Despairing of Fifth Edition

I came to the realisation last week that there is almost no chance of Wizards of the Coast producing a fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons that actually suits me. In fact, I'm pretty sure that it is impossible for them to do so.

See, three things are true:

1. In order to justify keeping the line going and employing staff, they have to keep regularly publishing books.
2. In order to justify publishing any given book, they need to be reasonably sure that it will sell a certain number of units.
3. The books most likely to sell the required number of units are the very 'crunch-heavy' "Player's Option" books - splatbooks for the various classes; compilations of new spells, powers, and magic items; and the like. Monster books, to a certain point, are also reliable sellers. But DM guides, setting books, and (especially) adventures are not.

The upshot of this, of course, is that in order for D&D to be successful in the long-term, it must be structured in such a way as to maximise the scope for advancement with lots of these "Player's Options" books. It is all-but-certain that fifth edition will see a "Complete Fighter's Handbook", "Sword and Fist", "Complete Warrior", or "Martial Power". Indeed, it will most likely see several of these.

And, indeed, that is on top of the likely three-book core ruleset, which will thus be another 1,000 page monstrosity. (In fairness... 3.5e is only 960 pages long in the core, and 4e 832 pages)

D&D is, and inevitably will remain, an extremely rules- and option-heavy game.

Conversely, what I want from the game is a much light, more fluid, and more elegant system. Personally, I'm inclined to think that if the core rules can't fit in a single 250-ish page rulebook, they're too long. (Star Wars Saga Edition manages it. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition manages it. Vampire: the Masquerade, Mutants & Masterminds, and Shadowrun all manage it...)

Additionally, I would very much prefer there to be a reasonable, but reasonably small, set of supplements, each fairly meaty, providing the complete system. (Again, SWSE does well, with about a dozen supplements. WRFP 2nd Edition has about 20 books, about a quarter of which are adventures.)

Get in, do what you want to do with the game, and then get out.

Of course, the model I've outlined probably gives scope for about three years of published material, with print runs inevitably declining as the line goes on. In terms of being able to actually make a (sufficient) profit on the game, and keeping a team busy working on it, it's very likely doomed to failure.

(And I don't think D&D can afford to go for sixth edition in three years' time. Frankly, fifth edition has come too soon. Indeed, if you count 3.5e and Essentials as significant revisions - as I do - then this is the fifth significant new version that WotC have published in 13 years. You can only go back to the well so many times, especially since nobody needs a new edition, ever - those 3.0e books I got 13 years ago are still perfectly usable!)

It is, of course, possible that I've misjudged the situation. WotC may have a grand master-plan, whereby they can structure the game in 'modules', and thus make sufficient profit while avoiding bloating the game. But I frankly don't believe it - in order to make profit, the books must sell, and if they're selling and being used, they contribute to bloating the game.