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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ComradeGnull" data-source="post: 5997475" data-attributes="member: 6685694">Two contradictory views that I have no problem holding simultaneously:1) Every business, particularly every publicly held business is about growth.  In the RPG market, growth means either a) re-directing dollars that used to be spent on other RPG products to your product or b) making new players.  Betting on option a) is a real crap shoot, leaving you with option b).  I don't think that supporting 5 different versions of D&D is realistic if you need to grow new players- it becomes too confusing for a new person to figure out what books go with what game, and which order to buy them in, and what 'version' you should buy first- I remember being 10 and wondering if I was doing something wrong by starting with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons without ever having played (Regular) Dungeons & Dragons.  Multiply that confusion by 5 and you have a recipe for disaster.  WotC needs one flagship brand that it can put front and center for this product and easily steer new players into it.  I'm of the opinion that they are changing directions from 4e not so much because 4e alienated too many old players, but because it failed to attract new players in the way that 3e did with its robust ecosystem of 3rd party products and simpler core rules.2) 3.5e/Pathfinder/OGL is out there now, forever.  WotC tried to lock it down with 4e by creating a less open licensing process, and all they did was push developers into supporting Pathfinder or making their own system.  Five systems is too many, but embracing two- a highly balanced system with substantial tactical support (4e) and a more open-ended system framework that can support old-school play or 3e/Pathfinder style play (OGL/d20SRD/whatever) seems like it might be reasonable.  Plenty of gaming companies in the past have published dual-ruleset expansions and system-neutral materials (look at Menzoberanzan, for instance).  By supporting OGL/3.5e/SRD stuff, you effectively support retro-clone stuff, including clones that imitate the flavor of 1/2/whatevercoloredbox.So while I remain interested and excited about 5e, I've yet to see anything from it that convinces me that it is a substantial improvement over either 4e or 3e.  It's early yet, obviously.  I would have been totally pleased if WotC had said "you know what?  4e had some great innovations, but we kind of screwed the pooch on the way it was presented to players, and we realize that it isn't every one's cup of tea.  With that in mind, we're restoring official support for 3.5e.  We'll publish new rules and material for 4e to round out areas of that game we never got around to creating or defining, we'll publish how-to rules for 3.5e to show you how to modularize it into whatever you want, including retro-clones, and we'll publish system-neutral setting documents and dual-system adventures for a while."I want to ultimately see 5e make me a better offer than that, because otherwise I'm happy right now with Pathfinder and 4e.  Too early to tell if that can be done or not.</blockquote>

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