D&D General Does D&D (and RPGs in general) Need Edition Resets?

[Lanefan]

No

It's that slowly updated 1e that never resets would be less successful than a RPG produced by a large company that is allowed to reset and/or incorporated modern game design.

Or basically.

If 1e never resets, it will never catch up with the current level of game design and be outdated. This would open a path for any well funded well designed well marketed RPG to surpass them with modern game design.

The assumptions you're making here are twofold, though connected:

1. That modern game design is better than what we'd have had after 40+ years of further iteration on a 1e/BX/BECMI chassis
2. That the within-the-hobby mainstream would care, if that 1e-based system was and remained good enough to be good enough, about what you're calling modern design.

The first of these assumptions is wide open for debate; as for every good idea over the years there's also been at least one bad one, and examples of both exist in the D&D we have now.

The second is evidenced in reailty by the continued inability of supposedly-good modern-design games to gain any real foothold in the market beyond a tiny niche within the hobby.

 

[Minigiant]

I suspect it depends on how iterated. There are a number of advantages D&D was going to have no matter what, but it should be noted that even the people who fled 3e and 4e into the OSR sphere don't seem to have usually run to AD&D knockoffs. It wouldn't have to be a 5e, but I think it might not be what it now is with something terribly close to that system as-was.

It's more about when than how.

1e doesn't have feats, dragonborn, tabaxi, goliaths, warlocks, sorcerers, the rage based or cultural versions of the barbarian, giants, runes, maneuvers, musical bards, or even proper skills... or ability mods for every ability...

If D&D slow walks from 1e without reset,50 years is not long enough to get them in the game or attempt them enough to get them right. Or kinda right.

This lets anyone who wants to in to take D&D's spot.

If TSR remains, there is no 3e-style WOTCRPG. Wizards started as an RPG company. When they first started getting flush with Magicash, they expanded into more RPGs because that's what Adkison was into. They bought Ars Magica and Talislanta (and maybe some others), and published Everway on their own. But they realized pretty quickly that resources spent on RPGs were pretty much wasted in comparison to resources spent on Magic, so they sold them off again and got out of RPGs – until they got the chance to buy the biggest RPG on the block.

And without 3e, there is no Paizo or Pathfinder. Paizo started because Wizards wanted to outsource making the Dragon and Dungeon magazines, so Lisa Stevens and Vic Wertz took some of the money they got from Wizards selling out to Hasbro and started a publishing company with it. They got known for raising the standard of the magazines, and particularly for their adventure paths in Dungeon. When they lost the license to the magazines because Wizards wanted to move them in house again, they switched focus to making magazine-like adventure paths, and mainly created Pathfinder because they didn't want to make 4e adventures (partially because they didn't like the rules, and partially because they couldn't abide the GSL) and it made little long-term sense to make adventures for a system that was no longer being published.

Pre-3e, the biggest competitors to D&D were White Wolf (who were about to blow themselves up and sell to an Icelandic video game studio), Palladium, and FASA. West End Games would have been one too if their parent company hadn't gone bankrupt in 1998 which made them lose the Star Wars license (just before the release of the Phantom Menace, too).

You're following a timeline that can't exist.

I'm saying if TSR stays in business and makes a 3e that is an adjusted 2e.... could it withstand a competitor with feats and skills and ability mods?

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's more about when than how.

1e doesn't have feats, dragonborn, tabaxi, goliaths, warlocks, sorcerers, the rage based or cultural versions of the barbarian, giants, runes, maneuvers, musical bards, or even proper skills... or ability mods for every ability...

If D&D slow walks from 1e without reset,50 years is not long enough to get them in the game or attempt them enough to get them right. Or kinda right.

This lets anyone who wants to in to take D&D's spot.


You're following a timeline that can't exist.

I'm saying if TSR stays in business and makes a 3e that is an adjusted 2e.... could it withstand a competitor with feats and skills and ability mods?

Would a competitor have such things, in the way the WotC editions did? Back in the 90s a lot of games used advantages and disadvantages.

 

[Minigiant]

Would a competitor have such things, in the way the WotC editions did? Back in the 90s a lot of games used advantages and disadvantages.

Yes.
They were appearing in video games.as perks/talents. Eventually some designer would apply them to TTRPGs.
1e would have to rest to insert feats.

Having feats and skills over the feat-less and skill-less D&D is just what would let an "D&D Killer" or Heartbreaker actually beat D&D

 

[Remathilis]

I think you would need an AD&D 3E and evolution from that.

Specifically unified ability scores and ascending AC. And evolve from there.

Kenzer co made a version of Hackmaster that was highly based on AD&D (it was part of the Dragon settlement). While the game has a lot of AD&D DNA mixed with KotDT in-jokes, they did spend some energy streamlining the AD&D rules in places. It might have served as a template for the kind of changes an AD&D 3e would take.

Though I think that regardless, unified ability scores and upward AC were both top to-do changes. I also bet level limits and race/class restrictions were an easy removal. But a 3e without feats or stacking multi-classing is an interesting thought experiment.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes.
They were appearing in video games.as perks/talents. Eventually some designer would apply them to TTRPGs.
1e would have to rest to insert feats.

Having feats and skills over the feat-less and skill-less D&D is just what would let an "D&D Killer" or Heartbreaker actually beat D&D

2e is an iteration on 1e, and it certainly had skills. Something like feats as a subsystem wouldn't be all that hard to bolt-on.

 

[Minigiant]

2e is an iteration on 1e, and it certainly had skills. Something like feats as a subsystem wouldn't be all that hard to bolt-on.

It didn't have skills that where tied to the system.

And "bolt on feats" would be raw obvious power creep. Neither 1e nor 2e had nothing to bolt into. There's no feat/ASI slot. No self referenced skill system. No slot for subclasses or subraces. No system for race design, monster design, encounters design, spell design, trap design, feature design. No developments into new styles of combat tension, encounter tension, adventure tension, campaign tension. No new ideas for handing our XP, gold, magic items, gifts, or other resources.

That is the core problem.

You need to reset the game to introduce new mechanics to the internals of the game. Without a reset, new good ideas can only be external (and thus unbalancing, optional, unreliable, and unfocused).

This will put you are disadvantage against a competitior who has popular new ideas as internal and better meshed and weaved into the game

Again this is not about being the better game or your favorite game. It's about sales.

New ideas come out with every game. And due to the Internet they are shared, discussed, tried, and retired.

If you never reset, you will never get the new ideas that are good or need constant revision in your game fast enough.

That can work if you are content with being a minor player. But if you are the market leader with people gunning for you are you have a tendency to piss off your fans, that spells doom for you (Both TSR & WOTC). The leader has to keep up with the times. Especially if the leader tends to vomit out bad press.

 

[payn]

That can work if you are content with being a minor player. But if you are the market leader with people gunning for you are you have a tendency to piss off your fans, that spells doom for you (Both TSR & WOTC). The leader has to keep up with the times. Especially if the leader tends to vomit out bad press.

Thats assuming the market is competitive, and its really not at the moment. Incremental change is the future. A good move if you ask me.

 

[Minigiant]

Thats assuming the market is competitive, and its really not at the moment. Incremental change is the future. A good move if you ask me.

We currently are living in a world where currently D&D resets to incorporate new popular ideas, mechanics. and concepts.

This topic is about a possibility of a D&D that doesn't reset and doesn't add new popular ideas, mechanics. and concepts. often enough to ever be considered a reset.

This hypothetical D&D doesn't have the current market but did put out the GSL or OGL for it's incremental 1.75e because corporate.

 

[payn]

We currently are living in a world where currently D&D resets to incorporate new popular ideas, mechanics. and concepts.

ORLY? Lot of folks dont find 5E 2024 to be all that radical in the new popular ideas, mechanics, and concepts department.

This topic is about a possibility of a D&D that doesn't reset and doesn't add new popular ideas, mechanics. and concepts. often enough to ever be considered a reset.

Sounds exactly like 5E 2024 to me.

This hypothetical D&D doesn't have the current market but did put out the GSL or OGL for it's incremental 1.75e because corporate.

wut?