Running D&D 5e 2014 and 2024 on different worlds

Help
1

Hello,

I am currently running a longform campaign using the D&D 5e 2014 ruleset, and the group does not really want to quit it, however…

I have recently begun building a new world, in which my players and I want to run the 2024 rules (mainly to see which we like better).

I know there are a lot of “compatibility issues", due to the change in how “items” are created between the D&D 3.x and 4.x module. Found that out the hard way.

Is there a way to “run both” 5e Rulesets on the two different worlds without “updating” them (and all the addons) every time we switch worlds, because we would really like to retain our existing world and keep playing it on different dates? There are after all still things to do there :wink:

I would prefer not to have to get another “server licence” just for a little experimenting.

2

Short answer on this is its possible but not practical.
Assuming that you are using Foundry v12 (which 4.x requires), you can only set all of your worlds to the same system version.
So as you suspected, you would need to update and downgrade each time you swapped between worlds, which would be painful enough in that eventually you will forget and it would migrate the world, so you would need lots of backups. On top of that there will most likely be modules that only run on one version and not the other (unless you run very module light).

To experiment yourself, you can install the 4.x version on your PC, but that works just for your testing not for a live world for your players.