[The Gamer] Dungeons & Dragons' 2024 Rules Won't Get Going Until 2026

[Kyonshi]

Source:
https://www.thegamer.com/dungeons-dragons-2024-rules-dnd-2026-book-phb/

Dungeons & Dragons' 2024 Rules Won't Get Going Until 2026

By
Stacey Henley
There are, broadly speaking, two different types of Dungeons & Dragons
players. Within these two types there are thousands of subdivisions, but
mainly, there are people who just play the game, and people who follow
the game on Reddit. The first, casual group, way outnumbers the second,
and likely has more fun. The second (and you can swap out Reddit for a
few other social media/forum sites), tends to take it far more
seriously, and I'm never even that sure how much some of them like the
game at all.

This is not to pour scorn on the hardcore communities. They are the
lifeblood of Dungeons & Dragons - Wizards of the Coast just spent over a
year playtesting every single class and dozens of tweaks, additions, and
alterations to how they play, and let me tell you, it wasn't Mary with
the D20 pencil case who loves her goblin pirate Jimminy and asks 'how do
I see my spell save number again?' who painstakingly tested every inch
of it. It wasn't Billy with his XP shirt who turns up every three weeks
and goes with the flow who applied pressure on WotC to reverse the
bizarre decision to delete 2014 content from its website.

Dungeons & Dragons' New Rules Matter As Much As You Want Them To
The committed D&Ders who know every inch of the game and sometimes seem
resentful of that fact are crucial to keeping the game alive, to oiling
its gears with player feedback, and to providing millions of free
adventures and resources to newbies. But it's odd having a foot in both
camps. I need to keep up with each news story, and how the fans react to
it, and as a DM who writes their own adventures with a substantial
amount of homebrew (or homebrew stolen from others), I'm in these
communities for business and pleasure. But I still think of myself as a
casual compared to the veterans, and so goes my reaction to the new
Player's Handbook.

A whistle-stop tour of how we arrived at the new rules. Dungeons &
Dragons is as popular as it has ever been, and that is through the Fifth
Edition of the rules (known as 5e) which launched in 2014. Wizards of
the Coast wanted to modernise the games with a rule reset, which should
have been 6e. However, this reset would have included more online
integration, so it would have been called OneD&D, with the idea that the
rules could always evolve.

Given that a lot of people still use pen and paper in this age of iPads
and apps, people didn't much care for OneD&D, so it was changed into
what we have now, which is 'the 2024 update to the 2014 Player's
Handbook', which is a bit of a mouthful. The reason for this is while
it's not an overhaul like 6e would have been, this is a substantial
refresh, and should be called 5.5e. However, back when 3e was given a
refresh into 3.5e, this was also highly unpopular, so the .5 numbering
has been scrapped, even though a) this is 5.5e and b) 3.5e is now a
highly popular format, more than both 3e and 4e.

All this means the fanfare around the new PHB has been muted. Wizards
wants people to buy it and use it, so much so that it initially removed
2014 rules from its digital archive, so it must be held up as a
significant improvement. On the other hand, it is now keen not to draw
too much attention to its 5.5e-in-all-but-name ruleset. It feels as
though casuals, who would benefit from some of the tweaks in the 2024
edition, which makes classes easier to understand, sands off some evil
edges, and makes the more complex rules a little more digestible, aren't
even aware this is happening. Wizards is advertising this as a new book,
something with fresh artwork and pages that aren't dog-eared, rather
than emphasising that the actual rules inside have some notable changes.

The hardcore players, who have been aware this has been coming for years
and (despite not really liking it as an entity, by and large) have
participated in its design through various Unearthed Arcana playtests,
know all too well that these rules are different. Mostly, they seem
content to keep going with whatever adventures they have now and leaving
the new rules to one side. Some will never pick them up, and others
probably won't be talked round until some official adventures emerge
with the new rules attached. But that won't be for a while, as you can
see below.

All of the announced upcoming D&D books are continuations of the PHB
2024 rollout:
* Worlds & Realms, an illustrated book of new art work and some short
stories (October 29)
* Dungeon Master's Guide, updated with 2024 rules (November 12)
* Monster Manual, with stat blocks tweaked for 2024 rules (Feb 18)
* Dragon Anthology, ten one shots for 2024 rules (Summer 2025)
* D&D Starter Set, a basic beginner adventure for 2024 rules (Fall 2025)

Being in both worlds, I am fittingly on the fence here. I don't have
much against the new rules, either in terms of precise quibbles with
their wording or their existence in general. But I also don't feel
excited enough by them to abandon what I'm working on at the moment to
incorporate it. Aside from taking a little bit of inspiration from the
art (I still dig the orc cowboys) and maybe changing one or two rulings
here or there based on 2024's ideas, I'm happy to wait. It seems like
everyone is. What does that mean for the next year of D&D?

[Spalls Hurgenson]

Post by Kyonshi
https://www.thegamer.com/dungeons-dragons-2024-rules-dnd-2026-book-phb/
Dungeons & Dragons' 2024 Rules Won't Get Going Until 2026

My major complaint about the new rules coming out is that they feel
unnecessary. Well, unnecessary to the player, anyway. A new edition
should be a significant revision to the game, otherwise it feels very
much like an attempt to just sell the same books to players twice.

More, a major revision should have _purpose_ to it other than just to
exist. That purpose should be to revamp the rules to be correct
mistakes or problems, or to significantly change the tone and texture
of the game. I've not seen enough significant complaints about 5th Ed
rules that would require the former, and everything I've seen about
6th Ed (or whatever WOTC wants to call it) indicates it isn't doing
the latter.

Maybe instead of churning out new rules every five years, WOTC could
concentrate on creating adventure modules and settings.

[Kyonshi]

Post by Spalls Hurgenson

Post by Kyonshi
https://www.thegamer.com/dungeons-dragons-2024-rules-dnd-2026-book-phb/
Dungeons & Dragons' 2024 Rules Won't Get Going Until 2026

My major complaint about the new rules coming out is that they feel
unnecessary. Well, unnecessary to the player, anyway. A new edition
should be a significant revision to the game, otherwise it feels very
much like an attempt to just sell the same books to players twice.

Well, yeah, that's what they make their money with. Everybody and their
gran already have the 5e books. Gonna move units somehow.

(incidentally I never bought the 3 core books because they just would
have been for the shelf and I didn't want to spend 150$ on that)

Post by Spalls Hurgenson
More, a major revision should have _purpose_ to it other than just to
exist. That purpose should be to revamp the rules to be correct
mistakes or problems, or to significantly change the tone and texture
of the game. I've not seen enough significant complaints about 5th Ed
rules that would require the former, and everything I've seen about
6th Ed (or whatever WOTC wants to call it) indicates it isn't doing
the latter.

I noticed that they are very careful about calling it 6th ed. I guess
for them it's closer to the 3.5 release: not a complete reworking, just
different enough so people have to buy new books. That's how you get
people to buy new books without scrapping your whole environment. Or at
least that's what they hope.
I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up being their 5.5 release, and the
actual new 6th edition comes in 2030.

Post by Spalls Hurgenson
Maybe instead of churning out new rules every five years, WOTC could
concentrate on creating adventure modules and settings.

yes, they should, but it always has been the case that modules and
settings just didn't sell as well as rule books. People need to have the
rulebooks, multiple ones even if you want to use it as a table reference
book. But settings and modules are only ever bought by DMs.
There's financial incentive to release mostly rule books for them.

[Spalls Hurgenson]

Post by Kyonshi

Post by Spalls Hurgenson

Post by Kyonshi
https://www.thegamer.com/dungeons-dragons-2024-rules-dnd-2026-book-phb/
Dungeons & Dragons' 2024 Rules Won't Get Going Until 2026

My major complaint about the new rules coming out is that they feel
unnecessary. Well, unnecessary to the player, anyway. A new edition
should be a significant revision to the game, otherwise it feels very
much like an attempt to just sell the same books to players twice.

Well, yeah, that's what they make their money with. Everybody and their
gran already have the 5e books. Gonna move units somehow.
(incidentally I never bought the 3 core books because they just would
have been for the shelf and I didn't want to spend 150$ on that)

Post by Spalls Hurgenson
More, a major revision should have _purpose_ to it other than just to
exist. That purpose should be to revamp the rules to be correct
mistakes or problems, or to significantly change the tone and texture
of the game. I've not seen enough significant complaints about 5th Ed
rules that would require the former, and everything I've seen about
6th Ed (or whatever WOTC wants to call it) indicates it isn't doing
the latter.

I noticed that they are very careful about calling it 6th ed. I guess
for them it's closer to the 3.5 release: not a complete reworking, just
different enough so people have to buy new books. That's how you get
people to buy new books without scrapping your whole environment. Or at
least that's what they hope.
I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up being their 5.5 release, and the
actual new 6th edition comes in 2030.

Post by Spalls Hurgenson
Maybe instead of churning out new rules every five years, WOTC could
concentrate on creating adventure modules and settings.

yes, they should, but it always has been the case that modules and
settings just didn't sell as well as rule books. People need to have the
rulebooks, multiple ones even if you want to use it as a table reference
book. But settings and modules are only ever bought by DMs.
There's financial incentive to release mostly rule books for them.

I mean, I won't argue with the fact that modules/settings don't sell
as well as rulebooks. But every player I've known has had almost as
big a collection of adventures etc. as I have.

Admittedly, this 'survey' is a bit out of date. It may have been
partly because -at the time- D&D had a lot of fiction (books, comics,
video games etc.) associated with it, and players interested in those
sought out more information about that fiction. So they went out and
bought the associated campaign settings and modules.

But a lot of players are also budding DMs, and the easiest way to
start DMing is to use a module. Plus, a lot of players like knowing
what's coming, and try to 'cheat' by reading the adventure ahead of
time.

Modules and settings also grow the hobby. Not only can they attract
tabletop gamers who don't play D&D, but it makes people who do more
invested in the system. If I have a couple dozen adventure modules,
I'm much less likely to jump ship to another system (and more likely
to buy the next rules upgrade).

Focusing simply on the "does book A sell more than book B" metrics is
short-sighted thinking that does nobody any good... except the
short-term stockholders because it might briefly make the stock jump.
But those sort don't really care about the company or hobby anyway.

[David Chmelik]

[...] a) this is 5.5e [...]

Really? Weren't AD&D second edition (2nd ed, 2e) optional/revised rules
called 'optional'... en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Editions_of_Dungeons_&_Dragons
says 'revised'... isn't this similar? Maybe after D&D3.5e people started
calling AD&D 2e optional rules '2.5e'('backronym'). This seems similar:
D&D '5e' (not original/1991 but renumbered/2014) just has optional rules
again, but officially, that's what it is, not 5.5e... maybe in some years/
decades there will be 5.n (maybe starting with 5.1) editions then people
calling optional/revised 5e '5.5e', when actual 5.n may be forthcoming,
will have to change everything they said. Call it what you want, just
until it's officially to 5.5 or beyond, I see no reason to say more.

[Spalls Hurgenson]

On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 12:17:36 -0000 (UTC), David Chmelik

Post by David Chmelik

[...] a) this is 5.5e [...]

Really? Weren't AD&D second edition (2nd ed, 2e) optional/revised rules
called 'optional'... en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Editions_of_Dungeons_&_Dragons
says 'revised'... isn't this similar? Maybe after D&D3.5e people started
D&D '5e' (not original/1991 but renumbered/2014) just has optional rules
again, but officially, that's what it is, not 5.5e... maybe in some years/
decades there will be 5.n (maybe starting with 5.1) editions then people
calling optional/revised 5e '5.5e', when actual 5.n may be forthcoming,
will have to change everything they said. Call it what you want, just
until it's officially to 5.5 or beyond, I see no reason to say more.

<ramble mode on>
In some ways, the core AD&D 2nd Ed was an 'optional' upgrade. It was
largely a revision and clean-up of 1st Ed rules, after all. It read
better than Gygax's prose, added in various elements from Unearthed
Arcana, or the Survival Guides and the like, and tweaked certain
aspects of the game to make it easier to play (THAC0 was actually an
improvement! ;-). But you could pretty easily take a 1st Ed adventure
and use it in your 2nd Ed game without much difficulty. (Getting a 2nd
Ed game to run in 1st Ed was possible too, and only required a little
more effort).

[Arguably, 2nd Ed was also written to 'get the Gygax' out
of the game, thus giving TSR a newly re-written edition where
they had sole control over the copyright. I think this argument
has some truth to it, but I think limiting the revision to /just/
that reason is inaccurate. 1st Ed AD&D was a very messy product
and the 2nd Ed rewrite made it -at least in my opionon- a much
more playable and expandable game.]

Things started to get more difficult once you added in all the various
splat-books (e.g., "Complete Fighters Handbook", "Complete Ninja
Handbook", or stuff like the Historical Reference accessories). You
could backport it all to 1st Ed, but it required increasing levels of
effort. In a sense, 2nd Ed + Splatbooks was a 2.25E.

In the mid-90s, TSR revamped 2nd Edition again, re-releasing revised
editions of the core books and adding the "Options" books", which
added significant changes to the game. As their names implied, these
rules were 'optional' but were seen as many as an effort by TSR to
unnecessarily change the game solely to sell new books, and were often
referred to as 2.5E. They weren't highly regarded and whether because
of player disdain or because of TSRs financial difficulties, didn't
really gain much traction. Still, some of the ideas were prototypes
for changes later made to 3E.

In this, I think there is some similarity to D&DOne (or whatever it's
called now): it's goal has less to do with improving the game and more
with selling books. It's not necessarily that anything in D&D6 is bad;
like the 2.5E options books, it probably has some good ideas. But D&D6
(and despite WOTC/Hasbro's revisionism, it seems clear that at the
start the game _was_ intended to be an entirely new edition) doesn't
feel _necessary_. It's change for the sake of change.

Was 2nd Ed necessary? Maybe not necessary but I think it was a welcome
change and added needed clarity and ability to expand. 2.5E was a
rushed and unpolished bunch of rules that seemed more about changing
the game to look more like its competitors rather than creating a
cohesive game; e.g., of benefit largely to the publisher, not the
people playing the game. 3.0E was a much needed revamp; 3.5E was 3E's
equivalent of 2nd Ed; clarifying and streamling things. 4E was
unnecessary and unwanted; it was WOTC chasing after the video-gamer
crowd. It was prompted by WOTC's profit-seeking, not because people
wanted it. Gamers were quite happy with the 3.5E/d20 system. 5E was a
return to what made D&D fun. People flocked back to D&D.

But 6E/One/whatever it's called today...? I don't see it. Unlike 1E
and 3E, the rules don't really need revision. They're good as they
are. What the game benefits most from is stability in its system. This
new edition feels like a chase after money rather than a needed
improvement.

But YMMV. I'm not big into the 5E ecosystem. Maybe there _are_ a lot
of complaints and issues with the rules that I'm just not aware of.
Maybe 6E/whatever is necessary. But I've seen no evidence of it. And
given this lack of evidence, I can only assume the drive for a new
edition by WOTC has more to do with profit-seeking than anything else.

And judging by the reactions I see online, I don't seem to be alone in
this.

</ramble mode off>

[Kyonshi]

Post by Spalls Hurgenson
On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 12:17:36 -0000 (UTC), David Chmelik

Post by David Chmelik

[...] a) this is 5.5e [...]

Really? Weren't AD&D second edition (2nd ed, 2e) optional/revised rules
called 'optional'... en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Editions_of_Dungeons_&_Dragons
says 'revised'... isn't this similar? Maybe after D&D3.5e people started
D&D '5e' (not original/1991 but renumbered/2014) just has optional rules
again, but officially, that's what it is, not 5.5e... maybe in some years/
decades there will be 5.n (maybe starting with 5.1) editions then people
calling optional/revised 5e '5.5e', when actual 5.n may be forthcoming,
will have to change everything they said. Call it what you want, just
until it's officially to 5.5 or beyond, I see no reason to say more.

<ramble mode on>
In some ways, the core AD&D 2nd Ed was an 'optional' upgrade. It was
largely a revision and clean-up of 1st Ed rules, after all. It read
better than Gygax's prose, added in various elements from Unearthed
Arcana, or the Survival Guides and the like, and tweaked certain
aspects of the game to make it easier to play (THAC0 was actually an
improvement! ;-). But you could pretty easily take a 1st Ed adventure
and use it in your 2nd Ed game without much difficulty. (Getting a 2nd
Ed game to run in 1st Ed was possible too, and only required a little
more effort).
[Arguably, 2nd Ed was also written to 'get the Gygax' out
of the game, thus giving TSR a newly re-written edition where
they had sole control over the copyright. I think this argument
has some truth to it, but I think limiting the revision to /just/
that reason is inaccurate. 1st Ed AD&D was a very messy product
and the 2nd Ed rewrite made it -at least in my opionon- a much
more playable and expandable game.]
Things started to get more difficult once you added in all the various
splat-books (e.g., "Complete Fighters Handbook", "Complete Ninja
Handbook", or stuff like the Historical Reference accessories). You
could backport it all to 1st Ed, but it required increasing levels of
effort. In a sense, 2nd Ed + Splatbooks was a 2.25E.
In the mid-90s, TSR revamped 2nd Edition again, re-releasing revised
editions of the core books and adding the "Options" books", which
added significant changes to the game. As their names implied, these
rules were 'optional' but were seen as many as an effort by TSR to
unnecessarily change the game solely to sell new books, and were often
referred to as 2.5E. They weren't highly regarded and whether because
of player disdain or because of TSRs financial difficulties, didn't
really gain much traction. Still, some of the ideas were prototypes
for changes later made to 3E.
In this, I think there is some similarity to D&DOne (or whatever it's
called now): it's goal has less to do with improving the game and more
with selling books. It's not necessarily that anything in D&D6 is bad;
like the 2.5E options books, it probably has some good ideas. But D&D6
(and despite WOTC/Hasbro's revisionism, it seems clear that at the
start the game _was_ intended to be an entirely new edition) doesn't
feel _necessary_. It's change for the sake of change.
Was 2nd Ed necessary? Maybe not necessary but I think it was a welcome
change and added needed clarity and ability to expand. 2.5E was a
rushed and unpolished bunch of rules that seemed more about changing
the game to look more like its competitors rather than creating a
cohesive game; e.g., of benefit largely to the publisher, not the
people playing the game. 3.0E was a much needed revamp; 3.5E was 3E's
equivalent of 2nd Ed; clarifying and streamling things. 4E was
unnecessary and unwanted; it was WOTC chasing after the video-gamer
crowd. It was prompted by WOTC's profit-seeking, not because people
wanted it. Gamers were quite happy with the 3.5E/d20 system. 5E was a
return to what made D&D fun. People flocked back to D&D.

Funnily enough 4E still was selling better than basically all other
games, except maybe Pathfinder at the tail-end, just before 5E came out.
And considering they made it to chase the video gamer crowd, I always
found it to be a massive failure.
Have you seen how humongous these books were?
If they wanted to chase the video gamer crowd, why did they make these
books so insanely thick?
Ok, they put a lot of art in that looked very much like World of
Warcraft, but seriously. I remember being more or less burned out on 3E,
and all of a sudden they dropped 4E into my game store. It felt insane.

Post by Spalls Hurgenson
But 6E/One/whatever it's called today...? I don't see it. Unlike 1E
and 3E, the rules don't really need revision. They're good as they
are. What the game benefits most from is stability in its system. This
new edition feels like a chase after money rather than a needed
improvement.

That's the thing, it's not a big revision. It's the 3.5 equivalent. It's
basically them working out the cruft from 10 years. They don't even call
it 6E. I bet they are gonna come out and release a proper 6E a few years
down the line. This is basically just a maintenance update, and with
that I mean "reason for people to spend money on books they already
have". You know, like 3.5.