My honest-to-God prediction: 5th edition will be released by a company none of us have ever even heard of yet.

Quote from: jrientsMy honest-to-God prediction: 5th edition will be released by a company none of us have ever even heard of yet.

Or a company we don't currently associate with RPGs. If memory serves, nobody expected WotC to buy TSR because WotC was a "card game company".

Ok. Now more serious prediction. D&D 5e will be announced on GenCon 2014 and the year after it (2015). By WotC... though they might change the name or became more integral part of Hasbro.

The designers will be different ones from those who designed this editon, though one or two names might stay. The game will go into deeper interaction with computers, possibly thanks to greater penetration of some kind of UMPCs.

There still be some kind of printed product though.

Quote from: jrientsMy honest-to-God prediction: 5th edition will be released by a company none of us have ever even heard of yet.

This sounds really likely to me.

I predict that 5e will evolve some kind of gambling angle. In fact, putting on my 'Dancy Hat,' I think that would be the easiest way to 'grow the hobby.' Wil Wheaton tried to get Comedy Central to air a D&D show; someday some desperate cable channel will do just that. If the televised game involves meaningful stakes, people will watch, and people will play.

Quote from: jrientsMy honest-to-God prediction: 5th edition will be released by a company none of us have ever even heard of yet.

I can only imagine this happening if 4e is an abject failure, and even then I can't see Wizards (or more importantly Hasbro) selling the rights. Big corporations can afford to hold on to properties forever if need be, there may come a day when they will be commercially viable again.

Quote from: DrewI can only imagine this happening if 4e is an abject failure, and even then I can't see Wizards (or more importantly Hasbro) selling the rights.

Jrients' prediction has nothing to do with selling the rights.

I read it in terms of licensing. Look at how Hogshead published WFRP. I could easily see the next tabletop version of 5e being handled by an outside company because it doesn't keep pace saleswise with the video games, etc.

Just a minor quibble, which doesn't have much to do with your prediction: My feeling is that 5e is a long ways off, and will be released in a much-diminished tabletop marketplace.

Quote from: FASERIPJrients' prediction has nothing to do with selling the rights.

I read it in terms of licensing. Look at how Hogshead published WFRP. I could easily see the next tabletop version of 5e being handled by an outside company because it doesn't keep pace saleswise with the video games, etc.

Just a minor quibble, which doesn't have much to do with your prediction: My feeling is that 5e is a long ways off, and will be released in a much-diminished tabletop marketplace.

Fair enough. It's just that "released by a company we've never heard of" and "licensed by Hasbro to a company we've never heard of" is a pretty big distinction in my book.

Quote from: James SkachD&D 4.0 is a holding ground. It's gauze on the wound that WoW put to D&D. It's stopping the bleeding. And it's stalling for time until they can build a product that is better than WoW. They won't care if all of the grognard die in a huge explosion of mind power at the sheer incensed anger at D&D going on-line in 5th Edition - they'll have this kick-ass application where you can have a live DM if you choose, or play in a WoW-like system. You'll have servers with people's homebrew campaigns next to servers running whatever WotC Living campaign that exists next to servers running WoW-like D&D run by a computer. the non-WoW-like games will be run by software you can buy (as the DM) and put on a WotC shared server - like this forum - and accesses (as a player) via custom front end, with all of the rules embedded and ready for XML (or whatever technology is used in 10 years) updates on demand, both of which will sell as a monthly subscription cost - probably in the $20-$30 range (which will include all of the Dungeon and Dragon content, fourms, tools, etc.). It will all be ready in 5-8 years - and 4.0 is just a holding ground to stop as much loss as possible and prepare the way.

From here.

Wow...umm..thanks jrients!  the minute I saw the title of this thread pop back up in the list I knew I shuld have posted that prediciton here.  Though it did have a weird here's-what-4th-edition-is as well, so..

But yeah, I'm convinced, more than ever, just on my own speculation thinking about what would make the most sense if they really wanted to compete with WoW - that this is the direction they will go. 4th Edition is merely a stepping stone in a much longer plan to go after this market.  I'd bet the reason for the management change and such was that the suits at corporate made this direction decision - that is, someone said "What are you going to do to compete with WoW?"  And they didn't like the answer, which was probably something like "Oh, we do't have to.  We're tabletop RPG's!" I'm guessing they didn't like that answer...