Sounds like 4th ed wasnt tha stellar. pff.. Ill keep an eye on it. Right now I use 3.5 base books and tons of 2nd Ed. book for description/source/everything non-diceable. For the 4th ed "fix" I prefer Descent; at least that does not try to sell itself wrongly as RPG and already comes with lots of minis.

4th edition worked very well if you primarily treated it like a tactical board game with RPG elements, rather than a fully fledged RPG. In fact, when treated like a tactical board game, it is quite fun!

But I feel like you have to fight the system too much if you want to make it a more diverse roleplaying experience. You can of course freeform quite a lot (which is what my group does no matter the game), but sometimes it is nice to have a good rule system as a base.

You'd be surprised how tempting a roots-rush can get for the higher ups when the air around the latest edition gets so stale that there's nothing they can do about it in the next edition unless they want to muck it up even more. That's when they shout "reboot!" and all that filth that accumulated over the years that they couldn't get rid of is gone and over. Happens sometimes in the comic industry, and by extension in the film industry too.

You want an example of how that can be worded in popular culture? No problem.

Thats why I prefer Descent over 4th ed. It is at least sold as tactical fantasy boardgame (or rather modular tile system) and does not tell you "Hey; I'm an RPG; now go buy tiles and minis too so you can play".

Every new edition is a reboot. And as soon as the big sale is over (first few weeks after release) and most player have their PHBs & DMGs they descide how much supplement-investments can keep it alive and when a new edition can be announced. And since they take so much time to make sure its as incompatible as possible (in this firms case) they cannot count on players of older editions to buy the new editions supplements.

It would not surprise me much if they already had 5th ed in full development when they just announced the 4th ed release.

Descent is such an awesome game. :)

You saw that they're releasing 2ed soon right?

To those complaining about D&D being too centred around combat...

Didn't it start as a personal-level wargame with semi-customizable characters?

Edit

Also and [url=http://penny-arcade.com/2012/01/11]this.

I registered, I am curious to see what it will look like

Too soon?

My 4th ed books have barely started collecting dust.

The group I'm playing with has gotten quite used to the system - it accommodates new players, and combat is pleasantly straightforward compared to 3.5.

One day we'll finish our current campaign and go looking for an interesting setting for a new one... but we won't be able to find it because they're busy re-releasing all of the existing settings for 5E instead.

Well if 5e comes out in two years, which is what most folks expect, it will be the exact same gap as there was between 3e and 4e, which was seven years. Mostly I'm curious about the whole "modular" thing that they've talked about, and what that means, exactly. Rolemaster is a modular system, where there are separate rulesets that you can choose to use or not use (like a splatbook but a lot more involved). But I'm pretty sure the 5e one will be more along the lines of modules for using miniatures or modules for LARPing or somesuch.

It might be good. It might be really good. Or it might be a horrible abomination that causes Hasbro to cancel it entirely. We'll just have to wait and see.

This won't be out for some time, go ahead and buy the core 4th ed. rule books, you have gotten your 60 USD investment out of them in spades by the time this comes out.
Sounds like GURPS to me, where you can plug in races if you want them... or not. Plug in high magic if you want it... or not. That kind of thing. Whether it'll work out or not is anyone's guess, your supplement buying will be different, though. You may just buy the supplements your character uses (i.e. you don't buy wizardry supplements for your warrior). The DMs have to know how it all works, though, so I sorta wonder.

These guys just don't get it.

As long as Hasbro/WotC continues to insist on forcing users to use newer editions they will continue to alienate their existing fans. As long as they continue to piss off their existing fan base every few years with another reboot D&D will continue to be a marginal property.

Different people want different things from their games. The old TSR subconsciously understood this and was serendipitously quite successful marketing different versions of the game for different players. OD&D, Basic D&D, and AD&D catered to different gaming styles and all were quite popular and profitable.

The trick to broadening the Appeal of D&D isn't to create a single edition that everyone will play. This is a fools errand. People are simply too diverse. If you really want the franchise to grow the trick is to stop locking all your previous editions each time you come up with a new one.

Won't happen of course. Greedy schmucks. No skin off my butt, though. I'll just use OSRIC instead of D&D.

WotC have claimed that they will continue support 4th ed at least in DDI and that they might look into conversion toold for the next ed. While it is nothing special, but at least something so i think I'll bite and get the 4th ed anyways.
Sauce

You're wearing your rose tinted glasses, TSR was no better than Hasbro with AD&D, 2nd edition was full of supplements and many of them were 2/3 full of stuff cobbled together from other, published stuff and 1/3 actual, new content. People were pissed off and "jumping ship" from TSR AD&D just like people do today, today it's for Pathfinder and the like, but in yesteryear there were scads of alternatives as well.

Original AD&D had less cruft hanging off of it but providing 2nd edition actually was beneficial for many players.

Frankly I like 4th edition (except for that Essentials crap), Hasbro is going in the correct direction, it's a fuckton more like AD&D than the abortions that were 3.0/3.5 ever managed to be. There's no reason 5th edition can't be even better. As hobbies go AD&D is really cheap, being pissed off because you need 100 USD in new books every 7 years is just silly.
5th edition won't be out until 2014 at the earliest in any case:)

Wait, what? they got rid of Saving Throws as well? How do you not die?

Same for me. Not as much money, but a good $250 or thereabouts in core books, supplements, dice, modules throughout the 90s. A good chunk of change for a young teenager without much discretionary income most of the time. Most of that material has been lost to time and changing addresses, however thankfully I held onto my Ravenloft 2nd Ed. Boxed set, in very good condition.

in the aughts (the 00s), I became very dubious with WotSC revising the official D&D edition every few years at the expense of their gamer base who would then need to buy everything all over again and sink "x" amount of dollars just to keep up with the times (3/3.5/4/5). Definitely appeared to be the textbook milking a cash cow. This 5th Edition business seems like more egregious evidence, so soon comparatively on the heels of the 4th edition.

I myself lost interest in AD&D/D&D anyway during that decade, favoring other RPG-systems with more nuanced mechanics or non Tolkein-esque settings. I figured that if I ever wanted to return to AD&D I'd go with Castles & Crusades, which I understand is closest to the spirit of old 2nd Ed and I could acclimate my old material to easily, as well as flexible to house-rules, etc.