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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Windjammer" data-source="post: 4845920" data-attributes="member: 60075">Well, 2E's healthy life span surely didn't go up all the way to 2000. I certainly can't envisage WotC to pin the health of 4E on the sort of nichê product TSR relied on in the final 5 years of 2E's existence.Where I'm on board with you, OTOH, is that 4E's mechanical simplicity isn't a stumbling block to future development. I mean, PHB 2 is already a huge step forward; if WotC keeps going on that scale, the potential for 4E is easily on a par with 3E. (I'd have never thought I'd ever write a sentence like this, but strange things can happen.) You see, like you I think some of the self-imposed constraints on 4E could be lifted pretty easily (e.g. DDM-distances on mobility, way more rituals, etc etc). So the question isn't whether WotC can see this through at a game-mechanical level, but whether they're interested to see it through at a corporate/economical level. Which is where my earlier point re TSR's death-defying optimism re nichê product comes in. See, I think continually developing 4E to ever more complex (not complicated) reaches inevitable renders a portion of the early 4E stuff obsolete. (In part, I think that's what's happening with PHB 2 vs. PHB 1 already, although I'd rather not render this a matter of debate in this wonderful thread.) So the issue is, how far can WotC go without alienating customers who don't want to see their extant 4E-investments being partly, but continuously, invalidated?That's hard to guess. Personally I'd keep buying 4E products year in, year out, provided the new stuff IS more interesting than the old stuff, and I don't get forced to switch editions in the process of picking up new stuff. But yeah, I think we've just seen a scratch of 4E's full potential. Whether that potential will see fruition in 4E itself or whether WotC thinks it more worthwhile to wrap all that into the next (read: 5E) PHB 1, only time will tell.</blockquote>

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