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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iosue" data-source="post: 6081767" data-attributes="member: 6680772">To be honest, I think WotC's goal here has been hugely misunderstood.  The prevailing wisdom is that they are trying to create a D&D that will make everyone happy, and get a significant number of TSR-era folks, OSR folks, 3e folks, and 4e folks all playing 5e.  I think that's true in as far as there's a large silent market out there of people who have no interest in edition wars, who may have preferred editions, but are not completely happy with them, and would like to mix and match different options.  Certainly there's a market for the kind of game they are designing.  4e fans who want simple chargen.  3e fans who want simple DM tools.  TSR fans who want more unified rules.But I think WotC is also taking an entirely new approach: they are not competing with their old editions.  It's not just the PDFs.  They had PDFs up previously, basically as a sop to nostalgia.  But when 3e came out they stopped supporting 2e.  When 4e came out they stopped supporting 3e.  I don't think that's the case here.  I think 5e is being designed with modularity because the intent is to support every other edition through 5e.  Adventures and settings published for 5e will deal with the modularity, which means they'll be written for easy conversion.  For example, Mearls mentioned wanting to include a ToEE-like mega-adventure with the Basic D&D product.  Such a product would be extremely easy for a B/X or 1e player to use.  Certain non-core modules or splats could lend themselves to being used by earlier editions.  Maybe you do a big, cinematic adventure path using the Standard Rules with the Tactical Battle System, with conversion notes for 3e and 4e.This is a model that was untenable even 12 years ago.  The costs of printing and distribution prohibited supporting something that might take away from sales of the primary product.  Now, technology gives them a whole host of tools.  Print-on-demand, PDFs, digital tools.  They have all sorts of ways to deliver product to customers.  This is not just idle speculation or what I wish they would do.  This is what I have gathered from a lot of what they've said.  Talking about support for all editions in more than place.  The desire to make 5e largely compatible with any previous adventure/module (I think that was in a Rodney Thompson Q&A).  Much of what Mearls & Crawford talked about in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yoa_xQTya8Y" target="_blank">this panel</a> regarding adventures.  The fact they're reprinting every edition of AD&D.  I was entirely unsurprised when the PDFs were re-released because much of what they were seeing seemed to be leading up to that.  I think there's a very significant reason Caves of Chaos and Isle of Dread are playtest adventures.  It's not because they were pandering to grognards and old-schoolers.  The goal is to design a kind of Gamic Philosopher's Stone.</blockquote>

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