D&D (2024) What the 1e-2e Transition Can Tell Us About 5.5e

[TerraDave]

@TerraDave Well, that and the fact that they are not making any significant changes. At least, not thus far, and they claim they won’t.

The point isn’t to sell a new PHB to someone who already has one. The point is to update the game and keep the currently strong sales rolling along.

If they make you feel you have to replace your existing books to still play the current edition, then they have failed at their stated primary design goal. This is a key distinction from 2e, which needed to generate fast sales to keep TSR afloat.

Whether they stick with 5e or not only matters if 5e is being replaced by a new, incompatible edition. If the players sticking with 5e still buy WotC's new adventures, then they can stay on 5e without any impact on WotC (apart from them not buying the 1DD books) or the players.

Would WotC want them to migrate, sure, but they are not being forced off 5e by their edition being discontinued.

Ahh. I see.

I think they will in fact want current players to get the new books. Thats why they are making so many changes and doing this huge open playtest. You can make up any definition of "significant" you want, but we are seeing a lot of changes, and its only just the beginning.

If they did not get a bump in sales from 2024 books, that would almost certainly be seen as a fail inside WotC.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

The point isn’t to sell a new PHB to someone who already has one.

Well, to be fair... THAT is ALSO the goal. I know I'm looking forward to selling them!

 

[mamba]

I think they will in fact want current players to get the new books.

sure, who in their right mind wouldn’t

Thats why they are making so many changes and doing this huge open playtest.

they do the playtest to get feedback. As to many changes, they may be big in number but they are mostly relatively small tweaks. I do not believe that they make them for change sake / to create enough of a difference to make upgrading worthwhile however

You cannot really expect them to make no changes in a new version of the books

If they did not get a bump in sales from 2024 books, that would almost certainly be seen as a fail inside WotC.

given that this is pretty much impossible, I’d agree

I believe the bigger fail would be if 40% or so stuck with 5e and stopped buying new adventures and supplements because they considered them incompatible however

 

[Clint_L]

Yeah, I know they won't object to selling new books to players who already have the old ones. What I mean is that that is not a primary goal, unlike with previous editions. They don't want you to feel pressured to have to update, so that you feel like now you have to choose a side, and potentially retire your entire investment. Because in the past, that created a jumping off point for a lot of players.

Like, if you were playing a cavalier or barbarian when 2e came out, you had a pretty good incentive to stick with 1e.

This will still be a jumping off point, but probably not as much.

 

[Lanefan]

Why 2e? What were the design reasons behind 2e, and the need for it?

There are a few answers to this. All of them are partly correct, none of them fully explains it.
a. Money. This is the biggest motivating factor, of course. TSR was emerging from dire financial straits, and a new edition means selling all those core books ... again.
b. Gygax. After Gygax's ouster, TSR began systemically ensuring that they were no longer beholden to his influence. Forgotten Realms was released as a campaign setting in 1987. And re-doing the core books in a way that made them more rule book, and less "Gygax pontificating on issues while also giving a few rules" would help lessen his singular influence on the game.
c. Reducing Sprawl. AD&D started as an expansion of the original OD&D rules and supplements, but the release of more rulebooks (OA and UA) and the flood of optional rules and supplements made it imperative to make some attempt to consolidate the game.
d. Satanic Panic. While TSR massively benefitted from the early Satanic panic and the Egbert controversy, and talked a big game, they were working to make the game more palatable and less offensive ... and more importantly, more friendly to teens, who were the target market for the new edition. 1e had been designed with adults in mind but had been played be teens- the new product would be designed to be accessible to teens and not to be offensive to parents.

In order of importance, I'd say it was d first, then a, then big drop to b and c.

2. What Did 2e Change?

One major change you missed was the presentation, at least in the initial core three books. Bigger typeface, simplified writing, bland artwork; all contributed to the sense of it having been considerably dumbed down.

3. Why U Mad Brah? Understanding the Reaction Against 2e.

I cannot speak for every single angry person, of course, but generally I would say that most of the resistance came down to some of the following factors:
a. Anger over the PG direction. This might shock you, but the idea that "D&D isn't for kids," has been around since, well, almost forever. the combination of the specific choice to make it more teen-friendly as well as the acknowledged capitulation to the forces behind the Satanic Panic weren't great for a lot of people.

These were, and remain to this day, my primary annoyance with 2e.

And with the 5e to 5.5e change I see some of the same type of things happening again.

d. Anger over change. This is always a catch-all, but if you've devoted years of your life to mastering a system, perhaps even going so far as to write your own dense packet of additional rules, you probably didn't think much of the changes that TSR chose to make. Why fix something that ain't broke?

Oddly enough, this was one way in which 2e largely didn't bother us at all, in that quite a few of its changes were simply catching up to changes we'd already homebrewed in. Other changes were things we'd already considered and tossed, while others e.g. the dumbing-down and the sanitization were flat-out non-starters for us.

 

[Zardnaar]

Proof will be in the pudding. We'll reception anyway.

 

[OB1]

But you won't switch. That is the point of it. They'll just gradually transition to the new books and take the 5e off them. They already started with Monsters of the Multiverse. The revolution already happened.

I'm with you on this. I wonder what percentage of people who owned VGtM and MToF bought MotM (I did once I saw some of the revisions) and if that isn't a kind of baseline for how many current players they'd like to see upgrade to 2024 in it's first year of release.

But overall this is about keeping sales strong for another 10 years, not reselling to all existing players. They only need to get a percentage of existing who either want the Anniversary edition for their collection or who like 2024 enough to upgrade.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Your posts are always a bit intimidating to comment on, because I feel like I need to raise my game.

Don't worry, brah. You got game.

I have vague memories of our furious nerd debates about the Zeb Cook article and the direction of 2e. It makes me nostalgic now, but we were mad. As teenagers, we obviously knew everything, and it was clear to us that he wanted to wreck D&D. We thought TSR was backing down to the Christian Right by banning the words "demon" and "devil" and by no longer illustrating the Gynosphinx with naked bewbs. And obviously, we were sure that Lorraine Williams done did Gary Gygax wrong (this was long before the rumours about his Hollywood adventures made the rounds, at least to our tender ears).

I don't see OneD&D exciting the same rage. To begin with, the changes are less significant. No classes are going away. Replacing the word "race" with "species" has generated plenty of commentary on this forum, but does anyone deeply care? For real? The tone of the game isn't changing: we get to keep our devils and demons, and our Gynosphinxes remain safely demure. No one is getting rid out of town on a rail, and there isn't a powerful woman taking charge that we can focus hateful rhetoric upon. There's just a lot of argument about fairly petty details, which will cause more drama than it should, but nothing like 2e did, IMO.

No parallels are exact- that's why there is a difference between an analogy and an identity. But I do think this is the most like of the prior edition changes simply because this is the one where they are trying to maintain that backwards compatibility, and yet still receiving pushback. One of the reasons it might not seem as similar to you is because you are not part of the angry contingent this time.

But replace "anger over Gygax" with "anger over the OGL." And "anger over the PG direction" with "anger over the PC direction." Even some things that are completely switched are similar- for example, people back then were angry that they called it a new edition because it was just the "same stuff" and a cash grab. Now, they are angry that they aren't calling it a new edition and, um, it's a cash grab.

That said, and much to my current shame, I was also part of the angry contingent back then. And, I have to admit, I will get in the occasional grog-fight when someone mistakes 2e for 1e, because OH NOES THEY ARE NOT THE SAME!!11!!!!!11!

But TBH, the same way that you now look at people and ask, "Does anyone really care, for real, about the changes...." That's the exact same way people look back at the 1e/2e changes.

To borrow a quip I am sure you are familiar with-
Q. Why were the disputes about 1e and 2e so vicious?

A. Because the stakes were so small.

While I hope for something different this time around, I am not confident that will be the case. Anyway, I thought it would spark a good conversation, and also help me procrastinate in terms of writing that second dice post.

 

[Krachek]

Sure some people will get mad! Despite the game have an a huge possibility of home brew, some people still keep a secret wish that the new edition will fit their exact needs. A new edition is like a lottery, we can hope to win the grand prize of the perfect edition for us… but in fact the game will aim the middle ground players.

As for 5.5 or One, we will have what we seen and will see in the playtest! No big surprise.

The biggest change for me is the mechanic for prepared spells tied to spell slots that been presented for all the casters.
it is a bigger change than I expected. It will make quite a difference for multiple classes and bring a different tone to the game.

We still have an important playtest to come: The first draft of the warrior group. The leak for the weapon mastery show they add more options for fighter during fight, but we are still in an evolution of the fighting style concept. They won’t solve the famous caster vs martial disparity that bother some posters.

 

[MGibster]

If they make you feel you have to replace your existing books to still play the current edition, then they have failed at their stated primary design goal. This is a key distinction from 2e, which needed to generate fast sales to keep TSR afloat.

I've felt like this for a while now. At least ever since they decided that Tasha's was the way they were going to handle character generation from that point forward. I dislike having all those rules scattered over many books, and I have no objection to a new edition of a game comingout.