if it quaks
and walks and talks like it, it's D&D, innit.
Without getting into pointless debates stretching the limits of semantics, it's amusing to see on the Wotc forums them trying to shove this under the rug with the edition zealots getting all defensive about it. (the truth hurts, don't it). I like 4e, but I hate Wizards. They release buggy games to sell more subs and then nerf middling toons half-way through a totally video-gamey campaign. Seriously, I did more epic stuff with my 5th level character in our pathfinder campaign, that's only four months old, than we did in nearly three years of the 4e grind.
I like 4e for its optimization potential, not for its balance. Let's face it, not everyone has 22 points of stats in life, to be placed perfectly so they line up to a final destination. The randomness of stats and HP alone makes PF more true to D&D than 4e could ever hope to be. Something was lost, never to be found again. Whatever 4e is, owning the copyright to D&D or not, D&D belongs to our imaginations and by now it's a generic term in popular lexicon that no corporation truly owns. No, wizards, just by virtue of buying Gary Gygax's name, you do not own our imaginations nor the rules. Game rules are not copyrightable, and in any sane society a 35 year old statute of limitations would have prevented Beholders, Trolls, Greyhawk, and so on, from being p0wned by people out to make a quick buck rather than those of us who truly own it. I.e. by virtue of being dedicated to the hobby and having bought splat books from 4 editions and their derivatives.
Thing is, I'd be all for a 5e, whoever owned it, if it didn't suck. But by virtue of it being owned by a money-grubbing corporation that doesn't live and breathe and die by the game (their chief earner is Magic, as many have pointed out), I don't see why we should pay any particular credence to their claim that their system deserves to be called D&D and others don't.
Mindless obedience to inane laws is anathema to me. It surprises me that so many here defend the non-argument that copyright trumps reason. It is essentially an exercise double-think. When we play Pathfinder, we are playing it because it IS D&D. It is not merely similar. If you walk out your door and introduce yourself as Bob, are you no longer John?
I call 4th ed Dungeons and Dragons 4e, more so than I refer to it as D&D. I can turn my hat around and pretend like Pathfinder isn't D&D to please the thought-police (tm), but seriously. Come on. It has more claim to be called D&D by virtue of its spirit, its nature, its character, than much of what the glorified chess game that wizards came up with is. NB : I love D&Chess. But it's not D&D.
