If they are thinking about a 4e in any manner, then it is likely to be in development at some level.
In my earlier post, I should have said development, not planned. I disagree with the assertion that planning something means actual development. Big corperatins plan lots of things that never see delvopment.
Anyways, a few days ago, I had a big post planned and I re-read Monte Cook's review of 3.5 because there he states that the business team had planned 3.5 from the start. I was going to agree with you about the plan part and make the point I just made above, but something happened while I was reading the review, I got angry with it. Spicificly, I started getting angry when
Monte addressed a couple of disclamers:
Monte Cook's 3.5 Review said:
While it's true that I worked on 3.0 and am very proud of it, there's a much larger, more realistic bias going on that you might not have considered. I am very much attached to D&D, in whatever form it takes -- not only as a gamer, but as a publisher. If I'm going to make a living producing books that support D&D, I need for D&D to be good. In fact, a part of me is saying, "Shut up and pretend it's all golden so people will buy it and keep playing." That would be a deep dishonesty, however. I do hope that people keep playing the game, and, in fact, I hope 3.5 does well, for Wizards of the Coast's well being (both for my friends there and for D&D's sake).
Monte himself ignored a larger bias on his part. See, as a lead designer on 3e,
he doesn't need a revision of the rules. Most of the content in the revised books isn't new material, it's a revision of the existing material so beginning gamers and DMs with little time can make the most use of the material. What is new material Monte either didn't mind the old version, or he could come-up with his own fix. Heck, he could even legally publish his fixes. Oh wait, he did.
So many of the important revisions simply aren't of any use to someone who worked on the original document.
- He didn't need a revised combat chapter, he understands 3e combat better than I ever will.
- He didn't need class revisions, he could write his own.
- He didn't need the monster breakdowns at the end of many of the entries, he doesn't need to reverse engineer the monsters in the MM. As someone who was new to RPGs when 3e came out, I struggled to add class levels to monsters where I had to reverse engineer the stats. I can't believe he didn't see the usefulness of that addition. He saw the reduced usefulness in the NPC tables, but not the increased usefulness of the MM entries. This brings me to...
- He doesn't need the level adjustment entry in the MM, he can assign his own.
- He doesn't need the skills re-organized because he already understood them. For those of us who struggled with the odder skills (like intuit direction), it was a godsend.
The combat chapter in the revised PHB has a great example of what I'm talking about:
3.5 PH pg. 143 said:
If a spell's normal casting time is 1 standard action, casting a metamagic version of the spell is a full-round action for a sorcerer or bard. Note that this isn't the same as a spell with a 1-round casting time--the spell takes effect in the same round that you begin casting, and you aren't required to continue the invocation, gestures, and concentration until your next turn.
I don't know if the sentence I bolded was a new rule for 3.5 or a clarification of the rule in 3.0, but I needed that sentence. It made metamagic feats playable for sorcerers. I doubt Monte even sees how must that changed things for my game. Those sentences scattered around the three books made the whole $90 price tag worth it to me.