New Editions, Fleecing, and You

I had a few minutes to spare this afternoon, so I went to my local bookstore to check out their stock of roleplaying products. I know, I know -- I need to find a hobby shop in my area instead. Anyway, the store had an endcap displaying the new fourth-edition Dungeons & Dragons core rulebooks. I looked as much as my conscience allowed (I have a pretty narrow interpretation of what constitutes grazing), after I perused what remained of their third-edition merchandise. Before I delve into my thoughts on the contents, I ask you to indulge a somewhat quick aside on the history of D&D.

According to Wikipedia, the original D&D set was released in 1974. The second edition of AD&D hit the marketplace in 1989, fifteen years later. After the fall of TSR, Wizards of the Coast unleashed the third edition of D&D in 2000; this gives a span of eleven years between editions. Now 2008 sees a fourth edition of the world's most well-known roleplaying franchise and/or corrupter of impressionable youths. Notice that the timespan between editions keeps decreasing by about four years, or, more accurately, the span difference shrank from four years to three in the last edition jump. Suppose Wizards of the Coast follows this pattern a couple more times, such that the sixth edition of D&D is on the shelves in the same amount of time it took to go from the third edition to fourth. Does this model sound familiar?

It should if you follow collectible card games, since it smacks of the setup used in Magic: the Gathering, the mother of all CCG's. Every couple of years, a new core set of cards outmodes everything which has come before it. I have no real quarrel with this structure for a game like Magic, primarily because I think it is necessary to prevent outlandish power escalation in card design as well as deck type stagnation in the metagame. Should a model like this be used in roleplaying products, though?

Being the cash-strapped lout that I am, I was compelled to look first near the UPC bar to check the price on these new books. The three core manuals now cost $34.95, as opposed to the $29.95 price point of the previous edition. I thought to myself, "Self, what could have caused the price increase? Did the good folks at Wizards of the Coast still need to replace some of their sterling silver toilets with gold ones? Are they trying to buy up all the copies of Skullclamp they let loose a few years back in some Orwellian attempt to retroactively deny it ever existed?" Perhaps an explanation lay in the pages of the player's handbook.

I thought this might be the case due to a sidebar from my version 3.5 manuals which attempted to explain the motivation for the revision to the third edition (well, besides 'to make more money'). I took what it said with a grain of salt or forty-three, but at least there was an effort at justifying the publication of new books after only three years of the last batch. This time around, I saw no such effort. I did, however, see that this new edition is 'bright and shiny.' I kid you not -- those words are really in there. I suppose that could explain the price hike; the extra money is going to brighten and shine the books. I always thought my manuals needed some extra luster.

I will post further feelings in the future, once I have had the chance to actually look at the material contained within the new edition. For now, it suffices to say that I will use the third-edition resources I already own for my upcoming campaign, solely because I already own the products.