Thoughts on the edition treadmill

[wingsandsword]

I've been thinking about the "edition treadmill", this idea that RPG's, especially D&D, MUST come out with new editions every so often. This plan that D&D must produce a new edition every decade or so (very roughly) or perish.

The more I think of it. . .the more I think that is baloney. I sometimes hear it stated that many types of games get new sweeping new editions and revisions all the time: baloney. That's the RPG world, not board games, and not really CCG's.

What got me thinking about this is that last month, I bought a bunch of board games for my 5 year old. I went out and bought Sorry, Trouble and Monopoly. Those games have the exact same rules and gameplay as they did when I played them a quarter-century ago when I was roughly his age.

I don't play CCG's (aside from a brief flirtation with L5R), but my wife got back into Magic recently, and found the game to be virtually the same as when she played it originally 8 or 9 years ago. Yes, there are new cards, a few new mechanics here and there, but the learning curve is very shallow indeed. Unless you're playing in a formal tournament, you can you the exact same decks and cards you used 10 years ago. I know a gamer who has his "fun" deck for non-serious Magic games which hasn't changed in at least 12 years.

D&D, on the other hand, is radically different than the game it was 25 years ago, or even 10 years ago. If somebody went and bought their son the game they sell as D&D now and wanted to crack into it with his family and relive the adventures of their youth, they will not recognize the terminology, or the rules, or anything except a superficial resemblance (like the "red box" marketing) to the game they remember. Somehow we're told by the gaming industry that it must be like this, that RPGs must have new editions every so often, and these editions so often seem to be vastly different with only token resemblances to what came before.

It makes me think "why"?

First, yes, game design does improve and evolve. By the time 3rd Edition D&D game out, our group had house-ruled 2e AD&D beyond recognition to get it to run the campaigns we wanted to run. Fortunately, the vast majority of those house rules had some equivalent or version in 3e, and 3.5 was mostly just an overzealous bug fix for 3.0. But not every change was quite so needed, in the 1e to 2e AD&D switch, lots of popular and useful material was dropped for a variety of (mostly bad) reasons and the game was much worse for it, even if the rules were slightly cleaned up in presentation. The 3.5 to 4e switch is one best touched on lightly, even years later it's a source of Instant Flamewar. From my perspective the 1e/2e AD&D switch to the d20 based 3.x editions was the only one the game seemed to need to stay vital.

So, rules do improve and evolve over time, but not enough to justify every single edition change we've had.

So, is the edition treadmill just a relic of business plans? Is it just a way for the company that runs D&D (be it TSR, WotC, or Hasbro) to ensure its bottom line, or is it progress incarnate as a way to keep the game constantly improving?

Personally, I see it as about 90% profit motive, 10% evolution, but I'd like to hear other opinions on the issue.

 

[the Jester]

When you talk about motive, you need to realize that each person involved has their own motivation, and that there isn't a single monolithic motive behind the edition treadmill.

To Hasbro, it's all about profit.

To some designers, it's all about improving the game.

I'd wager that to others, part of the motive involves having their own name on the game- I mean, wouldn't you love to see "6th Edition Players Handbook" with your own name at the bottom?

But basically, it's not so simple as a single motivation, and that's compounded by the fact that different people disagree as to what makes the game better.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Don't forget the desire to tinker with game systems. If the D&D IP fell into you lap, wouldn't the thought of "I can design a better system then this!" cross your mind?

 

[Sunseeker]

The more I think of it. . .the more I think that is baloney. I sometimes hear it stated that many types of games get new sweeping new editions and revisions all the time: baloney. That's the RPG world, not board games, and not really CCG's.

What got me thinking about this is that last month, I bought a bunch of board games for my 5 year old. I went out and bought Sorry, Trouble and Monopoly. Those games have the exact same rules and gameplay as they did when I played them a quarter-century ago when I was roughly his age.

I don't play CCG's (aside from a brief flirtation with L5R), but my wife got back into Magic recently, and found the game to be virtually the same as when she played it originally 8 or 9 years ago. Yes, there are new cards, a few new mechanics here and there, but the learning curve is very shallow indeed. Unless you're playing in a formal tournament, you can you the exact same decks and cards you used 10 years ago. I know a gamer who has his "fun" deck for non-serious Magic games which hasn't changed in at least 12 years.

Gonna stop you right there. First, "board games" like monopoly, are cheap, fun, and expand themselves by occassionally coming out with rule-variants(like tri-opoly, a 3-level monopoly), and also creating a wide variety of game variants, such as Beatle-opoly, Wine-opoly, and Beer-opoly. Not to mention marketing off already popular brand names, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Transformers and many others.

They're both revising the game(though not remaking it) as many of these games have variant rules, and expanding the game in a way that caters to people who may have already enjoyed the game, but would enjoy it more with some added flavor.

Secondly, you are completly wrong on CCGs. I have played MTG for the better part of almost 15 years, and there has been massive change in the game. No, they have not completly redone the game, but the rules NOW and not the same rules as they were in MTG's 4th edition. Also, like board games, these games do not continue to profit off of a static concept. There are hundreds of thousands of unique cards, hundreds of abilities, variant rules, creatures, card-types and more. They profit off of being anything BUT static.

To add to that, there are a variety of rules for HOW you can play. Though many MTG players ignore them in home-games, Standard requires the newest cards, Extended, cards from the last couple years, Legacy, cards from even further back, and so on. Not to mention Block means you can't play with anything outside of the latest material. Which helps keep MTG profitable by forcing people to buy more if they want to keep playing. Unlike D&D, they cannot simply reuse their books from 2ed to run a game for players who started around 4th ed.

Legend of the 5 Rings, Yu-Gi-Oh, MTG, Pokemon, all these games profit by expanding the game in a way that tabletop RPGs can't. Yes, you can play with your 4th ed, revised, and unlimited cards, but chances are you'll be outmatched by someone with the latest stuff(mostly due to power creep), and you guys will play on two totally different levels, not to mention you have to buy more cards if you want to play in tournaments, sanctioned games, and so on.

First, yes, game design does improve and evolve. By the time 3rd Edition D&D game out, our group had house-ruled 2e AD&D beyond recognition to get it to run the campaigns we wanted to run. Fortunately, the vast majority of those house rules had some equivalent or version in 3e, and 3.5 was mostly just an overzealous bug fix for 3.0. But not every change was quite so needed, in the 1e to 2e AD&D switch, lots of popular and useful material was dropped for a variety of (mostly bad) reasons and the game was much worse for it, even if the rules were slightly cleaned up in presentation. The 3.5 to 4e switch is one best touched on lightly, even years later it's a source of Instant Flamewar. From my perspective the 1e/2e AD&D switch to the d20 based 3.x editions was the only one the game seemed to need to stay vital.

So, rules do improve and evolve over time, but not enough to justify every single edition change we've had.

You've got some very loose reasoning here. Your argument seems to be able as being summed up as "i didn't like the changes, and therefore they weren't justified". What qualifies you, or anyone short of WotC to make those decisions?

So, is the edition treadmill just a relic of business plans? Is it just a way for the company that runs D&D (be it TSR, WotC, or Hasbro) to ensure its bottom line, or is it progress incarnate as a way to keep the game constantly improving?

Personally, I see it as about 90% profit motive, 10% evolution, but I'd like to hear other opinions on the issue.

If you don't think board games have kept up with the times, then you're missing the point. Every beast evolves differently. For Monopoly, it was to divide and conquer. It spread to every fandom, it have variants to appeal to a huge crowd, Monopoly is everywhere because it CAN be everywere. Yes, the "core" game still exists, but the variants are what make it money.

CCGs expand like mold. Once it's there, it will keep growing, keep adding to what works, and change slightly when needed, but you will NEVER get rid of it. And yes, MTG and many other card games have had their ups and downs, but the end result is, much like Monopoly, they are so expansive, and their sets so varried, that they can appeal to almost anyone.

D&D on the other hand evolves in rapid, and IMO, painful spurts. It grows oddly, adding new things constantly and revising the old, until you're working with such an unstable house of cards that it NEEDS to start again from the bottom. Otherwise it will become such a tangled menagirie of who-knows what that it will implode.

No, these other games change just as much as D&D did. They simply changed differently. Their nature is totally different so it's a different context. D&D's problem is that once you buy the core books(PHB, MM, DMG), you don't need anything else, everything else just becomes cake. Monopoly, MTG, they have ensured people keep buying them by ensuring you NEED the other things. Be they with sanctioned tournaments, rule-variants that do not overlap, or more sets to play with.

Because every player does not need every book, and every game doesn't even need MOST of the books or accessories, D&D must revise the core, or risk that people simply stop purchasing as they have everything they need. Think of it like a lawnmower, if your lawnmower never wears out, why would you ever buy another? D&D is in the same boat. They must make newer and better(by who's opinion is questionable), or they will never sell another product.

 

[fanboy2000]

I agree with your general premise: that RPGs don't need new editions all the time.

It might help to analyze what went into each D&D edition change.

The split of D&D into AD&D and BD&D was driven by differences between it's creators, Arneson wanted a rules set closer to his game (what became Basic D&D), and Gygax wanted wanted a game closer to AD&D, which is what he intended to be D&D Second edition. IIRC Arneson got few royalties for AD&D than he did for D&D.

AD&D 2e was driven by a desire to clean up AD&D. Gygax had been ousted by then.

D&D 3e was driven by a desire to make the brand profitable to it's new owners. The idea was to 1) include races, classes, and other elements that 2e had left out. Half-Orcs and Monks returned to the PHB. Wizards cleaned-up any legal problems there might have been using D&D instead of AD&D with Arneson.

I'm not going to speculate on what drove 4e. You can find lots of that online.

Board games have been around for literally thousands of years. For whatever it's worth, Monopoly has been around in different forms for over a hundred years. It seems a little unfair to compare a game invented in 1904 to one developed 70 years later. And say that, today, the older one has more stable rules than the younger one. Particularly when that's kind of what we might expect from new games.

 

[Stalker0]

I'll summarize a lot of what has been already said and add my own take.

1) Games like Monopoly work because they are such a commonly bought game that natural population growth can allow for a good profit margin. IE, when a couple begins a new family at some point they may acquire some board games like monopoly.

So as long as there are new families being generated, the game naturally sells and sells well.

Even with that however, there are tons of variants of the game that add in additional income.

2) CCG games live and breath on expansion packs. Its worth noting that a lot of modern board games are also designed to add in several expansion packs (look at Fantasy Flight's popular Arkham Horror game as an example).

Its just good business. Its hard to get someone to go from no product to some product, but often much easier to get someone that likes your product to buy more.

So while CCGs don't always have new editions, they continuously add new product to survive.



4th edition is actually trying to adapt more of the CCG model. The online subscription model is an attempt for WOTC to make continuous stable profit by offering what amounts to expansion packs...chunks of new powers, feats, classes, etc.


I believe WOTC would love to move away from the new edition model. They recognize all the problems it causes. However, the traditional problem is that as new content is added to DND it seems to create bloat...and resistance to new product increases. 3rd edition went through this, as the lists of feats and prestige classes continued to increase. This is the frustration with RPGs vs CCGs. In CCGs this is often the easier part of the model, in RPGs this has been traditionally difficult.

WOTC has not found a way to constantly add new content to the same edition and continue to make the same amount of profit....which leads to a cycle on a new edition.

 

[xechnao]

Don't forget the desire to tinker with game systems. If the D&D IP fell into you lap, wouldn't the thought of "I can design a better system then this!" cross your mind?

This is irrelevant to the topic at hand. The IP holder does not play around with her IP like that.

The deal is that the IP holder will try to make the best of its asset investment wise. The IP holder will try to expand the value of the IP as much as possible while making the most out of it financially wise (aka regarding profits).
This comes first, design evolution comes later.

The problem is that as we go on in the information age IPs lose much of their potential regarding their staying value. The competition becomes heavier and heavier and IP holders try to focus more on short term profits rather than long term ones. Many IP holding companies, including TSR were really afraid of the information age and demonstrated elements of panic when it was reaching their door step.

Just right there, Wotc tried a bold move so to revive D&D in the new age. Thus the open game license. Some years later, when the internets were getting better understood and mastered, Wotc launches a massive internet campaign regarding a new edition while at the same time tries to regain more control over the brand as its proprietary patron.

And it somehow works. But there are some pitfalls. What are the pitfalls? First of all the game tries to go too far away from certain traditional concepts so that it could more easily distance or rather barricade itself from what was freely out there. This, along their distance from the OGL created negative feelings in the fan base and the fanbase split enough to make them really worried or so I think. This fact gave room to competition to capitalize on that resentment up to a point where the competition manages to capture half the share of D&D's market.

This is the history of the forces that have shaped the game of D&D. It has a lot less to do with game designers than marketing.

 

[xechnao]

...

Bravo. Very good and coherent analysis.

 

[Stumblewyk]

As has been brought up before, the board game comparison is not a fair one. But I'd like to propose that it's not a fair comparison for a different reason - board games have a very specific objective: win.

P&P RPGs do not. They are open-ended, and the end objective of each game is up to the collaborative efforts of the GM and their players.

It's easy to write a ruleset that doesn't have to change for a game where you know what the outcome will be. In the case of Trouble, it's to be the first player to get all your pieces in the home row. Same goes for Sorry. In Monopoly, you need to be the wealthiest land owner in all of Atlantic City, NJ. In D&D, your goal is survive simulated combat, dangerous role-playing opportunities, and amass fictional wealth and power for a "living" character.

Someone, somewhere, is always going to be trying to refine the rules surrounding RPGs to be more in line with how they feel the game should be run. If that wasn't the case, then there would be no universally understood concept of the "houserule".

We *ALL* write our own editions of games. The only difference between us and Wizards or Paizo is that they get to make money from their ideas, while we get to shred them up and reassemble them as we please.

 

[Callista]

D&D is gaining new players all the time. As people get too busy or move away from their gaming groups, those books stay in their closets, and the new players buy books of their own. Even if they stop playing eventually, most people will introduce others to D&D before they lose interest; and in many cases those people will be somewhat younger. In my group, I'm a college senior teaching freshmen how to play, and will probably be a graduate student teaching undergrads before long.

It's actually very much like Monopoly that way. People are getting into it because their parents, friends, or older siblings introduced them; and then they play for a while, and either stay in, buying more books, or introduce others before they get too busy or get into something else.

Tabletop RPGs are here to stay; but whether D&D stays in the game over the next generation may depend on whether or not they can adjust their business model from the single-generation explosive growth phenomenon you see with many CCGs, to the multigenerational setup you get with more classic, long-lived games--a situation that actually depends partly on the constancy of the rules from year to year. If they can't adjust, they'll end up being left by the wayside, replaced by systems that can.