatible products.




Can this narrative please die already? Pathfinder Second Edition is doing very well and has a growing/younger customer base. The goal was not to primarily target existing Pathfinder customers primarily, but to reach people who want something different from what 5e is offering. In that endeavor the game has been quite successful.


----------



## Corinnguard

Campbell said:


> Can this narrative please die already? Pathfinder Second Edition is doing very well and has a growing/younger customer base. The goal was not to primarily target existing Pathfinder customers primarily, but to reach people who want something different from what 5e is offering. In that endeavor the game has been quite successful.



What does Pathfinder 2e offer that is different from what 5e has been offering the fans for the last 8 years? _curious_


----------



## payn

Corinnguard said:


> What does Pathfinder 2e offer that is different from what 5e has been offering the fans for the last 8 years? _curious_



Tactical combat, accurate CR, character customization complexity, hybrid multiclassing, level based differentiation of bounded accuracy, regular adventure path material releases, etc...

Note; none of this makes it better than 5E, just different. Yes, some folks want these things in their gaming system.


----------



## Retreater

5e/5.5e will probably see around a 50% split initially. But if it's as seamlessly backwards compatible as WotC claims, the 5e players will continue to purchase 5.5e content at the usual rate (to get the 5.5e equivalents of Styxhaven, Fitzbong's Dragons, Critical Rule Campaign Guide, etc.) 
But then...
Moving into the "D&D Brand" mentality will be the bigger challenge for fans. I can see D&D becoming a brand like "MTV." One day we might say, remember when D&D was a roleplaying game. It's going to be all the stuff around the hobby that makes the money, and we'll be nostalgic for the day when D&D used to release adventures and rules supplements.


----------



## Retreater

Corinnguard said:


> What does Pathfinder 2e offer that is different from what 5e has been offering the fans for the last 8 years? _curious_



I haven't done a recent count, but last time I looked there's already more content for PF2 than 5e. 
I will also say big things are that it's completely open for Content Creators, fantastic free online resources with all the rules information, a better VTT implementation than anything WotC has created. More detailed campaign setting information.


----------



## Corinnguard

Retreater said:


> 5e/5.5e will probably see around a 50% split initially. But if it's as seamlessly backwards compatible as WotC claims, the 5e players will continue to purchase 5.5e content at the usual rate (to get the 5.5e equivalents of Styxhaven, Fitzbong's Dragons, Critical Rule Campaign Guide, etc.)
> But then...
> Moving into the "D&D Brand" mentality will be the bigger challenge for fans. I can see D&D becoming a brand like "MTV." One day we might say, remember when D&D was a roleplaying game. It's going to be all the stuff around the hobby that makes the money, and we'll be nostalgic for the day when D&D used to release adventures and rules supplements.



I think it's already a brand.   After all, it's been around for nearly 50 years.


----------



## Mephista

Corinnguard said:


> What does Pathfinder 2e offer that is different from what 5e has been offering the fans for the last 8 years? _curious_



In addition to the added complexity of the game, PF2 has said to have fixed the martial-caster divide in their game.  I'm uncertain how true this is, as I've heard stories to the contrary both ways and haven't tried it myself.  Something to the tune of making Save or Die spells into just debuffs?

Either way, its something that's been suggested to me as an advantage of PF2 over 5e a couple of times


----------



## payn

Retreater said:


> 5e/5.5e will probably see around a 50% split initially. But if it's as seamlessly backwards compatible as WotC claims, the 5e players will continue to purchase 5.5e content at the usual rate (to get the 5.5e equivalents of Styxhaven, Fitzbong's Dragons, Critical Rule Campaign Guide, etc.)
> But then...
> Moving into the "D&D Brand" mentality will be the bigger challenge for fans. I can see D&D becoming a brand like "MTV." One day we might say, remember when D&D was a roleplaying game. It's going to be all the stuff around the hobby that makes the money, and we'll be nostalgic for the day when D&D used to release adventures and rules supplements.



Oh man, no im wondering what WOTC _Real World_ and _Road Rules_ equivalents would be


----------



## eyeheartawk

payn said:


> Oh man, no im wondering what WOTC _Real World_ and _Road Rules_ equivalents would be



The real MTV comparison would be if D&D stopped producing roleplaying games altogether and just did everything _but that. _


----------



## Corinnguard

Fitzbong?


----------



## Laurefindel

Too many changes will result in upset players and cause some sort of divide.

No or too little changes will result in upset  players and cause some sort of divide.

But players throwing their hands in the air yelling « that’s it! I’m never playing D&D ever again! » will be vocal but altogether minimal.

They, alongside a bunch of disappointed but less irritated people, will migrate to other RPG or houserule their D&D. I suspect that many people looking disappointingly at the new changes are playing heavily houseruled games (to various degrees) already because that’s one of the beauty and strength of D&D: it’s malleable.

Still, I bet this divide won’t be very deep and will have a negligible effect on their market.

[edit] crossed « heavily ». I have no intention of being derogatory.


----------



## HammerMan

It is already.  I am on here less and less because of the discourse about the playtest TBH


----------



## MNblockhead

Retreater said:


> 5e/5.5e will probably see around a 50% split initially. But if it's as seamlessly backwards compatible as WotC claims, the 5e players will continue to purchase 5.5e content at the usual rate (to get the 5.5e equivalents of Styxhaven, Fitzbong's Dragons, Critical Rule Campaign Guide, etc.)
> But then...
> Moving into the "D&D Brand" mentality will be the bigger challenge for fans. I can see D&D becoming a brand like "MTV." One day we might say, remember when D&D was a roleplaying game. It's going to be all the stuff around the hobby that makes the money, and we'll be nostalgic for the day when D&D used to release adventures and rules supplements.



Meh.  I'll still have my books, both WotC and 3rd party. And other games.

AND I'll get to live my childhood dream of mainstream big-budget D&D movies and TV series. 

I never understood most complaints against "over commercialization."  If I don't like it. I don't buy it. Problem solved. If the only D&D stuff you are interested in are adventures and rules supplements, I'm sure as long as there is a market for it, they'll continue to create and sell it. If they don't smaller, third-party publishers will have you covered.


----------



## MNblockhead

Retreater said:


> I haven't done a recent count, but last time I looked there's already more content for PF2 than 5e.
> I will also say big things are that it's completely open for Content Creators, fantastic free online resources with all the rules information, a better VTT implementation than anything WotC has created. More detailed campaign setting information.



What the PF2e community has done with the system and mods on Foundry is amazing. Very jealous.


----------



## GMforPowergamers

MacDhomnuill said:


> I don’t think a divide is coming but I do think DnD is due for a recession just like the player down turn during late 3.5 and 4e. You can already see some of the hoards of 5e players piling into sub reddits looking for new games as they tire of dnds mechanics. I doubt it will be as big as the 3.5/4 one was but I do think a lot of 5e players will be looking to expand their range of games and the transition to One DnD will provide the opening for that to happen.



There is a big push on tic tok and reddit as new players are looking for new games... an edition change can get new people to jump on but will always get some to jump off.

I find that I am less and less interested in D&D as we ramp this up but i am holding out hope... or at least trying to.


----------



## GMforPowergamers

eyeheartawk said:


> The real MTV comparison would be if D&D stopped producing roleplaying games altogether and just did everything _but that. _



hey I am old enough to remember music videos on MTV... but they also had game shows (I loved remote control)


----------



## MNblockhead

payn said:


> Oh man, no im wondering what WOTC _Real World_ and _Road Rules_ equivalents would be



In D&D Real World, a group of diverse exhibitionist players are brought together to live and game together. Man, I would totally watch the hell out of this. Will the rules lawyer be voted out? Or will it be anti-woke Bob? Or perhaps nice but never-ready-on-her-turn Jane?

Or, it could be _(Un)Real World: Forgotten Realms. _A motley crew consisting of an elves, dwarves, humans (well, one of the humans insists he's a halfing, but everyone else refuses to recognize the difference), gnomes, dragonborn, and the mandatory edge-lord tiefling are forced to live together?  Who gets voted out of the party?

Seriously, I would watch either. Zombie Orpheus Entertainment needs to get on this stat!


----------



## GMforPowergamers

MNblockhead said:


> In D&D Real World, a group of diverse exhibitionist players are brought together to live and game together. Man, I would totally watch the hell out of this. Will the rules lawyer be voted out? Or will it be anti-woke Bob? Or perhaps nice by never ready on her turn Jane?



I don't know if I want it as a reality TV show but a mock reality show like this on youtube I would eat up


----------



## Corinnguard

What about a D&D meets Jumanji-style movie where a group of players in the real world are literally drawn into the game?   "I have heard of being in character. But this...this takes it up a whole new level."


----------



## GMforPowergamers

Corinnguard said:


> What about a D&D meets Jumanji-style movie where a group of players in the real world are literally drawn into the game?   "I have heard of being in character. But this...this takes it up a whole new level."



they can fight tiamat and meet a friendly baby unicorn...


----------



## Marandahir

Micah Sweet said:


> They are releasing new versions of the core books in 2024.  If people don't buy them then 6e will have failed.  That seems...an unrealistic move for a for-profit company to make.



This is still 5e. This is NOT 6e.

They want people to buy the new books for sure. But when you are playing with a 2014 PHB and 2027 rules supplements and in a 2026-released campaign setting, it's not a failure. It's just that the new core rules weren't purchased by that person, but they continued to buy the new modules that interested them and were usable in their game.

It will all be compatible.


----------



## Retreater

Corinnguard said:


> Fitzbong?



Glad you liked it.
The dragons' breath weapons are quite interesting.



Corinnguard said:


> I think it's already a brand.  After all, it's been around for nearly 50 years.



Based on their recent talking points, they think of D&D as a "lifestyle brand." We are approaching a time (if it's not here already) in which the corporate logo means more than the game associated with it. When "D&D" isn't even connected to "Dungeons & Dragons" (like how "KFC" isn't "Kentucky Fried Chicken.") Where more marketing, budget, and talent is put towards making a TV series for Amazon Prime than an entire edition of the game.


----------



## Clint_L

Pathfinder is an excellent game. It's also a niche product, which is why they are making their new releases (and retrofitting old ones) compatible with 5e, to tap into the exponentially larger D&D market. But D&D always cycles up and down. Typically, after each surge in popularity there is a tailing off as some  of those new players get busy with life, bored with the game, or whatever, and others want to try new types of RPGs, such as Pathfinder for those who want an experience extremely similar to D&D but slightly more granular (for me, the Pathfinder vs. D&D debate is a lot like debating Coke vs. Pepsi; like, are these really meaningful differences?). This is healthy for RPGs.

OneD&D is WotC's attempt to mitigate that usual cycle by updating the game and offering new product without creating a wall for the existing player base. We'll see how it goes; I expect that this year will probably see slower growth in D&D and in the near future it will flatline or contract a bit until the next generation comes along. It's already gotten much, much bigger than most of us thought possible even in the heady days of the early 80s.


----------



## DEFCON 1

Retreater said:


> Glad you liked it.
> The dragons' breath weapons are quite interesting.
> 
> 
> Based on their recent talking points, they think of D&D as a "lifestyle brand." We are approaching a time (if it's not here already) in which the corporate logo means more than the game associated with it. When "D&D" isn't even connected to "Dungeons & Dragons" (like how "KFC" isn't "Kentucky Fried Chicken.") Where more marketing, budget, and talent is put towards making a TV series for Amazon Prime than an entire edition of the game.



Heh heh... I think you made the wrong analogy there.

You used KFC / Kentucky Fried Chicken as the example of changing up the brand like you thought D&D would become... except that KFC still releases the exact same product as they did when they were Kentucky Fried Chicken-- fried chicken.  Which means by the comparison we have nothing to worry about.  Because D&D would be the exact same game Dungeons & Dragons was, except for the change in name.

And quite frankly... a transition over to the name D&D wouldn't even be nearly the same giant jump KFC was, as people have been already calling it D&D this entire time.


----------



## MNblockhead

DEFCON 1 said:


> Heh heh... I think you made the wrong analogy there.
> 
> You used KFC / Kentucky Fried Chicken as the example of changing up the brand like you thought D&D would become... except that KFC still releases the exact same product as they did when they were Kentucky Fried Chicken-- fried chicken.  Which means by the comparison we have nothing to worry about.  Because D&D would be the exact same game Dungeons & Dragons was, except for the change in name.
> 
> And quite frankly... a transition over to the name D&D wouldn't even be nearly the same giant jump KFC was, as people have been already calling it D&D this entire time.



Heh heh... still chicken, but you can get extra crispy now and, more recently, they changed to recipe to make it less stinky (at least in Japan):









						KFC has made an incredible change to its fried chicken recipe... but there's a catch
					

WHO doesn’t love fried chicken? Everyone nearby who can smell you tucking into it, of course. Well, now KFC is changing the game by cooking up fried chicken which doesn’t stink up the p…




					www.thesun.co.uk
				




Last year they changed their gravy. 

I think the analogy holds up well.


----------



## MNblockhead

Corinnguard said:


> What about a D&D meets Jumanji-style movie where a group of players in the real world are literally drawn into the game?   "I have heard of being in character. But this...this takes it up a whole new level."



Zombie Orpheus Enterainment did a web series on this. _The Gamers: Humans & Households._


----------



## beancounter

Corinnguard said:


> What about a D&D meets Jumanji-style movie where a group of players in the real world are literally drawn into the game?   "I have heard of being in character. But this...this takes it up a whole new level."




Well, back in the day, a cartoon was made about a group of kids being pulled into a D&D world.









						Dungeons & Dragons (TV series) - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


----------



## Parmandur

No, not really: sure, not everyone will adapt, but as long as they maintain backwards compatibility like they have with the initial tests, the _Sturm und Drang_ will be limited.


----------



## Lojaan

Only if the streamers quit. If Critical Role stops using D&D then WotC will have a problem.


----------



## Frozen_Heart

Lojaan said:


> Only if the streamers quit. If Critical Role stops using D&D then WotC will have a problem.



That's a good point. Though pretty sure this is the last season of 'main cast' critical role.

Will be interesting to see if the brand sticks with 5e though.


----------



## MichaelSomething

Since we're on the subject of splintering sub groups, I'm recruiting for my "bring back the COMMONER class" faction. I can't seem to recuit people. Does anyone have advice on how I can get people to join?


----------



## TerraDave

It already has. Its actually worse off ENWorld.

But how could it not? We have seen this over and over again, most recently with PF, seemingly one of the most loyal and devoted communities...there is now totally a divide.


----------



## payn

TerraDave said:


> It already has. Its actually worse off ENWorld.
> 
> But how could it not? We have seen this over and over again, most recently with PF, seemingly one of the most loyal and devoted communities...there is now totally a divide.



To be fair, I don't think 5E, onednd, 5.5E, or anniversary edition whatever they are going to call it will be as different as PF1 and PF2 are.


----------



## GMforPowergamers

MichaelSomething said:


> Since we're on the subject of splintering sub groups, I'm recruiting for my "bring back the COMMONER class" faction. I can't seem to recuit people. Does anyone have advice on how I can get people to join?



you need newsletters or at least pamphlets


----------



## payn

MichaelSomething said:


> Since we're on the subject of splintering sub groups, I'm recruiting for my "bring back the COMMONER class" faction. I can't seem to recuit people. Does anyone have advice on how I can get people to join?



Have you tried the candy corn threads? They love old fashioned over there.


----------



## TerraDave

payn said:


> To be fair, I don't think 5E, onednd, 5.5E, or anniversary edition whatever they are going to call it will be as different as PF1 and PF2 are.



Sure. But to go farther back, 1e to 2e caused a divide, and they were basically compatible. Even 4e essentials caused a divide. 

Some might point to 3.5. It didn't seem to cause much of a rift, but things changed with its launch. That fan base seemed to get smaller--and started buying a lot of plastic minis, 3 party producers focused on their own games, the whole feel was different. Arguably things weren't really the same, until 5e.


----------



## Parmandur

TerraDave said:


> Sure. But to go farther back, 1e to 2e caused a divide, and they were basically compatible. Even 4e essentials caused a divide.
> 
> Some might point to 3.5. It didn't seem to cause much of a rift, but things changed with its launch. That fan base seemed to get smaller--and started buying a lot of plastic minis, 3 party producers focused on their own games, the whole feel was different. Arguably things weren't really the same, until 5e.



Obviously, there will always be a split and contention: we even see that with Xanathar's or Tasha's additions. But the question will be if the split ends up being _significant_: based on what we've seen so far, it seems doubtful.


----------



## Blue

We've had edition changes before.  We know what scope that won't cause a major rift (everything except changing to/from 4e), and what will cause a major rift (changing to and maybe from 4e).  This isn't an judgement on 4e, just an acknowledgement that it was different enough to cause a rift.  Everything else sure there will be some who lag behind, but no real "player rift".

As this is looking like the change of a half edition like 3.0 to 3.5, not even a full edition change.

Realistically, it is no where near the threshold to cause a significant player rift.


----------



## JEB

Clint_L said:


> How many folks currently use DnDBeyond or will by 2024? Probably the majority of campaigns.



I'd very much like to see official statistics on this question. Personally, I'd be very surprised if the majority of campaigns are primarily relying on D&D Beyond at this point, even though Wizards clearly would like for everyone to use it eventually.

That said, there's an important difference between having an account on D&D Beyond, and being an active user of D&D Beyond.  A difference I don't expect Wizards to distinguish in any official numbers, which will surely focus on user counts rather than engagement. (Especially since Wizards is under investor pressure to justify the purchase of DDB, based on the investor call a while back.)


----------



## Parmandur

JEB said:


> I'd very much like to see official statistics on this question. Personally, I'd be very surprised if the majority of campaigns are primarily relying on D&D Beyond at this point, even though Wizards clearly would like for everyone to use it eventually.
> 
> That said, there's an important difference between having an account on D&D Beyond, and being an active user of D&D Beyond.  A difference I don't expect Wizards to distinguish in any official numbers, which will surely focus on user counts rather than engagement. (Especially since Wizards is under investor pressure to justify the purchase of DDB, based on the investor call a while back.)



The last general demographics they shared are 50 million fans, and 10 million Beyond subscribers. So, probably not a majority, bit a pretty healthy community. The playtest changes seemed well situated to make the transition on Beyond painless for users.


----------



## Clint_L

The last general demographics they shared were 50 million fans _over the lifetime of D&D_ (i.e. 50 years). And even that was just a PR release, not exactly detailed numbers or definitions.


----------



## Haplo781

MacDhomnuill said:


> I don’t think a divide is coming but I do think DnD is due for a recession just like the player down turn during late 3.5 and 4e. You can already see some of the hoards of 5e players piling into sub reddits looking for new games as they tire of dnds mechanics. I doubt it will be as big as the 3.5/4 one was but I do think a lot of 5e players will be looking to expand their range of games and the transition to One DnD will provide the opening for that to happen.



Let's hope so


----------



## Haplo781

Mephista said:


> No one did anything to 4e except what 4e did to itself.  Pathfinder was created as a _reaction to_ 4e's departure from the D&D norms and filled a need of the market. In fact, they still are filling a need that 5e isn't, which is where their game is thriving enough to expand into other media and niches.
> 
> As for their marketshare? We don't have exact figures, no one does.  But its undeniable that they do have a presence and your most likely option for a game outside of D&D.



Pathfinder was created because WotC pulled the magazines from Paizo and slapped a horribly restrictive license on 4e.


----------



## billd91

Haplo781 said:


> Pathfinder was created because WotC pulled the magazines from Paizo and slapped a horribly restrictive license on 4e.



They successfully transitioned to their AP line once the magazines were gone. I doubt the magazines figured too much into their calculus to make PF. The 4e license not materializing seemed, at the time, to be what forced their hand into not holding up their company’s business plans waiting on WotC.


----------



## Lojaan

TerraDave said:


> It already has. Its actually worse off ENWorld.
> 
> But how could it not? We have seen this over and over again, most recently with PF, seemingly one of the most loyal and devoted communities...there is now totally a divide.



There is a divide in the PF2 community?


----------



## GreyLord

I do not know if there will be a split, but I think there are people that are concerned about it.

I think that is one reason why they are trying to call it ONE D&D right now, and I think the effort to make it able to be seamlessly compatible with older adventures is being done in earnest.


----------



## Micah Sweet

GreyLord said:


> I do not know if there will be a split, but I think there are people that are concerned about it.
> 
> I think that is one reason why they are trying to call it ONE D&D right now, and I think the effort to make it able to be seamlessly compatible with older adventures is being done in earnest.



Practically any edition can be made compatible with adventures: just make you use the same names.  4e might be a stretch, but that's it.


----------



## TerraDave

Lojaan said:


> There is a divide in the PF2 community?



Not what I said. But makes the point, if it is its own community.


----------



## Yora

TerraDave said:


> Sure. But to go farther back, 1e to 2e caused a divide, and they were basically compatible. Even 4e essentials caused a divide.
> 
> Some might point to 3.5. It didn't seem to cause much of a rift, but things changed with its launch. That fan base seemed to get smaller--and started buying a lot of plastic minis, 3 party producers focused on their own games, the whole feel was different. Arguably things weren't really the same, until 5e.



What you mean? Things were the same again when 5th edition came out? Same as when?


----------



## Corinnguard

GreyLord said:


> I do not know if there will be a split, but I think there are people that are concerned about it.
> 
> I think that is one reason why they are trying to call it ONE D&D right now, and I think the effort to make it able to be seamlessly compatible with older adventures is being done in earnest.



WoTC might also be concerned about the competition siphoning off their revenue stream again. First with Paizo when the latter came out with Pathfinder 1st edition. Now it's En Publishing's _Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition_. A more flexible version of 5e that is also compatible with older adventures. 

Sailing down a revenue stream is not always a smooth sail.


----------



## Frozen_Heart

My main concern for 5.75e which may cause me to stick with 5e, is that it will massively simplify an already oversimplified edition. Stripping away player options and choices for how to build their character.

We've already seen this from the playtest. Hunter has lost all its build choices. Bard has lost its spell list, and now you have to play as a healing bard. Playing as other types not allowed. Rogue can't choose when to use its sneak attack. It has to be exactly on the attack action. Expertise now being a copy and pasted mechanic onto all shown classes.

I'm fully expecting stuff like removing warlock invocations, rather getting fixed abilities for each pact boon. And changing druid so it only gets to transform into a generic template, therefore losing 90% of its cool features.

And looking at the initial 5e playtest as a comparison, the earlier playtest packets were far more complex and dnd feeling than the later ones or the final edition. If the trend holds for this edition, building characters will be basically monopoly pieces by the end.


----------



## TerraDave

Yora said:


> What you mean? Things were the same again when 5th edition came out? Same as when?



Those early days of ENWorld harmony. 

Now the cycle seems to be turning again.


----------



## doctorbadwolf

Micah Sweet said:


> Practically any edition can be made compatible with adventures: just make you use the same names.  4e might be a stretch, but that's it.



Come now, the post you quoted literally says “seamlessly compatible”, and even if it didn’t what does this have to do with whether the designers are earnest in their intention to make the new core books fully compatible with the rest of 5e?


----------



## UngeheuerLich

Corinnguard said:


> WoTC might also be concerned about the competition siphoning off their revenue stream again. First with Paizo when the latter came out with Pathfinder 1st edition. Now it's En Publishing's _Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition_. A more flexible version of 5e that is also compatible with older adventures.
> 
> Sailing down a revenue stream is not always a smooth sail.




I don't think that they are in any way concerned about A5E...


----------



## Benjamin Olson

Frozen_Heart said:


> My main concern for 5.75e which may cause me to stick with 5e, is that it will massively simplify an already oversimplified edition. Stripping away player options and choices for how to build their character.



Interesting. Simplifying for accessibility and new player experiences would be a cause I could actually support. My issue is that many of the changes needlessly complicate things. Why have the rule be "crits double the dice" when the rule can be "crits double the dice, but not for magic, and not for monsters, and not for additional non-weapon dice"? Why not make everyone also master the feats system to roll up their first character? Why not make someone wade through the entire Arcane spell list and sift them out by spell school in order to roll up a Bard?

Which is all to say that while I agree that they are simplifying in some places, I don't think that is actually the guiding star of this edition (would that it were, then there would be a guiding star). Or if it is, I think they have a perverse and misguided sense of what "simplification" is. Obviously on a broad conceptual level it is simpler to have only three spell lists, but for a player actually trying to pick spells from one who has not already memorized the lists it almost certainly isn't. Dividing the 12 core classes into 4 equal categories is very orderly and in that sense "simple", but, if the categories are misleading, inaccurate, and an artificial construct, it doesn't actually simplify anything for anyone.


----------



## DEFCON 1

We are two packets into what will probably be at least a 12 packet playtest period.  To make any declarations about simplification or non-simplification regarding the rules they have offered up for us to test is unnecessary right now.  Same with making pre-emptive decisions to play the 2024 game or not play the 2024 game.  None of us have any idea what the game will actually end up looking like... so why prejudice ourselves this early in the process?  What point does it serve us?


----------



## GMforPowergamers

Lojaan said:


> There is a divide in the PF2 community?



I don't know for sure but my (VERY LIMITED) tic tok and 2 friends show there is more a dived then 2e-3e but less then 3e-4e.  I have seen people say they never want to 'go back' and people who don't want to 'update' My most personal experence is of the split WE IN MY GROUP had after first few months of 4e more then half of those that left for PF came back... but some stayed at PF not 5e. I know that the group that stayed PF then split and I have 1 friend who only plays PF1 (and claims PF2 is 4e) and 1 friend who only plays PF2 (and claims that PF got too big an unweildy) and now I know of 2 groups, but I only know the DM of 1 and a player of the other.

I was always team 4e, so I played 2 campaigns of PF and 1 of those only for a few months. so I am FAR from the expert. However I have seen drama on tic tok of the two 'sides' clashing.


----------



## GMforPowergamers

Micah Sweet said:


> Practically any edition can be made compatible with adventures: just make you use the same names.  4e might be a stretch, but that's it.



even 4e can use (I used sunless citadel) just grab some kobolds, some goblins (I think I had to home brew twigg blights but can't be sure) an undead knight (I took the tomb guardian and removed arms) and make an NPC druid/necromancer as your big bad use the same map (oh wait I think you need rats and giant rats and a white dragon baby too) and it works fine, you just can't use stats out of book but the maps NPCs layout/set up works. 

TBF though I think they are going more for the 1e/2e switch that is even less work for DM facing things.


----------



## GMforPowergamers

DEFCON 1 said:


> We are two packets into what will probably be at least a 12 packet playtest period.  To make any declarations about simplification or non-simplification regarding the rules they have offered up for us to test is unnecessary right now.  Same with making pre-emptive decisions to play the 2024 game or not play the 2024 game.  None of us have any idea what the game will actually end up looking like... so why prejudice ourselves this early in the process?  What point does it serve us?



even I am TRYING to hold out hope that the public playtest will make 1D&D more what I want... but right now I do see some good and some bad


----------



## GMforPowergamers

Frozen_Heart said:


> I'm fully expecting stuff like removing warlock invocations, rather getting fixed abilities for each pact boon



Warlock is by far the most played class I see, and my personal favorite. I worry about them becoming a prep caster but it never even occurred to me they could REMOVE invocations... that would be a sad day.


----------



## Retreater

Lojaan said:


> There is a divide in the PF2 community?



People who like it vs. People who love it.


----------



## MNblockhead

JEB said:


> I'd very much like to see official statistics on this question. Personally, I'd be very surprised if the majority of campaigns are primarily relying on D&D Beyond at this point, even though Wizards clearly would like for everyone to use it eventually.
> 
> That said, there's an important difference between having an account on D&D Beyond, and being an active user of D&D Beyond.  A difference I don't expect Wizards to distinguish in any official numbers, which will surely focus on user counts rather than engagement. (Especially since Wizards is under investor pressure to justify the purchase of DDB, based on the investor call a while back.)



Not even sure what being an "active player on D&D Beyond" means.

In my games, I use it to look up things in game. Usually spells. Sometimes monsters, if I don't have them stated up properly in my VTT.

I have one player who uses the DDB character sheet and does her rolls in DDB.  The rest all just use it to update the character sheets and I sync it to my VTT. 

Most of my time in DDB is between games when doing prep. 

So are we all "active players", just the player who uses the character sheet and dice rolling in game, just her and me as the DM using it to look things up?  Would simply using it to update your character sheet between session not be considered an active player? 

I'm guessing that they look at frequency of logins and maybe time spent on the site.  Those are the numbers they would really care about, I would think. Whether that time is spent with a character sheet open and rolls being made versus searching for and reading content probably is less important.


----------



## Fifth Element

TheAlkaizer said:


> I think it will create a divide.
> 
> I know I am not going to buy the new books, not because of their content but just because I already own so many 5E books and I have no interest in a some update of the rules.



Is that really a divide per se? I don't play 2E anymore, for example, but I don't consider myself "divided" from people who do currently play 2E. I think it takes more than just not being interested in a particular edition to have a divide. There has to be some kind of animosity, for lack of a better term.


----------



## Campbell

Games don't create divides. They expose them. Does it really make us more divided if we are playing multiple versions of the same game if there was never any compatibility (in terms of the experience we are seeking) to begin with? I know my personal dissatisfaction with 3e on both sides of the screen was definitely not caused by 4e's existence. I know the war gamer / illusionist divide was not caused by Dragonlance. Did new products bring these existing divisions / difference of preference to light? Sure. Did they exist before the products were released? Absolutely.

Also _division_ is a pretty damn strong word to use for having incompatible preferences in a roleplaying game. It makes having preferences outside the mainstream almost feel like an affront.


----------



## eyeheartawk

Campbell said:


> Games don't create divides. They expose them. Does it really make us more divided if we are playing multiple versions of the same game if there was never any compatibility (in terms of the experience we are seeking) to begin with? I know my personal dissatisfaction with 3e on both sides of the screen was definitely not caused by 4e's existence. I know the war gamer / illusionist divide was not caused by Dragonlance. Did new products bring these existing divisions / difference of preference to light? Sure. Did they exist before the products were released? Absolutely.
> 
> Also _division_ is a pretty damn strong word to use for having incompatible preferences in a roleplaying game. It makes having preferences outside the mainstream almost feel like an affront.



Don't forget the divide between people who hate Kender/ those who are empirically, objectively wrong for liking them.


----------



## GMforPowergamers

Fifth Element said:


> Is that really a divide per se? I don't play 2E anymore, for example, but I don't consider myself "divided" from people who do currently play 2E. I think it takes more than just not being interested in a particular edition to have a divide. There has to be some kind of animosity, for lack of a better term.



I don't think I am divided with 1e or 2e players... even though I don't play those.
I do consider myself divided with 3e and PF players because I find they argue points I am very against.


----------



## Zaukrie

No. Most tables move on eventually.


----------



## Benjamin Olson

I think if they eventually tamp down the dumbest playtest ideas then, ultimately, most 5e fans will migrate to 5.5. But since I suspect that I will come to see it as basically a degenerate form of 5e, I probably won't fully make the switch until the people I play with and I have used up 5e content. Since (to the extent I still care about published adventures) 5.5 adventures are likely to involve a minuscule amount of tweaking to be 5e adventures the "running out of content" scenario is basically when we have grown bored with the character possibilities of 5e, and see some appealing new ones from 5.5. The time frame depends on both the quality of 5.5 and how much 5e we play.

So while, as explained in prior posts, I am extremely unimpressed with the playtest materials, and at the moment have a strong impulse to swear off the new edition as an aimless and unnecessary remix of the current one, eventually I will probably find my way to it, because it is probably not different enough to be worth being schismatic over long term. Still, I think there will be a short term schism and a lot of bad feelings over the process if they don't articulate a stronger design philosophy to justify the overall direction of changes. As is the process just reads to me as "we are changing some things to make people buy new books and to support our digital tabletop". Will it cause a huge, long-term community divide? Probably not. Will it cause enough unnecessary short-term division and ill-will to make the unite-everyone-and-everything "OneD&D" branding ridiculous and a little embarrassing? Probably.


----------



## Corinnguard

Was 4e D&D ever play-tested by the players? _curious_


----------



## Parmandur

Corinnguard said:


> Was 4e D&D ever play-tested by the players? _curious_



No, all internal. WotC own postmortem is that 4E was designed in a self-referential environment without input from hiw most people actually play D&D.


----------



## Corinnguard

Parmandur said:


> No, all internal. WotC own postmortem is that 4E was designed in a self-referential environment without input from hiw most people actually play D&D.



What about the editions that came before 4e? Or was 5e the first edition to actually be play-tested by the players?


----------



## FitzTheRuke

I don't think the divide will be significant or long-term. Initial divide? Sure. Always is. I mean, there's a bit of a divide about it now, and we don't even know what rules will make it to actual print.


----------



## FitzTheRuke

Corinnguard said:


> What about the editions that came before 4e? Or was 5e the first edition to actually be play-tested by the players?




5e was first.


----------



## Parmandur

Corinnguard said:


> What about the editions that came before 4e? Or was 5e the first edition to actually be play-tested by the players?



5E was the first edition of D&D to get any sort of public playtest, yes.


----------



## Whizbang Dustyboots

We went through this exact scenario before, with the 3E to 3.5E transition, which the 1D&D is starting to look like.

There were people who loudly protested that they'd _never_ convert to 3.5E and ... well, they mostly did. There were a few people who stuck with 3E, and more who grumbled about the transition, but for the most part, few people jumped off the then-current edition of D&D until the very dramatic design changes of 4E, at which point, a lot of folks went to Pathfinder 1E, which was a less significant break with 3.5E.

At this point in time, it seems very likely that we'll have something similar to 3.5E. There will be people who are _outraged_, as we've seen earlier this year with the kerfuffle over Monsters of the Multiverse, but most people will go with the flow or, at worst, mix and match components as they see fit, which is a tradition as old as D&D itself.


----------



## Whizbang Dustyboots

Parmandur said:


> 5E was the first edition of D&D to get any sort of public playtest, yes.



Didn't Pathfinder 1E get a public playtest? That's probably a meaningful point of comparison, for people who are interested in such.


----------



## payn

Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> We went through this exact scenario before, with the 3E to 3.5E transition, which the 1D&D is starting to look like.
> 
> There were people who loudly protested that they'd _never_ convert to 3.5E and ... well, they mostly did. There were a few people who stuck with 3E, and more who grumbled about the transition, but for the most part, few people jumped off the then-current edition of D&D until the very dramatic design changes of 4E, at which point, a lot of folks went to Pathfinder 1E, which was a less significant break with 3.5E.
> 
> At this point in time, it seems very likely that we'll have something similar to 3.5E. There will be people who are _outraged_, as we've seen earlier this year with the kerfuffle over Monsters of the Multiverse, but most people will go with the flow or, at worst, mix and match components as they see fit, which is a tradition as old as D&D itself.



I think 3 years from launch was hard to chew for a lot of players, but 10 seems like a good amount of time to space out a half edition to me.


Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> Didn't Pathfinder 1E get a public playtest? That's probably a meaningful point of comparison, for people who are interested in such.



Yeap.


----------



## Corinnguard

Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> Didn't Pathfinder 1E get a public playtest? That's probably a meaningful point of comparison, for people who are interested in such.



Yes. Before Pathfinder 1e officially came out, there was a Beta version of the PHB for everyone to try out.


----------



## Parmandur

Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> Didn't Pathfinder 1E get a public playtest? That's probably a meaningful point of comparison, for people who are interested in such.



That's not D&D, though.


----------



## Corinnguard

Parmandur said:


> That's not D&D, though.



Pathfinder 1e was sometimes called 3.75 D&D.   It might not have been created by WoTC, but it looked and felt like D&D to those who were turned off by 4e.


----------



## JEB

MNblockhead said:


> Not even sure what being an "active player on D&D Beyond" means.



Someone who actively uses the site as a resource for their D&D games, as opposed to someone who merely has an account on DDB and rarely if ever uses it. For example, I doubt most of the users who signed up just to get access to the playtest immediately became active DDB users. (Though I'm sure Wizards is hoping they will!)


----------



## Parmandur

Corinnguard said:


> Pathfinder 1e was sometimes called 3.75 D&D.   It might not have been created by WoTC, but it looked and felt like D&D to those who were turned off by 4e.



I mean, sure, it is derived from 3.5, but it's not D&D.


----------



## Whizbang Dustyboots

Parmandur said:


> That's not D&D, though.



Unless you are an owner of either company, of course it is, just as OSR books are D&D.


----------



## SkidAce

Parmandur said:


> I mean, sure, it is derived from 3.5, but it's not D&D.



I feel it is, and call it d&d, since its based on the d20 system, share attributes, classes, etc, but technically you are correct.


----------



## Parmandur

Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> Unless you are an owner of either company, of course it is, just as OSR books are D&D.



I mean, no. Those are also not "D&D", those are different games.


----------



## Vaalingrade

All Tabletop games are D&D in the same way all tissues are Kleenex.

And yes, it will create a divide in the community because that's the thing we do. We get divided and we fight. It just gets worse during and edition change (which is absolutely is).


----------



## Jahydin

Lycurgon said:


> And with the changes you have seen so far, if they all pretty much make it into the finished 1D&D release, would you and your group change to the new version? What are your thoughts so far about this?



I don't think the rule changes are what's going to cause the "divide". It will be digital vs non-digital groups. 

I think WotC is going to go "all in" with digital and create a need for it somehow. Whatever that is, I don't think groups are going to be able to "dip their toes" into it; it will be all in or all out. And all in is going to be $$$. This will create the divide.

Just my tinfoil hat opinion.


----------



## Yora

Now that I think of it, D&D seems to be the only game that has that approach.

Might be because other games are way too small to justify the initial investment, but it very much seems to be a D&D thing only.


----------



## MNblockhead

Jahydin said:


> I don't think the rule changes are what's going to cause the "divide". It will be digital vs non-digital groups.
> 
> I think WotC is going to go "all in" with digital and create a need for it somehow. Whatever that is, I don't think groups are going to be able to "dip their toes" into it; it will be all in or all out. And all in is going to be $$$. This will create the divide.
> 
> Just my tinfoil hat opinion.



Yes, but...

I don't think that WotC has to be heavy handed about this. They will continue to publish print books as long as people buy them and we can continue to run games fully analog if we want. 

But a growing majority of players are not going to want to be completely analog. Even if playing in person with battlemaps and minis, many players will prefer digital character sheets and being able to search the rules in DDB.  The convenience of VTTs, especially for players who have difficulty finding groups or arranging schedules for in-person games, has created a growing demand for these platforms. The conveniences of VTTs have also bled over into in-person play with more and more people using digital displays for battlemaps rather than Chessex mats and printed terrain/battle maps.  

The divide is less about WotC forcing us into digital tools and more about them responding to the market and some people not being happy about the direction in which the market is going. 

In away, it is easier to deal with changes to rules than moving from analog to digital play (or vice versa).  I know some tables have a non-devices policy at the table.  Other players would avoid such tables. Those in the former group, may feel "abandoned" by WotC as more and more attention is given to the preferences of the digital crowd (live updates to errated rules, early release of new books, more focus on VTT features and assets than printing physical game aids, etc.)  This may lead to any physical products being priced at collector and luxury-good prices, which will rankle many in the analog-but-not-"rich" camp. But WotC is going to follow the market. And there is a healthy market of third-party creators of minis, terrain, and other analog assets.


----------



## MNblockhead

Yora said:


> Now that I think of it, D&D seems to be the only game that has that approach.
> 
> Might be because other games are way too small to justify the initial investment, but it very much seems to be a D&D thing only.



Do you mean digital approach?

Yeah, most publishers in this space don't have the money to set up a software-development arm.  And for those that do, like Paizo, they have focused more on creating CRPGs based on their IP. 

It make much more sense for smaller publishers to work on getting their material in one to three of the major VTT platforms. Even that not economically viable for most. 

But WotC has the money, they see the trends, and they don't want to leave money on the table.


----------



## Corinnguard

Parmandur said:


> I mean, sure, it is derived from 3.5, but it's not D&D.



In other words, anything that looks like D&D but wasn't created and owned by WoTC isn't D&D. When WoTC allowed 3rd party companies to create supplements and accessories for 5e via the OGL, those products in the eyes of some of the players became a part of D&D. PF1 is very much a part of D&D, again because of the OGL.


----------



## UngainlyTitan

Corinnguard said:


> In other words, anything that looks like D&D but wasn't created and owned by WoTC isn't D&D. When WoTC allowed 3rd party companies to create supplements and accessories for 5e via the OGL, those products in the eyes of some of the players became a part of D&D. PF1 is very much a part of D&D, again because of the OGL.



Personally, I distinguish between D&D the brand and the genre. Anything set of rules that serve a D&D experience is D&D for practical purposes.


----------



## Corinnguard

UngainlyTitan said:


> Personally, I distinguish between D&D the brand and the genre. Anything set of rules that serve a D&D experience is D&D for practical purposes.



After 50 years of providing the D&D experience, D&D has definitely become a genre.


----------



## Parmandur

Corinnguard said:


> In other words, anything that looks like D&D but wasn't created and owned by WoTC isn't D&D. When WoTC allowed 3rd party companies to create supplements and accessories for 5e via the OGL, those products in the eyes of some of the players became a part of D&D. PF1 is very much a part of D&D, again because of the OGL.



I mean, maybe some players, I guess. Not to me. Pathfinder is a distinct game.


----------



## billd91

Corinnguard said:


> What about the editions that came before 4e? Or was 5e the first edition to actually be play-tested by the players?



Not really. 3e got extensive play testing through a play test program that was, I believe, accessible through the RPGA. In the original 3.0 PH, there are loads of play repeat credits that all came through that program.


----------



## Parmandur

billd91 said:


> Not really. 3e got extensive play testing through a play test program that was, I believe, accessible through the RPGA. In the original 3.0 PH, there are loads of play repeat credits that all came through that program.



That was the precursor to WotC private playtest network, which they still run parallel to the UA program. That's a bit different than the Next or OneD&D process.


----------



## billd91

Parmandur said:


> That was the precursor to WotC private playtest network, which they still run parallel to the UA program. That's a bit different than the Next or OneD&D process.



Different, yes. But still players external to WotC itself.


----------



## doctorbadwolf

Jahydin said:


> I don't think the rule changes are what's going to cause the "divide". It will be digital vs non-digital groups.
> 
> I think WotC is going to go "all in" with digital and create a need for it somehow. Whatever that is, I don't think groups are going to be able to "dip their toes" into it; it will be all in or all out. And all in is going to be $$$. This will create the divide.
> 
> Just my tinfoil hat opinion.



This seems extremely unlikely. Like, reprint 4e and call it OneDnD level unlikely. 

They're not completely clueless fools.


----------



## John R Davis

I think going uber-digital will be my divide, as I have no interest.
Of the ten or so PF1 players I play PF with, I think only 1 has bought into PF2.


----------



## Parmandur

doctorbadwolf said:


> This seems extremely unlikely. Like, reprint 4e and call it OneDnD level unlikely.
> 
> They're not completely clueless fools.



Yeah,the money Hasbro wants is merchandising money.

Even on the digital side, the model that has worked so well for WotC in Magic is Free to Play: so I expect they will monetize the VTT in many ways, but making it easy to go and play will be key to their strategy.


----------



## doctorbadwolf

Parmandur said:


> Yeah,the money Hasbro wants is merchandising money.
> 
> Even on the digital side, the model that has worked so well for WotC in Magic is Free to Play: so I expect they will monetize the VTT in many ways, but making it easy to go and play will be key to their strategy.



Absolutely. The entry level will be quite accessible, and there will be a wealth of stuff you don’t need to spend big money on, just as there is now.


----------



## Whizbang Dustyboots

Parmandur said:


> I mean, maybe some players, I guess. Not to me. Pathfinder is a distinct game.



If you couldn't see the books or character sheets being used but just had to watch or listen to a game being played, you can immediately tell a D&D-derived game, as opposed to something in the same dungeon-crawling genre like Dungeon World.

The things that make a game "D&D" for non-lawyers are a whole host of standards and sacred cows like level-based advancement, funny dice that are used to adjudicate actions in the world, armor class and hit points, etc. You don't have to have everything on the list (which is a pretty long list, if one sat down to create it) but once you lose too much of it, it becomes something different. But when you have most of them, the games are largely interoperable and all the players can speak the same language, even if they sometimes have regional accents and the like.

I have never played 13th Age or even touched a rulebook for it. I am confident I could sit down at a table and play it more or less immediately. Likewise Pathfinder or Shadow of the Demon Lord or Adventures in Middle Earth. I wouldn't even have to open a book to create a character and start playing OSE.

That's what I -- and the general public -- understand as a game being D&D.


----------



## Blue Orange

Of course it's going to divide the community.  Every time they have a new edition some people like the old one better. If they screw up badly enough, the new edition resembles the one two before (as happened with 5e and 3.5e)...and some people will still like the one that gets replaced.

Now that they sell older editions, they can make even more money!


----------



## Thomas Shey

UngainlyTitan said:


> Personally, I distinguish between D&D the brand and the genre. Anything set of rules that serve a D&D experience is D&D for practical purposes.




The phrase I use is "D&Doids" or "in the D&D sphere".  There's enough similarity within that (as in contrast with all the other games in the hobby) that there are certain common assumptions taken as a given there (and there are plenty) that would not be assumed the moment you get outside of it, and they tend to be clustered together (you'll only rarely find levels in games that don't also do classes and a bunch of the other things, for example, and you rarely see AC as a method of reducing chance to hit in games that don't deal with level-elevating hit points).


----------



## Haplo781

Blue Orange said:


> Of course it's going to divide the community.  Every time they have a new edition some people like the old one better. If they screw up badly enough, the new edition resembles the one two before (as happened with 5e and 3.5e)...and some people will still like the one that gets replaced.
> 
> Now that they sell older editions, they can make even more money!



Opening up older editions on DM's Guild would be so amazing


----------



## Parmandur

Thomas Shey said:


> The phrase I use is "D&Doids" or "in the D&D sphere".  There's enough similarity within that (as in contrast with all the other games in the hobby) that there are certain common assumptions taken as a given there (and there are plenty) that would not be assumed the moment you get outside of it, and they tend to be clustered together (you'll only rarely find levels in games that don't also do classes and a bunch of the other things, for example, and you rarely see AC as a method of reducing chance to hit in games that don't deal with level-elevating hit points).



I mean, I just use the term "RPG."


----------



## Thomas Shey

Parmandur said:


> I mean, I just use the term "RPG."



Except D&Doids share a large number of common traits that are not common elsewhere in the hobby: classes, levels, elevating hit points, armor-as-reduction-to-hit and others.  They're clearly a separate family of games, just as BRP derivatives are.


----------



## Arilyn

I've borrowed Robin Laws' term F20 to cover these games.


----------



## Parmandur

Thomas Shey said:


> Except D&Doids share a large number of common traits that are not common elsewhere in the hobby: classes, levels, elevating hit points, armor-as-reduction-to-hit and others.  They're clearly a separate family of games, just as BRP derivatives are.



Some RPGs are closer to or farther from D&D, they do all have D&D in their DNA, but an RPG is an RPG, but D&D is specifically D&D.


----------



## Clint_L

I've used the Dread rules for entire games in my D&D campaign, and all they are is basically a Jenga tower. So I'm pretty rules agnostic. Other folks take the rules very seriously - kids in my D&D Club will furiously debate D&D vs. Pathfinder, which I find adorable, like passionately arguing over whether regular-stuffed or double-stuffed Oreos are better. At the end, as long as the story is good and the game is fun, who cares?

So the only thing I worry about with OneD&D is whether I will be required to buy a bunch of new stuff. As long as the answer is "only when you want to," then I'm good.


----------



## payn

Clint_L said:


> I've used the Dread rules for entire games in my D&D campaign, and all they are is basically a Jenga tower. So I'm pretty rules agnostic. Other folks take the rules very seriously - kids in my D&D Club will furiously debate D&D vs. Pathfinder, which I find adorable, like passionately arguing over whether regular-stuffed or double-stuffed Oreos are better. At the end, as long as the story is good and the game is fun, who cares?
> 
> So the only thing I worry about with OneD&D is whether I will be required to buy a bunch of new stuff. As long as the answer is "only when you want to," then I'm good.



This is an awful attitude. Unfortunate for those kids.


----------



## Bedrockgames

As an outsider who doesn't play 5E, it seems like anything they do that changes 5E could result in fractures, because the hobby feels fairly organized around 5E (to a degree it wasn't organized around D&D in the past, in numbers exceeding anything we've had in recent years). I am also following some of the debates and it seems there are a few issues around changes that could be contentious. If the changes are sufficient enough that blocks of fans are not satisfied with the new edition, that could create an opening for alternative systems to step in (the way pathfinder did when 4E came out). And the pie is pretty big these days so there is tremendous incentive for that. But I am not keyed in enough to really assess because I am just catching the vague contours of the debate and not sure how many of the changes would be deal breakers for people. I just have a sense that this is as big as the D&D pie probably gets, and unless that assumption is wrong, changes seem fraught with risk (but then I suppose it goes the other way, where not making the changes that some segments might want, could result in a competitor swooping in from that direction as well).


----------



## Whizbang Dustyboots

Parmandur said:


> Some RPGs are closer to or farther from D&D, they do all have D&D in their DNA, but an RPG is an RPG, but D&D is specifically D&D.



This is comparable to you saying that cats are cats and all other animals are just animals and there's no point in talking about vertebrates, mammals or any other subclassifications.

You can hold this idiosyncratic view if you wish, but you should know that it's going to seem weird to most people. The best leg to stand on here is a legalistic IP one, not one about game design.


----------



## Whizbang Dustyboots

Clint_L said:


> I've used the Dread rules for entire games in my D&D campaign, and all they are is basically a Jenga tower. So I'm pretty rules agnostic. Other folks take the rules very seriously - kids in my D&D Club will furiously debate D&D vs. Pathfinder, which I find adorable, like passionately arguing over whether regular-stuffed or double-stuffed Oreos are better. At the end, as long as the story is good and the game is fun, who cares?



It's the cultural moment. What once we just Ford vs. Chevy obsessives and sports fanatics has become a whole thing, with people devoting a great portion of their identity to whether they are consumers of Android versus iPhone products, Xbox versus Playstation versus Nintendo, or a million other things.

I'm not sure this way of thinking benefits anyone other than corporations, but there you go.


----------



## Whizbang Dustyboots

Bedrockgames said:


> As an outsider who doesn't play 5E, it seems like anything they do that changes 5E could result in fractures, because the hobby feels fairly organized around 5E (to a degree it wasn't organized around D&D in the past, in numbers exceeding anything we've had in recent years). I am also following some of the debates and it seems there are a few issues around changes that could be contentious. If the changes are sufficient enough that blocks of fans are not satisfied with the new edition, that could create an opening for alternative systems to step in (the way pathfinder did when 4E came out). And the pie is pretty big these days so there is tremendous incentive for that. But I am not keyed in enough to really assess because I am just catching the vague contours of the debate and not sure how many of the changes would be deal breakers for people. I just have a sense that this is as big as the D&D pie probably gets, and unless that assumption is wrong, changes seem fraught with risk (but then I suppose it goes the other way, where not making the changes that some segments might want, could result in a competitor swooping in from that direction as well).



My guess is a lot of the contentious changes won't make it through to the final version. We've already seen some semi-contentious stuff from the first UA doc reverted in the second one.

They're throwing a lot of spaghetti at the wall and there's no reason to think we know what 1D&D will really look like by the time the process is done.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> My guess is a lot of the contentious changes won't make it through to the final version. We've already seen some semi-contentious stuff from the first UA doc reverted in the second one.




The second packet is not based on the feedback from the first.
So we now only know that they are trying out different things.


----------



## ersatzphil

Parmandur said:


> Some RPGs are closer to or farther from D&D, they do all have D&D in their DNA, but an RPG is an RPG, but D&D is specifically D&D.



I mean, not to pick a nit, but Old School Essentials is literally a reformatting of B/X D&D. What does that count as?

As a sidenote - at least according to the Vintage RPG podcast, isn't Traveller the only RPG that doesn't have D&D as an antecedent?


----------



## Whizbang Dustyboots

ersatzphil said:


> I mean, not to pick a nit, but Old School Essentials is literally a reformatting of B/X D&D. What does that count as?



Well, until they bring in the AD&D stuff in the Advanced Fantasy books.


----------



## ersatzphil

Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> Well, until they bring in the AD&D stuff in the Advanced Fantasy books.



I have to admit - I’ve been playing the Black Hack for awhile now, and have wanted to try out OSE for some time, but it is _extremely unclear _to me what books I do and don’t need to buy for it.


----------



## Whizbang Dustyboots

ersatzphil said:


> I have to admit - I’ve been playing the Black Hack for awhile now, and have wanted to try out OSE for some time, but it is _extremely unclear _to me what books I do and don’t need to buy for it.



Yeah, they don't do themselves a lot of favors in that regard.

The ones that start with BASIC FANTASY are the BD&D line. You can either get this as one or two big corebooks or a set of smaller books so that only the spellcasters, for instance, have to look at those pages and everyone else can just have the booklets they need. (I'd get the big corebook, myself.)

The ADVANCED FANTASY line takes the AD&D stuff from the PHB, MM, DMG and Unearthed Arcana book that isn't already present in BD&D and adds it all in, while tweaking the math to match Basic D&D. So it will work very similarly and if you're not someone who regularly looks at the AD&D books (or maybe hasn't for a few decades), it should feel the same as it ever was. But it's truly interoperable, instead of just mostly so, as everyone I knew jammed them together anyway back in the day. It's available in the same types of formats as the BASIC FANTASY line.


----------



## niklinna

ersatzphil said:


> I have to admit - I’ve been playing the Black Hack for awhile now, and have wanted to try out OSE for some time, but it is _extremely unclear _to me what books I do and don’t need to buy for it.



How very old-school of them!


----------



## ersatzphil

Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> But it's truly interoperable, instead of just mostly so, as everyone I knew jammed them together anyway back in the day. It's available in the same types of formats as the BASIC FANTASY line.



Aah so - in example, is the BASIC thief class identical to the ADVANCED one? The ADVANCED just adds druids and illusionists and whatnot?


----------



## ECMO3

doctorbadwolf said:


> Sure you can. If you are using a 2014 Race and a 2024 background you just…choose your ASIs. It’s not even a conversion it’s just…if your race and background both provide an ASI, you choose which to use, not both.



If you use a 2014 race and a 2024 background you should get both the ASIs from your race and the ASIs from your background, there is no reason you shouldn't, the ASIs  are part of the race and part of the background.  This is not like TCE where they put in a rule that changed the way to apply racial ASIs.

To be honest I don't think the ASIs in the background will survive to the final version.  Considering that you can make a custom background, tying them to background is meaningless - If you want to be an acolyte but with strength and constitution ASIs, just make a custom background to do that.


----------



## Parmandur

ECMO3 said:


> If you use a 2014 race and a 2024 background you should get both the ASIs from your race and the ASIs from your background, there is no reason you shouldn't, the ASIs  are part of the race and part of the background.  This is not like TCE where they put in a rule that changed the way to apply racial ASIs.
> 
> To be honest I don't think the ASIs in the background will survive to the final version.  Considering that you can make a custom background, tying them to background is meaningless - If you want to be an acolyte but with strength and constitution ASIs, just make a custom background to do that.



The packet specifically says that if a Race grants an ASI, the player chooses whether they get to keep that ASI or trade them for the ASI in the Background. It calls out Race options from any 2014 compatible book as working that way. One or the other, not both.


----------



## doctorbadwolf

ECMO3 said:


> If you use a 2014 race and a 2024 background you should get both the ASIs from your race and the ASIs from your background, there is no reason you shouldn't, the ASIs  are part of the race and part of the background.  This is not like TCE where they put in a rule that changed the way to apply racial ASIs.
> 
> To be honest I don't think the ASIs in the background will survive to the final version.  Considering that you can make a custom background, tying them to background is meaningless - If you want to be an acolyte but with strength and constitution ASIs, just make a custom background to do that.



Read the Origins playtest doc again. It explicitly states that if you use a race that grants an ASI and a background that does so, you choose one or the other, you don't get both.

As for the background ASIs, I think the design paradigms of 5e suggest that they will have ASI tied to _something_, and background is less problematic than race. With background, the rules arent say that your strength comes from your race at all, it comes from how you were raised or what trade you learnt or whatever.


----------



## MNblockhead

Clint_L said:


> I've used the Dread rules for entire games in my D&D campaign



Glad to know I'm not the only one!

I used it when the party traveled to the Fey Wild in my first campaign and I wanted it to feel very different from the Prime Material.


----------



## The Myopic Sniper

Other than the changes to backgrounds and races which are pretty much locked in due to larger cultural issues, there is a good chance that most of the stuff that is being playtested won't make the targeted survey numbers and will get changed to something closer to 5e.  They aren't going to change something with only 65 percent approval unless every other option that they are testing comes in with less unless it was on an issue that was perceived as a large issue in the 2014 edition. Some things that are quality of life issues for designers of further content like maybe making subclasses all have a similar power budget and work similarly across classes might get further retests and refinements until they get that to work, but I imagine a lot of stuff will be reverted to 2014 standards in the end.

If WOTC stick to that approach I think most of the blowback will be minor in the long run. Except on issues that align with certain social justice concerns, I don't think that WOTC has the courage to rock the boat up too much. If something like the new exhaustion rules came in with 95 percent approval, the new rules might make the cut, but I don't think they are going to change things that aren't generally perceived as problems unless it has a lot of support. Still, they might as well use this playtest period to test concepts to see if anything hits the level of support they are looking for. Why wouldn't they?


----------



## TheSword

The Myopic Sniper said:


> Other than the changes to backgrounds and races which are pretty much locked in due to larger cultural issues, there is a good chance that most of the stuff that is being playtested won't make the targeted survey numbers and will get changed to something closer to 5e.  They aren't going to change something with only 65 percent approval unless every other option that they are testing comes in with less unless it was on an issue that was perceived as a large issue in the 2014 edition. Some things that are quality of life issues for designers of further content like maybe making subclasses all have a similar power budget and work similarly across classes might get further retests and refinements until they get that to work, but I imagine a lot of stuff will be reverted to 2014 standards in the end.
> 
> If WOTC stick to that approach I think most of the blowback will be minor in the long run. Except on issues that align with certain social justice concerns, I don't think that WOTC has the courage to rock the boat up too much. If something like the new exhaustion rules came in with 95 percent approval, the new rules might make the cut, but I don't think they are going to change things that aren't generally perceived as problems unless it has a lot of support. Still, they might as well use this playtest period to test concepts to see if anything hits the level of support they are looking for. Why wouldn't they?



65% approval is massive. That probably means 10-20% are ambivalent and 15-25 disapprove. That’s a 40 to 50 point majority in favour of something.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

If WotC are going primarily by approval percentages in 2022 then 1D&D is going to be a complete and utter mess, frankly.

Grown-ups running a company with hundreds of millions of turnover should not be basing design decisions on percentages from a poorly-written survey, and if they are, god help us all. The percentages are of interest, sure, but ultimately the right design decision is the right design decision, whether or not the LITERAL sub-1% of the playerbase who answered the survey approve of it or not. People are against design by committee, and the only thing worse than that is design by a tiny percentage of the playerbase/fans.

Realistically whether 1D&D creates a significant divide or not is going to depend a lot less on the rules, and a lot more on the marketing, pricing, accessibility of the new rules, and so on on. It's also going to depend on hard-to-control and somewhat irrational perceptions about whether rules are "better" or "worse", which are something WotC are going to need to finesse towards the end of the playtest (but which is largely immaterial at this point).

As an aside, an awful lot of people who actually run/play D&D are unaware of the 1D&D playtest right now, outside of the "extremely online" types. For example, my most rules-attentive and generally up-to-date-on-D&D player? He didn't know about it until last weekend when I told him. My friend who regularly runs D&D for his kids and their friends, and is a long-time player, and buys a lot of 5E stuff? He didn't know until even more recently, and again, only because I told him. These people are representative of more "typical" D&D players, I would suggest, and they know nothing about it.

I don't follow Critical Role or the like, but unless they're talking about 1D&D, I doubt their fans will have heard of it either. I suspect we'll see a huge increase in the number of people aware of it in the last few months before release.


----------



## Thomas Shey

Parmandur said:


> Some RPGs are closer to or farther from D&D, they do all have D&D in their DNA, but an RPG is an RPG, but D&D is specifically D&D.




If you don't find it a useful descriptive term you don't, but I've found it quite the useful shorthand over the years for telling people "13th Age is in the D&D-sphere where Magic World is a BRP derivative".  Objecting to it does not change its utility.


----------



## Thomas Shey

Clint_L said:


> At the end, as long as the story is good and the game is fun, who cares?




The "as long as" in that sentence is doing some heavy lifting, however.  A fair number of people can find mechanical process in games helps or hurts their fun.


----------



## Thomas Shey

ersatzphil said:


> I mean, not to pick a nit, but Old School Essentials is literally a reformatting of B/X D&D. What does that count as?
> 
> As a sidenote - at least according to the Vintage RPG podcast, isn't Traveller the only RPG that doesn't have D&D as an antecedent?




Only if "was aware of the existence of and might have known vaguely the kind of rules it had" is enough to count as an antecedent, because there were absolutely some other early games that only fit that (most of them haven't survived to the modern period, but in the modern period there are all kinds of games that you have to view what they're doing in very broad strokes to show much influence).


----------



## Whizbang Dustyboots

ersatzphil said:


> Aah so - in example, is the BASIC thief class identical to the ADVANCED one? The ADVANCED just adds druids and illusionists and whatnot?



Exactly.

The Advanced Fantasy book adds (in addition to the BASIC stuff, which is included in the big corebook version): acrobat, assassin, barbarian, bard, druid, illusionist, knight (a renamed cavalier), paladin and ranger, as well as race-as-class versions (and the option to split races and classes) of drow, duergar, gnome, half-elf (I think -- maybe this is in the basic version, too), half-orc and svirfneblin.

The level of commitment to include duergar, which I think five people ever played back in the 1E era, is impressive. Half-ogre from Dragon was far more popular in my experience.


----------



## Arilyn

It also adds in racial abilities for humans if you want to dump level limits. 

I'm having fun with my duergar.  He's always assuming the worst will happen, which may be contributing to him staying alive.


----------



## JEB

Ruin Explorer said:


> As an aside, an awful lot of people who actually run/play D&D are unaware of the 1D&D playtest right now, outside of the "extremely online" types. For example, my most rules-attentive and generally up-to-date-on-D&D player? He didn't know about it until last weekend when I told him. My friend who regularly runs D&D for his kids and their friends, and is a long-time player, and buys a lot of 5E stuff? He didn't know until even more recently, and again, only because I told him. These people are representative of more "typical" D&D players, I would suggest, and they know nothing about it.



Very true. Depending on just how different 2024 edition winds up being, this could create some dramatic reactions on release...


----------



## Dwarf 007

leonardozg said:


> Wizards calling it a new edition or not, new rules always cause some division. The fact that these new rules are compatible with older ones will avoid a break like 3e to 4e, but there will be groups playing old and new rules and moving from one to another will require some adaptation, not to much different than conversion rules from edition to edition, just a little smoother.
> In the end of the day, the new rules will be like a new edition.




Correct.  New rules, always cause some division.


----------



## ECMO3

The more experience I get with one the answer is yes it will create a divide.


----------



## Clint_L

leonardozg said:


> Wizards calling it a new edition or not, new rules always cause some division. The fact that these new rules are compatible with older ones will avoid a break like 3e to 4e, but there will be groups playing old and new rules and moving from one to another will require some adaptation, not to much different than conversion rules from edition to edition, just a little smoother.
> In the end of the day, the new rules will be like a new edition.



I disagree. In the context of D&D, the word "edition" has a specific meaning that WotC is expressly abandoning: substantial changes that make the previous version obsolete. You had to buy new books or you were in effect playing a different game than new players. This is why we still have communities playing 1e, 3.5 e, 4e, etc. 

So if OneD&D is truly backwards compatible, then that will not be like a new "edition" as that word is commonly understood in the context of D&D. Again for my example, I point to Monsters of the Multiverse, which I think we can all agree integrates quite seamlessly with 2014 books.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Clint_L said:


> I disagree. In the context of D&D, the word "edition" has a specific meaning that WotC is expressly abandoning: substantial changes that make the previous version obsolete. You had to buy new books or you were in effect playing a different game than new players. This is why we still have communities playing 1e, 3.5 e, 4e, etc.
> 
> So if OneD&D is truly backwards compatible, then that will not be like a new "edition" as that word is commonly understood in the context of D&D. Again for my example, I point to Monsters of the Multiverse, which I think we can all agree integrates quite seamlessly with 2014 books.



We definitely cannot all agree that MotM integrates perfectly.  They cut out a ton of spells from soellcasting monsters across the board, for example.

I also expect 6e will not be nearly as backwards compatible as folks who care about more just the base math would like.  Deciding to redefine a word to suit your purposes requires a good deal of buy-in to work.  I can't speak for others, but I don't buy it.


----------



## Clint_L

Micah Sweet said:


> We definitely cannot all agree that MotM integrates perfectly.  They cut out a ton of spells from soellcasting monsters across the board, for example.
> 
> I also expect 6e will not be nearly as backwards compatible as folks who care about more just the base math would like.  Deciding to redefine a word to suit your purposes requires a good deal of buy-in to work.  I can't speak for others, but I don't buy it.



I don't follow your last point. What word is being redefined, and by whom?

The fact that some creatures in MotM are different isn't the point. The new books will have differences. _All_ new books _always_ have differences. The question is whether they still all work together, and that is what I meant when I said that MotM integrates seamlessly. You can use it in conjunction with the 2014 PHB with no challenges. This would not be the case with, say, the 4e Monster Manual.

OneD&D will bring changes. That is not in dispute. The question is whether those changes will create a break with what came before to the extent that players will feel forced to choose between one set of books or the other, as with previous editions, or will be able to gradually integrate new books into what they are already doing and update as desired. WotC is expressly aiming for the latter. We shall see if they are successful, but I see no reason why they can't be.

I only just bought MotM, and I still use Volo's and Mordenkainen's as well, depending on the version of the monster I want for an encounter (for example, I happen to prefer the spell lists in many cases). It all works. I honestly don't see what the problem is.


----------



## leonardozg

Clint_L said:


> I disagree. In the context of D&D, the word "edition" has a specific meaning that WotC is expressly abandoning: substantial changes that make the previous version obsolete. You had to buy new books or you were in effect playing a different game than new players. This is why we still have communities playing 1e, 3.5 e, 4e, etc.
> 
> So if OneD&D is truly backwards compatible, then that will not be like a new "edition" as that word is commonly understood in the context of D&D. Again for my example, I point to Monsters of the Multiverse, which I think we can all agree integrates quite seamlessly with 2014 books.




I think I'll see dialogues like this:

"Let's play D&D fifth edition?"
"Sure! Can I use One D&D rules?"
"No, just 5e."

Or posts like this:
"LFG 5e to play Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Tuesdays 8-10PM. Updated rules from D&D One only".

Call it different editions or not, the word doesn't matter, but the impact of the changes. That's what I meant.


----------



## Malmuria

ersatzphil said:


> Aah so - in example, is the BASIC thief class identical to the ADVANCED one? The ADVANCED just adds druids and illusionists and whatnot?



This video does a decent job of breaking it down.  The current necrotic gnome webpage lays out the differences between their products as well.  But yeah it could be simpler


----------



## Scott Christian

I honestly think the only divide it will bring up is someone complaining that they can't have a 16 in their starting trait because the background bonuses don't allow them. Outside of that, I think it'll be smooth sailing for WotC.


----------



## Bill Zebub

leonardozg said:


> I think I'll see dialogues like this:
> 
> "Let's play D&D fifth edition?"
> "Sure! Can I use One D&D rules?"
> "No, just 5e."
> 
> Or posts like this:
> "LFG 5e to play Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Tuesdays 8-10PM. Updated rules from D&D One only".
> 
> Call it different editions or not, the word doesn't matter, but the impact of the changes. That's what I meant.




Ok, but the same could be said for using Tasha's.  Or the UA Ranger.  Or the Artificer.  

Here's another way that conversation could go:

"Wanna play D&D 5e?"
"Sure.  Can I use One D&D rules?"
"Um...we're using original 5e, but, yeah, go ahead, as long as you aren't counting on me to remember what your character does differently."

I haven't seen anything (yet) in One that would make that particularly difficult, even if it could be argued that the player using One is slightly more/less powerful, as long as that one player knows the rule changes well.  The only thing I can think of that might even be slightly challenging for the DM is, if the "monsters don't crit" rule becomes a thing, remembering which PCs suffer crits and which don't.


----------



## Lycurgon

Scott Christian said:


> I honestly think the only divide it will bring up is someone complaining that they can't have a 16 in their starting trait because the background bonuses don't allow them. Outside of that, I think it'll be smooth sailing for WotC.



What? Custom and customizing backgrounds are part of the new rules. Anyone can have their bonuses wherever they want.


----------



## Fifth Element

leonardozg said:


> I think I'll see dialogues like this:
> 
> "Let's play D&D fifth edition?"
> "Sure! Can I use One D&D rules?"
> "No, just 5e."



Some DMs back in the 2E days refused to allow character kits from the PHBR books. That didn't make the PHBR books a seperate edition.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Clint_L said:


> I don't follow your last point. What word is being redefined, and by whom?
> 
> The fact that some creatures in MotM are different isn't the point. The new books will have differences. _All_ new books _always_ have differences. The question is whether they still all work together, and that is what I meant when I said that MotM integrates seamlessly. You can use it in conjunction with the 2014 PHB with no challenges. This would not be the case with, say, the 4e Monster Manual.
> 
> OneD&D will bring changes. That is not in dispute. The question is whether those changes will create a break with what came before to the extent that players will feel forced to choose between one set of books or the other, as with previous editions, or will be able to gradually integrate new books into what they are already doing and update as desired. WotC is expressly aiming for the latter. We shall see if they are successful, but I see no reason why they can't be.
> 
> I only just bought MotM, and I still use Volo's and Mordenkainen's as well, depending on the version of the monster I want for an encounter (for example, I happen to prefer the spell lists in many cases). It all works. I honestly don't see what the problem is.



The word they're trying to re-define is "edition".


----------



## Fifth Element

Micah Sweet said:


> The word they're trying to re-define is "edition".



Only if you pretend that the meaning of the word "edition" in this context is clear-cut, which of course it is not. The vast majority of words in English have nuances and fuzziness to their meanings, and you shouldn't pretend otherwise.


----------



## DEFCON 1

Worrying about whether the 2024 books are a "new edition" or not is a waste of time and energy.  People can and will call them whatever they want, and it has no impact on anyone else.

All that matters is that in two years a new set of D&D books will be published that some players will buy and use, and others won't.  However those people choose to identify and categorize those books is meaningless... they will will buy and use them based upon how much they find them useful-- not whether some people are calling it a "new edition" or an "update" or a "half-edition" or whatever other silly bug of a term they'll have stuck up their butt.


----------



## Cadence

Fifth Element said:


> Only if you pretend that the meaning of the word "edition" in this context is clear-cut, which of course it is not. The vast majority of words in English have nuances and fuzziness to their meanings, and you shouldn't pretend otherwise.




It feels like the context is either publishing (clearly is), games (certainly feels like it would get a new number in minecraft) , ttrpgs (feels like it?), or D&D (is this 4e to essentials? 1e to 2e? I guess we'll find out).

I'm not sure what the nuance of any other words has to do with it.  Similarly I'm not sure what any other definitions of edition have to do with anything.


----------



## Cadence

Bill Zebub said:


> Ok, but the same could be said for using Tasha's.  Or the UA Ranger.  Or the Artificer.
> 
> Here's another way that conversation could go:
> 
> "Wanna play D&D 5e?"
> "Sure.  Can I use One D&D rules?"
> "Um...we're using original 5e, but, yeah, go ahead, as long as you aren't counting on me to remember what your character does differently."




RE: "Rules"

Will the person in your game picking 5e also get to use different rules for what a natural 1 and 20 mean, how inspiration works, rules for grappling, rules for recoveries, for the spells, for the spell lists, for the feats, etc*... as long as they remind you how they work differently?

* Depending on what rules finally get put in.


----------



## Clint_L

leonardozg said:


> I think I'll see dialogues like this:
> 
> "Let's play D&D fifth edition?"
> "Sure! Can I use One D&D rules?"
> "No, just 5e."
> 
> Or posts like this:
> "LFG 5e to play Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Tuesdays 8-10PM. Updated rules from D&D One only".
> 
> Call it different editions or not, the word doesn't matter, but the impact of the changes. That's what I meant.



It's possible. If you are correct, then WotC will have failed at what they are expressly trying to do. I'm not seeing much thus far that makes me think it will be a problem for my campaign, but then I'm not particularly fussy about rules. For me, it looks like it'll be conversations like:

Player: "Which version of character generation should I use? Can I use the new custom background feature?"
Me: "I don't care. Pick one. They all basically work the same."

I'm just not seeing substantial changes in anything put out thus far, aside from the brief proposal to rob DMs of our critical hits, which I would have just ignored anyway had WotC been foolish enough to go forward with it.


----------



## Bill Zebub

Cadence said:


> RE: "Rules"
> 
> Will the person in your game picking 5e also get to use different rules for what a natural 1 and 20 mean, how inspiration works, rules for grappling, rules for recoveries, for the spells, for the spell lists, for the feats, etc*... as long as they remind you how they work differently?
> 
> * Depending on what rules finally get put in.




i only need to be reminded how the rules work differently if it affects how I’m DMing. So far very few of the changes (again, monsters not critting would be an example) fall into that category. 

Personally I wouldn’t have any difficulty DMing a hybrid 5e/One game, at least not from what we have seen so far. Maybe others feel it would be hard.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Bill Zebub said:


> i only need to be reminded how the rules work differently if it affects how I’m DMing. So far very few of the changes (again, monsters not critting would be an example) fall into that category.
> 
> Personally I wouldn’t have any difficulty DMing a hybrid 5e/One game, at least not from what we have seen so far. Maybe others feel it would be hard.



See, that's my issue.  How can it even be thought of as a "hybrid" if it's not an edition change?


----------



## Bill Zebub

Micah Sweet said:


> See, that's my issue.  How can it even be thought of as a "hybrid" if it's not an edition change?




You seem way too obsessed with the definition of 'edition'.  But I think you should use whatever terminology makes you happy.


----------



## leonardozg

Bill Zebub said:


> Ok, but the same could be said for using Tasha's.  Or the UA Ranger.  Or the Artificer.
> 
> Here's another way that conversation could go:
> 
> "Wanna play D&D 5e?"
> "Sure.  Can I use One D&D rules?"
> "Um...we're using original 5e, but, yeah, go ahead, as long as you aren't counting on me to remember what your character does differently."
> 
> I haven't seen anything (yet) in One that would make that particularly difficult, even if it could be argued that the player using One is slightly more/less powerful, as long as that one player knows the rule changes well.  The only thing I can think of that might even be slightly challenging for the DM is, if the "monsters don't crit" rule becomes a thing, remembering which PCs suffer crits and which don't.



New rules will cause some division, but not a significant division. In some contexts it will be the same, groups playing new OD&D rules and groups sticking to the original 5e, but due to the fact that they're compatible, it will not be a significant division.
Judging by what I've seen in the playtest docs, I think it will give 2-4 years more for this edition until players get bored. So far, and because Wizards is committed to keep compatibility, OD&D will not change a lot of stuff. Adding or fixing classes, races, feats, spells and so is more like applying some patches or installing DLCs than new rules.


----------



## Clint_L

I don't see it as a hybrid. Incorporating MotM doesn't feel like I am playing a hybrid game. The game has been gradually evolving with every new book anyway. I'm playing a Way of Mercy monk that wouldn't have been possible a few years ago.

Again, I think we have to look at what "edition" has always previously meant in the context of D&D, which was a whole new version of the game that necessitated buying all new books. Even adventure guides would often be rewritten for the new rules and re-released. That doesn't seem to be happening here, and WotC claims that it won't happen. So this won't be like 4e to 5e. It'll just be an updated PHB with some tweaks. I don't see this as a whole lot different from when Tasha's came out, etc.


----------



## AnotherGuy

Any player that joins our table - quickly accepts the version of the rules we follow and our homebrew rules.
1D&D will likely be quite similar 5e so I do not see this being an issue for our community. People will gravitate to their friends tables and tables of good DMs. Same as before. Rules will be secondary in this regard.


----------



## Warpiglet-7

I don’t know.

I know that some of the Playtest material looks nice.  Some I don’t like.  We will see how it ends up.

Our group will likely play 5e with some one D&D tweaks.  I am guessing if this really is compatible—-that there will be others that do this too.

As a result, the schism between 3.5e and 4e players will simply not be the same for 5e and One…if I am a betting man.

Did Tasha’s tear the player base apart?  I don’t think so but some don’t use it.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Bill Zebub said:


> You seem way too obsessed with the definition of 'edition'.  But I think you should use whatever terminology makes you happy.



That's why I call it 6e.  Because I don't see it any other way.


----------



## Micah Sweet

leonardozg said:


> New rules will cause some division, but not a significant division. In some contexts it will be the same, groups playing new OD&D rules and groups sticking to the original 5e, but due to the fact that they're compatible, it will not be a significant division.
> Judging by what I've seen in the playtest docs, I think it will give 2-4 years more for this edition until players get bored. So far, and because Wizards is committed to keep compatibility, OD&D will not change a lot of stuff. Adding or fixing classes, races, feats, spells and so is more like applying some patches or installing DLCs than new rules.



I would actually love it if TTRPG development was _ less_ like a videogame.  A multitude of tiny adjustments across the board was one of the things that annoyed me about 4th ed, and the 3.5 shift.  If you're going to update the core game, make a big update, own up to it, and let people stay with the current edition or move on to what you're offering.  This half-measure does not work for me.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Clint_L said:


> I don't see it as a hybrid. Incorporating MotM doesn't feel like I am playing a hybrid game. The game has been gradually evolving with every new book anyway. I'm playing a Way of Mercy monk that wouldn't have been possible a few years ago.
> 
> Again, I think we have to look at what "edition" has always previously meant in the context of D&D, which was a whole new version of the game that necessitated buying all new books. Even adventure guides would often be rewritten for the new rules and re-released. That doesn't seem to be happening here, and WotC claims that it won't happen. So this won't be like 4e to 5e. It'll just be an updated PHB with some tweaks. I don't see this as a whole lot different from when Tasha's came out, etc.



The Tasha's release was a big deal too, and not everyone is down with it even now.  WotC's whole design philosophy seemed to shift with Tasha's, to the point I think it's reasonable to split 5e into two eras right at that point.


----------



## Gorck

Micah Sweet said:


> The Tasha's release was a big deal too, and not everyone is down with it even now.  WotC's whole design philosophy seemed to shift with Tasha's, to the point I think it's reasonable to split 5e into two eras right at that point.



People don't like Tasha's?  Aside from the additional subclasses, spells, and magic items (like Xanathar's had), it provided a bunch of optional rules that made the classes better (and vastly improved upon the Ranger), and it finally gave us an official Artificer.

Just don't get me started on the flexible +2/+1 ASI for character creation and their subsequent removal from the Races.


----------



## Bedrockgames

One thing I realized looking at this thread title is One D&D may create confusion with D&D 1E, as I imagine a lot of people are going to swap out "one" with "1".


----------



## Micah Sweet

Gorck said:


> People don't like Tasha's?  Aside from the additional subclasses, spells, and magic items (like Xanathar's had), it provided a bunch of optional rules that made the classes better (and vastly improved upon the Ranger), and it finally gave us an official Artificer.
> 
> Just don't get me started on the flexible +2/+1 ASI for character creation and their subsequent removal from the Races.



Well, Eberron gave us an official artificer, but it was nice that it was in Tasha's if you didn't buy that book.


----------



## Bill Zebub

Clint_L said:


> I don't see it as a hybrid.




I used hybrid, although without defining it explicitly, to mean that you incorporate an older version of an option and a newer option in the same game. I.e. if a party had both a PHB Ranger and a UA Ranger.


----------



## Bill Zebub

Micah Sweet said:


> That's why I call it 6e.  Because I don't see it any other way.



Yeah that won’t confuse anybody. But you do you.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Bill Zebub said:


> Yeah that won’t confuse anybody. But you do you.



I've had plenty of folks call me out on it, so I think it's pretty clear how I mean it.


----------



## Bill Zebub

Micah Sweet said:


> I've had plenty of folks call me out on it, so I think it's pretty clear how I mean it.



Until an actual 6e comes out. Which I’m guessing you will call 7e.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Bill Zebub said:


> Until an actual 6e comes out. Which I’m guessing you will call 7e.



They said they weren't doing editions anymore, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see.


----------



## phuong

Bill Zebub said:


> Until an actual 6e comes out. Which I’m guessing you will call 7e.



I'm dying.

If the changes to 5e are superficial, then it is not a new edition.  So far they have been pretty minor and a little boring and so hence its maybe a 5.5e but I don't think they can decide what to call it.  D&D "Next" was never a thing, I don't think "One" is going to be a thing, its an insult to 1st edition.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

Micah Sweet said:


> That's why I call it 6e.  Because I don't see it any other way.




I call it D&D Sw5ety


----------



## Bill Zebub

phuong said:


> , I don't think "One" is going to be a thing, its an insult to 1st edition.




The “1” in 1st edition was in decimal.  The new 1 is in binary. TOTALLY different.


----------



## Li Shenron

I don't expect a big split this time, but only a very small splinter group, similar to what happened between 3.0 and 3.5. I will be in the splinter group like I was back then.

Most of all, I think WotC is counting on the fact that a large portion of the gamebase is always made of two kinds of people:


heavy consumers who "need" frequent change and constant novelty in their hobby, some which are lucky to really play a lot and exhaust all the options, some others whose hobby is more focused on buying, collecting and talking instead of actually playing (it happens in all hobbies) and they just need something new all the time so for them a new edition is the best thing that can happen
newcomers who simply buy whatever is current because they have no cognition or opinion about previous versions

I have long ago turned into a minority kind of RPGamer. I like taking a ruleset or edition and treating it more as a toolset. I could easily play all my life with a single edition, although I've eventually gravitated around three of them (BECMI, 3.0 and 5e) which is two more than I need. In addition, I've grown to detest fandom, the attitudes/habits of most regular gamers, I care nothing for "official" labels, and I am suspicious of everything that is "en vogue". If the masses go one way, I pretty much immediately look for the other direction. More specifically in RPGing, I nowadays run the game almost exclusively for "casual gamers" i.e. friends, workmates, family which usually don't know much about D&D and just want to have some fun trying it out, they won't buy books (and I won't encourage them to do it) so the edition of choice is entirely up to me. As a player on someone else's table, I play pretty much anything they want, it doesn't have to be D&D so it also doesn't have to be a specific, but I'm not going to buy anything, so I'll be the "casual gamer" for them.


----------



## TwoSix

It will only cause a problem if some groups decide that say "You can't use that subclass from Tasha's, we're playing a ONE only game."


----------



## Thomas Shey

Bedrockgames said:


> One thing I realized looking at this thread title is One D&D may create confusion with D&D 1E, as I imagine a lot of people are going to swap out "one" with "1".




The alternative, which I've also seen, is people confusing it with Original D&D by using "O".


----------



## Bill Zebub

TwoSix said:


> It will only cause a problem if some groups decide that say "You can't use that subclass from Tasha's, we're playing a ONE only game."




Which isn’t/won’t be a new problem.


----------



## TwoSix

Bill Zebub said:


> Which isn’t/won’t be a new problem.



The newest iteration of an age-old problem, for sure.


----------



## Clint_L

phuong said:


> I'm dying.
> 
> If the changes to 5e are superficial, then it is not a new edition.  So far they have been pretty minor and a little boring and so hence its maybe a 5.5e but I don't think they can decide what to call it.  D&D "Next" was never a thing, I don't think "One" is going to be a thing, its an insult to 1st edition.



WotC addressed this in the original announcement video. The project is called OneD&D. They want the game to henceforth just be called D&D or Dungeons and Dragons. No edition appended, unless you are playing one of the old ones. 

So instead of "5e" or "D&D5e," it will just become "D&D," even though it will still be 5e rules, as they have evolved and keep evolving.


----------



## Marandahir

One D&D is the prototype name, the same as D&D Next. 
The books won't say One D&D or D&D 6th Edition or even ADVANCED D&D 5th Edition ESSENTIALS PLUS PRO ADVANCE.

They'll just say Dungeons & Dragons. 

WotC has a financial incentive to have a singular product series on the market that is their brand identity. There's no need to subdivide the brand. So if you had older edition books, or even older 5e books, it's still D&D. It's ALL D&D. But these are building on the matrix of the 5e rules. It's like how 3e dropped the Advanced title. There was no need to keep the ADVANCED when the Basic line was dead as of 5 years earlier. Now they're just dropping the initials numbers.

In any case, owning up to a new edition with huge changes would be very financially problematic for them. They don't need that messiness. They don't want to split the party again like at every edition change in the past. They want to unify the party while updating the core to build on everything they've learned from selling us the expansions and playing them with us over the last 10 years. 

This is 5.5e MAYBE. 5.1e was the updated SRD that came out just a few months after the 5.0e SRD in 2016, alongside the finalized 5e Basic Rules v1.0. 5.2e would then be Xanathar's in 2017, 5.3e would be Tasha's and the changes it brought in 2019, and 5.4e would be Mordenkainen Presents and the changes that it brought this year (2022).


----------



## Uni-the-Unicorn!

No, I don’t think. Not anymore than any other edition shift and most likely a lot less.


----------



## Cadence

So, in the case of an actual edition change 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 3.5 -> 4 -> 5 was a huge percent of the sales of the core books, at least at first, to those who played the previous edition?  

On the other hand, was there much of a big rush to get the new 1e covered core books by the previous owners at all?  

So, assuming Yes and No respectively, what's the marketing gimmick to get all of the current 5e owners to buy a definitely not new edition set of core books when they already have a set?


----------



## Incenjucar

Overall it's going to be bigger than the number of books people buy multiple times with zero changes, and may sell to people who have been holding off from 5.0E to avoid buying a stale edition.


----------



## Ogre Mage

I have seen a "significant divide" with the release of 3.X, 4E (a gigantic divide in this case) and 5E.  If the World Wide Web had existed when 2E came out I strongly believe I would have seen a divide as well.

I expect there will be divide with the new edition and we will have 5E grognards.  There's no reason One D&D should be an exception.


----------



## tetrasodium

Ogre Mage said:


> I have seen a "significant divide" with the release of 3.X, 4E (a gigantic divide in this case) and 5E.  If the World Wide Web had existed when 2E came out I strongly believe I would have seen a divide as well.
> 
> I expect there will be divide with the new edition and we will have 5E grognards.  There's no reason One D&D should be an exception.



Possibly but I think the lack of useful gm guidance combined with "you can do whatever you want in your <distasteful tone>_home game</distasteful tone>_, but officially it should be..." & the munchkin levels of design present in some area of the rules creates constant pressure for the one true way of 5e.  With at least two of those three changing with 6e it diverts that internet pressure that you note.


----------



## overgeeked

Lycurgon said:


> I'm not saying it _will_ but that it _could_. Part of me thinks that the changes we are seeing will be scaled back due to negative feedback and not be as many big proposed changes that we have seen so far in the playtest material.



I don't believe this is an actual playtest in the vein of D&D Next or any other playtest. They've more than likely already decided what changes they're going to make and will massage the released "playtest" documents to generate the feedback they want or simply ignore feedback that goes against what they've already decided. They released Experts 4 October, opened the survey 20 October and it will close after 14 days. So a whopping 16 days to use it before the survey opens and a total of 30 days to use it before the survey closes. The responses they're getting are not playtest responses, rather they're gut reaction, reading it a few times, and maybe...maybe trying it once or twice at the table.


Lycurgon said:


> But if the level of changes (or something close) that we are seeing go through, the game will be changed quite a bit. It will still have the same basic structure/mechanics but there will be limits to how much mixing and matching can happen between 5e and 1D&D.
> 
> Currently you can't use the more powerful Races from 5e (which provide Ability increases) with the Backgrounds from character origins playtest (which provide Ability Increases and a feat) and pick a Class from 5e with a subclass from 1 D&D (or vice versa) that have a different number of subclass features at different levels. And yes they cover the ability score increase in a sidebar and can make conversion rules for other things. But freely mixing and matching will through off the balance of things.



Backwards compatibility is a marketing gimmick to soften the drop in sales the announcement of a new edition brings.


Lycurgon said:


> But with the amount of changes we are seeing (if a similar amount make it into the final product) I know there will be groups that don't change to the new rules and am sure there will be groups that will abandon all the old rules and just stick to just the new. Other groups may use a houseruled mix of the 2.



It happens every edition.


Lycurgon said:


> It is possible this with will create a divide in the community where some people are not buying the new material that is being produced by WotC and maybe even being supported by some 3rd party publishers that stick with 5e.



The vast majority of players will switch over to the new. Especially with the new stuff being inherently more powerful than the old stuff.


Lycurgon said:


> So while there is certain to be a divide, how significant do you currently think it will be? It might only be a small number of groups that don't convert to the new rules and stop buying any new books from WotC. Just like with every edition change some groups will remain with the edition they are used to/like. But will the size of this 5e only community be significant? Could the divide be big enough that 1D&D actually, ironically, creates a need to make a new 6e to reunite the community? (Probably not?)



The holdover fan community will likely be bigger than any other previous edition, except maybe AD&D and the variations of Basic. Maybe. It will definitely utterly dwarf most other non-D&D communities. Edition changes cause fandom splits. The best WotC can hope for is that the split will be small. It all depends on how significant the changes are and how invested players are. The bigger the changes and the more invested the player, the less likely they are to switch. Unless they happen to have heaps of disposable income.


Lycurgon said:


> And with the changes you have seen so far, if they all pretty much make it into the finished 1D&D release, would you and your group change to the new version?



My main D&D group is switching to DCC for the time being. We might go back to AD&D. We might pick up OSE. Who knows. We're incredibly tired of the fantasy superhero, no challenge, cakewalk nature of 5E. We'll look at 5.5 after it drops and go from there. Unless there's a serious shake up in direction, the chances of us playing 5.5 are negligible.


Lycurgon said:


> What are your thoughts so far about this?



Some people love it and good for them. I don't think the minor tweaks they've released so far are enough to make me and mine enthusiastic about 5.5. Kinda the opposite. Power escalation, more feats, 1st-level feats, feat chains, clear drive and focus on digital...it's going the wrong direction for us. But that's what sells, so that's what WotC chases.


----------



## Marandahir

overgeeked said:


> I don't believe this is an actual playtest in the vein of D&D Next or any other playtest. They've more than likely already decided what changes they're going to make and will massage the released "playtest" documents to generate the feedback they want or simply ignore feedback that goes against what they've already decided. They released Experts 4 October, opened the survey 20 October and it will close after 14 days. So a whopping 16 days to use it before the survey opens and a total of 30 days to use it before the survey closes. The responses they're getting are not playtest responses, rather they're gut reaction, reading it a few times, and maybe...maybe trying it once or twice at the table.



Survey is closing on November 10th - that's 21 days after opening and 37 days after release. You're welcome to your own conspiracy theories, but don't be surprised if most of us are going to take WotC at their word, if somewhat skeptically. After all, many UAs in the past have seen major revisions based on negative feedback from players.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

Marandahir said:


> Survey is closing on November 10th - that's 21 days after opening and 37 days after release. You're welcome to your own conspiracy theories, but don't be surprised if most of us are going to take WotC at their word, if somewhat skeptically. After all, many UAs in the past have seen major revisions based on negative feedback from players.




I think it is indeed not a real playtest. It is more of a feeltest.
But calling it a marketing ploy is most probably... just forget it. Won't convince anyone.


----------



## DEFCON 1

I think "playtest" is probably the wrong word to use actually (based upon traditional usage.)  All of us in the general public are not meant to be "testing" the "game" part of these rules to make sure the rules work 100%.  They have their own internal and external alpha and beta testers for that.  This was true for D&D Next, has been true through all the UAs, and is true for One D&D.  We are not here to make sure the rules "work".

What we are here for is to give our impressions of interest and usability of the rules they present us.  Do we like these ideas they are putting forth?  Do they make us say to ourselves "Hmm!  That's a good change!  I like that idea!"... or do we say "Ugh!  Why the heck are they doing that?!?"  And they are using those responses to determine whether or not to continue down the paths they have been looking.

We don't need to create Bard PCs and "test" in actual games whether or not we like the Arcane / Divine / Primal spell list switch, and the Bard's use of only certain schools from the Arcane list.  We get our reactions immediately upon reading the playtest packet and can say to them without much thought at all whether or not we think that change is a good idea.  Hopefully everyone who did or did not like the change from Class spell lists to Power Source spell lists actually said so in the survey (I know I certainly did) because that's the way WotC will know whether or not to continue using it for the next packet.

Yes, some of the more cynical among us will believe that the Power Source spell lists are here to stay because WotC wants it and no responses to the playtest packets will ever change that because the "playtest" isn't "real".  Frankly though, I think those people are being silly.  Because there is absolutely nothing for Jeremy, Chris et. al. to gain by ignoring what people's responses in the surveys are.  Waste of time spent designing the rules that we then say we don't like?  These people write and design rules all the time-- that's most of their jobs!  They create rules and ideas that don't get used _constantly_ every day... so why would _*these*_ rules in these playtest packets be so sacrosanct that they'd ignore our statements of displeasure and keep using them even though a lot of us said they didn't work?  That's just dumb.  And I do not believe Jeremy, Chris et. al. are dumb.

Of course... this belief won't matter if it turns out that enough actually liked or were ambivalent to Power Source spell lists that WotC felt comfortable continuing down that road... which will of course result in those cynics who didn't like them to keep screaming "See!  They are ignoring these playtest surveys!"  Because of course some folks here on the boards refuse to accept that their own preferences to how D&D should be are not widely held (and in fact might actually be outright stupid).  So for those people... c'est la vie!


----------



## Bedrockgames

Ogre Mage said:


> I have seen a "significant divide" with the release of 3.X, 4E (a gigantic divide in this case) and 5E.  If the World Wide Web had existed when 2E came out I strongly believe I would have seen a divide as well.




I remember there being a divide when 2E came out. I think the backwards compatibility and the fact that you often could still buy most of the 1E stuff easily at stores made it a little different. But there was a pretty big gulf stylistically between those two editions and in how they approached things like running the game. I knew lots of groups who wouldn't play 2E after (and I knew a lot of GMs who stuck with basic D&D after 2E came out). Something to keep in mind too that is a little different in that era from now: there were effectively 3 editions available at that time. I don't know when they stopped printing the 1E books, but well into 2E I still remember being able to buy those and I remember players picking them up for inclusion in our 2E game. But there was also stuff like the Mentzer boxed set still widely available in major outlets (it was in book stores, toy stores etc) and there was the D&D rules cyclopedia. So when I played with a new group, I'd often find myself playing 1E or basic D&D using the rules Cyclopedia (and virtually everyone had the Mentzer boxed set).


----------



## Micah Sweet

DEFCON 1 said:


> I think "playtest" is probably the wrong word to use actually (based upon traditional usage.)  All of us in the general public are not meant to be "testing" the "game" part of these rules to make sure the rules work 100%.  They have their own internal and external alpha and beta testers for that.  This was true for D&D Next, has been true through all the UAs, and is true for One D&D.  We are not here to make sure the rules "work".
> 
> What we are here for is to give our impressions of interest and usability of the rules they present us.  Do we like these ideas they are putting forth?  Do they make us say to ourselves "Hmm!  That's a good change!  I like that idea!"... or do we say "Ugh!  Why the heck are they doing that?!?"  And they are using those responses to determine whether or not to continue down the paths they have been looking.
> 
> We don't need to create Bard PCs and "test" in actual games whether or not we like the Arcane / Divine / Primal spell list switch, and the Bard's use of only certain schools from the Arcane list.  We get our reactions immediately upon reading the playtest packet and can say to them without much thought at all whether or not we think that change is a good idea.  Hopefully everyone who did or did not like the change from Class spell lists to Power Source spell lists actually said so in the survey (I know I certainly did) because that's the way WotC will know whether or not to continue using it for the next packet.
> 
> Yes, some of the more cynical among us will believe that the Power Source spell lists are here to stay because WotC wants it and no responses to the playtest packets will ever change that because the "playtest" isn't "real".  Frankly though, I think those people are being silly.  Because there is absolutely nothing for Jeremy, Chris et. al. to gain by ignoring what people's responses in the surveys are.  Waste of time spent designing the rules that we then say we don't like?  These people write and design rules all the time-- that's most of their jobs!  They create rules and ideas that don't get used _constantly_ every day... so why would _*these*_ rules in these playtest packets be so sacrosanct that they'd ignore our statements of displeasure and keep using them even though a lot of us said they didn't work?  That's just dumb.  And I do not believe Jeremy, Chris et. al. are dumb.
> 
> Of course... this belief won't matter if it turns out that enough actually liked or were ambivalent to Power Source spell lists that WotC felt comfortable continuing down that road... which will of course result in those cynics who didn't like them to keep screaming "See!  They are ignoring these playtest surveys!"  Because of course some folks here on the boards refuse to accept that their own preferences to how D&D should be are not widely held (and in fact might actually be outright stupid).  So for those people... c'est la vie!



I don't think my beliefs are particularly widely held.  But that really doesn't matter to whether or not I'm going to like/play/buy new rules, or whether or not I'm going to talk about my likes, dislikes and speculations.  All we have are our opinions, and whether or not we expect disappointment.


----------



## Fifth Element

overgeeked said:


> I don't think the minor tweaks they've released so far



If you believe they are minor tweaks then your assertion that it's not really a playtest because of the short time frame isn't even internally consistent (leaving aside all of the other baseless speculation and conspiracy theorizing in your post). Why would they need an extended playtest for "minor tweaks"? A short playtest timeframe is absolutely consistent with minor tweaks. So you're arguing against yourself here.


----------



## DEFCON 1

Micah Sweet said:


> I don't think my beliefs are particularly widely held.  But that really doesn't matter to whether or not I'm going to like/play/buy new rules, or whether or not I'm going to talk about my likes, dislikes and speculations.  All we have are our opinions, and whether or not we expect disappointment.



Of course.  I would expect nothing less from you, Micah.


----------



## Bill Zebub

UngeheuerLich said:


> But calling it a marketing ploy is most probably... just forget it. Won't convince anyone.




I'm with you.

Some years ago a book came out claiming that dogs don't actually love us, rather they have just evolved to exhibit behaviors that we anthropomorphize as "love", because those behaviors resulted in us taking care of them.

I thought that was a silly argument for two reasons:
1) If those behaviors really are the result of evolutionary pressure, which I agree is probably the case, it seems to me more likely that dogs would evolve to actually love us, rather than independently evolve all these separate behaviors that are indistinguishable from love.
2) In any event, it's impossible to tell the difference between genuine love and strategic love.  So what's the point in trying to make that distinction?

The answer to #2 is, of course, if you have an ulterior motive of pushing a narrative that only humans have emotions.

It feels like there's something similar going on here.  In the absence of incriminating emails, how does one distinguish between a desire to deliver a great product to the largest possible audience, and a shameless money grab?  You can't.  Either way the external evidence is going to be identical. Or, at least, in this case the external evidence is identical.  The distinction is entirely a matter of how we choose to interpret the behavior.

And for the life of me I can't understand why anybody would voluntarily choose the cynical, bitter interpretation.  Seems like a miserable story to keep telling oneself.


----------



## Clint_L

What this thread is revealing to me is how much difficulty a lot of _players_ are having letting go of the old editions paradigm, rather than Wizards of the Coast. It's one thing to be healthily skeptical, and another to just dig your heels in and say "it has always been thus, and so it must always be thus."

What if, just for a moment, we allow for the thought experiment: imagine that WotC _actually means what they say_, are basically happy with the 5e rules set, and want to abandon the old editions model that created schisms in their player base by expecting players to abandon their old stuff whole sale and purchase a new version of the game. Is that an _impossibility_? Because a lot of folks seem to be assuming that it is.

Edit: WotC has _good reasons_, as they have explained at length, to want to get away from the old editions paradigm, which basically arose as a short term mechanism to save TSR from impending bankruptcy back in the 80s rather than from any genius, long term strategy. And though they haven't stated so directly, WotC has good _financial_ reasons to junk the "editions" cycle for D&D. A lot of them! It makes sense for them to want to get out of it! So I really don't understand why so many folks find the concept so utterly unbelievable. Grognards gotta grognard, I suppose.


----------



## payn

Clint_L said:


> What this thread is revealing to me is how much difficulty a lot of _players_ are having letting go of the old editions paradigm, rather than Wizards of the Coast. It's one thing to be healthily skeptical, and another to just dig your heels in and say "it has always been thus, and so it must always be thus."
> 
> What if, just for a moment, we allow for the thought experiment: imagine that WotC _actually means what they say_, are basically happy with the 5e rules set, and want to abandon the old editions model that created schisms in their player base by expecting players to abandon their old stuff whole sale and purchase a new version of the game. Is that an _impossibility_? Because a lot of folks seem to be assuming that it is.



So, if subclasses were moved from level 3 to 1, thats just D&D? If they brought back alignment mechanics, thats just D&D? If they brought back AEDU, that's just D&D? If they add a new subsystem to allow a more narrative approach, thats just D&D? No matter the changes in the future, its just D&D with no way to differentiate mechanics at any point in its history since 2014?


----------



## Marandahir

payn said:


> So, if subclasses were moved from level 3 to 1, thats just D&D? If they brought back alignment mechanics, thats just D&D? If they brought back AEDU, that's just D&D? If they add a new subsystem to allow a more narrative approach, thats just D&D? No matter the changes in the future, its just D&D with no way to differentiate mechanics at any point in its history since 2014?



They have no financial incentive to bring back 4e or 2e as a parallel product to 5e. 

The want everyone to play the same D&D. The alternative is to prop up a rival like _Pathfinder_. 

So it's just 5e with some errata (some extensive, others less so) built into a fresh new PHB. The DMG will have new content that is perhaps more useful to DM's - something I'm super looking forward to. They don't want to use edition labels for it because they don't want to create a schism as all. They want us to be playing the same game we're always playing. But for a lot of us, having those rules updates in a single fresh new version of the Core Rules that can realign some ideas that were broken makes sense. Having the revised Ranger in the PHB rather than having to find it in Tasha's makes sense. Having a Monk of the Four Elements in the PHB that works makes sense. Having actual narrative differences to the Fighter subclasses in the PHB makes sense. These are all things they've wanted for 5e but it hasn't made sense previously because they weren't re-doing the Core Rules. But they're ultimately cleaning up the game to make it all fit a bit better with the most recent books they've issued. 

The biggest audience for these books are new players. But if you're using the old books, that's fine too. The Power level shouldn't be too off, and I would definitely expect the DMG and/or free columns on D&D Beyond to discuss how to balance the power of 2014 and 2024 PCs with each other (perhaps by granting a bonus feat or some sort to the older book characters). 

It's not a new edition, it's a revised version reprint. Perhaps this is because editions and versions are confused to many D&D players (and were confused by WotC when they started calling the revisions to 3rd Edition "D&D v3.5". Yeah, you could place it as the v1.5 take on 3rd Edition, but it's not like it's halfway between the design of 3e and 4e. It's 3e v1.5; not D&D v3.5 to be supplanted by D&D v4.0. This is a v1.5 revision of 5e, in a sense, but 5e & One D&D ≠ 4e & Essentials ≠ 3e & 3.5e ≠ Basic & AD&D ≠ B/X, BECMI, & RC ≠ Original. They're different games, essentially, with shared heritage and some linearity, but really more like development forks. _Pathfinder_ 1e, for example, is a fork off of 3e, while 4e was a separate fork building off of _Bo9S_ and the 3.5e _PHB2_, among other influences. One could argue that Basic and Advanced were intended as the same game, and A1e and A2e and A2e_ Player's Option_ were just iterations on the same idea, but B/X was a separate fork off of _Basic_ and developed into BECMI and then RC. _Original D&D_ of course inspired all of it, and _Chainmail_ in some ways, alongside _Braunstein_, was like the v0.01 versions of _Original_.


----------



## payn

Marandahir said:


> They have no financial incentive to bring back 4e or 2e as a parallel product to 5e.
> 
> The want everyone to play the same D&D. The alternative is to prop up a rival like _Pathfinder_.
> 
> So it's just 5e with some errata (some extensive, others less so) built into a fresh new PHB. The DMG will have new content that is perhaps more useful to DM's - something I'm super looking forward to. They don't want to use edition labels for it because they don't want to create a schism as all. They want us to be playing the same game we're always playing. But for a lot of us, having those rules updates in a single fresh new version of the Core Rules that can realign some ideas that were broken makes sense. Having the revised Ranger in the PHB rather than having to find it in Tasha's makes sense. Having a Monk of the Four Elements in the PHB that works makes sense. Having actual narrative differences to the Fighter subclasses in the PHB makes sense. These are all things they've wanted for 5e but it hasn't made sense previously because they weren't re-doing the Core Rules. But they're ultimately cleaning up the game to make it all fit a bit better with the most recent books they've issued.
> 
> The biggest audience for these books are new players. But if you're using the old books, that's fine too. The Power level shouldn't be too off, and I would definitely expect the DMG and/or free columns on D&D Beyond to discuss how to balance the power of 2014 and 2024 PCs with each other (perhaps by granting a bonus feat or some sort to the older book characters).
> 
> It's not a new edition, it's a revised version reprint. Perhaps this is because editions and versions are confused to many D&D players (and were confused by WotC when they started calling the revisions to 3rd Edition "D&D v3.5". Yeah, you could place it as the v1.5 take on 3rd Edition, but it's not like it's halfway between the design of 3e and 4e. It's 3e v1.5; not D&D v3.5 to be supplanted by D&D v4.0. This is a v1.5 revision of 5e, in a sense, but 5e & One D&D ≠ 4e & Essentials ≠ 3e & 3.5e ≠ Basic & AD&D ≠ B/X, BECMI, & RC ≠ Original. They're different games, essentially, with shared heritage and some linearity, but really more like development forks. _Pathfinder_ 1e, for example, is a fork off of 3e, while 4e was a separate fork building off of _Bo9S_ and the 3.5e _PHB2_, among other influences. One could argue that Basic and Advanced were intended as the same game, and A1e and A2e and A2e_ Player's Option_ were just iterations on the same idea, but B/X was a separate fork off of _Basic_ and developed into BECMI and then RC. _Original D&D_ of course inspired all of it, and _Chainmail_ in some ways, alongside _Braunstein_, was like the v0.01 versions of _Original_.



I get that, but eventually these small changes will become big ones. Perhaps thats way down the road, but the rules cant just get .01 updates in perpetuity. When that time comes, you need a way to differentiate it. Folks are not hung up on the word edition, but the concept behind it. You cant eliminate it, so what will it be called? WotC doesnt need to worry about that at the moment, so im sure they will deliver a new conceptual name when the time comes. Some folks are just not patient.


----------



## Marandahir

payn said:


> I get that, but eventually these small changes will become big ones. Perhaps thats way down the road, but the rules cant just get .01 updates in perpetuity. When that time comes, you need a way to differentiate it. Folks are not hung up on the word edition, but the concept behind it. You cant eliminate it, so what will it be called? WotC doesnt need to worry about that at the moment, so im sure they will deliver a new conceptual name when the time comes. Some folks are just not patient.



We don't need to worry about what might happen in the future, just about the shift right now. This is incrementalism. Sure in 2054, will the game look very different from 2014? Absolutely - 40 years of incremental developement alongside a completely changing demographic would do that. But it's kinda like biological or philological evolution: there's no clear cut off between the different boxes, just fuzzy boundaries of when something became something else. To the Spanish, they were always still speaking Latin, it's just that the French and the Italians were speaking it WRONG! 

English 500 years from now will look and sound completely different from our English, just as our English is not mutually intelligible with Middle English or Old English (Anglo-Saxon). But there's a continuity of speech, and no one generation "decided" to speak differently than the last; they all had incremental tweaks to the language. Sure, you'll have wholecloth language replacement as well, and you'll have injections of whole lexicons due to merging populations, but the language lineage is possible to trace and nobody believed they were suddenly speaking Middle English and not Old English (though perhaps Ye Olde English was believed to exist as people compared their English to the old English written by their ancestors). 

My point is that the game will certainly change. It already has in many ways. It makes sense to publish a new encyclopedia of rules based on those changes and based on a few more changes WotC have wanted to make (or are testing if they should make) but hadn't previously made because they didn't want to "invalidate" the 2014 books. But these changes are no bigger than the ones introduced in the _Rules Expansions_. They're all incremental. So One D&D is to say, D&D = English. We're not going to call it Old D&D or New D&D or Middle D&D, but just D&D. It's going to change over time. That's fine for everyone save the systematic D&Dologists amongst us to feel like they have to categorize everything into neat little boxes.


----------



## payn

Marandahir said:


> We don't need to worry about what might happen in the future, just about the shift right now. This is incrementalism. Sure in 2054, will the game look very different from 2014? Absolutely - 40 years of incremental developement alongside a completely changing demographic would do that. But it's kinda like biological or philological evolution: there's no clear cut off between the different boxes, just fuzzy boundaries of when something became something else. To the Spanish, they were always still speaking Latin, it's just that the French and the Italians were speaking it WRONG!
> 
> English 500 years from now will look and sound completely different from our English, just as our English is not mutually intelligible with Middle English or Old English (Anglo-Saxon). But there's a continuity of speech, and no one generation "decided" to speak differently than the last; they all had incremental tweaks to the language. Sure, you'll have wholecloth language replacement as well, and you'll have injections of whole lexicons due to merging populations, but the language lineage is possible to trace and nobody believed they were suddenly speaking Middle English and not Old English (though perhaps Ye Olde English was believed to exist as people compared their English to the old English written by their ancestors).
> 
> My point is that the game will certainly change. It already has in many ways. It makes sense to publish a new encyclopedia of rules based on those changes and based on a few more changes WotC have wanted to make (or are testing if they should make) but hadn't previously made because they didn't want to "invalidate" the 2014 books. But these changes are no bigger than the ones introduced in the _Rules Expansions_. They're all incremental. So One D&D is to say, D&D = English. We're not going to call it Old D&D or New D&D or Middle D&D, but just D&D. It's going to change over time. That's fine for everyone save the systematic D&Dologists amongst us to feel like they have to categorize everything into neat little boxes.



Problem is folks already consider 2014 as old English and what is coming as new English. They want a way to differentiate them which will be helpful when finding players. Just saying D&D is already not working.


----------



## tetrasodium

payn said:


> Problem is folks already consider 2014 as old English and what is coming as new English. They want a way to differentiate them which will be helpful when finding players. Just saying D&D is already not working.



Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, Millemium, Whistler, Harmony, Longhorn, Blue, Redstone, Sun Valley... Those are all codenames used for extremely well known & widespread products but none of them were confusing when those products eventually came into the hands of most computer users on some level.  Differentiation will come about when things approach a finalized ruleset but the current playtest is nowhere near that. If it turns out to be that the codename is great by then then the codename will be good enough.  _If_ it turns out that it's divisive in a problematic way then wotc can easily do what was often said would have helped 4e & just release it as a parallel d&d like but not d&d product that gets more of the market to buy their 5e HC adventures for years longer.








There's a second interpretation different from the old English one though.  In a lot of areas the 2014 5e chases player facing streamlining & simplicity with the ejection & omission of rules to a point analogous to 



Spoiler: Ithkuil







Ithkuil is designed to be maximally precise while using the fewest letters possible.  While the language succeeds at the goal it results in a silly gain of little value at the cost of huge overhead in writing & reading it... Great if your only concern is the person carrying the written text but awful if you need to be the one who reads or writes it.  The 2014 ruleset often  results in a similar gain where the players see simple clear rules with guaranteed success in a game that's to some degree already fixed by the GM.  Things get messy  for the GM however with the rules that seemed so simple to players managing to fail at providing supportwith rules & guidance for supporting the gm while simultaneously set the GM up as the badguy trying to subvert the perfection this it was thus it must always be people have commented on in the last several posts.  oned&d/6e seems to be targeting some of that & has pledged to do better on the dmg side.


----------



## Fifth Element

payn said:


> So, if subclasses were moved from level 3 to 1, thats just D&D? If they brought back alignment mechanics, thats just D&D? If they brought back AEDU, that's just D&D? If they add a new subsystem to allow a more narrative approach, thats just D&D? No matter the changes in the future, its just D&D with no way to differentiate mechanics at any point in its history since 2014?



If your DM doesn't allow Tasha's, you're playing D&D. If your DM does allow Tasha's, you're playing D&D.

So....yes. I think we can handle it.


----------



## payn

Fifth Element said:


> If your DM doesn't allow Tasha's, you're playing D&D. If your DM does allow Tasha's, you're playing D&D.
> 
> So....yes. I think we can handle it.



Tasha's is a supplement. You can say D&D; no Tasha's. I suppose you can say D&D 2014, not D&D 2024. Point is its the same as saying edition, its a needed concept.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Bill Zebub said:


> I'm with you.
> 
> Some years ago a book came out claiming that dogs don't actually love us, rather they have just evolved to exhibit behaviors that we anthropomorphize as "love", because those behaviors resulted in us taking care of them.
> 
> I thought that was a silly argument for two reasons:
> 1) If those behaviors really are the result of evolutionary pressure, which I agree is probably the case, it seems to me more likely that dogs would evolve to actually love us, rather than independently evolve all these separate behaviors that are indistinguishable from love.
> 2) In any event, it's impossible to tell the difference between genuine love and strategic love.  So what's the point in trying to make that distinction?
> 
> The answer to #2 is, of course, if you have an ulterior motive of pushing a narrative that only humans have emotions.
> 
> It feels like there's something similar going on here.  In the absence of incriminating emails, how does one distinguish between a desire to deliver a great product to the largest possible audience, and a shameless money grab?  You can't.  Either way the external evidence is going to be identical. Or, at least, in this case the external evidence is identical.  The distinction is entirely a matter of how we choose to interpret the behavior.
> 
> And for the life of me I can't understand why anybody would voluntarily choose the cynical, bitter interpretation.  Seems like a miserable story to keep telling oneself.



Because you're not getting what you want.  If you're not getting what you want, you interpret the behaviors and motivations causing you to not get what you want as negative.


----------



## Thomas Shey

Micah Sweet said:


> Because you're not getting what you want.  If you're not getting what you want, you interpret the behaviors and motivations causing you to not get what you want as negative.




I do have to point out that its entirely possible for motivations that are entirely positive to not give you what you want.  In fact, I'd argue that no matter _how_ positive the motives on systemic redesign they won't give someone what they want, and will actively detract from it, because contrary to what some people say you really can't get a floor wax and desert topping in one.

This means its not necessary to view what someone is doing through a cynical lens to perceive it likely they won't give you what you want.  Frankly the whole D&D design paradigm hasn't given me what I want in onto 40 years now, but I don't perceive that as signs of malign intent.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Thomas Shey said:


> I do have to point out that its entirely possible for motivations that are entirely positive to not give you what you want.  In fact, I'd argue that no matter _how_ positive the motives on systemic redesign they won't give someone what they want, and will actively detract from it, because contrary to what some people say you really can't get a floor wax and desert topping in one.
> 
> This means its not necessary to view what someone is doing through a cynical lens to perceive it likely they won't give you what you want.  Frankly the whole D&D design paradigm hasn't given me what I want in onto 40 years now, but I don't perceive that as signs of malign intent.



It's easier to see malign intent if they have been giving you what you want for years and then stop.


----------



## Bill Zebub

Micah Sweet said:


> Because you're not getting what you want.  If you're not getting what you want, you interpret the behaviors and motivations causing you to not get what you want as negative.




What flavor “negative”? I’m quick to accuse designers of bad judgment, or of listening to the wrong playtesters, when I don’t get what I want. But I still assume they are trying to make what they think are the best design choices. 

“Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.”


----------



## Micah Sweet

Bill Zebub said:


> What flavor “negative”? I’m quick to accuse designers of bad judgment, or of listening to the wrong playtesters, when I don’t get what I want. But I still assume they are trying to make what they think are the best design choices.
> 
> “Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.”



I'm cool with think of them as incompetent instead.


----------



## Bill Zebub

Micah Sweet said:


> I'm cool with think of them as incompetent instead.




It would be much kinder.


----------



## overgeeked

Micah Sweet said:


> I'm cool with think of them as incompetent instead.



Or what‘s good design just isn’t popular and doesn’t sell well enough so they drop it. Like with 4E. It was amazingly designed. It was just not well received. It’s weird how people confuse “what sells” with “good design.” WotC will put out whatever sells. Doesn’t matter how good or bad the design.


----------



## Bill Zebub

overgeeked said:


> Or what‘s good design just isn’t popular and doesn’t sell well enough so they drop it. Like with 4E. It was amazingly designed. It was just not well received. It’s weird how people confuse “what sells” with “good design.” WotC will put out whatever sells. Doesn’t matter how good or bad the design.




It’s also weird how people often equate “my preference” with “good design.”

Knowhatimsayin’?


----------



## Dwarf 007

leonardozg said:


> I think I'll see dialogues like this:
> 
> "Let's play D&D fifth edition?"
> "Sure! Can I use One D&D rules?"
> "No, just 5e."
> 
> Or posts like this:
> "LFG 5e to play Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Tuesdays 8-10PM. Updated rules from D&D One only".
> 
> Call it different editions or not, the word doesn't matter, but the impact of the changes. That's what I meant.




Online gaming with easy access to "current rules including changes", will be much more problematic for those wishing to run D&D 5.0 instead; but in person gaming with access to real printed copies, will be out of WOTC's control....forever.


----------



## Ogre Mage

Bedrockgames said:


> I remember there being a divide when 2E came out. I think the backwards compatibility and the fact that you often could still buy most of the 1E stuff easily at stores made it a little different. But there was a pretty big gulf stylistically between those two editions and in how they approached things like running the game. I knew lots of groups who wouldn't play 2E after (and I knew a lot of GMs who stuck with basic D&D after 2E came out). Something to keep in mind too that is a little different in that era from now: there were effectively 3 editions available at that time. I don't know when they stopped printing the 1E books, but well into 2E I still remember being able to buy those and I remember players picking them up for inclusion in our 2E game. But there was also stuff like the Mentzer boxed set still widely available in major outlets (it was in book stores, toy stores etc) and there was the D&D rules cyclopedia. So when I played with a new group, I'd often find myself playing 1E or basic D&D using the rules Cyclopedia (and virtually everyone had the Mentzer boxed set).



Thanks for this confirmation.  I was in 8th grade and had only been playing D&D for a few years when 2E was released.  I didn't have the same perspective that I did with later edition changes when I was a longtime D&D player, an adult and had an internet connection.  1E-2E was a vastly different world from the WoTC era but as I suspected some divisions have always been with us.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

overgeeked said:


> Or what‘s good design just isn’t popular and doesn’t sell well enough so they drop it. Like with 4E. It was amazingly designed. It was just not well received. It’s weird how people confuse “what sells” with “good design.” WotC will put out whatever sells. Doesn’t matter how good or bad the design.




Sometimes "good design" does not mean appealing, because it might be too smooth and not exciting.*

*Sometimes you love persons or thing because they are not perfect and have interesting little quirks and flaws.


----------



## Swarmkeeper

UngeheuerLich said:


> Sometimes "good design" does not mean appealing, because it might be too smooth and not exciting.*
> 
> *Sometimes you love persons or thing because they are not perfect and have interesting little quirks and flaws.




Kinda like embracing that 8 or even a 6 as one of your PC's six ability scores...

[ducks]


----------



## Bill Zebub

Swarmkeeper said:


> Kinda like embracing that 8 or even a 6 as one of your PC's six ability scores...
> 
> [ducks]




Why “duck”? Is that controversial?


----------



## tetrasodium

Bill Zebub said:


> Why “duck”? Is that controversial?



5e's "give your players what they want" mantra is so deeply enshrined at so many levels of chargen & charop that it's weirdly controversial to even suggest that anything less than the elite array should ever be used or accepted.

/just guessing


----------



## Thomas Shey

Micah Sweet said:


> It's easier to see malign intent if they have been giving you what you want for years and then stop.




Doesn't change my statement.  Markets change; products changing with them is not a sign of malign intent.  It just means the market has moved away from you.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Thomas Shey said:


> Doesn't change my statement.  Markets change; products changing with them is not a sign of malign intent.  It just means the market has moved away from you.



Yes, and when that happens, people react negatively.


----------



## Thomas Shey

Micah Sweet said:


> Yes, and when that happens, people react negatively.




Reacting negatively is one thing.  Blaming designers for actually serving the market is a different story.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Thomas Shey said:


> Reacting negatively is one thing.  Blaming designers for actually serving the market is a different story.



I would be a terrible businessperson, because art I create is based on what I want to do and what I think is good, not what "the market" is most likely to spend money on.  WotC's bottom line is not my concern, so if they make something I don't want to buy, I'm not giving them money for it, and I'm not going to just be fine with them continuing that trend.  We're allowed to discuss products we don't care for, and if that seems to be a trend, we're allowed to discuss that too.


----------



## overgeeked

Bill Zebub said:


> It’s also weird how people often equate “my preference” with “good design.”
> 
> Knowhatimsayin’?



Exactly. Hilariously, you seem to think that applies to _me_ but not to _you_. Most in this thread cheering the changes can’t seem to separate their preferences from the quality of the design. “I like it therefore it’s good” seems to be the only statement a lot of folks are capable of making.


----------



## Bill Zebub

overgeeked said:


> Exactly. Hilariously, you seem to think that applies to _me_ but not to _you_.




Citation needed.  Where have I expressed that?


----------



## Bill Zebub

Micah Sweet said:


> I would be a terrible businessperson, because art I create is based on what I want to do and what I think is good, not what "the market" is most likely to spend money on.




I'll tell you what: if you ever achieve widespread commercial success with your art, which I hope you do, I promise I won't assume you're just a sell-out chasing the market, even if I personally don't appreciate your art.  Nor will I fill the internet with posts claiming you are a non-artist making a money grab.  I _might_ make posts about what I think of your art, but I won't go anywhere near your motivations for making it, because I would just be making that up.



Micah Sweet said:


> We're allowed to discuss products we don't care for, and if that seems to be a trend, we're allowed to discuss that too.




Discussing the products if fine.  Great, even.  

It's the constant, derogatory, baseless conjecture about the motivations and mindset of the designers that I think is unnecessary and offensive.


----------



## overgeeked

Bill Zebub said:


> It's the constant, derogatory, baseless conjecture about the motivations and mindset of the designers that I think is unnecessary and offensive.



It’s clear they’re not giving people time to actually playtest these things. That’s not “baseless conjecture.”


----------



## Bill Zebub

overgeeked said:


> It’s clear they’re not giving people time to actually playtest these things. That’s not “baseless conjecture.”




That’s also not a motivation/mindset. 

Contrast to: “…because they’ve already made up their minds and they just want us to think they care about our opinion.”

Not only is that baseless conjecture, but it’s undermined by the fact that they already reverted changes between packets 1 & 2.

Or had they already planned that out in advance to create the illusion that they hadn’t made up their minds? “That’s a terrible idea, Jeremy, but let’s put it in packet 3 then roll it back in 4 so they think we are reading the surveys.” How fiendishly clever of them.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Ogre Mage said:


> Thanks for this confirmation.  I was in 8th grade and had only been playing D&D for a few years when 2E was released.  I didn't have the same perspective that I did with later edition changes when I was a longtime D&D player, an adult and had an internet connection.  1E-2E was a vastly different world from the WoTC era but as I suspected some divisions have always been with us.




My perspective probably isn't that much more illuminating than your own (I was probably in 7th grade when it came out). I just remember knowing a lot of 1E only groups in middle school and high school. I also remember starting on 1st a few years before the 2E PHB came out.


----------



## Bill Zebub

Bedrockgames said:


> My perspective probably isn't that much more illuminating than your own (I was probably in 7th grade when it came out). I just remember knowing a lot of 1E only groups in middle school and high school. I also remember starting on 1st a few years before the 2E PHB came out.




My first character, created for my by my friend’s older brother, was a basic/AD&D hybrid: an elf (class and race) with 18/33 strength.


----------



## UngainlyTitan

The playtest packets are a reaction test. Anything that is rejected or controversial in the playtest packets is unlikely to make it in to the final iteration of the rules. We have seen that process already over the last eight years with playtest packets.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Bill Zebub said:


> My first character, created for my by my friend’s older brother, was a basic/AD&D hybrid: an elf (class and race) with 18/33 strength.




My first character was a robot for Mech Warrior I believe in about 1986, and then I had either an AD&D or Mentzer D&D character----can't recall what version the GM was using for our first D&D campaign. f I recall then GM made all pre-gens and tended to make balanced parties (you there were like a group of 5 characters to select from). Still not sure precisely what system that first game was as we never saw the books, the GM just said he was doing a "Battletech" campaign (everything was on lined paper in his binder too). I

But I started running games myself in 7th grade when the 2E PHB came out. Up to that point I had only been a player and bought RPGs to read. I remember a lot of our first characters had a lot of luck on those rolls. A lot of STR 18, DEX 18, CON 18, WIS 18, INT 18, CHR 17 making their way into the very early games


----------



## overgeeked

UngainlyTitan said:


> The playtest packets are a reaction test. Anything that is rejected or controversial in the playtest packets is unlikely to make it in to the final iteration of the rules. We have seen that process already over the last eight years with playtest packets.



Precisely. They don't expect you to play with these rules nor to test them in any real way. Simply to read and knee-jerk react to them. So it's not a playtest. It's an absurdly thinly veiled marketing survey.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Bill Zebub said:


> That’s also not a motivation/mindset.
> 
> Contrast to: “…because they’ve already made up their minds and they just want us to think they care about our opinion.”
> 
> Not only is that baseless conjecture, but it’s undermined by the fact that they already reverted changes between packets 1 & 2.
> 
> Or had they already planned that out in advance to create the illusion that they hadn’t made up their minds? “That’s a terrible idea, Jeremy, but let’s put it in packet 3 then roll it back in 4 so they think we are reading the surveys.” How fiendishly clever of them.



As has been mentioned more than once, the information in packet 2 was not affected by reactions to packet 1. All it says is they're undecided on a couple aspects of the new edition.


----------



## Micah Sweet

overgeeked said:


> Precisely. They don't expect you to play with these rules nor to test them in any real way. Simply to read and knee-jerk react to them. So it's not a playtest. It's an absurdly thinly veiled marketing survey.



Which is fine.  Just don't call it a playtest.


----------



## Bill Zebub

overgeeked said:


> So it's not a playtest. It's an absurdly thinly veiled marketing survey.




Maybe. 

But that potential lexical misappropriation ranks about 4,327th on my list of Things That Affect Me.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

overgeeked said:


> Precisely. They don't expect you to play with these rules nor to test them in any real way. Simply to read and knee-jerk react to them. So it's not a playtest. It's an absurdly thinly veiled marketing survey.




There is a logical fallacy.

It is not a ploy if they actually want your gut feeling about it.
But I agree, it is not a play test with emphasis on play.


----------



## Bill Zebub

UngeheuerLich said:


> There is a logical fallacy.
> 
> It is not a ploy if they actually want your gut feeling about it.
> But I agree, it is not a play test with emphasis on play.




Yes. 

If they didn’t actually care about feedback, and were just trying to build some hype, then it would be a dishonest ploy. But I’m not cynical enough to believe that. 

More likely they are expecting feedback based mostly on gut feel, with maybe _some_ actual play testing. I don’t fault them for using the standard industry term for soliciting feedback.


----------



## Thomas Shey

Micah Sweet said:


> I would be a terrible businessperson, because art I create is based on what I want to do and what I think is good, not what "the market" is most likely to spend money on.  WotC's bottom line is not my concern, so if they make something I don't want to buy, I'm not giving them money for it, and I'm not going to just be fine with them continuing that trend.  We're allowed to discuss products we don't care for, and if that seems to be a trend, we're allowed to discuss that too.




Sure.  But when you assign malign motives to doing so, I think that's a bridge too far.  Its essentially claiming that people who serve the majority purpose are malign by nature, and frankly, I don't know a non-insulting term to characterize that with.


----------



## Thomas Shey

overgeeked said:


> Exactly. Hilariously, you seem to think that applies to _me_ but not to _you_. Most in this thread cheering the changes can’t seem to separate their preferences from the quality of the design. “I like it therefore it’s good” seems to be the only statement a lot of folks are capable of making.




Of course its hard to come up with a set of criteria that can define "good design" that don't have personal preference in there somewhere.  The alternative is to conflated "good" with "popular" and, well, its not hard to find examples that bring that into question.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Thomas Shey said:


> Of course its hard to come up with a set of criteria that can define "good design" that don't have personal preference in there somewhere.  The alternative is to conflated "good" with "popular" and, well, its not hard to find examples that bring that into question.




I think the answer there is if popularity is one of the goals, it should be one of the criteria. If it isn't, it shouldn't be.


----------



## Thomas Shey

Bedrockgames said:


> I think the answer there is if popularity is one of the goals, it should be one of the criteria. If it isn't, it shouldn't be.




Its an argument, but at that point its more an argument for negative design; i.e. its actually less about how well the thing works than how much it doesn't annoy people.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Thomas Shey said:


> Its an argument, but at that point its more an argument for negative design; i.e. its actually less about how well the thing works than how much it doesn't annoy people.




It is just about measuring whether it meets its goals. Again it is one criteria among many, and only one if that is one of the goals. I mean if you are setting out to make a pop song, and you don't succeed in appealing to a mass audience, then on that part of your goal you are falling short (doesn't mean every song has to reach a mass audience or every RPG needs to be popular).


----------



## Micah Sweet

Bedrockgames said:


> I think the answer there is if popularity is one of the goals, it should be one of the criteria. If it isn't, it shouldn't be.



That's where I fall.  I wish popularity wasn't one (perhaps the most important, who can say) of WotC's goals.


----------



## overgeeked

Micah Sweet said:


> That's where I fall.  I wish popularity wasn't one (perhaps the most important, who can say) of WotC's goals.



With their stated goal of D&D being a $1 billion+ a year brand, I’d say it’s about the only thing they care about.


----------



## Marandahir

Remember also that "I don't like it, so it must not be good design" may also be at play here. 

The playtest is not a democracy, it never was a democracy, so of course playtesting is not seeking a popular vote to determine what they're going to do with the game. But they are going to use audience reactions to impact which directions they go. So while -I- may like something, or not like something, if I'm not likely going to be the target audience for this feature, or the broadest target audience of the game means it should go a different way, then my likes are not so important, no matter how much I shout them out or convince other people to voice content or discontent about the feature design in the feedback surveys. WotC still can overrule us, of course they can; the playtests are ONE piece of the evidence for why they want to publish what they want. We're a sample size of their actual audience, and if the hardcore responders to the surveys are largely grognards like a bunch of us are, then they may need to take those demographics into account when taking our opinions into account.


----------



## Bill Zebub

Marandahir said:


> Remember also that "I don't like it, so it must not be good design" may also be at play here.




That is 100% what is going on here.

There are lots of design decisions made in 5e (and really in any game) that I don't like, and would not have made had I been in charge.  I would greatly prefer other systems, if my friends also did. But does that make D&D "bad design"?  It would be arrogant of me to say so.  Also wrong.

I challenge anybody here who thinks D&D is bad design to offer an objective, universal definition of what makes good game design.


----------



## tetrasodium

Bill Zebub said:


> That is 100% what is going on here.
> 
> There are lots of design decisions made in 5e (and really in any game) that I don't like, and would not have made had I been in charge.  I would greatly prefer other systems, if my friends also did. But does that make D&D "bad design"?  It would be arrogant of me to say so.  Also wrong.
> 
> I challenge anybody here who thinks D&D is bad design to offer an objective, universal definition of what makes good game design.



Is it?  The last couple pages seem to have been meta analysis of a meta analysis so far from whatever started it that it seems like everyone is agreeing that "I do/don't like it so it's good/bad" is a meaningless statement.


----------



## Thomas Shey

Micah Sweet said:


> That's where I fall.  I wish popularity wasn't one (perhaps the most important, who can say) of WotC's goals.




Wishing popularity wasn't a goal of a design that for a company as big as WOTC is, well, a take.


----------



## Thomas Shey

tetrasodium said:


> Is it?  The last couple pages seem to have been meta analysis of a meta analysis so far from whatever started it that it seems like everyone is agreeing that "I do/don't like it so it's good/bad" is a meaningless statement.




I don't think its particularly _good_ design (I think there's plenty of evidence that nontrivial parts of its user base find one or more things suboptimal, sometimes significantly so), but I think you have to set the target criteria very selectively to call it bad; for all the fact I think people are in too big a hurry to conflate popularity with quality (and use it to defend problem areas) I don't think an actively bad design could be as successful as D&D is, even accounting for the networking principal and the first-in benefit.


----------



## tetrasodium

Thomas Shey said:


> I don't think *its* particularly _good_ design (I think there's plenty of evidence that nontrivial parts of its user base find one or more things suboptimal, sometimes significantly so), but I think you have to set the target criteria very selectively to call it bad; for all the fact I think people are in too big a hurry to conflate popularity with quality (and use it to defend problem areas) I don't think an actively bad design could be as successful as D&D is, even accounting for the networking principal and the first-in benefit.



Well that settles things.  I think  "It" is sounding unusually deep into being self evidentially great if even naming "it" or giving any specifics on why "it" may be "suboptimal" are all things to avoid to such an extreme degree.  Your post doesn't even make clear if you are talking about "problem areas" in the 2014 d&d5e or the one of the 2022 One-D&D 6e playtest packets.  Can you give _any _specifics?


----------



## Thomas Shey

tetrasodium said:


> Well that settles things.  I think  "It" is sounding unusually deep into being self evidentially great if even naming "it" or giving any specifics on why "it" may be "suboptimal" are all things to avoid to such an extreme degree.  Your post doesn't even make clear if you are talking about "problem areas" in the 2014 d&d5e or the one of the 2022 One-D&D 6e playtest packets.  Can you give _any _specifics?




You're talking to the wrong person. _ I don't particularly like D&D_.  Not the current version, not all the way back to AD&D1 (and arguably, earlier).  There was a period when I considered virtually everything it did doing things the wrong way.  I got over that, but still don't find almost anything about its basic systemic design attractive.

So I'm not its market.

But I think it requires a selective reading of any place where people _do_ like the basic structure of D&D to not see that there are repeated complaints about some of the same things.  They just either aren't important enough to harm their overall appreciation of the system, or at least there aren't enough of them to significantly impact the overall success of the system as a system.

If you want more than that, I'm _absolutely_ the wrong person to ask it of.


----------



## Scott Christian

Lycurgon said:


> What? Custom and customizing backgrounds are part of the new rules. Anyone can have their bonuses wherever they want.



I meant to say if the customization piece doesn't make it into the final edit. After all, what better way to sell more books than to make setting or AP and add backgrounds?
But I do stand by what I said, aside from that I think it will be smooth sailing.


----------



## DEFCON 1

It's easier to assign bad intent to Wizards of the Coast for moving away from your preferences so that they become the "bad guy" and you have someone to blame... than it is to accept that your own personal preferences do not match most of the general D&D populace and you've become an outcast from that gaming society.  That can be a tough pill to swallow.  Thus you keep lashing out at WotC with bitter jibes at their efforts and intent in order to make yourself feel better for being ostracized from the D&D community through no efforts of your (or their) own.  You just don't like D&D the same way that all the others now seem to do, and that makes you feel alone and sad.


----------



## payn

DEFCON 1 said:


> It's easier to assign bad intent to Wizards of the Coast for moving away from your preferences so that they become the "bad guy" and you have someone to blame... than it is to accept that your own personal preferences do not match most of the general D&D populace and you've become an outcast from that gaming society.  That can be a tough pill to swallow.  Thus you keep lashing out at WotC with bitter jibes at their efforts and intent in order to make yourself feel better for being ostracized from the D&D community through no efforts of your (or their) own.  You just don't like D&D the same way that all the others now seem to do, and that makes you feel alone and sad.



Im sort of with this. I would say outlier instead of outcast. Normally, not a big deal you just grab a game and system that does suit your preferences. However, with D&D's oversized impact on the hobby in general, it makes having a committed concern to its direction, and thus disappointment when it moves away from you, a popular opinion. Nobody wants a tiny pool of players to choose from. So, that anger gets placed at the feet of WotC. 

I think the above was much more drastic back in '08. Now with the rise of VTT, crowdsourced indie games, etc... It's becoming less of an issue with every new iteration of D&D. YMMV.


----------



## DEFCON 1

payn said:


> Im sort of with this. I would say outlier instead of outcast. Normally, not a big deal you just grab a game and system that does suit your preferences. However, with D&D's oversized impact on the hobby in general, it makes having a committed concern to its direction, and thus disappointment when it moves away from you, a popular opinion. Nobody wants a tiny pool of players to choose from. So, that anger gets placed at the feet of WotC.
> 
> I think the above was much more drastic back in '08. Now with the rise of VTT, crowdsourced indie games, etc... It's becoming less of an issue with every new iteration of D&D. YMMV.



Your point about VTTs is exactly why I find complaints about not being able to "find players" to be silly.  People can find players for all editions and games of D&D and others so much more easily than they ever could before VTTs and the internet.

But I think what we're finding now is that because the total player pool is so much wider... players have begun condensing it themselves by getting more and more nitpicky about every single little game facet that they want.  It's not enough to just say they want to find 5E players (which is quite easy in these days of VTTs)... but now they are saying they want 5E players that won't use Tasha's, will only play non-magical characters, no races other than these 5 specific ones the DM has chosen, and are okay with using the X, Y, and Z house rules the DM wants to incorporate into the game because they don't like how WotC's rules do them.  And then when all these contingencies do not produce a viable player pool... _then_ they complain that WotC's rules changes have made it harder to find players.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Thomas Shey said:


> Wishing popularity wasn't a goal of a design that for a company as big as WOTC is, well, a take.



I don't expect it to change, i just don't like very much.  There's no way to know if this is the game they want to make, or just the game they think will be the most financially successful.


----------



## gorice

Bill Zebub said:


> That is 100% what is going on here.
> 
> There are lots of design decisions made in 5e (and really in any game) that I don't like, and would not have made had I been in charge.  I would greatly prefer other systems, if my friends also did. But does that make D&D "bad design"?  It would be arrogant of me to say so.  Also wrong.
> 
> I challenge anybody here who thinks D&D is bad design to offer an objective, universal definition of what makes good game design.



If I may butt in here: I think that's a tricky thing to define, though 'good design' in general can abolutely be defined. It can be true that different people can have different tastes, and that a given instance of design or artistry can be good or bad, simultaneously.

In the case of RPG design, I think a good definition would involve something like 'facilitates the experience that it promotes' and 'contains no extraneous and confusing details'.  5e D&D certainly fails on the latter (separate attributes and modifiers come to mind). The former is tricky, because...



Thomas Shey said:


> But I think it requires a selective reading of any place where people _do_ like the basic structure of D&D to not see that there are repeated complaints about some of the same things.  They just either aren't important enough to harm their overall appreciation of the system, or at least there aren't enough of them to significantly impact the overall success of the system as a system.



...In my experience, no-one can actually agree on what the 'basic structure' of D&D is. I'm really starting to believe that it's all just projection.


----------



## Clint_L

Bill Zebub said:


> That is 100% what is going on here.
> 
> There are lots of design decisions made in 5e (and really in any game) that I don't like, and would not have made had I been in charge.  I would greatly prefer other systems, if my friends also did. But does that make D&D "bad design"?  It would be arrogant of me to say so.  Also wrong.
> 
> I challenge anybody here who thinks D&D is bad design to offer an objective, universal definition of what makes good game design.



I can't offer a universal definition, but I can offer an objective economic argument that 5e is _great_ design, because it has been incredibly successful. So from Hasbro/WotC's perspective: 5e is good game design.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Clint_L said:


> I can't offer a universal definition, but I can offer an objective economic argument that 5e is _great_ design, because it has been incredibly successful. So from Hasbro/WotC's perspective: 5e is good game design.



That's my problem: I don't consider making a lot of money a definition of good design.  I know others do, but its not on my list.


----------



## Clint_L

Well, but what we are here to discuss is whether OneD&D is going to create a schism. WotC expressly wants to avoid dividing their player base, which is why they are sticking to 5e as the basis of D&D going forward and just adding incremental tweaks to it. So the argument about "what is good design" is settled, from their perspective: good design is 5e.

We can argue about personal taste all day (I just ran a game of _Dread_ yesterday, fused with a touch of _Call of Cthulhu_; that might be my favourite game design), but it seems like it probably won't go anywhere.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Clint_L said:


> Well, but what we are here to discuss is whether OneD&D is going to create a schism. WotC expressly wants to avoid dividing their player base, which is why they are sticking to 5e as the basis of D&D going forward and just adding incremental tweaks to it. So the argument about "what is good design" is settled, from their perspective: good design is 5e.
> 
> We can argue about personal taste all day (I just ran a game of _Dread_ yesterday, fused with a touch of _Call of Cthulhu_; that might be my favourite game design), but it seems like it probably won't go anywhere.



Accepted.  But I still think re-writing the core books with substantial game element changes (which is what I see here and expect to continue) will lead to a schism of some degree, and WotC not calling it a new edition won't, IMO, change that.


----------



## payn

DEFCON 1 said:


> Your point about VTTs is exactly why I find complaints about not being able to "find players" to be silly.  People can find players for all editions and games of D&D and others so much more easily than they ever could before VTTs and the internet.



Yeap, I dont think its necessarily silly, but folks do tend to back themselves in a corner and act entitled. "I live in a rural town, refuse to use VTT, so D&D must be my way since my pool is so small" is something I see on occasion. I do understand preferring face to face gaming, but the more limits you put on yourself, the fewer options you have and folks should be mindful of it. 


DEFCON 1 said:


> But I think what we're finding now is that because the total player pool is so much wider... players have begun condensing it themselves by getting more and more nitpicky about every single little game facet that they want.  It's not enough to just say they want to find 5E players (which is quite easy in these days of VTTs)... but now they are saying they want 5E players that won't use Tasha's, will only play non-magical characters, no races other than these 5 specific ones the DM has chosen, and are okay with using the X, Y, and Z house rules the DM wants to incorporate into the game because they don't like how WotC's rules do them.  And then when all these contingencies do not produce a viable player pool... _then_ they complain that WotC's rules changes have made it harder to find players.



I think this has been the case since at least 3E, but agree with you about the more recent "WotC did this to me" idea that has become popular.  

I was just thinking about how funny the edition changes have been. It was popular to think 4E was a WotC screw job. I always felt it was more the hardcore vocal social media folks at the time that drove the direction. Folks often talk about "fixing" the game when really items were removed wholesale as opposed to tweaked. Though, when 5E came around, folks seemed to blame the player base for not liking the direction when I think WotC had a lot more to do with that particular change. Guess it just looks differently depending on where you are sitting.


----------



## FitzTheRuke

Clint_L said:


> I can't offer a universal definition, but I can offer an objective economic argument that 5e is _great_ design, because it has been incredibly successful. So from Hasbro/WotC's perspective: 5e is good game design.




Yes, I think success implies _good_ design (in as far as the game's design didn't get in the way of its success) but it doesn't mean that it couldn't have _better_ design, or greater success. Unfortunately, it does tend to make publishers loathe to change anything, even for the better, in case that element is somehow miraculously responsible for a portion of the success.

Which is why I think that the 50th Anniversary Dungeons & Dragons books (the only thing that I can imagine them being called in the end) will not be drastically different than the 5e ones. Any changes made will naturally be too much for some, and not enough for others, but both ends will be outliers, and the vast majority will adopt them with no more than a shrug (at worst).


----------



## Micah Sweet

FitzTheRuke said:


> Yes, I think success implies _good_ design (in as far as the game's design didn't get in the way of its success) but it doesn't mean that it couldn't have _better_ design, or greater success. Unfortunately, it does tend to make publishers loathe to change anything, even for the better, in case that element is somehow miraculously responsible for a portion of the success.
> 
> Which is why I think that the 50th Anniversary Dungeons & Dragons books (the only thing that I can imagine them being called in the end) will not be drastically different than the 5e ones. Any changes made will naturally be too much for some, and not enough for others, but both ends will be outliers, and the vast majority will adopt them with no more than a shrug (at worst).



You think the majority of 5e players will just shell out another $150 to re-buy the core books, especially if the changes are all as minor as you claim?  Even minor changes need to be accounted for if you intend to use them.


----------



## Cadence

Micah Sweet said:


> You think the majority of 5e players will just shell out another $150 to re-buy the core books, especially if the changes are all as minor as you claim?  Even minor changes need to be accounted for if you intend to use them.



To the sadness of the LGSs, probably not.  I can see a bunch of folks shelling out $77.82 for the set of three on Amazon if the changes are more than cosmetic (or especially $22.95 for the PHB).  :-/


----------



## FitzTheRuke

Micah Sweet said:


> You think the majority of 5e players will just shell out another $150 to re-buy the core books, especially if the changes are all as minor as you claim?  Even minor changes need to be accounted for if you intend to use them.




Yes. Yes, I do.

Edit: I am speaking as a 30-year owner of a FLGS. I have sold (as they came out) every D&D book since the black-covered 2e revised core books. Core books are _easy_ to sell. It's one of the reason that they like to do them. Internet controversy does not have much to do with sales. For example, 4e was widely loathed here on these boards, but the core books sold like crazy.


----------



## Clint_L

I think there has to be a democratic element to what is good design, if you are a publisher. In other words, I don't think it's a cop out to say that, objectively, good design is what the most people like. Because as many have pointed out, _no design_ will please everyone. There is no perfect game. But you can get a pretty good sense of whether the design is broadly good or bad based on players reaction. From this perspective, 4e was clearly bad design - it was responsible for Pathfinder (i.e. D&D 3.5 continued) briefly becoming the market leader until 5e was rushed out to course correct.

5e was specifically designed and heavily play-tested to go back to the roots of D&D, simplified into the d20 system, and to not overcomplicate things so that the emphasis is more on story than rules. 5e is pretty much what I wanted back when I first started playing AD&D. I think WotC has pretty much solved what makes a great D&D game. And they think so too. That's why they don't want a new edition. They are recognizing that there are tweaks that will happen here and there as culture evolves and ideas from players and from other game systems slowly percolate, but they don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water.

And WotC aren't idiots. They know that to the established D&D fan base, the word "edition" means one thing: you're expected to throw out the old books and buy new ones if you want to keep up. They don't want that, precisely because it will create a schism, exactly like what happened with 4e when they harpooned their own brand. They would rather sell you more books over many years than go for the quick money grab of the old editions model that always fed into a boom/bust cycle.

So many folks here are basically just being pedantic and arguing about what the word edition means as if that is objectively meaningful. It isn't. Words only have meaning in context, and in the context of the history of D&D the word "editions" has come to mean something that WotC doesn't want to do anymore. _They want you to be able to keep using your 2014 PHB and still feel comfortable buying new sourcebooks and adventures._ It's as simple as that. Yes, there will be an updated PHB for those who want it, but it is not going to change any of the fundamentals of 5e. You will be able to purchase the new PHB and still run the old "Lost Mines of Phandelver" if that's your thing, or you will be able to buy the upcoming _Phandelver_ adventure book and run it with your 2014 PHB.


----------



## overgeeked

Clint_L said:


> I think there has to be a democratic element to what is good design, if you are a publisher.



So you’re not a game designer, then. Got it.

ETA: Good game design is about making the game work to its mandate. You want a game of cat burglars, then you need to design a game that works to bring that fantasy to the table. The better the design achieves this the better the design. If you say your game is about personal horror yet the mechanics all point to superheroes with fangs, for example, that’s bad design. This is all completely unconnected to sales.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

overgeeked said:


> So you’re not a game designer, then. Got it.




Overdesigning and designing past the audience is also not making you a good designer.


----------



## Olrox17

UngeheuerLich said:


> Overdesigning and designing past the audience is also not making you a good designer.



Game designing and marketing are two different skills and fields, though. Making a commercially successful product involves both, but they are not the same thing.


----------



## Bill Zebub

DEFCON 1 said:


> It's easier to assign bad intent to Wizards of the Coast for moving away from your preferences so that they become the "bad guy" and you have someone to blame... than it is to accept that your own personal preferences do not match most of the general D&D populace and you've become an outcast from that gaming society.  That can be a tough pill to swallow.  Thus you keep lashing out at WotC with bitter jibes at their efforts and intent in order to make yourself feel better for being ostracized from the D&D community through no efforts of your (or their) own.  You just don't like D&D the same way that all the others now seem to do, and that makes you feel alone and sad.




Or lashing out at millions of players they've never met: "They just want everything without working for it."  "They just want a video game."  "They don't what good game design is."  Etc. etc. etc.

There's some really weird psychology going on with all of this.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

Olrox17 said:


> Game designing and marketing are two different skills and fields, though. Making a commercially successful product involves both, but they are not the same thing.




I did not imply that.
I said exactly what I meant: "good design" is not always appealing to the audience.

The problem: if you want D&D, you are somewhat limited by the expectations of the game which has been there for nearly 50 years now. So you need to make sure the game has the right feel.

4e was good design. But it did not carry the feel correctly. I say, 3.5 did not carry the feel correctly. 5e, for me, is a lot closer to my expectations. And better designed than the editions before 4e.

So I expect one to be a bit more coherently designed (as shown in the playtest), but still carrying the correct feel (which seems to be somewhat off for the ranger at least, going from the reactions here).


----------



## GMforPowergamers

Clint_L said:


> From this perspective, 4e was clearly bad design - it was responsible for Pathfinder (i.e. D&D 3.5 continued) briefly becoming the market leader until 5e was rushed out to course correct.






Clint_L said:


> They don't want that, precisely because it will create a schism, exactly like what happened with 4e when they harpooned their own brand.



okay baseless edition warring aside you have made a really weird argument


Clint_L said:


> So many folks here are basically just being pedantic and arguing about what the word edition means as if that is objectively meaningful. It isn't. Words only have meaning in context, and in the context of the history of D&D the word "editions" has come to mean something that WotC doesn't want to do anymore.



yes and no... they want to have there cake and eat it too.

they want to make the changes that will help the game
they want to reprint the rules close enough that you can use DM side stuff but far enough apart that you have to rebuy PC side stuff.


Clint_L said:


> _They want you to be able to keep using your 2014 PHB and still feel comfortable buying new sourcebooks and adventures._



no, nothing has indicated the 2024 PHB and 2014PHB will play well togather... they are changeing even basic rules (status) they are changing what race means. they are changing the rogue that they said they had no complaints about (but even it gets some tweeks all be it small) 
bards now prep spells
half orc and half elf are not separate races

I have no doubt that somewhere there will be tables that run a 2014 half orc bard with a 2024 ardling ranger... but they will be so few that as a statistic it will be close enough to call 0.  (best case you could argue 1 to 2%)



Clint_L said:


> Yes, there will be an updated PHB for those who want it, but it is not going to change any of the fundamentals of 5e.



except races, feats, classes, spells, status effects (how class and spells interact) 
so you know all the player side stuff.


Clint_L said:


> You will be able to purchase the new PHB and still run the old "Lost Mines of Phandelver" if that's your thing, or you will be able to buy the upcoming _Phandelver_ adventure book and run it with your 2014 PHB.



I have no doubt the plan right now is this statement and this statement only... you can use 1 PHB (2014 or 2024) but not both and run and adventure book (pre2024 or post 2024)

I doubt they plan for same table to sit down with a 2014phb and a 2024phb.  

Just like I CAN (and have) as a DM grabbed ideas and even full characters from 2e,3e,and 4e and used them in 5e...


----------



## GMforPowergamers

overgeeked said:


> So you’re not a game designer, then. Got it.
> 
> ETA: Good game design is about making the game work to its mandate. You want a game of cat burglars, then you need to design a game that works to bring that fantasy to the table. The better the design achieves this the better the design. If you say your game is about personal horror yet the mechanics all point to superheroes with fangs, for example, that’s bad design. This is all completely unconnected to sales.



a great example is the world of darkness setting/rules/themes

for years the theme was supposed to be an uncontrollable thirst or rage... a monster that you have to fight down every night. Some people played that way, but others made vampires into 'super heroes' with cool powers... cause the base rules made it work really easy. 
A few years ago new vampire (5th edition ironically) came out and had a VERY different mechanic that meant every time you did almost anything you risked losing control... (the mechanic now not just the flavor) and it changed the whole way people play.


----------



## GMforPowergamers

Olrox17 said:


> Game designing and marketing are two different skills and fields, though. Making a commercially successful product involves both, but they are not the same thing.



this is why you not only need 2  teams that are GREAT at there jobs you need a management that can keep them on the same page.


----------



## HammerMan

GMforPowergamers said:


> a great example is the world of darkness setting/rules/themes
> 
> for years the theme was supposed to be an uncontrollable thirst or rage... a monster that you have to fight down every night. Some people played that way, but others made vampires into 'super heroes' with cool powers... cause the base rules made it work really easy.
> A few years ago new vampire (5th edition ironically) came out and had a VERY different mechanic that meant every time you did almost anything you risked losing control... (the mechanic now not just the flavor) and it changed the whole way people play.



I will add to this I know people who refuse 5e Vampire BECAUSE it enforced the fluff that was always there because  they had built the old ways up


----------



## DEFCON 1

Micah Sweet said:


> You think the majority of 5e players will just shell out another $150 to re-buy the core books, especially if the changes are all as minor as you claim? Even minor changes need to be accounted for if you intend to use them.



Yep. People like buying D&D books. And they like thinking they are using the new shiny. And with 2 years to save $150 (which is about $6 a month), having the cash to buy them isn't that much of an issue for the majority of players.


----------



## HaroldTheHobbit

Being burned out on 5e and not enjoying the direction WotC has taken during the last few years, I would actually rather have seen a real new edition with massive changes. That I probably would have bought, but I won't get any One or other D&D stuff for the foreseeable future.


----------



## Olrox17

UngeheuerLich said:


> I did not imply that.
> I said exactly what I meant: "good design" is not always appealing to the audience.
> 
> The problem: if you want D&D, you are somewhat limited by the expectations of the game which has been there for nearly 50 years now. So you need to make sure the game has the right feel.
> 
> 4e was good design. But it did not carry the feel correctly. I say, 3.5 did not carry the feel correctly. 5e, for me, is a lot closer to my expectations. And better designed than the editions before 4e.
> 
> So I expect one to be a bit more coherently designed (as shown in the playtest), but still carrying the correct feel (which seems to be somewhat off for the ranger at least, going from the reactions here).



No disagreements on my part, then.
You can indeed have superbly designed games that just don’t appeal to the right audience, or to a vast enough audience. On the contrary, you can have crappily designed games with amazing general appeal, carried by smart marketing. The video game market offers a tremendous amount of interesting examples of both and everything in between.


----------



## Bill Zebub

overgeeked said:


> So you’re not a game designer, then. Got it.




Do you even lift?


----------



## Morrus

Clint_L said:


> I think there has to be a democratic element to what is good design, if you are a publisher. In other words, I don't think it's a cop out to say that, objectively, good design is what the most people like.




What you're describing is _popular_ design, the largest influence on which is marketing budgets.

Art is not democratic. And it's not bad if it's not popular, whether it be an RPG, a book, a painting, food, or anything else.

My local restaurant makes awesome food, but it's 1-billionth as 'popular' as McDonalds. That does not make is an 'objectively' bad restaurant.

I have made stuff I knew wouldn't be universally popular. I did this consciously. But the target audience liked it a lot. If Disney suddenly bought it and sold it to a million people, it wouldn't suddenly have become 'objectively good design'.


----------



## HaroldTheHobbit

Morrus said:


> What you're describing is _popular_ design, the largest influence on which is marketing budgets.
> 
> Art is not democratic. And it's not bad if it's not popular, whether it be an RPG, a book, a painting, food, or anything else.
> 
> My local restaurant makes awesome food, but it's 1-billionth as 'popular' as McDonalds. That does not make is an 'objectively' bad restaurant.
> 
> I have made stuff I knew wouldn't be universally popular. I did this consciously. But the target audience liked it a lot. If Disney suddenly bought it and sold it to a million people, it wouldn't suddenly have become 'objectively good design'.



Design isn't art, neither is developing a game. Design is per definition the creative process of making something as appealing as possible to a large or small group of people with the goal of increasing their willingness to acquire the designed object. This is most often done for a commercial purpose, but can have other motivations.

In a culture of overconsumption, design can be perceived and mistaken for art. That doesn't make it so.

That doesn't mean that designing or developing a game is easy, or that I don't have respect or gratitude to the very creative people who spend large amounts of time on products that I enjoy and buy.

But it still isn't art.


----------



## Morrus

HaroldTheHobbit said:


> Design isn't art, neither is developing a game. Design is per definition the creative process of making something as appealing as possible to a large or small group of people with the goal of increasing their willingness to acquire the designed object. This is most often done for a commercial purpose, but can have other motivations.
> 
> In a culture of overconsumption, design can be perceived and mistaken for art. That doesn't make it so.
> 
> That doesn't mean that designing or developing a game is easy, or that I don't have respect or gratitude to the very creative people who spend large amounts of time on products that I enjoy and buy.
> 
> But it still isn't art.



Yes it is.


----------



## Olrox17

HaroldTheHobbit said:


> Design isn't art, neither is developing a game. Design is per definition the creative process of making something as appealing as possible to a large or small group of people with the goal of increasing their willingness to acquire the designed object. This is most often done for a commercial purpose, but can have other motivations.
> 
> In a culture of overconsumption, design can be perceived and mistaken for art. That doesn't make it so.
> 
> That doesn't mean that designing or developing a game is easy, or that I don't have respect or gratitude to the very creative people who spend large amounts of time on products that I enjoy and buy.
> 
> But it still isn't art.



If we had a disagree button, this is where I would press the heck out of it.


----------



## overgeeked

HaroldTheHobbit said:


> Design isn't art, neither is developing a game. Design is per definition the creative process of making something as appealing as possible to a large or small group of people with the goal of increasing their willingness to acquire the designed object. This is most often done for a commercial purpose, but can have other motivations.
> 
> In a culture of overconsumption, design can be perceived and mistaken for art. That doesn't make it so.
> 
> That doesn't mean that designing or developing a game is easy, or that I don't have respect or gratitude to the very creative people who spend large amounts of time on products that I enjoy and buy.
> 
> But it still isn't art.



You’re wrong.


----------



## Scott Christian

Bill Zebub said:


> It’s also weird how people often equate “my preference” with “good design.”
> 
> Knowhatimsayin’?



To be fair to everyone here, I have rarely (I'd even stand on very rarely) ever seen anyone here point out bad design as not my preference. And I would say the opposite is true too. People on this site know how to differentiate a design or rule as being functional/useful/flavorful, but also not to their liking.


----------



## Scott Christian

Micah Sweet said:


> You think the majority of 5e players will just shell out another $150 to re-buy the core books, especially if the changes are all as minor as you claim?  Even minor changes need to be accounted for if you intend to use them.



If I may interject into your conversation...
Yes. Yes, I do think they will buy them. And in greater numbers.


----------



## Bill Zebub

HaroldTheHobbit said:


> Design isn't art, neither is developing a game. *Design is per definition the creative process of making something as appealing as possible to a large or small group of people with the goal of increasing their willingness to acquire the designed object. *This is most often done for a commercial purpose, but can have other motivations.
> 
> In a culture of overconsumption, design can be perceived and mistaken for art. That doesn't make it so.
> 
> That doesn't mean that designing or developing a game is easy, or that I don't have respect or gratitude to the very creative people who spend large amounts of time on products that I enjoy and buy.
> 
> But it still isn't art.




The definition you offer is wrong because it only considers one of many possible design parameters, but otherwise I agree that design and art are not the same thing, even if they often overlap.  Good design is design that meets parameters, and those parameters might have nothing to do with art.  (Unless one is using the somewhat archaic definition of 'art' to simply mean 'skill', but that would make the arguments that depend on it rather trite.)


----------



## Clint_L

WotC has outright stated, repeatedly, that they don't like the old "editions" model of D&D publishing and are abandoning it. They have outright stated, repeatedly, that their goal is for players to NOT feel compelled to have to replace all their books, and for new releases to play well with existing 5e releases.

They are, in other words, trying to change the D&D paradigm.

Paradigm shifts are hard and always meet with entrenched resistance. They challenge the ego. Thus, this thread.

Will WotC succeed in their project? I dunno. It seems hard...but what if they are right and we're wrong? What if there _is_ a better model for how to update the game without alienating big chunks of the player base? What if Gary Gygax and Lorraine Williams set the game on a flawed "editions" path back in the 80s when sales were collapsing and they were desperately looking for short term fixes? Are these things _possible_?

WotC specifically used the term "evolution" for their new model of updating the game. That is interesting. In evolution, there aren't new "editions." There is just incremental change, with interbreeding possible at every stage amongst a given population. Over time, the changes can be enormous. But there is no one moment you can point to and state, "THAT is where the new species began." Well, that is what they are describing for their new vision for D&D. No giant changes. Just gradual adaptations to a changing environment.

Edit: just thinking that there are interesting parallels here back to when Darwin proposed his theory of evolution driven by incremental change through a process of natural selection, and was immediately met by choruses of "No, that's impossible! Species are _immutable_!"


----------



## Clint_L

overgeeked said:


> So you’re not a game designer, then. Got it.
> 
> ETA: Good game design is about making the game work to its mandate. You want a game of cat burglars, then you need to design a game that works to bring that fantasy to the table. The better the design achieves this the better the design. If you say your game is about personal horror yet the mechanics all point to superheroes with fangs, for example, that’s bad design. This is all completely unconnected to sales.



A) I actually _am_ a published board game designer: I designed the educational game _Up the Creek: The Salmon Survival Game_ as a side gig back when I was in grad school. I got paid a whole 3 grand, which was a bit of a windfall at that time of my life. So there! It is minimal experience, but it is experience.

More to the point, as is typical of this thread you ignored the actual words of my post to create the "gotcha" statement that you wanted. Specifically, you ignored the words "element" and "if," in order to make your super obvious point as if I did not understand the basic intent of design. So...good job? You stated the obvious? You want a gold star?


----------



## Micah Sweet

HaroldTheHobbit said:


> Design isn't art, neither is developing a game. Design is per definition the creative process of making something as appealing as possible to a large or small group of people with the goal of increasing their willingness to acquire the designed object. This is most often done for a commercial purpose, but can have other motivations.
> 
> In a culture of overconsumption, design can be perceived and mistaken for art. That doesn't make it so.
> 
> That doesn't mean that designing or developing a game is easy, or that I don't have respect or gratitude to the very creative people who spend large amounts of time on products that I enjoy and buy.
> 
> But it still isn't art.



That isn't design.  That's marketing.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Scott Christian said:


> If I may interject into your conversation...
> Yes. Yes, I do think they will buy them. And in greater numbers.



It is clear that I don't understand the current fandom.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Clint_L said:


> WotC has outright stated, repeatedly, that they don't like the old "editions" model of D&D publishing and are abandoning it. They have outright stated, repeatedly, that their goal is for players to NOT feel compelled to have to replace all their books, and for new releases to play well with existing 5e releases.
> 
> They are, in other words, trying to change the D&D paradigm.
> 
> Paradigm shifts are hard and always meet with entrenched resistance. They challenge the ego. Thus, this thread.
> 
> Will WotC succeed in their project? I dunno. It seems hard...but what if they are right and we're wrong? What if there _is_ a better model for how to update the game without alienating big chunks of the player base? What if Gary Gygax and Lorraine Williams set the game on a flawed "editions" path back in the 80s when sales were collapsing and they were desperately looking for short term fixes? Are these things _possible_?
> 
> WotC specifically used the term "evolution" for their new model of updating the game. That is interesting. In evolution, there aren't new "editions." There is just incremental change, with interbreeding possible at every stage amongst a given population. Over time, the changes can be enormous. But there is no one moment you can point to and state, "THAT is where the new species began." Well, that is what they are describing for their new vision for D&D. No giant changes. Just gradual adaptations to a changing environment.



Sounds like an excellent way to manipulate people into buying slightly updated corebooks over and over and over again.


----------



## bloodtide

It will create a divide, like it always will.  A group of players will fall allover themselves to say D&D 5.5 is "the best" and some new players will be "drawn in" by the "new" and whatever shinny new gimick it has game.  Some will stay with 5E.  Same thing that ALWAYS happens.


----------



## overgeeked

Clint_L said:


> I actually _am_ a published board game designer: I designed the educational game _Up the Creek: The Salmon Survival Game_ as a side gig back when I was in grad school. I got paid a whole 3 grand, which was a bit of a windfall at that time of my life. So there! It is minimal experience, but it is experience.



Right. You have experience as a freelance designer. Not the main designer or creator of an original idea and taking that from idea to finished product. As already stated in the thread by people with more full design experience, that’s not how it works. Art isn’t democratic. Being a freelance designer isn’t democratic either. You get hired, do the work to the satisfaction of your employer, then get paid. No democracy involved.


----------



## Thomas Shey

gorice said:


> ...In my experience, no-one can actually agree on what the 'basic structure' of D&D is. I'm really starting to believe that it's all just projection.




Eh.  I think there's been enough common elements from all the way back to OD&D that you can point at them, and a number of them are pretty rare (levels, classes, significant hit point advancement over time) outside of D&D and its clear offshoots that you can call them that.  No one of them says D&D per se, but as a set that structure has been fairly consistent.


----------



## tetrasodium

The what is what must be path of near deckchair moving stagnation is the same one KFC took a couple decades back with the domestic (US) market even while competitors like popeyes zaxbies raising canes & so on were establishing & growing a foothold.  Coincidentally KFC's international wing continued to focus on innovation quality & experience in markets where they took the competition seriously.  Today US KFC is pretty much synonymous with mediocre yet pricy offerings from a tired & overplayed menu while the international offerings are anything but & international competitors are using that to make inroads in the US market.


Spoiler: Here is a good video on it


----------



## Bill Zebub

overgeeked said:


> Right. You have experience as a freelance designer. Not the main designer or creator of an original idea and taking that from idea to finished product. As already stated in the thread by people with more full design experience, that’s not how it works. Art isn’t democratic. Being a freelance designer isn’t democratic either. You get hired, do the work to the satisfaction of your employer, then get paid. No democracy involved.




I am totally picturing a black beret and a fake French accent. 

Needs more Sartre references, though.


----------



## Aldarc

tetrasodium said:


> The what is what must be path of near deckchair moving stagnation is the same one KFC took a couple decades back with the domestic (US) market even while competitors like popeyes zaxbies raising canes & so on were establishing & growing a foothold.  Coincidentally KFC's international wing continued to focus on innovation quality & experience in markets where they took the competition seriously.  Today US KFC is pretty much synonymous with mediocre yet pricy offerings from a tired & overplayed menu while the international offerings are anything but & international competitors are using that to make inroads in the US market.
> 
> 
> Spoiler: Here is a good video on it



Bojangles is better.


----------



## Bill Zebub

bloodtide said:


> A group of players will fall allover themselves to say D&D 5.5 is "the best" and some new players will be "drawn in" by the "new" and whatever shinny new gimick it has game.




The corollary is that some group of non-new players will insist that a previous version was the best, confusing quality with nostalgia.  Or maybe just hating anything new.


----------



## Aldarc

Bill Zebub said:


> The corollary is that some group of non-new players will insist that a previous version was the best, confusing quality with nostalgia.  Or maybe just hating anything new.



We don't hate new things. Those wicked WotC designers just hates us. Yes. They hates us, precious. They pander, but I am not wrongs, precious. It's the children. _grognard grognard_


----------



## Yora

Bill Zebub said:


> The corollary is that some group of non-new players will insist that a previous version was the best, confusing quality with nostalgia.  Or maybe just hating anything new.



But sometimes never isn't better. If there is such a thing as better and worse for game systems.


----------



## Bill Zebub

Yora said:


> But sometimes never isn't better. If there is such a thing as better and worse for game systems.




Agreed, although not sure why you prefaced it with "But".


----------



## HaroldTheHobbit

Micah Sweet said:


> That isn't design.  That's marketing.



Optimizing products to be as commercially attractive as possible, ie design, comes a few steps before marketing.


----------



## HaroldTheHobbit

Morrus said:


> Yes it is.



There's a pretty hefty amount of art sociology academia regarding the purpose, aim and results of design that points to the contrary.

But as always for the forum peace, let's just agree to disagree.


----------



## Scott Christian

Micah Sweet said:


> It is clear that I don't understand the current fandom.



Um, I bet you do, just maybe not _this_ fandom. I mean, just think back to when we were young, and we craved new material. I'd imagine it'll be like that.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Scott Christian said:


> Um, I bet you do, just maybe not _this_ fandom. I mean, just think back to when we were young, and we craved new material. I'd imagine it'll be like that.



Maybe, but I don't see new material and rewritten core books with just the right amount of changes to make a profit to be the same thing.


----------



## Bill Zebub

Micah Sweet said:


> Maybe, but I don't see new material and rewritten core books with just the right amount of changes to make a profit to be the same thing.




How does one distinguish between just the right amount of changes to make a profit, and just the right amount of changes period?

Or is that just in the eye (mind) of the beholder?


----------



## Micah Sweet

Bill Zebub said:


> How does one distinguish between just the right amount of changes to make a profit, and just the right amount of changes period?
> 
> Or is that just in the eye (mind) of the beholder?



It's certainly subjective.  I personally would have liked a bigger change for 2024's 6e, to more easily distinguish it from 2014's 5e in the minds of the fans.  I don't agree with the half-measures they're currently pursuing, and the fact that they have sound financial reasons for doing so doesn't change my opinion.


----------



## gorice

Thomas Shey said:


> Eh.  I think there's been enough common elements from all the way back to OD&D that you can point at them, and a number of them are pretty rare (levels, classes, significant hit point advancement over time) outside of D&D and its clear offshoots that you can call them that.  No one of them says D&D per se, but as a set that structure has been fairly consistent.



I guess the question is: how fundamental are these commonalities to the way the game is played, compared to the differences between edtions, or between tables? I think classes and levels are important commonalities, but you also have things like hit dice and attributes that are (IMO) pretty meaningless in 5e, but which people identify as part of 'D&D'.

On the other hand, you can't even get 5e players to agree on fundamental stuff like whether players should describe what their characters are doing, or whether you can say 'I roll arcana' (the PHB states the former, but the game doesn't force you to play that way). How does the DM apply time pressure or consequences? Are travel and exploration important parts of the game, or do we just handwave it on the way to the next encounter? Are people supposed to follow the DM's prepared story, or is the DM supposed to prepare a story based on the PCs' backstories, or is the story supposed to emerge organically in play?

At this point, no-one actually plays the game as written, to the extent such a thing is possible. Strangely, you also can't change anything without causing someone to have a meltdown.


----------



## Thomas Shey

gorice said:


> I guess the question is: how fundamental are these commonalities to the way the game is played, compared to the differences between edtions, or between tables? I think classes and levels are important commonalities, but you also have things like hit dice and attributes that are (IMO) pretty meaningless in 5e, but which people identify as part of 'D&D'.




Note I was very cautious about what I picked in my example (but I'll note that attributes were relatively meaningless in OD&D too, but they still go all the way back then; being significant and being expected aren't identical sets).



gorice said:


> On the other hand, you can't even get 5e players to agree on fundamental stuff like whether players should describe what their characters are doing, or whether you can say 'I roll arcana' (the PHB states the former, but the game doesn't force you to play that way). How does the DM apply time pressure or consequences? Are travel and exploration important parts of the game, or do we just handwave it on the way to the next encounter? Are people supposed to follow the DM's prepared story, or is the DM supposed to prepare a story based on the PCs' backstories, or is the story supposed to emerge organically in play?




Note those aren't strictly game structure elements though; they're playstyle/game culture elements.  You can see those (or not) in games that otherwise have no resemblance to D&D in any mechanical sense.


----------



## dave2008

Micah Sweet said:


> It is clear that I don't understand the current fandom.



Is it that you don't understand them, or that you have different interests / desires / viewpoints? I mean I understand your desire for consistent lore, etc.; I just don't have the same desires.


----------



## dave2008

Micah Sweet said:


> Sounds like an excellent way to manipulate people into buying slightly updated corebooks over and over and over again.



Yes, it is the model almost all other products (and RPGs) use . I think it can be a good thing for D&D, it just depends on who is doing the updated and how well it is done!


----------



## Bill Zebub

Micah Sweet said:


> *Sounds like an excellent way to manipulate people* into buying slightly updated corebooks over and over and over again.






dave2008 said:


> Yes, it is the model almost all other products use (and other RPGs). I think it can be a good thing for D&D, it just depends on who is doing the updated and how well it is done!




If only I had Micah’s wisdom I wouldn’t be so easily manipulated into buying books I don’t need. Woe is me!

(Translation: it's kind of insulting to suggest that people who want 5.5 have been manipulated.)


----------



## gorice

Thomas Shey said:


> Note I was very cautious about what I picked in my example (but I'll note that attributes were relatively meaningless in OD&D too, but they still go all the way back then; being significant and being expected aren't identical sets).
> 
> 
> 
> Note those aren't strictly game structure elements though; they're playstyle/game culture elements.  You can see those (or not) in games that otherwise have no resemblance to D&D in any mechanical sense.



I think we're operating with very different ideas of what 'structure' means, then. Particularly with the 'describe what you're doing' vs. 'push a button' split: that is one of the very first rules in the PHB. It's foundational to the game's basic play loop.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Bill Zebub said:


> If only I had Micah’s wisdom I wouldn’t be so easily manipulated into buying books I don’t need. Woe is me!



Don't worry, there's still time.  The books aren't out until 2024!


----------



## dave2008

Micah Sweet said:


> Don't worry, there's still time.  The books aren't out until 2024!



But what if he needs those books!


----------



## Fifth Element

payn said:


> Tasha's is a supplement. You can say D&D; no Tasha's. I suppose you can say D&D 2014, not D&D 2024. Point is its the same as saying edition, its a needed concept.



Missed my point entirely. It is the same as saying edition, and we already do it all the time, and it's all still D&D.


----------



## Bill Zebub

dave2008 said:


> But what if he needs those books!




Lord save me from squandering that money on yet more ill-advised Kickstarters. The longer I wait, the more I squander.


----------



## Fifth Element

Micah Sweet said:


> I would be a terrible businessperson, because art I create is based on what I want to do and what I think is good, not what "the market" is most likely to spend money on.



Great. Since you don't do it for a living, you don't have to think about such things. But at the same time you're maligning people who DO have to think of such things, calling them malicious and/or incompetent. It's an abject failure to understand the perspective of someone who is in a very different position than you are.


----------



## Fifth Element

Micah Sweet said:


> Which is fine.  Just don't call it a playtest.



They can call it whatever they please. Reality is more imortant than labels. Don't obsess over labels.


----------



## Fifth Element

Micah Sweet said:


> That's where I fall.  I wish popularity wasn't one (perhaps the most important, who can say) of WotC's goals.



I'm the complete opposite. I'm happy when there is a thing that makes lots of people happy, even if I'm not one of them. There are lots of things that make me happy, I don't need everything to cater to my tastes. I don't WANT everything to cater to my tastes. What a dull world that would be.


----------



## Fifth Element

Micah Sweet said:


> That isn't design.  That's marketing.



So You agree it's not art, which was the point.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Fifth Element said:


> I'm the complete opposite. I'm happy when there is a thing that makes lots of people happy, even if I'm not one of them. There are lots of things that make me happy, I don't need everything to cater to my tastes. I don't WANT everything to cater to my tastes. What a dull world that would be.



I don't need everything to cater to my tastes either.  But D&D did a pretty good job for many years, and then rather abruptly stopped.

I don't appreciate being insinuated to be selfish and not want other people to be happy.  That's a label too, by the way.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Fifth Element said:


> So You agree it's not art, which was the point.



I agree they was describing marketing and not design.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Bill Zebub said:


> If only I had Micah’s wisdom I wouldn’t be so easily manipulated into buying books I don’t need. Woe is me!



*Mod Note:*

Why the poke at Micah?  Or anyone, for that matter?  How about not doing that.


----------



## Fifth Element

Micah Sweet said:


> I don't need everything to cater to my tastes either.  But D&D did a pretty good job for many years, and then rather abruptly stopped.



Cool. The D&D you like still exists, as do all the old books you may have.



Micah Sweet said:


> I don't appreciate being insinuated to be selfish and not want other people to be happy.  That's a label too, by the way.



I mean, it isn't a label, but whatever. I was describing my own attitude here.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Fifth Element said:


> Cool. The D&D you like still exists, as do all the old books you may have.
> 
> 
> I mean, it isn't a label, but whatever. I was describing my own attitude here.



You said your attitude was the opposite of mine.  Your words.  How did you expect me to take that?


----------



## Thomas Shey

gorice said:


> I think we're operating with very different ideas of what 'structure' means, then. Particularly with the 'describe what you're doing' vs. 'push a button' split: that is one of the very first rules in the PHB. It's foundational to the game's basic play loop.




It might be my fault for not making it clear; I'm talking about the structure of the _system_.  While resolution approaches are not completely disconnected with that, its far more vulnerable to, from lack of a better term "local conditions"; no matter how a game describes how you're supposed to approach dealing with particular types of problems, people will use the core mechanics in other ways to do that.  That comes up outside the D&D sphere too (dip into enough threads about PbtA games and its abundantly clear a non-trivial amount of GMs ignore the way they're told to use the system, sometimes in ways that seem kind of appalling to PbtA proponents, and PbtA games and related have always been far more rigid in that way than virtually any editions of D&D.)

As such, I don't think a lot of things that are theoretically part of a game loop don't seem particularly core to people because they've played in a lot, maybe all their games that don't follow it.  But they've still probably played D&D with classes, levels, level elevating hit points and a couple other things.  Its far more central to the overall D&D hobby than any specific playstyle (though there are certainly some styles that have been very common throughout its history).


----------



## UngainlyTitan

Thomas Shey said:


> Eh.  I think there's been enough common elements from all the way back to OD&D that you can point at them, and a number of them are pretty rare (levels, classes, significant hit point advancement over time) outside of D&D and its clear offshoots that you can call them that.  No one of them says D&D per se, but as a set that structure has been fairly consistent.



Defining D&D is like that of porn, you know it if you see.


----------



## GMforPowergamers

that fact that 20 pages in we see divide and we are still in playtest shows there will be... However this weekend at a store I ran into people who didn't even know 1D&D was a thing talking about it with the store owner and getting mad.

1 of the two players had JUST bought there PHB either beginning of this year or end of last and said they would be upset if the 2024 reprint was adopted by there group because they were not rebuying a book after only 2 years, and the other (younger) player said there parents warned them that D&D changed edition every few years and they didn't understand it until now... when the store owner told them it wasn't 'really' an edition change they both laughed.   Both are new players, neither played any RPGs before 5e D&D and even THEY felt this was both unneeded and an edition change even if not called such.

When I tried to help by saying that if there group all agreeed to stay with older rules it would be fine the older of the two said he had heard stories about people staying with 3rd edition and loosing friends when 4th edition came out... and me and store owner had to admit that did happen.

edit: since said store owner is a friend, I will add they are PRO 1D&D in private, but have to put on a more conservative face at moments like this. Out of the two of us (me and store owner) I am MUCH less enthusiastic


----------



## Olrox17

GMforPowergamers said:


> that fact that 20 pages in we see divide and we are still in playtest shows there will be... However this weekend at a store I ran into people who didn't even know 1D&D was a thing talking about it with the store owner and getting mad.
> 
> 1 of the two players had JUST bought there PHB either beginning of this year or end of last and said they would be upset if the 2024 reprint was adopted by there group because they were not rebuying a book after only 2 years, and the other (younger) player said there parents warned them that D&D changed edition every few years and they didn't understand it until now... when the store owner told them it wasn't 'really' an edition change they both laughed.   Both are new players, neither played any RPGs before 5e D&D and even THEY felt this was both unneeded and an edition change even if not called such.
> 
> When I tried to help by saying that if there group all agreeed to stay with older rules it would be fine the older of the two said he had heard stories about people staying with 3rd edition and loosing friends when 4th edition came out... and me and store owner had to admit that did happen.



Tbh, the only thing that surprises me from your anecdote is younger people getting upset/surprised about this, in a game market where annual videogame releases have been the norm for a decade or so.


----------



## GMforPowergamers

Olrox17 said:


> Tbh, the only thing that surprises me from your anecdote is younger people getting upset/surprised about this, in a game market where annual videogame releases have been the norm for a decade or so.



I think (and I may be way off I have not been young since the T rex went extinct) that we still sell the TTRPG as 'not video games'. I doubt either (although I don't really know them and only have seen 1 of the 2 of them before in passing) would be suprised at the new madien or assassins creed game coming out, but the idea that D&D could change so soon seemed to shock them.

in my own group we are all 3e or older players so I am not sure at all... my niece and nephew both stared playing around end of 4e along with 'no thankkyou evil' so they already know of the edition wheel spinning


----------



## Warpiglet-7

I like a few of the new possible rules and dislike some of the others.

My purchase of PHB is really going to come down to the art.  If it’s cool I might just grab it and steal any new rules we like.

If not…probably will stick with 5e as is.  My group is a group of friends and occasional kid tagalong.  We are not being divided and will play group consensus.  Frankly, there is such a big player base now I don’t think it will be hard to find 5e games for years to come.


----------



## gorice

Thomas Shey said:


> It might be my fault for not making it clear; I'm talking about the structure of the _system_.  While resolution approaches are not completely disconnected with that, its far more vulnerable to, from lack of a better term "local conditions"; no matter how a game describes how you're supposed to approach dealing with particular types of problems, people will use the core mechanics in other ways to do that.  That comes up outside the D&D sphere too (dip into enough threads about PbtA games and its abundantly clear a non-trivial amount of GMs ignore the way they're told to use the system, sometimes in ways that seem kind of appalling to PbtA proponents, and PbtA games and related have always been far more rigid in that way than virtually any editions of D&D.)
> 
> As such, I don't think a lot of things that are theoretically part of a game loop don't seem particularly core to people because they've played in a lot, maybe all their games that don't follow it.  But they've still probably played D&D with classes, levels, level elevating hit points and a couple other things.  Its far more central to the overall D&D hobby than any specific playstyle (though there are certainly some styles that have been very common throughout its history).



Regarding your first paragraph: to what extent is a rule non-structural because some people don't follow the rule? No game designer can _make_ players do things by the book. I think there's a difference between a game that people play 'wrong' in some instances, and a game that people play 'wrong' in most instances, or a game that doesn't have an obvious 'right'. This is all possibly a matter of degree, to be fair.

The more important question is: if everyone plays with classes, levels, and ascending HP, does that yield some kind of 'core' D&D experience? I would argue that it does not, and point the the incredible wealth of D&D-derived games (including video games) that all contain those same elements, and yet play very differently.


----------



## GMforPowergamers

gorice said:


> The more important question is: if everyone plays with classes, levels, and ascending HP, does that yield some kind of 'core' D&D experience?



at this level of abstraction 4e basic and 5e are all identical. 


gorice said:


> I would argue that it does not, and point the the incredible wealth of D&D-derived games (including video games) that all contain those same elements, and yet play very differently.


----------



## SteveC

I hate to give this answer, but really it's "it depends." If you think about it, and have read this thread, it already has to some degree.

But, it all depends on how much a change the new edition actually turns out to be. Yes, WotC is saying "you will be able to keep using your old books," but they have said similar things in the past. They have to say something like that if they don't want to have no one buying new PHBs of 5E for the next year plus.

Every time there's been a new edition, and I've experienced them since AD&D went to 2E, there is division and people have stayed with the new, for the most part. I think the closest thing we've ever seen to real division was 4E, and I say that as a 4E fan. The question is how big a change there is going to be, and if the changes are seen as a net positive by the fanbase.

I don't know how that's going to work out, but I do know that some of the people working on design are coming from Paizo, and my experience with Pathfinder2 has been excellent, so I am hopeful that the game will have design improvements.

I think the thing that people need to come to terms with is that D&D One 1D&D will be it's own thing, and yes, people will be buying new books for it if they're playing it. My 5E PHB will be 10 years old at that point, so I don't think that's going to be unreasonable to assume that I will need a new one (the horror! New book smell!) What's going to change *the most* are the classes and spells, and if you think about it, that's what you reference a PHB for most anyway. I don't expect a change in the core mechanic at this point (so my dream of a dice pool based D&D with D4s will remain just a dream), and I expect we'll still have AC and HP, so you will be able to *play *D&D One 1D&D without a new PHB if you already know the rules. You'll just need to know what your character can do now, and that's something I expect to change. That's the reason for a new PHB.

If you look at the Amazon ratings, people are still buying PHBs at a high rate today, and will that really change with a new edition? Methinks not.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Olrox17 said:


> Tbh, the only thing that surprises me from your anecdote is younger people getting upset/surprised about this, in a game market where annual videogame releases have been the norm for a decade or so.



It really is different.  Updates to the base game are generally free in video games, and hard to avoid, so everyone is basically on the same page.  DLC is extra, but is more like an rpg supplement in that it's there if you want, but you have to opt in.


----------



## Thomas Shey

gorice said:


> Regarding your first paragraph: to what extent is a rule non-structural because some people don't follow the rule? No game designer can _make_ players do things by the book. I think there's a difference between a game that people play 'wrong' in some instances, and a game that people play 'wrong' in most instances, or a game that doesn't have an obvious 'right'. This is all possibly a matter of degree, to be fair.




Absolutely.  But that's kind of the point; things that have changed with every edition are going to not be viewed as core _because they've changed with every edition.  _Consider something as simple as climbing a wall; go back through time and ask an OD&D GM, a AD&D2e GM and a D&D4e era GM how that's done and you'll get three different answers.  Ask them how characters advance and you'll get fundamentally the same one.  Levels and at least approximately what they mean has been a substrate of the game since its inception, and has only changed in ways that most people would consider trivial from that.



gorice said:


> The more important question is: if everyone plays with classes, levels, and ascending HP, does that yield some kind of 'core' D&D experience? I would argue that it does not, and point the the incredible wealth of D&D-derived games (including video games) that all contain those same elements, and yet play very differently.




I'm afraid I can't follow you there, and the reason is, I've played and/or run OD&D, D&D3e, D&D4e and related family games like PF2e and SotDL, and they feel much more similar than a game like RuneQuest or Fantasy Hero.  That doesn't mean there aren't some real differences, but they're still giving that fundamentally D&D-like experience.


----------



## Thomas Shey

GMforPowergamers said:


> at this level of abstraction 4e basic and 5e are all identical.




Again, I've run OD&D and played D&D4e, and they still felt more similar than any fantasy game I played/ran outside the D&D sphere.


----------



## Thomas Shey

Micah Sweet said:


> It really is different.  Updates to the base game are generally free in video games, and hard to avoid, so everyone is basically on the same page.  DLC is extra, but is more like an rpg supplement in that it's there if you want, but you have to opt in.




There's also the issue that most non-online computer games are a basically solitary experience.  If you didn't want to hop from XCOM1 to XCOM2, you didn't have to, and it would not impair your experience because you were not likely dependent on other people sticking with XCOM1 for your enjoyment.


----------



## Clint_L

If WotC does what they say they intend to do, this whole conversation will seem ridiculous in a few years. When you can walk into a store, grab an updated PHB when you feel like it, go home and still use it with your _Rime of the Frostmaiden_ campaign you've been planning to run, and it works fine, folks will be like "eh." I'm sure you will get the occasional grognard insisting that only the 2014 PHB is _real_ D&D, but most conversations will be something like: Player: "Are we using the updated Bardic inspiration rules?" DM: "Sure." I don't think we are gonna exactly get a Protestant/Catholic schism here.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Clint_L said:


> If WotC does what they say they intend to do, this whole conversation will seem ridiculous in a few years. When you can walk into a store, grab an updated PHB when you feel like it, go home and still use it with your _Rime of the Frostmaiden_ campaign you've been planning to run, and it works fine, folks will be like "eh." I'm sure you will get the occasional grognard insisting that only the 2014 PHB is _real_ D&D, but most conversations will be something like: Player: "Are we using the updated Bardic inspiration rules?" DM: "Sure." I don't think we are gonna exactly get a Protestant/Catholic schism here.



This is an area where I feel it is impossible to be objective.  IMO, the more you as an individual like the new rules or at least don't think they're a big deal, the more likely you will believe that there won't be a schism or that it will be small.  And of course the reverse is true.


----------



## DEFCON 1

Micah Sweet said:


> This is an area where I feel it is impossible to be objective.  IMO, the more you as an individual like the new rules or at least don't think they're a big deal, the more likely you will believe that there won't be a schism or that it will be small.  And of course the reverse is true.



And there's also the other facet, which is that even if there does end up being a schism... whether that actually matters or not?

There might very well be a schism amongst the player base on the whole... but if almost all individual tables are able to play the game they want (switching, not switching, staying with D&D, moving on from D&D), then the schism will have little impact on people.  Heck, people are still playing AD&D right now happily and the fact that there are been multiple editions since then hasn't bothered them in the least.

Find people to play the game you want and to hell with anyone else playing something different.  There are lots of different flavors of ice cream... we don't all have to enjoy the same one.


----------



## billd91

Clint_L said:


> I don't think we are gonna exactly get a Protestant/Catholic schism here.



But what if it's a Rome/Avignon schism?!?


----------



## Olrox17

Micah Sweet said:


> It really is different.  Updates to the base game are generally free in video games, and hard to avoid, so everyone is basically on the same page.  DLC is extra, but is more like an rpg supplement in that it's there if you want, but you have to opt in.



Sure, but 5e is almost 10 years old. How many games are continually freely updated and patched for 10 years straight? There are some, but they are the exception rather than the rule. Eventually, you want to churn out a full sequel and start making money all over again.


GMforPowergamers said:


> I think (and I may be way off I have not been young since the T rex went extinct) that we still sell the TTRPG as 'not video games'. I doubt either (although I don't really know them and only have seen 1 of the 2 of them before in passing) would be suprised at the new madien or assassins creed game coming out, but the idea that D&D could change so soon seemed to shock them.
> 
> in my own group we are all 3e or older players so I am not sure at all... my niece and nephew both stared playing around end of 4e along with 'no thankkyou evil' so they already know of the edition wheel spinning



Could be. I'm just surprised to hear that younger gamers aren't completely used to nowadays' crappy commercial practices yet.


----------



## payn

Olrox17 said:


> Sure, but 5e is almost 10 years old. How many games are continually freely updated and patched for 10 years straight? There are some, but they are the exception rather than the rule. Eventually, you want to churn out a full sequel and start making money all over again.



MMOs.


----------



## Aldarc

UngainlyTitan said:


> Defining D&D is like that of porn, *you know it if you see.*



Obviously. They print the name "D&D" or "Dungeons and Dragons" on the cover.



Olrox17 said:


> Sure, but 5e is almost 10 years old. How many games are continually freely updated and patched for 10 years straight? There are some, but they are the exception rather than the rule. Eventually, you want to churn out a full sequel and start making money all over again.



Diablo 2 was released in 2000. Its latest patch was 2016. But then it got a re-release as Diablo 2: Resurrected in 2021.

Diablo 3 was released in 2012. Still being patched in 2022. 

Starcraft 1 and Brood War were released in 1998. Its latest update was patch 1.23.10, which was in September 2022.

Guild Wars 1 (2005) had three patches this year.

It's a lot more common than you think, especially as many PC games involve online co-op play.


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## FitzTheRuke

payn said:


> MMOs.




Sure, but they have other ways to monetise your play experience.


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## Aldarc

FitzTheRuke said:


> Sure, but they have other ways to monetise your play experience.



The goal post has now been moved.


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## Cadence

Clint_L said:


> If WotC does what they say they intend to do, this whole conversation will seem ridiculous in a few years. When you can walk into a store, grab an updated PHB when you feel like it, go home and still use it with your _Rime of the Frostmaiden_ campaign you've been planning to run, and it works fine, folks will be like "eh." I'm sure you will get the occasional grognard insisting that only the 2014 PHB is _real_ D&D, but most conversations will be something like: Player: "Are we using the updated Bardic inspiration rules?" DM: "Sure." I don't think we are gonna exactly get a Protestant/Catholic schism here.




If they're using the books, how will the player and DM even know they are using different ones or think to ask?  If they're using the online ones will the new player ever think of not using the new one and will the DM ever try to keep up?

Anyway, my question is about how they would get sold on Amazon and ebay.  Will they all note the printing?
And then I went and checked out the first one on ebay...






Maybe I'm just skeptical of how textbooks work, where even the international versions of the same edition have the homework problems in different orders and the like.  Actual different editions are painful for trying to get students the right sections and problems.


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## tetrasodium

Micah Sweet said:


> It really is different.  Updates to the base game are generally free in video games, and hard to avoid, so *everyone is basically on the same page. * DLC is extra, but is more like an rpg supplement in that it's there if you want, but you have to opt in.





Spoiler: You sure about that?






5e was built around the idea that the _simplicity_ of _streamlined_ crossplay is the only important goal.  6e seems to be fixing some of the more egregious results of that from what we've seen so far.


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## Bill Zebub

Lake Onebegone.  Where all the halflings are weak, all the orcs are evil, and all the ability scores are below average.


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## Olrox17

payn said:


> MMOs.



Yes, I mentioned that there are some exceptions to the rule, thank you for providing an example.


Aldarc said:


> Diablo 2 was released in 2000. Its latest patch was 2016. But then it got a re-release as Diablo 2: Resurrected in 2021.
> 
> Diablo 3 was released in 2012. Still being patched in 2022.
> 
> Starcraft 1 and Brood War were released in 1998. Its latest update was patch 1.23.10, which was in September 2022.
> 
> Guild Wars 1 (2005) had three patches this year.
> 
> It's a lot more common than you think, especially as many PC games involve online co-op play.



I’m sure we can easily provide a few more examples if we put our minds to it. Then, we’ll have to look at the literal hundreds of examples of the opposite.
Besides, how many Diablo games did we get since 2000? Come now.


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## payn

Olrox17 said:


> Yes, I mentioned that there are some exceptions to the rule, thank you for providing an example.



Thats an ass load of exceptions.


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## Olrox17

payn said:


> Thats an ass load of exceptions.



If you are a big MMO enjoyer, I’m sure it is by your perspective. If you look at the mainstream market, however, you’ll find it’s all annual releases, sequel grind, remake/remaster like crazy, and egregious monetization (loot boxes, microtransactions).

I’ll gladly take a new dnd edition every 6-10 years, thank you. I think many of us have no idea how good we got it.


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## Aldarc

Olrox17 said:


> Yes, I mentioned that there are some exceptions to the rule, thank you for providing an example.
> 
> I’m sure we can easily provide a few more examples if we put our minds to it. Then, we’ll have to look at the literal hundreds of examples of the opposite.



"All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, when was the last time that games were patched across a 10 year life cycle?"  

But yes, once we ignore the buttloads of inconvenient exceptions, your point is correct. 



Olrox17 said:


> Besides, how many Diablo games did we get since 2000? Come now.



Regardless of how many Diablo games we have gotten since 2000, Diablo 2 was patched until 2016. Sixteen years. How many Diablos in that time frame? One. It was released in 2012. So still twelve years of patching. And for the record, both 12 and 16 are more than 10, which was your original goal post that you put forth. 



Olrox17 said:


> If you are a big MMO enjoyer, I’m sure it is by your perspective. If you look at the mainstream market, however, you’ll find it’s all annual release, sequel grind, remake/remaster like crazy, and egregious monetization (loot boxes, microtransactions).
> 
> I’ll gladly take a new dnd edition every 6-10 years, thank you. It think many of us have no idea how good we got it.



The mainstream market shows that the existence of sequels doesn't preclude older games from being updated and patched by the company as well.


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## Olrox17

Aldarc said:


> "All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, when was the last time that games were patched across a 10 year life cycle?"
> 
> But yes, once we ignore the buttloads of inconvenient exceptions, your point is correct.



In a market that includes literal thousands of titles, am I really supposed to be impressed by half a dozen of hand picked examples?I’m not. I wouldn’t be impressed by a hundred.


Aldarc said:


> Regardless of how many Diablo games we have gotten since 2000, Diablo 2 was patched until 2016. Sixteen years. How many Diablos in that time frame? One. It was released in 2012. So still twelve years of patching. And for the record, both 12 and 16 are more than 10, which was your original goal post that you put forth.



You forget the announced and upcoming Diablo 4 and Diablo Immortal. They kept patching Diablo 2 for a decade? That’s cool of them. Of course, they were still making money with a sequel, a remake, a mobile sequel, and are getting ready with another sequel.
I mean, if WotC decided to release a 4e or 3e rules update tomorrow I wouldn’t mind, but 5e/One dnd would still be the current product.



Aldarc said:


> The mainstream market shows that the existence of sequels doesn't preclude older games from being updated and patched by the company as well.



Agreed. What are we disagreeing about? I’m surprised nobody even mentioned Skyrim, I thought it was the most obvious example of a long-living game that is still being sold on current hardware.
The mainstream market, however, is still what it is. Getting a new d&d edition every 5-10 years is fantastically customer friendly in comparison.


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## FitzTheRuke

Aldarc said:


> The goal post has now been moved.




Perhaps I wasn't all that familiar with the original thrust of the tangent, but I have no idea what you mean by this. My limited understanding of the tangent went something like this:

"Unlike D&D, video games (sometimes) offer free updates." 

... to which I responded, in effect, "Yes, but unlike D&D, video games are built to make money that way."

If I moved a goal-post somehow, it's only because I mistook some part of the original conversation. Care to walk me through it?


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## Incenjucar

WotC does need to make money off of D&D, one way or another, or else they have no reason to not just shelve the game as anything but a licensing brand. As an edition ages, you get diminishing returns on sales because people already have enough material for their campaigns and the accrual of errors introduced starts to make things messy.

The nice thing is you can keep your books forever as long as they don't get damaged or lost, so they can't just turn the servers off on you.


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## Scott Christian

GMforPowergamers said:


> that fact that 20 pages in we see divide and we are still in playtest shows there will be...



Only a divide with two people.


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## Thomas Shey

Aldarc said:


> Obviously. They print the name "D&D" or "Dungeons and Dragons" on the cover.
> 
> 
> Diablo 2 was released in 2000. Its latest patch was 2016. But then it got a re-release as Diablo 2: Resurrected in 2021.
> 
> Diablo 3 was released in 2012. Still being patched in 2022.
> 
> Starcraft 1 and Brood War were released in 1998. Its latest update was patch 1.23.10, which was in September 2022.
> 
> Guild Wars 1 (2005) had three patches this year.
> 
> It's a lot more common than you think, especially as many PC games involve online co-op play.




And even a long lasting multiplayer game is liable to run into graphics expectations problems at some point; not everyone is happy playing Dwarf Fortress in 2022.


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## Aldarc

Olrox17 said:


> In a market that includes literal thousands of titles, am I really supposed to be impressed by half a dozen of hand picked examples?I’m not. I wouldn’t be impressed by a hundred.



It doesn't really matter if you are impressed by them or not really. The point is that there are plenty of counterexamples, and likely thousands of counterexamples if someone would be bothered to put in the effort. My post was also meant to add to @payn's post, which mentioned MMOs. So I wanted to add a few prominent non-MMOs to the mix. Blizzard seemed like a good choice since it's a major mainstream game company. 



Olrox17 said:


> You forget the announced and upcoming Diablo 4 and Diablo Immortal. They kept patching Diablo 2 for a decade? That’s cool of them. Of course, they were still making money with a sequel, a remake, a mobile sequel, and are getting ready with another sequel.
> I mean, if WotC decided to release a 4e or 3e rules update tomorrow I wouldn’t mind, but 5e/One dnd would still be the current product.



I forget that they announced Diablo 4 and Diablo Immortal? That's rich of you to assume. I was only addressing your argument that games aren't freely updated and patched over a 10-year cycle. Neither Immortal nor Diablo 4 have been out for 10+ years, so they did not seem pertinent. I would point out that Diablo Immortal came out in 2022, which is ten years after Diablo 3 was released in 2012. Likewise Diablo 4 will probably be released in 2023 (supposedly April), which is eleven years after Diablo 3's release. 

I agree that 5e is the current product. I agree that One D&D (however it is called) will be the current product and the primary focus of WotC's published content. I do not agree that video games don't get updates and patches over a ten-year cycle, because there are plenty of counterexamples. Again, it's far more prevalent than you claim. 



Olrox17 said:


> Agreed. *What are we disagreeing about? *



That there aren't that many games patched and updated over a 10-year cycle. It's far more prevalent than you think. Even when there are sequels and new games, a lot of older games will still get patches and updates. These may not be big content updates. They may be mostly maintence mode updates. But patches and updates for 10+ year-old games are still pretty dang common. 

I agree that there are still market incentives for game companies to make new games, which is also true in the case of WotC with D&D. However, I don't think that this requires fibs about the video game market.


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## Olrox17

Aldarc said:


> That there aren't that many games patched and updated over a 10-year cycle. It's far more prevalent than you think. Even when there are sequels and new games, a lot of older games will still get patches and updates. These may not be big content updates. They may be mostly maintence mode updates. But patches and updates for 10+ year-old games are still pretty dang common.
> 
> I agree that there are still market incentives for game companies to make new games, which is also true in the case of WotC with D&D. However, I don't think that this requires fibs about the video game market.



Very well, so we disagree whether having patches and updates for 10+ year-old games is a pretty common thing (your position) or a relatively rare thing (my position). I think we can just agree to disagree on this point and move on, especially since my main point was another.

My main point: 
Today's new D&D players are very likely to also be videogamers (sometimes casual, often hardcore).
Today's videogamers are (unfortunately) used to pretty aggressive market tactics (constant annual releases, waves of remakes and remasters, and egregious monetization schemes like loot boxes).

Compared to the videogame market, I claim that the D&D model of having us pay for a few core books every decade or so (books you can share with multiple people) is fantastically customer friendly, and I'm personally 100% on board with that.


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## Yora

I remember in the 90s and 2000s, there would be several new D&D books released every month.
The current output of 5th edition is positively anemic in comparison.


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## Yora

billd91 said:


> But what if it's a Rome/Avignon schism?!?



That would mean 6th edition claiming that it's still 5th edition and the only 5th edition.

Oh wait, I think that checks out.


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## GMforPowergamers

Yora said:


> That would mean 6th edition claiming that it's still 5th edition and the only 5th edition.
> 
> Oh wait, I think that checks out.



that may be what we get


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## Micah Sweet

Yora said:


> I remember in the 90s and 2000s, there would be several new D&D books released every month.
> The current output of 5th edition is positively anemic in comparison.



I do draw a line between new supplements and lightly changed rules material in rewritten core books, personally.  Maybe that's arbitrary, I don't know.


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## GMforPowergamers

Micah Sweet said:


> I do draw a line between new supplements and lightly changed rules material in rewritten core books, personally.  Maybe that's arbitrary, I don't know.



we used to have a word for that... we called them editions (the RPG version) and WotC doesn't like that word


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## Micah Sweet

GMforPowergamers said:


> we used to have a word for that... we called them editions (the RPG version) and WotC doesn't like that word



Yeah, we did.  I disagree with WotC on that front.  Better to me to make 1DD a new edition, make it the way they think their largest player base wants, maybe pair it with a new setting that caters to that design philosophy.  That way, you can make an informed choice whether or not to move forward with them.  I don't like half-measures, and that's what this looks like to me.

All that being said, there's nothing to be done about it, so there's no point in continuing to give WotC a hard time for a decision they've already made.


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## GMforPowergamers

Micah Sweet said:


> Yeah, we did.  I disagree with WotC on that front.  Better to me to make 1DD a new edition, make it the way they think their largest player base wants, maybe pair it with a new setting that caters to that design philosophy.  That way, you can make an informed choice whether or not to move forward with them.  I don't like half-measures, and that's what this looks like to me.



I agree with all of this. not only do I want a better divide, but also i want more of a change



Micah Sweet said:


> All that being said, there's nothing to be done about it, so there's no point in continuing to give WotC a hard time for a decision they've already made.



okay this i am back to disagreeing... we have 1 1/2 years to get them to change there mind... (IMO)


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## Micah Sweet

GMforPowergamers said:


> I agree with all of this. not only do I want a better divide, but also i want more of a change
> 
> 
> okay this i am back to disagreeing... we have 1 1/2 years to get them to change there mind... (IMO)



Maybe.  I just don't think WotC is likely to listen to complaints thst amount to, "Please toss out backwards compatibility and make a new game that better fits your current fan base".  I really, really wish they would, but I just don't see it.


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## Cadence

Micah Sweet said:


> Maybe.  I just don't think WotC is likely to listen to complaints thst amount to, "Please toss out backwards compatibility and make a new game that better fits your current fan base".  I really, really wish they would, but I just don't see it.




I have the feeling that backwards compatibility has a squishy definition.


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## Micah Sweet

Cadence said:


> I have the feeling that backwards compatibility has a squishy definition.



Me too, but it seems they _ really_ like the phrase.


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## MichaelSomething

Micah Sweet said:


> Maybe. I just don't think WotC is likely to listen to complaints thst amount to, "Please toss out backwards compatibility and make a new game that better fits your current fan base". I really, really wish they would, but I just don't see it.



Didn't they try that with 4th Edition?


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## Micah Sweet

MichaelSomething said:


> Didn't they try that with 4th Edition?



Yep.  And I tried it for a while, didn't like it and left it alone.  At least this time, I have a good 5e-adjacent I prefer and have players for.  I tried Pathfinder, but by then I'd already invested a lot in 4e and didn't want to do it again.


----------

