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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Badapple" data-source="post: 5981043" data-attributes="member: 71811">Thanks for that.  And thanks for presenting/inspiring a "what if" scenario that I find particularly fascinating...  Here's my take that (may) be a similar take to what you have? What if we went back in time to the announcment of D&D 4E.  At that time D&D 3.5 was my far and away favorite fantasy game, but at that time we were involved in two very long running campaigns where the party was around 13th level or so.  That, to me, was where some of the shortcomings of 3.x reared itself... growing imbalances between the player characters and that it was gettting harder and harder to DM.  But it was still far and away the reigning king of rpgs and the OGL had utterly energized the rpg industry.  After playing 3.0 since release, I was ready for something a little new, but what exactly that would be I hadn't decided yet.  I had plans to start a new campaign using Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved and I was very interested in the upcoming Pathfinder take on 3.x.  In the absence of fourth edition I would have probably gravitated away from core 3.x rules, but the alternatives available at the time weren't as drastic a change from that ruleset as 4E's would prove to be. What if Wotc had retained it's close partnership with Paizo (maybe bought them out?), and in fact worked out a business model with them for Paizo's developers to put out the next edition of D&D and the fourth edition of D&D wound up being something very similar to Pathfinder? Meanwhile Mike Mearls and Rob Heinsoo and all the other various designers of D&D 4E designed a brand new fantasy game from scratch, called it "Points of Light" and put "a new fantasy RPG from the makers of Dungeons and Dragons" on the box and gave it similar marketing support? WotC could have both Pathfinder (labelled as 4E D&D: Pathfinder) AND fourth edition (labelled as a totally different game) on the shelves simultaneously.  Paizo would be a part of WotC and their excellent adventure paths could find their way into both products.  There would be no product confusion among consumers, as they are two totally seperate games.  Both games could freely use each other's copyrights and material, since they are owned by the same company.  The OGL could continue to apply to D&D 4E pathfinder, but not apply to "Points of Light".  Pathfinder could have WotC's online presence.  Gamers could make digs at each other good naturedly on the boards, but since both product lines are being supported would probably markedly reduce the "editon war". Also, both these flavors of D&D could be improved incrementally through seperate future editions...  Future new releases of D&D/Pathfinder and Points of Light would be focused in their direction, serve a specific base, have adventure modules and campaign sourcebooks that are still relatively compatible, etc. Meanwhile... the 3rd party companies would have the AD&D market left to fight over, so the retroclones and internet support that OE fans have currently enjoyed would have perhaps hit the scenes and provided support to that gaming base sooner... Heck, this thread's original purpose was "Tell us what would you like to see no matter how unrealistic or selfish?" So just throwing it out there, heh.</blockquote>

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