The Age of the Rolling Update

No doubt you've heard WotC's announcement earlier in the week of the playtest for "One D&D" which according to their slick YouTube video will be updating, consolidating, and tweaking 5E in order to keep selling you the same stuff you've already purchased provide you with the most up-to-date version of the rules on a regular basis. And it will most definitely NOT be a new edition. Oh no, wouldn't want that. That splits the fanbase.

Well, despite the desire on WotC's part, it looks to me like it will be at least as substantial a change in 5E as adding books from 1984+ to 1E (UA, OA, Dungeoneers/Wilderness Survival Guides), which many consider 1.5E, or the "skills & powers" stuff for 2E, which again many consider to be 2.5E. 

Of course, this is play test material, and the finished 5E was fairly different from the D&D Next play test material in certain ways. 

But there will be changes. And from what it sounds like, the new VTT (if they actually manage to make it work this time) will likely put players on either a subscription model or an in-app purchases model to make money each time something gets added or updated. Not to mention all the money the could make from the sale of virtual tabletop monster models or other assets for DMs without the time to model their own.

So WotC seems to have finally found a way to market D&D in the same way they've always done Magic: The Gathering. Keep releasing updates/expansions and every couple of years update/modify the base rules just enough to keep people purchasing them again. 

If that keeps the company profitable, and keeps D&D in particular and RPGs in general in the public consciousness, that's fine with me. I've been meeting more and more people these days who game, and talk about it openly, than I ever have in my life. I've actually got more players interested in my upcoming TS&R Jade campaign than I need. 

I probably will be finished with 5E/One D&D though. If the online play-by-post 5E games I'm in update to the new rules, I will drop out. If they keep with 5E I'll stick around at least one of them. It's a lot of fun, fairly old school in approach (tons of randomly generated content and a focus on exploration with no set story), and definitely not on any sort of rails. The other two are running published 5E modules, and I joined both games from curiosity. They're very boring to be honest. PbP games require good pacing, and the modules may work really well around a table (real or virtual), but they drag out a lot of boring crap in PbP. But since they're railroads, we've got to play out the encounters given in the module because they're given in the module. 

If you are still enjoying 5E, and looking forward to this "revision but not new edition" I wish you the best with it. 5E is a solid game, and does what it sets out to do pretty darn well. I've had fun playing it, if not so much fun when I tried to run it. I'll be sticking to my old school style games for D&D.