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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mark CMG" data-source="post: 5664637" data-attributes="member: 10479">I think they are happy, at least initially, getting a generally positive reaction on their own site from people they know will purchase what they put out.  I'm not sure they should be but that's another story.Whatever they do with 5E needs to be different enough from the current edition and past editions to warrant fans not only purchasing a new core but also purchasing enough follow up supplements to justify the change to a new edition.  They cannot afford to put something out and just have simply decent sales numbers on the core and especially cannot be satisfied with selling low numbers of their new core books and have people utilize their older supplements instead of purchasing the new follow ups.  That reasoning and reclaiming their IP territory from the third party marketplace is, I suspect, a large part of why the current edition is so different from previous editions.  During the dev of 3E they had a whole different landscape (and different staff) with no corporate overlord, no direct competition, no extensive secondary market with easy access through the Internet to thirty-five years of OOP material, etc.They have no choice but to make things very different.  That is not to say that making something different cannot also mean making something very good.  While they have gutted their institutional memory through layoffs, they still do have a lot of young talent, many of whom now have the experience of putting out a major edition and its revision.  At the very least, what they finally produce is going to be innovative and interesting.  I think we can count on that.</blockquote>

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