Can anyone out there give me a compelling reason why I, or any other gamer of my generation for that matter, would want to buy the next version of D&D? I have no real desire to purchase a game I already own well meeting my needs, that being to tell a great long-running story to a group of friends and family on a Saturday night. It seems like a waste of money to me. I'm not a collector so why buy? I buy the books for entertainment purposes, in other words to use in crafting and improving our games. I own so much core and supplemental material now, I haven't even begun to use everything in my existing arsenal. This includes material dating back from the current version to when I first started playing over twenty years ago. I've barely scratched the surface and will be playing long into retirement on what I already own. The good news is that the 3.5 material I haven't purchased yet is about to get a whole lot cheaper.
D&D isn't as cool as it used to be when it wasn't popular. Wizards of the Coast is simply catering to a new generation of gamers raised on video games and MMORPGs, neither or which are at all particularly effective at limitless interactive story-telling. So the proposed virtual table top fails to interest me too. I like real dice, real metallic miniatures, vinyl mats, dungeon tiles, and my trees and rocks. Still, if I were to consider using one, I'd use Fantasy Grounds which looks a whole lot better (it looks far more friendly an accessible to those with visual imparements). What gamers really need are more tools for running games and generating game objects such as monsters and non-player characters. Wizards of the Coast seems to have given up on the idea of producing such tools. I would even consider subscribing to an online database of spells, monsters and magic items. I recognize that there are areas where some innovation is needed but recreating the game every so often doesn't really achieve that. What it does achieve is improve profit margins, which after all is the real goal of D&D 4E.
