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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 6222819" data-attributes="member: 3586">It is very rare for a group to be 100% happy with any particular version of D&D. This is quite true of designers - Gary Gygax could have stopped with the original game, but released several supplements, revised it again into AD&D, released more supplements, and was considering a 2nd edition before his plans were unfortunately derailed. Not only that, but the potential player base *also* is changing. Each version of the game is completely legitimate and will serve a portion of the gaming public. Should he have stopped with just the original three booklets? In my opinion, definitely not! Although the core of them is genius, the books are poorly organised, badly set-out and contain some extremely questionable design.Thus, we started getting new editions.Now, here's the thing: We should be playing the game we most enjoy, whether it be original D&D, AD&D, 3E, 4E, Pathfinder or something else entirely. I'm currently running three games: AD&D, 4E and the Next playtest. Each one has strengths and weaknesses, but none of them is perfect for my purposes. I would say the number of people who are 100% satisfied with every element of an edition is quite small. Next offers us the opportunity to see if the newest version of the game fits our needs better than previous versions. By no means do I think it will be automatically better for everyone. Not a chance! The hope of the designers is that it will fit enough people's needs better than the alternatives.What makes it particularly interesting is the design goal of modularity, of allowing groups to choose the complexity of the game themselves, allowing it to be played in a very simple form up to a quite complex form. I've no idea how this will work in the final product - I remain fascinated in the result.Someone who is 100% satisfied with AD&D will have little interest in Next. That can be assumed. But for those who like AD&D but aren't fully satisfied by it, Next should be enough like AD&D for them to see if they like it better. Unusually, this also applies to fans of 2E, 3E and 4E: if Next's modularity works as desired, Next should be a potential choice for someone who likes those systems and wants a different take on them - one which might be better for them. It's an ambitious goal; I don't know how successful it will be.Of course, the other aspect to all of this is that playing the current version of the game means it will be better supported than the older ones and it is probably easier to find players for that game. (This isn't anywhere as certain as in previous years, thanks to the effects of the OGL and the strong support of fan and commercial publishers for older editions). Playing the current edition is still a strong draw.None of this assures success. However, by potentially appealing to all previous players of D&D, Wizards do allow themselves the possibility of getting more interest than if they only targeted players of one edition.Cheers!</blockquote>

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