I have recently seen some discussion about the confused messaging Wizards of the Coast is giving about its One D&D project. You know, the new core rulebooks it is releasing in 2024, marking the 50^th anniversary of the game. The rules we are currently playtesting? (Or avoiding playtesting).

And it occurred to me that the compatibility between editions of the game is not entirely dissimilar to that of the compatibility between PlayStation consoles.

If you had bought a PlayStation 2, then when the PlayStation 3 came out you couldn’t play your old games on it. The same occurred with the PS3 and the PS4.

If there was an old game you wanted to play, you had to either bring out your creaking old PlayStation or buy a new copy of the game that had been reworked to function on the new system.

Here’s the kicker: The PlayStation 2 could run PlayStation 1 games! This was actually a major leap forward for console gaming; almost all consoles to that point didn’t feature backwards compatibility.

The PlayStation 3, with its major changes to architecture, didn’t have that. (It has something of a mixed reputation).

But with the PS5, we are back to backwards compatibility. There are a few games that run on the PS4 and don’t run on the PS5, but they are by far the minority.

When we consider Dungeons & Dragons – at least the main (including AD&D) line, we get this:

• AD&D -> AD&D 2E    compatible (mostly)
• AD&D 2E -> D&D 3E    not compatible
• D&D 3E -> D&D 4E    not compatible
• D&D 4E -> D&D 5E    not compatible
• D&D 5E -> One D&D    compatible (mostly).

D&D has an extra “console” change in there where they don’t maintain compatibility. And I’ve left out the weirdness of 3E and 3.5E. (Which sits in the “compatible (mostly)” slot). Yes, I mainly left it out to make the transitions look a bit more like the PlayStation ones – the concept still stands.

However, here’s the thing: There are a lot of computer gamers out there, and they understand the idea of backwards compatibility. At this point, console gaming is more popular than PC gaming.

It’s rather obvious that the people at Wizards of the Coast are afraid to call the revised books “Dungeons & Dragons 6^th edition”, despite the manifold changes they’re planning.

And, because some of those changes do break compatibility, I would rather like them to call it what it is: 6^th edition. It’s mostly compatible with the old edition, but not completely.