I've been reflecting. The more editions, the more I think the magic, and the truer quality, was in the first, in OD&D and Rogue Trader; and the more I think that after any new thing appears, if we love it, the way to honour what it represents is to carry on truly developing, to push the limits in corresponding ways, not just rework.
Some, like the producer of the game, may have an incentive only to tinker, see it as a cash cow to milk, a safe source of income. But maybe that's what success and comfort can do: we just get desperate, hanging in or hanging on rather than rolling with or riding.
It's a bit like sugar. We can and do 'refine' it, to a form that's been called 'white poison', but the brown form, with its molasses, has higher mineral content, and maybe crucially is more of the source plant that emerged for a given moment in biological time in the overlapping ecosystems. It may be less about clarity than purity. Veracity, not voracity.
(If you're worried about white sugar, or sugar in general, especially if you seen material like this, you could consider moving to honey, or look into xylitol or steviol glycosides.)
I get the impression that a major attraction of fifth and seventh, and any new edition, is the ability to find fellow players easily. You can just go with the flow, barring influential reactions like Oldhammer and the OSR of course. The companies do the selling for you.
On the other hand, the bigger your gaming group, and the more you all share the same interests, or the more willing you are to look for and accept unknown or potential players and persuade and be persuaded to get your preferred games on, the less you need the new editions. You can dip in of course, but at leisure. You're in a long-term happy place, and less worried about what any sixth or eighth edition might be bringing, and how soon.
Even beyond this of course, there are so many other great games to play - games doing what OD&D and RT did when they arrived and first grew, whether whole new things or radical progressions. After all, how much of what D&D and 40K haven't covered in their 40 and 27 years respectively can the fifth edition and the seventh actually have to offer?
Let's turn that last broad question into a more specific set. We buy new editions not just to help with belonging, or from boredom or a hoarding instinct, but also for the changed or new rules. Bearing that in mind, does the newest edition of D&D or 40K have rules for:
- ... higher or lower levels of gravity, plus zero gravity, that is, microgravity?
- ... relationships between dimensions, mass, density, attributes and value?
- ... an underlying continuity binding items, living beings, vehicles and terrain?
- ... atmospheric composition and pressure, as well as velocities of light etc.?
- ... a variety of distinct forms of sensory perception and physical interaction?
- ... disability in starting characters or units, not caused only by injury in play?
- ... a range of specific states of mind and mental illnesses, and epiphanies?
- ... linguistic relativity and translation errors? (D&D) / ... negotiation? (40K)
- ... specific dream or vision content? (D&D) / ... R&D for unit mods? (40K)
- ... actions altering a wider world? (D&D) / ... supply management? (40K)
These are fairly general but relevant areas that I can't recall being covered in any edition, if ever, beyond supplementary homebrew of course, although I don't spend as much time reading rulebooks as I once did, or playing in more sanctioned ways: one or two may have come up. In the case of D&D it may be the Dungeon Master's Guide will cover some. For 40K, let's be honest - who has a clue what the next year or two could bring?
A lot of these rules might seem unnecessary, because we can make them ourselves, or adapt them or improvise, but the same can be said for a lot of rules, even core elements like aspects of combat. Regardless of how easy they are to make, we still buy, and the ability to pick and mix and find new inspiration is useful. But having them, shifting the core away from the superficial and direct, might reshape the niche, and eventually the wider culture, as D&D did, and to a lesser degree 40K too. They'd be evidence of vitality.
If even a handful appear in the latest edition of either game, it would be a reason to look.
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