Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 7992705" data-attributes="member: 11760">This is a completely innocuous comment and indicative of nothing. Every new edition was allegedly triggered by the fans finding the old edition troublesome. (Although, really, economic pressures are more important, as spelled out in Art & Arcana.)There's also no reason to believe Winniger is going to be announcing a sixth edition, especially since he's apparently been on the job for a while now, and fans just weren't paying attention.More relevant data points not in the original post:1. WotC is moving heaven and earth to not update the ranger in the PHB, despite their admission that a lot of fans have problems with the class, as they don't want to fork the user base between people with PHB 1.0 and PHB 1.1 (although there has been more minor errata added).2. The UA publication of supplemental rules intended to allow groups to tweak existing classes (including that pesky ranger) instead of wholesale replacing any classes, for the same reason as above.3. The measured release of material that changes the core experience. So far, only Xanathar's comes close to really shaking up the core D&D game, and even then, most of the content in there is pretty niche compared to the iconic material in the PHB. Subsequent releases have had a few races, a few spells, a background or a subclass or three, but nothing that could be deemed essential outside of the setting or campaign they're linked to. This is clearly WotC following a game plan intended to allow indefinite releases.4. And most importantly, the core D&D books are still selling like gangbusters, especially during the pandemic, which Amazon and other retailers are happy to show without waiting for (unfortunately less important at the moment) trade group reports. Until the PHB isn't a consistent best seller, there's going to be no real drive to kill a cash cow, devote resources to replacing it, and riding out the rough period of low sales between announcement and release.</blockquote>

Verification