D&D 4E What's the point of playing 4e now?

[Skade]

If I played 4e I would say it was time to buy more books on clearance and half priced books! Buy more, not less.

 

[Iosue]

It may be pie in the sky thinking, but based on everything I've heard them say, there's good reason to believe that the next iteration of D&D will be largely compatible with 4e.

Look, the idea of editions being completely different and incompatible with those that came before them is relatively recent. You could still use 2e materials with 1e. Hell, you could use AD&D materials with Basic D&D, with only a bit of tweaking. It's only after WotC came out with 3e that the tradition of completely wiping out the previous edition came about. Everything Mearls has been talking about is getting away from that, and with DDI, there are in a position to consolidate the editions and make money off them in a way never before possible.

 

[TerraDave]

Er, the air has been leaking of of the room for a while now. If you are still in that room, you are probably close to passing out.

Take the advice given above, and get out of the room while you still can.

 

[Rechan]

Why does it matter what WotC does or does not do? I'm serious. I still play 3.x and will do so for the next who know how many decades. You can do the same with 4e if you love it. Nobody is stopping you.

I'm not trying to be snarky, I just honestly don't understand the concern.

It would probably be different if I already had a group of 4e-friendly friends. As it stands I can't find/keep a group. I keep winding up in locations where gamers are spread thin, and any group I've been in the last few years disintegrates after a few sessions.

IMO one of the main reasons it was possible was that 4e was the current thing. Now that the writing is on the wall, it will be even more difficult to convince people to play, or find new groups.

To put it another way, when was the last time you saw someone recruiting for a 3.0 game?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, I'll just chime in with the same basic thought. I have no reason to stop playing 4e now, what would I run? There's no 5e out there to even try out at this point. It could be 3 years before there is for all I know, and I might not even like it when it comes out (not too likely really, but still).

I think most of us play D&D to play and have fun, not because we really care much about which game we're playing and if it is the latest and greatest or whatever. Honestly I would be just as happy if WotC would have stuck to making more material that I can use vs thrashing core rules, but that isn't under my control, so I'll just grab what does become available and keep using it to have fun.

I'm super psyched about this next adventure I just put together for my Tuesday night group. It is going to kick! I fully expect we'll run through that campaign right up to high level. It will only take around 18 months, maybe less. 5e won't even be out yet by then.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

God the server is getting a beating.

On topic, I saw this attitude with the announcement of 4e also and i did not understand it then. Why is the endition only worth while when one spends money on it. I played WHRPG 1e for 10 years with no support and Palladiun for 16 (all the material I saw at that time was for RIFTS) and it never bothered me.

I am not terribly excited about the new edition, I still have too much to explore in this one but I will plug away with the material I have.
My biggest concern is with DDI and the online tools. I have finally persuaded the old college gang to try the VTT tonight and I am hoping to get a weekly campaign going. So if the tools get switched soon that could kill the momentum. It took me a year to get them this far. I tried maptools and they did not bite prefering to wait for the WOTC one. So if they pull 4e support soon that would really piss me off.

 

[drothgery]

Even if 5e is a really super-awesome game which 90% of the people playing 4e AND 90% of the people playing Pathfinder immediately fall in love with (and I hope it is), we don't have it yet. And in fact, Wizards' announcement didn't actually say when 5e is going to be launched (though it strongly hinted at GenCon 2013), so we won't have 5e for quite some time.

In the mean time, 4e is still the best version of D&D out there to many of us.

 

[Umbran]

I'm running classic Deadlands. Not the d20, not the Savage Worlds, but the classic. It hasn't had books in physical print for years, and my players are having a blast.

It seems to me that being a going concern, with a long list of new products going forward, really isn't what some make it out to be. Games are perfectly viable to play after they go out of print. Games are generally viable if you only have the core rules!

Play what you like. Don't worry so much about what WotC might do or print in the future.

 

[Rechan]

Even if 5e is a really super-awesome game which 90% of the people playing 4e AND 90% of the people playing Pathfinder immediately fall in love with (and I hope it is), we don't have it yet. And in fact, Wizards' announcement didn't actually say when 5e is going to be launched (though it strongly hinted at GenCon 2013), so we won't have 5e for quite some time.s.

Not true. It's an open playtest.

They're already hinting at this spring releasing the rules for playtesting. People will get the rules and play.

 

[Rechan]

My main issue is that if I can't find people to play what I want before, how can I find them now?