It’s not going to happen without a major change in marketing strategy on Hasbro’s part. Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition was created with a couple of very specific mandates from Hasbro corporate:
Create an “evergreen” version of Dungeons & Dragons which will draw in new players while also appealing equally to fans of every previous iteration of D&D.
Cultivate homogenised expectations of what playing Dungeons & Dragons entails in such a way that every group becomes a potential purchaser of every first-party sourcebook.
Anything that would create a perceived split in the game’s player base is counter to both of those goals, and a new edition – or, at least, admitting that any given revision constitutes a new edition – is pretty high on that list.
(Did you ever wonder why 5E’s designers talked such a big game about modularity, then proceeded to produce one of the least modular iterations of D&D ever published, why licensed material for every first-party campaign setting that isn’t The Forgotten Realms has basically dropped off the face of the planet, and why topical sourcebooks are being displaced by big, messy guides-to-everything with no clear organising principle? See above!)
I feel like I should point out for the benefit of the folks who are scrambling to “agree” with me that 5E’s rules suck that I didn’t say a word about the mechanics of 5E. Like, let’s understand the criticism that’s being articulated before we get aboard the hate train – this is about capitalism, not game design. Never forget that, regardless of what the game’s front-line designers think they’re doing, D&D is ultimately owned by the same global media megacorp that owns Monopoly and My Little Pony; the direction it’s going can only really be understood with that context firmly in mind.
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