There is no such thing as "Fourth Edition D&D". Advanced Dungeons and Dragons is as new as it gets, and the date on the cover of mine says "1974".
Bet it doesn't. The first AD&D book, the Monster Manual, came out in 1977. If you mean D&D came out in '74, then yeah. 4e will make or break WOTC. They lucked out with 3e mainly because everyone was sick of 2e and the "2.5" black books. My call? They'll pump the crap for 2-3 years for the mouth breathers and that will be it for tabletop gaming as far as D&D is concerned. Any D&D products after that will be electronic. Hasbro's sick of the shit, and WOTC doesn't bring in that much money with their RPG material. The license restrictions for publishing 4e material out of house are so restrictive that some well-known publishers are actually coming out with their own stuff in order to keep the 3e crowd. For example, Paizo, still butthurt after losing licenses for Dragon and Dungeon, basically rewrote 3e with some tweaks and they're calling it Pathfinder. Goodman Games is coming out with their own RPG called Eldritch, and I don't know what Necromancer Games is doing since Clark Peterson is an utter fucking asshole and won't talk. Oh, and Mongoose has RuneQuest now, so they don't need the OGL, so there you go.
Bet it does! It says right on the front cover, "Copyright TSR, 1974". Open the cover and it says, "First Edition Printing: 1978".
The fuck are you doing even opening up a first printing of the MM, you visigoth??!!! You might damage the spine! Mine says "(c) -- 1974, 1978 TSR Hobbies, Inc." Yours, I'm guessing, says either "1974, 1977" or "1974, 1978."
I've had it, and used the crap out of it, for over 20 years. The back cover and most of the spine have been gone for at least 15 years. And mine says, "(c) -- 1974, 1978 TSR Hobbies, Inc." also.
Ok, so the 1974 refers to the original copyright for the OD&D booklets. Trivia: try finding any monster in the MM that has an AC10.
I think if 4E improves the gameplay the way Saga edition for the SW RPG did over the revised core ruelbook, D&D could see an explosive resurgence in popularity. IMHO, D&D 3 and 3.5 are too goddamn clunky, the skill system is clunky and there are so many addon books with prestige classes and emphasizing certain character 'builds' that the game has gotten waaaaaaaaay too complicated. 4E, if it succeeds in streamlining gameplay, simplifying the skill system (mostly by combining similar skills into 1 skill, but also in the way skill points are handled), then they could have a winner on their hands. Many skeptics have tried out SW saga edition and been instant converts to the 4E concept. We'll find out in a few months, I guess. As for WOTC, Ihave 2 hopes: 1. That they succeed in their quest of divorcing themselves from Hasbro, and; 2. They settle down and stop trying to put out entirely new editions of their signature products every few years. 3 editions of D&D in a decade is going to piss people off, no matter what. That's a lot of money.
I have yet to try the saga edition, but I hear good things about it. Care to enlighten me? Not happening until at least after 2011-2012. Too much money invested. Not happening either. Secret: when HASBRO acquired WOTC in 1999, they made a longterm plan to milk the D&D brand name for as much money as they could... hence 3e the following year... 3.5 a couple of years after that. That's why the OGL was created: to shift the burden of modules, splatbooks and assorted other low return items on to small publishers. I told people I knew a couple of years ago that 4e would spring up in '07-'08, but no one believed me since 3.5 was doing so well. That's completely beside the point. This isn't about what works, it's about sales, and the sales for 3.5 core books were scheduled to slow down about 2007 if not sooner. Look for a 5th edition in 2010 unless WOTC can finanically justify a complete shift to online gaming, and that will be it for the printed books.
