What if the D&D brand had gone dark?

[RFisher]

People would keep playing and then carry on with a new edition when it finally came out, or keep using what they had.

Just like they did at the end of 2E, when TSR went under and we had almost a year with no new product at all.

Heck, for many of us D&D was effectively out-of-print during a few years of the 1990s. D&D was dead to me for most of the 1990s.

 

[Aeolius]

I didn't care for 2e and thus skipped most of that edition, save for a handful of supplements. Skipping 4e doesn't upset me in the least; there will either be 5e or the d20 SRD to continue playing with.