One thing I don't get is why people keep buying new material. It doesn't make financial sense to me. Suppose you're a 4th ed. DM and have bought a bunch of supplements, and so have your players. Then 5th ed. comes around. Now you're supposed to throw all your books, and investment in them, in money to buy them and time to read them, and understand them, and make scenarios and campaigns and characters and whatever, in the bin and start fresh? Why?
I got the same question about Magic: the Gathering, which I play a lot, and Warhammer (which I mainly collected to paint the minis, though I played also). Why would you buy a new edition of a game every few years?
The answer I think is- you wouldn't. Which is to say, all those new editions are sold mainly to new players, who have no investment in the old editions and no attachement to their style of play or whatever.
Which in turn is to say that making a new edition of a big, expensive game like D&D every few years is takig a big, juicy dump on the players who bought the earlier edition, probably betting on the fact that they now have jobs and kids and no time for gaming.
So I understand there would be a pushback on that, and that's partly how I understand the OSR scene/ genre/ movement, whatever. My personal choice is to make my own games, and play them the way I want to play, and not care about D&D, past, present or future. It's free and creatively fulfilling (making your own game) so what's not to like?
I got the same question about Magic: the Gathering, which I play a lot, and Warhammer (which I mainly collected to paint the minis, though I played also). Why would you buy a new edition of a game every few years?
The answer I think is- you wouldn't. Which is to say, all those new editions are sold mainly to new players, who have no investment in the old editions and no attachement to their style of play or whatever.
Which in turn is to say that making a new edition of a big, expensive game like D&D every few years is takig a big, juicy dump on the players who bought the earlier edition, probably betting on the fact that they now have jobs and kids and no time for gaming.
So I understand there would be a pushback on that, and that's partly how I understand the OSR scene/ genre/ movement, whatever. My personal choice is to make my own games, and play them the way I want to play, and not care about D&D, past, present or future. It's free and creatively fulfilling (making your own game) so what's not to like?