As stated by Scott Rouse in a recent interview:
"Once 4E begins, you will not have to worry about a 4.5E arriving at all. That's because we will begin planning work for 5th Edition. It will most likely be released 4-5 years after the release of the core books for 4th Edition. There's no need for anyone to worry, trust us. You always trust us, though, so that's a an understatement. It'll be as exciting as ever and even if you don't like 5E, there's nothing stopping you from continuing your 4E games. No, the two won't be compatible, not even remotely close. We want you to spend money on us, you wouldn't be doing that if the converting your 4E material to 5E would be so easy, or vice versa! We just need to bring in extra cash again and instead of thinking of a way to do that while keeping the same edition (like we did with 3E), we decided to try the tactic that always works. Starting a whole new edition!"
So why a 5th Edition? According to Chris Perkins:
"3E we originally stated was supposed to emphasize a streamlined, simpler system with all the options you could ever want. We did that. However, we somehow screwed that up and instead of just slowly evolving 3E into what people wanted, we took the easy route and began 4E. Now 4th Edition emphasizes faster gameplay, blowing through all the layers of the Abyss in under an hour, and power ups for all your character's needs. However, we realized it still just wasn't enough. In a few years, our customers will be raving like starved lycanthropes that the material in 4E is suffering from rules and game material glut once again and that the game is overly complex...again. We weren't sure how to eventually handle that until it hit us! We realized that people are so passionate about D&D, they'll follow it no matter where it goes. So onwards to 5th Edition it is!"
What can we expect in 5E? Bill Slavisek has this to say:
"Expect a much faster gameplay and more power-ups and an experience we know customers would want...at least the World of Warcraft customers. And there's millions of them, so they must know what they're talking about. A few tidbits are that we'll be moving to a completely classless system where a player can call himself whatever he wants and makes up his or her own abilities to match the concept of the character they want. Skills will all be pooled together as one, making every character equally as good in every skill, with the only difference being their ability score modifiers and miscellaneous mechanics, like feats. The level cap will increase to 100. There will be many power-ups for characters to deal with combat much faster and to completely avoid the boring work of storytelling and roleplay. For example, when you hit objects in the worlds of D&D in 5th Edition, expect magic items to explode from the debris. Objects such as magic mushrooms that increase you to Colossal size to take down that dragon army much faster, coins to acquire gold pieces to buy whatever you want at anytime, and even glowing stars that burst out and if you catch them, they grant you deific status for a few rounds."
Andy Collins seems to be very excited at the new look and feel for 5th Edition:
"I know I just started my 4E character not too long ago, but 5E will make D&D better than ever, we're sure! I play a dwarven fighter whose really worth something because in 5E, you deal maximum damage all the time. Much faster combat and the experience of it being like MMORPGs is something everyone can relate to. Prepare to have fun in combat with the creatures. Sure, every sacred cow of a monster we once had has been 'sacrificed', but we're sure you'll enjoy our new red dragons in D&D who have undergone a cosmetic change. They will now be purple dragons. Beholders are now just one huge eye and ogre mages, despite supposedly possessing an array of different spell-like abilities to represent their 'mage' aspect, now have only one spell-like ability to speed up combat. Our combats have been so much faster for our DM ever since we gave every monster a complete overhaul and only one ability per creature."
When can we expect this new and awesome edition of D&D? Well, they'll be working on it not too long after 4E is released, so expect it sometime in May of 2011.
NOTE: This is sarcastic humor. Not "Funny, hah hah, I can't wait for 4E" humor...
"Once 4E begins, you will not have to worry about a 4.5E arriving at all. That's because we will begin planning work for 5th Edition. It will most likely be released 4-5 years after the release of the core books for 4th Edition. There's no need for anyone to worry, trust us. You always trust us, though, so that's a an understatement. It'll be as exciting as ever and even if you don't like 5E, there's nothing stopping you from continuing your 4E games. No, the two won't be compatible, not even remotely close. We want you to spend money on us, you wouldn't be doing that if the converting your 4E material to 5E would be so easy, or vice versa! We just need to bring in extra cash again and instead of thinking of a way to do that while keeping the same edition (like we did with 3E), we decided to try the tactic that always works. Starting a whole new edition!"
So why a 5th Edition? According to Chris Perkins:
"3E we originally stated was supposed to emphasize a streamlined, simpler system with all the options you could ever want. We did that. However, we somehow screwed that up and instead of just slowly evolving 3E into what people wanted, we took the easy route and began 4E. Now 4th Edition emphasizes faster gameplay, blowing through all the layers of the Abyss in under an hour, and power ups for all your character's needs. However, we realized it still just wasn't enough. In a few years, our customers will be raving like starved lycanthropes that the material in 4E is suffering from rules and game material glut once again and that the game is overly complex...again. We weren't sure how to eventually handle that until it hit us! We realized that people are so passionate about D&D, they'll follow it no matter where it goes. So onwards to 5th Edition it is!"
What can we expect in 5E? Bill Slavisek has this to say:
"Expect a much faster gameplay and more power-ups and an experience we know customers would want...at least the World of Warcraft customers. And there's millions of them, so they must know what they're talking about. A few tidbits are that we'll be moving to a completely classless system where a player can call himself whatever he wants and makes up his or her own abilities to match the concept of the character they want. Skills will all be pooled together as one, making every character equally as good in every skill, with the only difference being their ability score modifiers and miscellaneous mechanics, like feats. The level cap will increase to 100. There will be many power-ups for characters to deal with combat much faster and to completely avoid the boring work of storytelling and roleplay. For example, when you hit objects in the worlds of D&D in 5th Edition, expect magic items to explode from the debris. Objects such as magic mushrooms that increase you to Colossal size to take down that dragon army much faster, coins to acquire gold pieces to buy whatever you want at anytime, and even glowing stars that burst out and if you catch them, they grant you deific status for a few rounds."
Andy Collins seems to be very excited at the new look and feel for 5th Edition:
"I know I just started my 4E character not too long ago, but 5E will make D&D better than ever, we're sure! I play a dwarven fighter whose really worth something because in 5E, you deal maximum damage all the time. Much faster combat and the experience of it being like MMORPGs is something everyone can relate to. Prepare to have fun in combat with the creatures. Sure, every sacred cow of a monster we once had has been 'sacrificed', but we're sure you'll enjoy our new red dragons in D&D who have undergone a cosmetic change. They will now be purple dragons. Beholders are now just one huge eye and ogre mages, despite supposedly possessing an array of different spell-like abilities to represent their 'mage' aspect, now have only one spell-like ability to speed up combat. Our combats have been so much faster for our DM ever since we gave every monster a complete overhaul and only one ability per creature."
When can we expect this new and awesome edition of D&D? Well, they'll be working on it not too long after 4E is released, so expect it sometime in May of 2011.
NOTE: This is sarcastic humor. Not "Funny, hah hah, I can't wait for 4E" humor...
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, considering how little of the thing you refer to there has actually been, and on the other hand how much ready defensiveness about an edition that doesn't yet exist.
