Dramatic title aside, i'm wondering about the aims of d&d next. You know, where they said fans of various editions could sit at the table together and play their version of the game alongside others.

Maybe it's a legal minefield with byzantine intellectual property problems to even consider this, but i wonder if the guys and gals at WotC ever considered just releasing new material for the previous editions of the game. One month we get an ad&d adventure alongside a 3e Forgotten Realms splat book, then next month a 4e magic items book and a 2e Birthright splat. That sort of thing.

They think they can make more money producing new core rulebooks.

It used to be called something like "slash n burn" marketing.

Basically it goes like this.

Put out a new edition every 5 years.
The only players that are of matter are the new ones.
The old fans are meaningless or seen as an adversary.
The new edition has to be sufficiently different to hook any older players with "cult of the new" or "tournament" syndrome to buy the new edition. These though are incidental to the main goal of getting new players.

Some publishers play with only one or two parts of that. Some go totally overboard.

Unless WOTC changes something dramatically between the last playtest packet and printing... It is even more different than 3rd or 4th ed to O/AD&D in some respects. Spellcasting has been totally overhauled as explained over in the Druid discussion.

Now how backwards compatible it is... not sure. I have not sat down and really done a comparison of the monsters yet. If they arent too changed from older versions then yes. New modules would be cross compatible with some work.

A conversion packet would be nice. 3rd ed had one.

The "fans of every edition" thing is pure marketing hype.  I'd bet a pint of IPA that nobody has ever sat down and said "This rule appeals to edition fans for this reason" and actually charted it out.

Frankly, I don't think Lizards of the Ghost has the faintest fucking IDEA why I still play OD&D, and I don't think they really care.

Quote from: Old Geezer;702976Frankly, I don't think Lizards of the Ghost has the faintest fucking IDEA why I still play OD&D, and I don't think they really care.

Some of the worker bees care, those poor doomed souls who got into the industry because they love gaming. But yeah, I'm pretty sure the corporate entity that made its millions by creating flat crack, cashed in on geek chic becoming popular, and belongs to a toy company that sells pokemon probably doesn't care much about the gaming habits of people who are kind of hard to sell to.

Quote from: therealjcm;702979Some of the worker bees care, those poor doomed souls who got into the industry because they love gaming. But yeah, I'm pretty sure the corporate entity that made its millions by creating flat crack, cashed in on geek chic becoming popular, and belongs to a toy company that sells pokemon probably doesn't care much about the gaming habits of people who are kind of hard to sell to.

Thats why they sometimes take notice.
A: You are hard to sell to. Thus a potential problem. You are going to bitch about the changes. At the very least you aint buying unless you are the aformentioned cult of the new type.
B: Worse. You may be likely extolling the virtues of an older edition and thus potentially leeching customers away.

B: is the one that can bug the suits. Why? Money. You are cutting into their profits... and doing it... for free... With an edition that they dont want to make money off of.

Now heres the crazy part. Some companies will actually play on the fact older edition fans will go ballistic and make a game as diametrically opposed to past versions as they can. Or change some fundamental element that is a cornerstone of the setting or mechanics. You raising bloody hell is free advertising.

Where the hell the concept of the discardable fan base came from I have no clue. First saw hints of it back in the 90s. But it keeps trying to get traction with each passing decade.

And yeah. The designers struggle under this problem usually. One or two support and revel in it. But most arent too keen on the "5 year plan" system.

I've wondered this for a while. Why not support all editions? Have a D&D Classics line, print cheap digest-sized paperback reprints of the old rules sets, every once in a while doing a fancy "30th" or "35th " etc Anniversary editions like Chapsium just to grab some bucks from the Nostalgia crowd.

I wouldn't see it necessary to release adventures for one edition or another though, seems like it'd be easy enough to do adventures with appendixes covering multiple stats, maybe just adventures aimed at Classic D&D ( all TSR editions are really easy to adapt between) and adventures aimed at modern D&D + PF, so no more than 2 or 3 different stat blocks.

That said, Ive been several times pleasantly surprised by things Ive heard about Next, so maybe it will turn out to not be too bad as a bridge between editions and playstyles. I heard one of the more recent play test adventures was supposed to support any edition's characters. Not sure how that went.

WOTC has at times tried that approach, be it with the micro books, PDF re-releases, etc.

The reason not to is a simple one. You want to focus on one production line. And you want the new players focused on that new line. Also focusing curbs a little the backlog of answering questions. Or worse, trying to figure out what edition anyone is talking about.

As for Next. It is far from complete. But the last playtest packet has several new twists like the new magic system in particular. Backgrounds, etc. So far nothing that really screams out as bad. Just a little different. Rather than broad sweeping changes.

Quote from: TristramEvans;702993I've wondered this for a while. Why not support all editions? Have a D&D Classics line, print cheap digest-sized paperback reprints of the old rules sets, every once in a while doing a fancy "30th" or "35th " etc Anniversary editions like Chapsium just to grab some bucks from the Nostalgia crowd.

I wouldn't see it necessary to release adventures for one edition or another though, seems like it'd be easy enough to do adventures with appendixes covering multiple stats, maybe just adventures aimed at Classic D&D ( all TSR editions are really easy to adapt between) and adventures aimed at modern D&D + PF, so no more than 2 or 3 different stat blocks.

That said, Ive been several times pleasantly surprised by things Ive heard about Next, so maybe it will turn out to not be too bad as a bridge between editions and playstyles. I heard one of the more recent play test adventures was supposed to support any edition's characters. Not sure how that went.

Allow me to point to this thread. It appears that someone at WotC is thinking about this.

Quote from: Bobloblah;703024Allow me to point to this thread. It appears that someone at WotC is thinking about this.

Interesting. Wether they live up to that or not is anyones guess.

As said, Im not sure on the cross compatibility yet of Next. Fighters and Thieves should carry over relatively ok. Spellcasters may have some adjusting to do.

It's too late for 'one edition'. That horse left the barn, the barn burned down and WizBro salted the earth so nothing would ever grow there again. We will all play the edition we like. Some might well hop on the Next bandwagon. My ideal falls somewhere between Pathfinder and Radiance. Where on that spectrum depends on the wind, my blood glucose levels and the day of the week. But WizBro will never see my money again.

Quote from: One Horse Town;702951Dramatic title aside, i'm wondering about the aims of d&d next. You know, where they said fans of various editions could sit at the table together and play their version of the game alongside others.

That claim is just marketing BS.  The "aim" of 'Next' is to claw back customers that were lost whith the launch of 4.0 and to try and reclaim the top position as an RPG company.  Which they lost after 4.0 was launched.

Quote from: Arduin;703166That claim is just marketing BS.  The "aim" of 'Next' is to claw back customers that were lost whith the launch of 4.0 and to try and reclaim the top position as an RPG company.  Which they lost after 4.0 was launched.

I'd like to be 6' tall and a billionaire. I think both I and WizBro shall be disappointed.

Quote from: Tetsubo;703190I'd like to be 6' tall and a billionaire. I think both I and WizBro shall be disappointed.

I think that you are very prescient.  

Quote from: One Horse Town;702951Dramatic title aside, i'm wondering about the aims of d&d next. You know, where they said fans of various editions could sit at the table together and play their version of the game alongside others.

Maybe it's a legal minefield with byzantine intellectual property problems to even consider this, but i wonder if the guys and gals at WotC ever considered just releasing new material for the previous editions of the game. One month we get an ad&d adventure alongside a 3e Forgotten Realms splat book, then next month a 4e magic items book and a 2e Birthright splat. That sort of thing.

They have a "customization" module for 3e fans, and a "tactical combat" module for 4e fans, and a "downtime" module for fans of high level AD&D domain-bulding stuff, and a "storygame" module for fans of Dungeon World and Torchbearer and FATE.  Then they have a host of core rules which are really optional, like feats (replaced with ability increases) and skills (replaced with just ability checks) and even proficiencies.  So, if you remove some or all those elements, you get pretty close to 1e and 2e and even Basic/Expert D&D.  

I think that's all they mean by it at this point.  And they can release, and have been releasing, conversion notes for old AD&D modules that work quite well with the core as it is.  They may well do this with 3e and 4e adventures as well, once the optional modules come out.

I think in the end, you will get adventures that can work with any of these systems, with a "version" for each.  Here is an example:

WatchTower of the Necromancer is a module for D&D characters level 4-7.
You can purchase the paper-cover book for 5e core, which assumes use of feats and skills, but no other optional modules.

With your purchase, you get a code that lets you download a PDF of alternate versions.  Those alternate versions include:

1) Tactical Combat version, with more detailed set-piece maps and monsters with more tactical options;
2) Customization version, which assumes characters are more powerful in certain aspects and adjusts the monsters and encounters to suit such higher level of specialization;
3) Storygame version, which provides suggested content on player narrative control;
4) An "old school" version, which assumes the characters have no feats or skills, and adjusts some things like DCs accordingly.

So now you can have 5 tables at a convention, all playing the same adventure, but none of them using quite the same set of rules.  One table "feels" more like 4e, the next like 3e, the next like 1e/2e, the next like Basic/Expert, and finally one that is the core 5e game.  These are all tailored for fans of various editions, without being those actual editions.  It just caters to the feeling and tone and types of decisions and options one uses in those other game versions, without being actual replicas of those other versions of the game.

That is my guess as to how this is going to work.  We shall see.