Players from every generation have taken it as a given that RPGs get updated. There are always new ideas to be implemented and tweaks to make, and basically every high profile attempt to make a ‘final’ edition of a popular game ended in failure (or, at least, another edition). Even if you can’t change a manual’s text, there are errata. Even if the base game stays largely the same, new supplements mix up how everything works and plays together. This is, at least in terms of how we engage with games, inevitable.

What’s not inevitable is how games will change, what that actually looks like. I had an opportunity to play in a short Fabula Ultima game a ways back, and while I liked the game (quite a bit, actually!), one thing was seared in my mind from the experience. After almost every session, one of the players would trawl through the game designer’s Discord and bring us rules updates. These weren’t errata, they were notably redesigned spells and class abilities which the designer was rebalancing in response to feedback on the game. Even though the published version of the game hadn’t changed, we had rules modifications delivered fresh…so long as someone in the group was on the Discord and at least nominally engaging with the fannish side of the game’s community. It is a very different way of adjusting rules, and it is but one aspect of a sea change in how designers approach adjusting, fixing, and yes, finalizing their games.

Ashcans: the low budget answer to playtesting and market research

Ashcan as a term has history in the comics industry. In the 1930s, ashcans were small runs (like two or three copies) of comics with titles or characters the publisher was interested in using whose main purpose was to be sent to the US Patent and Trademark Office in order to secure the trademark on the title or character. The name ashcan came from the fact that, since the “book” often used recycled art on the interior, the ultimate destination for these books after serving their purpose was the ashcan, or trash bin. Much later on, the term started to be used for promotional comics or even promotional booklets advertising upcoming comics, and this is where the alignment is found with its current use in TTRPGs.

An ashcan TTRPG is intended to gauge or generate interest around a game through a very early release. Typically rules are complete, though it’s rare that an ashcan game will perfectly align with a final version mechanically. Art is either placeholder or nonexistent, the game may or may not be laid out any further than a word processor template, and generally the game will be missing things like introductory adventures or expansions of rules beyond what is needed to make the game playable. These ashcans are then released on sites like itch.io, often either free or pay-what-you-want (and if neither of those, typically in a price range of $3 to $5). Another tactic is to distribute ashcans via Patreon, and in this case patrons may receive incremental versions of the game as feedback is received and internalized.

Ashcans vary widely in terms of how complete they are and how rough they look, but in all cases the point of an ashcan is to get the game into people’s hands and see what happens. If a lot of people download the game, it can indicate that the game is worth investing more money in and give the designer more confidence that they should seek out an editor and start procuring art. If a lot of people also play the game, many will then give feedback, providing information on what works and what doesn’t. Whether or not the designer has done their own playtesting or will do more, this additional feedback is often immensely valuable because it comes from players outside the designer’s own play group and play culture. Having strangers attempt to play your game without your intervention is likely the most valuable way to gain actionable feedback; this is also the reason that many ashcan games are distributed either to Patreon patrons or Kickstarter backers, as those groups are easier to put a little parasocial pressure on in terms of participating in the development process.

The ashcan is the father (and homemade version) of what’s become de rigueur for large publishers in recent years, the public playtest. The most influential public playtest was also one of the first, for what would become D&D Fifth Edition. Since then, more companies have opened their products up to public playtest; here we’ve reviewed public playtest materials from games like Pathfinder and Daggerheart while they were still being developed. Public playtesting does serve some of the same purposes as releasing ashcan games, though the balance of value is quite a bit different. While large publishers do gain some valuable functional playtest information (i.e. does this rule work, can this be exploited, etc), they also gain a lot more information about the playerbase’s sentiment towards rules changes. When we last discussed RPG edition revisions here, ‘edition war’ was right in the title. Gamers often build both attachment to and revulsion from certain mechanics on a completely non-functional, aesthetic basis, and gauging the sum total of how players want a game to ‘feel’, completely outside of whether the rules work, is really hard to do. The only effective way to get that information from players is to ask them, and the best way to ask them is often by giving them an early copy of the rules.

When we look at the public playtest of Fifth Edition D&D, it appears to have contributed to the game’s success. Development shifted rules towards what players wanted, and gave the edition significant momentum. That momentum came from the beginning of the product lifecycle, but it’s now impacting the tail end of it as the decade-plus old game saw its first revision back in 2024. As the current market environment for the hobby heavily encourages public playtesting, zero editions and ashcans, it also burdens large revisions and new editions with significantly more risk.

Second edition? In this economy?

The immense popularity of Fifth Edition D&D caused many in the hobby to wonder if it could be followed up effectively, and D&D 2024 seems to indicate that this was an important question. The most common sales headline regarding D&D 2024 is that it was the fastest-selling core book trio ever, tripling 5e’s sales in 2014. That press release came out exactly one week after the new books were released, and with that information I find the claim both a) completely believable and b) completely worthless for gauging the new books’ performance. D&D 5e did have some early success coming off the back of the more divisive 4e, but the real acceleration of 5e’s sales rate started in 2017 and then really started pulling hard from there (at least if BookScan data is any indication). As Critical Role debuted in 2015 and Dimension 20 in 2018, it both makes sense that 5e really entered its full-throttle sales period in the late 2010s, and also that tripling 5e’s 2014 numbers may actually be not only not impressive, but a serious decline from where the game had been selling.

To be honest, I’ve likely already assigned too much certainty to what are very poorly reported numbers, but the trajectory of D&D makes one thing clear: Wizards of the Coast is not rushing towards a new edition of the game. If anything, they’re likely going to spend the second decade of 5e’s publication avoiding 6e at all costs. No matter what the game, releasing a new edition is a balancing act between retaining enough players who liked the older game and expanding the market by attracting new players. Here D&D, by virtue of being the most popular TTRPG ever (and being so much larger than its competitors), is a special case; with so many players attached to 5e and with the edition’s design a tacit admission that Wizards of the Coast will likely never make another large revision, the risks of a 6e are far higher than the rewards and will remain so pretty much until the D&D monopoly breaks again. It’s another reason (though far from the only one) that Wizards is pivoting so hard towards digital distribution: If they know they won’t be making another edition any time soon, other approaches to incremental revenue are necessary to continue to get the game investment.

While D&D’s path is unique, the shift in new edition risk-reward is not; much of the change comes from the fact that games are more expensive to produce and (thanks to D&D) the target market is smaller than it has been in some time. When you look at the calculus of a new edition given those dynamics in the hobby, it makes sense that the largest, most successful revisions are of long-dormant games where there’s essentially no market cannibalization left. Given how tough the market is, designers either have to put out a revision that everyone will buy, or make sure that any existing fans who don’t like the new game are given options. This is why, even though it’s almost forty years old, Cyberpunk 2020 is kept in print alongside Cyberpunk RED.

There is another change in the hobby, and I think it needs to be considered alongside the financial pressures to truly explain why we’re no longer seeing three editions of GURPS in two years or four editions of Call of Cthulhu in eight years. The combination of easier online distribution with the fact that game design itself has simply become more refined means that new editions, when they’re released, are simply more different than they used to be. To continue with GURPS as an example, GURPS went from 1e to 3e between 1986 and 1988. 3e was then the primary GURPS edition for 16 years until 4e was released in 2004. Similarly, Call of Cthulhu stayed at Fifth Edition from 1992 until 2004 (possibly longer, considering how little Sixth Edition actually changed). Part of what was going on here was that the changes in these editions are no longer considered edition-worthy changes. AD&D 2e likely changed more between 1989 and its revised printing in 1995 than GURPS did between 1e and 2e, and that standard of what constituted a ‘new edition’ changed further when D&D went to 3e in 2000.

There are two competing pressures here. First, market pressures have continued to increase the threshold at which gamers are willing to pay for another copy of a game. This is why in the 1990s, TSR’s low point before its eventual collapse and sale, core rulebooks being produced were intended to enhance and revise but not replace existing editions. Both AD&D 2e revised and the Basic D&D Rules Cyclopedia were updated to appeal to new players, but not so much that they pressured old players into buying a new book (when doing so was more likely to cause them to pick another game entirely). Second, updating books has become much easier. If you have a PDF version of a game, likely it’s already been updated half a dozen times. It also changes the calculus of revised editions; the Fabula Ultima designers have been releasing all these rules updates for free, but it wasn’t until their Bestiary Kickstarter that there was any indication the updates would make their way into print. It once again reduces the regret of being an early adopter, but still gives the option of a new, fully updated book to those who want it. In that way, perhaps newer games like Fabula Ultima aren’t actually doing things much differently than a game like Call of Cthulhu; the main difference is that modern content distribution reduces the need for newer games to have revisions labeled 5.5, 5.6, or 5.6.1.

When newer games get second or third editions, they’re more likely to see substantive changes to how the game works. This does mean that the days of fifth, sixth, or seventh editions are likely over; while D&D is the obvious exception it’s also shifted to the larger, more substantial edition change model (at least since 2000). This means the changes needed to warrant a sixth edition are going to be made very carefully, if such a change happens at all.

---

With the level of refinement games are seeing nowadays, it’s easier to question why an edition change is needed for some games. We’re at an era of sink-or-swim for TTRPGs, especially indies outside the D&D-based fantasy paradigm. This does mean that the most successful games are often the ones where fans become protective, where change isn’t necessarily seen as good. Magpie Games is threading this needle right now. Urban Shadows 2e was an improvement over 1e, at least I think, but that opinion is not held by everyone. Now the company is getting ready to campaign Masks 2e, and I find myself asking ‘why?’ Now, the campaign isn’t even live yet and the changes have only been described in broad strokes; I do expect by the time crowdfunding is open there will be a clearer explanation from Brendan Conway and the team how they intend to make 2e a better game than 1e. But even my innate reaction illustrates the risk and reward; I am both highly suspicious of a new edition of Masks, but also already ready to drop money on it. From a business perspective, that’s likely an indication that Magpie is doing the right thing, especially as it’s been ten years since the first game came out.

The lengthening edition schedule and shrinking revision pipeline are indicators of a hobby under stress, but they’re also likely better for gamers. The balance of new editions being game improvements versus revenue improvements is skewing more and more towards the former, even if the net effect is to downgrade certain levels of alteration from edition change to revision and then perhaps to simply reprint. At the same time, there is still a need for revision after a game is first scrutinized by the public. In 1986 this may have been GURPS 1e rapidly being followed by 2e, but in 2026 it’s likely the release of a 0e or ashcan edition. This shift may not make it easier for designers to succeed, but it does make iteration and fast failure a lot cheaper. Sometimes there’s success from go, like what happened with Mothership 0e. Even in the absence of immediate response, though, it makes it much easier for a designer to see what players like and dislike, and to refine a game without too big a budget. There’s always a balance, though. Every trend that makes it easier for designers to succeed, makes it easier for designers to shoot their shot, will continue to increase the number of games out there. This can be a good thing for gamers, but it puts more and more pressure on designers who are trying to get their work seen. A curious contrast is that the same trends are affecting corporate conference rooms, as Wizards of the Coast must decide if there’s ever going to be a D&D Sixth Edition.

Like what Cannibal Halfling Gaming is doing and want to help us bring games and gamers together? First, you can follow me @levelonewonk.bsky.social for RPG commentary, relevant retweets, and maybe some rambling. You can also find our Discord channel and drop in to chat with our authors and get every new post as it comes out. You can travel to DriveThruRPG through one of our fine and elegantly-crafted links, which generates credit that lets us get more games to work with! Finally, you can support us directly on Patreon, which lets us cover costs, pay our contributors, and save up for projects. Thanks for reading!