D&D 5E Sneak look at 5E !

[xechnao]

showing your prospective customers works-in-progress of the upcoming "edition", NO.

Why not?

I think it suits Wotc's current business pretty well. They have invested in establishing a market relationship of feeding the D&D product to buyers through on-going subscriptions and on-going events. So, tieing marketing on this on-going engagement with the public -even the push towards a new edition, the making of it and its eventual launch- is pretty much a given. So far, playtests, arcana uneathed alternative rules, all to be shared with the public. They even try to show to their public that their skepticism, their critical thoughts, their own criticisms regarding the products of D&D they make and sell are shared with them in this Legends & Lore column. Along with the solutions, the new directions and developments everyone desires (players + developers of D&D).

So, how would you market 5e?

 

[Kelvor Ravenstar]

While showing previews of an upcoming edition is definitely something Wizards of the Coast would do, their record would suggest that showing off binders of playtest material would be a big change in how they do business. Material that used to be released only under NDA to select playtesters.
Did we get playtest articles for the Essentials products? And apart from the Executioner Assassin, we haven't got very many playtest materials through DDI in a long time.

As to how would I market 5E? I would likely do it under very similar strategies that WotC is currently using through DDI, but I wouldn't even start design work on it until I thought the market was ready, and from the reactions I've seen to Essentials and the current lineup of books, I don't believe the playerbase is even close to being ready for a new edition. So I'd anticipate WotC to be thinking very very vaguely about 5E right now (as we might be seeing in the Legends and Lore articles), starting up design in about 2 years, and maybe publish a 5e in 4 years. (Though I'd probably prefer even longer, I doubt it could be sustained as-is beyond that)