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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 5300841" data-attributes="member: 59082">Ahh...the Holy Grail of fantasy game design (or at least D&D): how to make mages awesome and balanced. Actually, this is inspiring me to start a post on it...Good predictions, although I wonder about 2013--that would seem too soon, especially with Essentials coming out. I wouldn't be surprised to see WotC find a smoother way to transition from one edition to another. As some have mentioned--including myself--the times of edition cycles may be at an end; Essentials may be the harbinger of "jumping off the wheel" and taking a different, more open-ended and gradual approach. This doesn't mean there won't be a 5E, but that by the time we get there it will be relatively painless (and thus less controversial) because a bunch of incremental changes (through errata, D&D Insider, etc) will have gradually changed the game. "5E" may simply be a new round of revisions and formatting--the next version of the core books, with new covers, formatting, art, but still 4E compatible, or at least Essentials-compatible. So if I were WotC I would try to find a way to make buying new rounds of books appealing without the resulting fallout. One way to do this is what they seem to be doing: rather than only making signficant rules changes with a new edition, integrate change as a regular and expected aspect of the game. D&D Insider makes this possible. A new "edition" of the core books is less like a total re-booting of the game and more like a "state of the nation" (or game) printing. It is a representation, in other words, of where the open-ended and ever-changing game is at a certain time. To put it another way, I imagine that in the past WotC has compiled a list of changes they would like to make for the next edition of D&D. Rather than saving them up for that next edition, those changes can be (and are being) implemented more frequently, within the current edition. So when "5E" comes out it is more of a marker for "the changes thus far" and thus more contiguous with all that came before. If what I'm saying is true then we could see that sooner than later, maybe corresponding to your dates.</blockquote>

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