D&D 5E WotC's Nathan Stewart Teases New D&D Setting Book in 2019

Jester David said:

Based on the Sly Flourish survey, FR sees more play than every other campaign setting combined and doubled...

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That’s a rather self-fulfilling situation. Of course it is - it’s the only one available other than a single Ravenloft adventure.

Of course, these things aren’t branded like that any more. They don’t have “Forgotten Realms” or “Ravenloft” on the cover, just “Dumgeons & Dragons”. WotC is very much consolidating its brands into its strongest one.

Maybe I'm the only one, but I find this teasing and hinting Wizards does to be irritating and terrible marketing.

In fact, I find most of their marketing execrable, like their videos. It's mostly bad, cloying marketing that takes a lot of words to say very little. As opposed to their UA articles (for example) which are a far better and more useful look into what we are actually going to see in the future.

I would say Al-Qadim is less likely than a long shot. Re-writing this setting with cultural sensitivity would be an unenviable task. I think it can be safely ruled out.

pogre said:

I would say Al-Qadim is less likely than a long shot. Re-writing this setting with cultural sensitivity would be an unenviable task. I think it can be safely ruled out.

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Could work if they got someone like Saladin Ahmed to write it up.

guachi said:

Maybe I'm the only one, but I find this teasing and hinting Wizards does to be irritating and terrible marketing.

In fact, I find most of their marketing execrable, like their videos. It's mostly bad, cloying marketing that takes a lot of words to say very little. As opposed to their UA articles (for example) which are a far better and more useful look into what we are actually going to see in the future.

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Oh, man, WotC teasing is like candy to me. Really makes me happy for whatever reason.

I also like streaming D&D shows, and everything they say about the statistically typical group that is supposedly Counter-Reactionary to is true to my experience of the game since College, so I feel these days like D&D is being built around me for no apparent reason.

Morrus said:

That’s a rather self-fulfilling situation. Of course it is - it’s the only one available other than a single Ravenloft adventure.

Of course, these things aren’t branded like that any more. They don’t have “Forgotten Realms” or “Ravenloft” on the cover, just “Dumgeons & Dragons”. WotC is very much consolidating its brands into its strongest one.

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A little, yeah.
The last survey WotC did showed:

Not surprisingly, our most popular settings from prior editions landed at the top of the rankings, with Eberron, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Planescape, and the Forgotten Realms all proving equally popular.

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http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/july-survey

But the Sly Flourish DM survey of 6601 gamers has pegged 3611 as using a homebrew world. That's 54%.
And even with the published adventures pushing people into the Realms, that's still only 2507 (38%). Of them, only 646 (10%) were using homebrew adventures. Or, put another way, as many as three-quarters of the people playing in the Realms might be doing so because that's where the published adventures are set.
That's not a large audience...

A campaign setting product is going to suffer some diminishing returns. Unlike other splatbooks where you can run with two or three at once, you can only use one campaign setting at a time. And WotC will have published two within a twelve-month span. A third or fourth campaign setting might be a little much, with each selling less and less.
It seems unlikely they'll leave their flagship setting until last.

Additionally, they're always going to be setting adventure in the Realms. Because they have to. Or the rights revert back to Greenwood.
It makes sense to get a book out for it sooner. Which makes more sense when you consider the other popular settings (Eberron, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Planescape) have not changed since second edition. The old lore still works and is available for Print on Demand. But the Realms has changed. The timeline advanced. The state of some big kingdoms is unknown.

All other things being equal, the Realms is the easy bet.

Jester David said:

A little, yeah.
The last survey WotC did showed:

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/july-survey

But the Sly Flourish DM survey of 6601 gamers has pegged 3611 as using a homebrew world. That's 54%.
And even with the published adventures pushing people into the Realms, that's still only 2507 (38%). Of them, only 646 (10%) were using homebrew adventures. Or, put another way, as many as three-quarters of the people playing in the Realms might be doing so because that's where the published adventures are set.
That's not a large audience...

A campaign setting product is going to suffer some diminishing returns. Unlike other splatbooks where you can run with two or three at once, you can only use one campaign setting at a time. And WotC will have published two within a twelve-month span. A third or fourth campaign setting might be a little much, with each selling less and less.
It seems unlikely they'll leave their flagship setting until last.

Additionally, they're always going to be setting adventure in the Realms. Because they have to. Or the rights revert back to Greenwood.
It makes sense to get a book out for it sooner. Which makes more sense when you consider the other popular settings (Eberron, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Planescape) have not changed since second edition. The old lore still works and is available for Print on Demand. But the Realms has changed. The timeline advanced. The state of some big kingdoms is unknown.

All other things being equal, the Realms is the easy bet.

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Based on how they have been positioning the GGtR vis a vis lootability, WotC seems to be trying to make setting books that are useful to homebrewers: PC options, monsters, variant rules and adventure building blocks.

The Forgotten Realms has the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide, which they continue to point to in the adventure books that double as Gazeeters for different parts of Farun. I don't know if they will do more than that to support the Realms, which is a fair bit in comparison.

Seems rather mean to tease Spelljammer fans like that.
But they keep teasing us, so either they're masochists, or they actually are planning to revive Spelljammer, just not yet.
I won't rule out both

barasawa said:

Seems rather mean to tease Spelljammer fans like that.
But they keep teasing us, so either they're masochists, or they actually are planning to revive Spelljammer, just not yet.
I won't rule out both

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Well, Mearls did tweet this comment back in September:

"the problem with doing a spelljammer book is that adding spelljammer easter eggs to our products is my main job these days"

what I would like to see is Ulgrotha or Mystara, and I already know this will never happen. anyway, 'more campaign settings' is a good news for me, even if I don't like the 'teasing for months' approach: it is one of that things about modern d&d which I truly can't understand (what's wrong in a public publishing schedule?), together with the fact that settings clearly considered 'dead' by wotc are excluded from dms guild development (maybe they fear that 10 copies of my hypothetical 'karameikos starter set' subtract audience from dms guild adepts products or stuff tied fo the current storyline, but this seems a really weak point to me...).