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Aug 2, 2012 -- 3:36PM, knightwriter wrote:

I'm just curious to see how many people are still playing 4E and why? As soon as I found out that DnD Next was on the way, it sort of let the wind out of my sails for playing 4E as it seems like a dying system that won't have a lot support anymore. I found that I felt like hanging up 4E until Next came out and see how that goes. 

I'm not sure how to explain this in any other way. Does anyone else feel this way? What did you do about it?

Thanks and game on!

I fail to see why the announcement of a future edition would make anyone stop playing the current one. Heck, we still play OVA and it has never had any support and the OVA Revised has been promised for years with little hope of releasing anytime soon. Why should that lack of support make us not play? Look also at how many people still play BESM or Tri-Stat even though Guardians of Order died years ago. 

We currently have more books for GURPS 3e than any other game, yet our group's go-to game is GURPS 4e. My HackMaster 4e game didn't die when 5e released. We actually converted the characters to the new system and have kept on going. In both of those cases, I like the new editions so much that I will no longer GM the old ones, but I'll happily play if someone else wants to run them.

It's the same with D&D. 4e is the first edition I've actually liked well enough to play non-grudgingly. (3.x is the only roleplaying system I've come across that I refuse to play. Pre-3e I will only play with one particular GM: he's been GMing for more than the 36 years I've been alive so he is really good at it, and we're so close that his eldest granddaughter is also our goddaughter). So we will continue playing it at least until 5e releases, and probably after.

I assume that Encounters or its equivalent will use 5e, and I won't mind since I've liked what I've seen of it so far, but the two guys running home games feel no compulsion to switch. In fact, one of them, the one who originally introduced us to D&D 4e, feels as strongly about it as we do about GURPS, and is completely unimpressed with what we've seen of DDN so far, so I will be surprised indeed if he converts his game.

Aug 3, 2012 -- 12:46AM, Duskweaver wrote:

I'm sticking with 4e for the forseeable future. From everything I've seen of 5e, it just plain isn't for me. It's supposed to "feel like D&D again", but it turns out I don't actually like "D&D", I just like 4e. Most of the things they're bringing back to 5e from earlier editions are the things that stopped me from ever really getting into D&D back then, so why would I drop the game I actually like to go back to that?

As mentioned, one of our guys feels exactly the same way and will likely continue to run D&D 4e until the day he dies, unless something else happens to come along that he likes better. We feel the same way about GURPS 4e: it is very nearly the perfect system for us, so we'll be sticking with it until something better comes along (hopefully the game I'm designing will fit that bill).

As to not liking D&D but liking 4e, I agree completely. As I mentiond above, I loathe 3.x, and will only play older editions because the GM is so awesome that he makes me forget that I don't like the systems. My wife is the same way, but I think her loathing of 3.x is a bit less. But 4e has so impressed us that I run Encounters and she runs Lair Assault. Another of our players feels as we do about previous editions, but he used to run Encounters and still runs a home game using the system; previously he only used HackMaster 4e (essentially D&D 2.5, but replacing the bits we didn't like about the game).