Speculating on the Future of D&D

Jer · Jul 25, 2018

I think Eberron will be a big experiment in Print-on-demand for Wizards. It's got all of the pieces in place to be a big hit with D&D gamers who dig Eberron - the original creator is driving it, so no arguments about Wizards "destroying the vision of the setting", it's got a sizeable fanbase, and it's a world that has the mission statement "if it's in D&D it can fit into Eberron somewhere" - meaning that all of the books that they sell are applicable for players who are using Eberron.

If sales on Eberron are poor, then Wizards knows that they shouldn't put much effort into other settings that don't line up quite nicely (Greyhawk is missing Gygax, so anything Wizards publishes as Greyhawk will always be contentious, for example). If sales on Eberron are good, then they can use that to leverage DM's Guild into a bigger publishing platform.

A lot of Wizards publishing schedule right now is to not overwhelm retailers - which was a problem with both 3e and 4e. If they can supply enough product to retailers while also giving niche products that the retailers can't have cluttering up the shelves a place to sell, it would be a solid win for all three groups (Wizards, the retailers and the customers).

Ralif Redhammer · Jul 25, 2018

I think, if we do see more product for D&D, it won’t be by much. The slow burn release schedule has worked well for them these last four years. I’m certainly not eager to return to the glut of 2e, 3e, and 4e again.

I think it’s likely that we’ll see older settings return as PDF/POD products.

One thing both Eberron and Ravnica seem to have in common is that they’re both high magic settings. By comparison, FR looks low-magic (at least, going by the AL modules and hardcovers). Whether this is coincidence, or a swing towards high-magic, high-wonder, magitech settings, I couldn’t say. For all I know, Dragonlance is next (which, I have to say, would make me happy).

One random prediction I’ll make now for the heck of it is that there’ll be another official D&D soundtrack album.

But whatever happens, at this point I trust in Wizards of the Coast’s stewardship and steering of the D&D brand.

MNblockhead · Jul 25, 2018

Things will be released faster than my busy schedule allows me to consume them and I'll eventually stop paying attention, happily playing my campaign with the too-much content I already have. Maybe I stop D&D for other systems for a while. Decades pass, new controversial editions are released and edition wars happen unnoticed by me, and then upon retirement I will hear about a new edition of D&D that gets back to its roots and I'll try it and fall in love with D&D again.

I've been playing D&D and other TTRPGs on and off (mostly off as I was getting my career off the ground) since the early 80s. What's old is new again. Fashions cycle on. Each new edition and game gives me deja vu and each time I feel like it is too soon, like a gamer's version of the "holiday paradox."

The funny thing about most of these prediction threads is that most of the predictions end up being correct at some point, in some way or the other--except for the end of the world doom-and-gloom predictions that WotC is going to kill D&D because they dared to do something that has been done before, but not recently.

bmfrosty · Jul 25, 2018

Parmandur said:
It's not even that it doesn't work anymore, it's that all you need to run Greyhawk are the core rulebooks and the OFF for the '83 boxed set. No race or subclass expansion required, no rules to make the assumptions different than core.

I feel like with Greyhawk, less is more. Can you have dragonborn and teiflings in Greyhawk? Sure. Should you? Probably not. I feel like getting into Greyhawk should be a exercise in reduction.

I feel like Greyhawk would be 7 new classes and the idea of class as race brought back. Keep the level progressions simple. Drop the ASIs and feats. Keep backgrounds. Drop opportunity attacks as a general thing - have it as a class feature.

I don't know what WoTC is going to do with Greyhawk, but I doubt it will be exactly what I want it to be. Maybe it will be close. Maybe it won't.

aco175 · Jul 25, 2018

I'm actually kind of happy right now. I do not mind FR and seemed to have contained myself to the region around Phandalin with the starter set and some expansion on that area. I would like to see some more smaller modules, but that seems to be set aside for DMsGuild and AL. I would like a better magic item book. It looks like the other books try to cover too much in order to be appealing to the most people that I find them not appealing enough for me to use but 25% of each one. I'm sure some people use the whole book though.

Jer · Jul 25, 2018

bmfrosty said:
I don't know what WoTC is going to do with Greyhawk, but I doubt it will be exactly what I want it to be. Maybe it will be close. Maybe it won't.

I think this is why Wizards would be foolish to do almost anything at all with Greyhawk.

Their best approach would be to just open it up on DM's Guild, provide the boxed set (with no updates) as the "world bible" for the setting (and fix the maps in it) and tell everyone "OK - go to town. Put out the Greyhawk products you want!" Even allow folks to produce new content for any edition of D&D set in Greyhawk rather than restricting it to 5e.

Second best approach would be to create a new PDF document that strips out all of the rules information from the boxed set and just provides the system-neutral information and let that be the "world bible". Then let people publish using that.

Literally anything that Wizards does around Greyhawk will be "wrong" to some subset of Greyhawk fans. You aren't going to get the goodwill that Eberron gets because the creator of the setting cannot be involved in it - so why do it? Just get the goodwill of opening the setting up for the fans, then step back and let the fans produce the material (and take your cut, of course).

And I think that's what they should do with Mystara as well, though Mystara loses out by not having a single campaign setting document that can be used as a "bible" the way that Greyhawk does.

bmfrosty · Jul 25, 2018

Jer said:
I think this is why Wizards would be foolish to do almost anything at all with Greyhawk.

Their best approach would be to just open it up on DM's Guild, provide the boxed set (with no updates) as the "world bible" for the setting (and fix the maps in it) and tell everyone "OK - go to town. Put out the Greyhawk products you want!" Even allow folks to produce new content for any edition of D&D set in Greyhawk rather than restricting it to 5e.

Second best approach would be to create a new PDF document that strips out all of the rules information from the boxed set and just provides the system-neutral information and let that be the "world bible". Then let people publish using that.

Literally anything that Wizards does around Greyhawk will be "wrong" to some subset of Greyhawk fans. You aren't going to get the goodwill that Eberron gets because the creator of the setting cannot be involved in it - so why do it? Just get the goodwill of opening the setting up for the fans, then step back and let the fans produce the material (and take your cut, of course).

And I think that's what they should do with Mystara as well, though Mystara loses out by not having a single campaign setting document that can be used as a "bible" the way that Greyhawk does.

This might be a truth. I think my thoughts on this are that while AD&D (1/2), 3, and 4 are a chain of systems that have variously supported Greyhawk in some way shape or form, that Greyhawk (and Mystara) feel like they really have their roots in OD&D and the various BECMI D&D sets from over the years. I feel like an officially blessed modern variation of those rules that is compatible with most of the old modules (with an AC flip and a few other adjustments) would be a very nice thing. If they're also compatible with DCC modules and other OSR type things that's a big bonus.

Mercurius · Jul 25, 2018

DEFCON 1 said:
No one should be making any predictions.

Because when you do, you get in your head what you think/hope/want to have happen. And when it doesn't, you'll come here onto ENWorld complaining about it.

As I don't want want the forums filled with threads of nothing but people complaining that they didn't get what they made up for themselves, I'd love it for everyone to just give it a rest for once.

Thanks for advising me on what type of threads you'd like to see me not write; I'll take your request into account.

Well, not really.

TheCosmicKid · Jul 25, 2018

LordEntrails said:
And Ravnica, as has been said, it's just pulling together info and art they already had and putting it into a D&D book. Sure, it's much more involvement than Eberron because you have to provide more than just lore, but still...

If, as seems overwhelmingly likely, the UA School of Invention was a playtest for Ravnica's Izzet wizards, then Mearls at least has been working on the Ravnica book for a while.

Mercurius · Jul 25, 2018

Li Shenron said:
But Mystara and Greyhawk? I am not really familiar with them, but at a glance they are such "normal" fantasy settings that I can't imagine how their settings books can have the equivalent weight of Dark Sun. If they do a Mystara or Greyhawk supplement, it'd probably be similar to SCAG, which featured only a small amount of fairly generic crunch (part of which is already reprinted now). I don't see much compelling reason for buying those books for the fluff, when you can buy their original fantasy setting books which are a lot more valuable in terms of fluff (just compare the 5e SCAG with any older edition's FRCS book).

Mystara and Greyhawk are similar to FR in that they are both relatively traditional kitchen sink fantasy settings, but both feel more locked into context-bound flavor, and thus have not aged as well as the FR. Again, this is my personal opinion and not meant as a judgement of their respective worth or value as creative product. I'm trying to look at it from the perspective of WotC. At most I would put out some kind of "legacy" product: a PDF that offers 5E rules and a summary of the setting, but pretty much leaves it as it was decades ago. So it would be "classic Greyhawk" of the early 80s, not Greyhawk 40 years after the Greyhawk Wars.

(I know much less about Mystara, except that elves have facial hair :-S