Is a 5th Edition coming soon? [Answer: NO, it isn't!]

[dbm]

People need to be careful what they wish for. We often talk about how the game company can't come into your home and either:

• Tell you that you're doing it wrong
• Take your books away

With online content this is exactly what they can do. I speak from experience with DnD 4e. I used to subscribe to the DDi which gave you the Character Generator web tool, and used it to generate all my characters given the amount of accumulated stuff which goes with a DnD 4e character. We didn't bother keeping up with errata, but we did start to notice that some of the power cards changed the next time we printed them out - they had been errata'ed and those changes implemented whether we wanted them or not. And it makes implementing house rules much more difficult when you are dependent on an electronic tool to make your characters.

Finally, lots of DnD players were bragging on-line that they had stopped buying the books as they got all the rules 'for free' in the DDi. What they had failed to grasp was that, Wizards will choose to turn that service off at some point (probably when 5e comes along soon) and at that point they will have nothing. DnD 3.x players can still use their books to play the game if they wish; the 4e crowd will be left with nothing in many cases.

So moving to a wholly (or even predominantly) on-line solution for delivering rules seems like nirvana, but it could be hell.