D&D Fifth Edition Announced

Wizards of the Coast has announced that 5th edition is in the works.

Several blogs out there are already making the edition wars comments.I won't start a "edition x is so much better than edition y!" fight here. Kind of pointless as each edition that I've played has had it's strengths and its weaknesses.

I will say that I think the numbering is wrong. From my gaming experience, the differences between 1st edition and 2nd edition core rules are about the same magnitude as the differences between 3 and 3.5. So I've always sort of thought that 3.5 should have been 4th edition, bumping 4th to 5th and so on.... But that's semantics I suppose.

My first RPG was AD&D. Back when there was only one edition. My first character was a Cavalier, from the Unearthed Arcana rules. I happily made the jump to second edition. It fixed some things that AD&D did poorly, in my opinion... things like dropping the massive to-hit charts from the DMG and replacing that with THAC0 or making psionics a playable mechanic or making the bard a core class rather than an early-concept "prestige class." The move to third edition was a bit of a relief, too. By that point second edition was showing it's age. Too many rules books had been published for 2e, each with it's own set of quirks and changes. I loved the idea of prestige classes -- that fledgling first level PCs just weren't able to tap into all the abilities that a prestige class offered made sense to me. At the same time, I missed the vast array of settings from 2e. Second edition offered too many settings; too many boxed sets of beautiful maps, perhaps. But I still enjoyed the ones I got to play. I was disappointed when 3.5 came out. Not because it wasn't a good system! No, rather because it was too soon. I still was enjoying the 3.0 characters that suddenly didn't work the same anymore under 3.5. But 3.5 was a good rule set as well, and had some great things in it, too.

I have never played 4th edition. It came out about the time our gaming group split apart due to time commitments and other pesky "grown-up" things. I own the PHB, and have read just enough to think that it, too brings some great things to the game. I like that low-level mages aren't hamstrung after that first spell of the day. True, rules that make that possible don't always make sense from an in-character perspective -- a long-running debate I've had with others on this site.

I probably would also love the Pathfinder engine (based on the D&D 3.5 rules). But I've not played it, either.

I don't know what 5th edition will bring. I don't know if I'll ever even get to play it.

But I hope it's great. I hope it's popular. I hope it sells well. I don't want the D&D franchize to fade out.