D&D 5E Eberron popularity in 5E

[Jester David]

First off, you're assuming that every potential Eberron fan was bought the books during 3e or 4e and no new players (or perhaps people who no longer have access to said books) will appear.

Yes, I'm assuming no people spontaneously become fans of a setting they've never played, read, or own the books of. That's not really much of assumption.

It's also not much of an assumption that it's unlikely a new player to become a fan of the setting and not have access to the books. Anyone playing and learning of Eberron is either playing with an established group (who would have the books) or has been playing since 2009-ish (when the 4e book was released) and thus not really a "new".

And it's not much of an assumption that a fan who lost access to the books will be completely able to access that content if they had any interest. The 3e and 4e Eberron books are available pretty readily online. Not *just* as PDFs but as used books. The 4e one is available used on Amazon for $10 and the 3e for <$20. Much cheaper than you could expect to buy a newly printed book.
Why pay $60 for a book with new information when you could buy two sources of that information and a couple sourcebook? Or the 3e book and as many as five sourcebooks? To say nothing of the PDF route. That's over 1000 pages of information versus at most 320.

It also assumes that nothing of the setting needs updating but crunch; which is also false as despite there bring no advancement to the timeline or novels, there were major differences in the 3e and 4e versions of the setting. (Especially regarding the planes, new 4e races, and dragonmarked races) or that material from the various source books won't be incorporated.

Given all the 4e races exist in 5e and nothing mechanically new was added, a 5e version wouldn't need to change anything from the 4e version. Other than possibly altering some things back to how they were in 3e. Which still doesn't mean much as that content is available. Fans can pick the version of the world they like more and decide if dragonborn or eladrin are a thing or the layout of the cosmology, mix and matching elements from 3e and 4e.

While a theoretical reprint of an Eberron book could incorporate some sourcebook content, that didn't happen significantly in 4e when they updated the campaign setting from 3e. Likely because the 3e book was already pretty big and bursting with content and WotC can't fit more words on a page now compared to 3e. There's no reason to think a 5e version of the books would have a significant amount of more content than the 4e version.

Lastly, the guide might want to discuss how Eberron's assumptions interact with the new core game, as the Eberron written in 3e assumed 3e treasure and magic items, for example. A new guide won't just reprint the ECS text, but update, clarify, and expand in areas.

Yes, they could fill a book with Eberron material if they wanted. The point isn't that it's impossible to write an Eberron book. A theoretical Eberron book could discuss a lot of topics or get into many details of the world interacting with the rules, and provide all sorts of new subclasses, spells, rules modules, and the like. But none of that is absolutely necessary to run the game.

That said, did the 4e book go into detail on how the treasure assumptions changed between 3e and 4e?
Really, this is a small sidebar. A note that adventuring level magical gear is rarer and expensive while common, mundane magical items are cheap and easy to purchase. Possibly with a handful of prices and details on cheap magic items. It doesn't justify a book.

Also, the Elemental Evil Player's Companion is 25 pages while the UA Eberron article was 6. If they did something that size, there'd be 19 pages of room for an expanded artificer, some equipment, some spells, and more. Lots of room for the above content.

As to the second, an Eberron game without the unique elements misses the point. You miss out on the politics of the houses, the mystique of the warforged finding his place post-War, or the magi-tech tinkerer versatility of the artificer. It's not just PCs either; there are dragonshards, unique foes like dolgrims and dolgaunts, the quori, and such to discuss.

It's not a game without them, it's a game without the PCs being them. There can still be dragonmark houses and warforged and the like. That's easy since NPCs don't need to obey PC rules and you can just throw a spell on an NPC and call it a dragonmark, or use the conversion guide (either official or fan version) to alter the numbers on a 3e monsters and run a dolgrim or quori.
If the UA version of warforged just don't seem to hit the mark, Keith Baker did his own. Or you can use the gearforged from Kobold Press' Midgard Heroes.

Right now, Eberron is a half-finished shell that can only look like Eberron if you run a FR game while squinting and changing proper nouns. I hope for more, but if WotC isn't willing or able to do Eberron right, then don't bother to do it at all. Half measures like the SCAG conversion blurb doesn't make the setting viable.

WotC is not a charity. They're not here to give away content at a loss. They're a business. Releasing dozens of campaign settings is not a sound business strategy, nor is spending too much of their time on free PDFs unrelated to products that generate income. They're trying to enable Eberron fans and give them something. It's small but the advice is there. But they're not going to just decide to publish a 300+ page book for fun.

But I'm also a Ravenloft and Dragonlance fan. Neither of which have seen as much 5e love as Eberron has, even if just a half measure. It's supper insulting to fans of every other world to insist and ask for more when Eberron has already received so much more attention and content than anywhere else save the Realms.
That said, I'd love a second version of the Eberron content. Warforged are in my setting, as they were core in 4e. And warforged were also in the Realms in 4e, along with shifters, changeling, and the like. So that's content that's useful for everyone. But they're busy folk. And I'd like to see new UA content, rather than a repeat month.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Some of the iconic mechanical elements of Eberron:

• Warforged, kalashtar, shifters, or changelings as PC races;
• Psionics;

One of the central conceits of Eberron was that it would have a place for just /everything/ in D&D. In that sense, it'd've been a perfect setting for 5e, which was supposed to be so all-fired all-inclusive.

But, it does mean that until 5e rolls out it's version of (or deterministic conversion rules for) all that's come before, any version of Eberron will seem 'incomplete.' Though, it'd be just as fair to roll out an Eberron now that has a place for everything in 5e, and that's it.

So, to reiterate: Eberron is apparently not very popular in 5E. Is that surprising given that most of Eberron's coolest features don't exist in 5E yet?

Sure, they produce material exclusively for one setting for over a year (following a two-year hiatus), put all organized play in that setting, and then a survey shows it's the most-played single setting - with the catch-all of 'homebrew' also being huge. Maybe that means that FR was the most popular setting. Maybe it means a lot of people play the setting that's offered. Maybe the folks playing 'homebrew' would do so no matter what other settings were available, maybe a lot of them are waiting for Eberron. :shrug:

 

[GreenTengu]

But I'm also a Ravenloft and Dragonlance fan. Neither of which have seen as much 5e love as Eberron has, even if just a half measure. It's supper insulting to fans of every other world to insist and ask for more when Eberron has already received so much more attention and content than anywhere else save the Realms.
That said, I'd love a second version of the Eberron content. Warforged are in my setting, as they were core in 4e. And warforged were also in the Realms in 4e, along with shifters, changeling, and the like. So that's content that's useful for everyone. But they're busy folk. And I'd like to see new UA content, rather than a repeat month.

Well, this is why likely the absolutely best way to introduce the settings is to introduce them via adventure paths that really highlight the stark differences in the settings by focusing on adventures that could really only take place in those specific settings and couldn't just be put anywhere.

In addition to the steampunk noir espionage story of Eberron, you can have a Ravenloft story that is clearly inspired by goth horror set in the mid to late 19th century Europe and maybe mix some elements inspired by Silent Hill and Dark Souls in there (I'd reference recent horror movies instead of games, but there just... aren't any worthwhile ones), you could have a Dragonlance adventure with..... I guess a bumbling stock villains led by a foppish guy or over-sexualized woman, ridiculously unrealistic characters, heavy handed body humor and a general immature tone-deaf adolescent but generally G-rated humor aimed at total beginners.

You know, play to each setting's unique aspects and strengths.

 

[Remathilis]

Quote ALL the things!

If you can tell me where and how in Forgotten Realms you can have steampunk technology and skyscrapers and so noir style detective/espionage in regards to noble houses and crime families in Forgotten Realms, I'd really like to know how you play yours because I've never much seen anything approaching it. I was saying focus on what makes it unique as all I have ever seen from it was a complete focus on the things that make it exactly like GreyHawk or Forgotten Realms except it is more childish, anime-esque and shallow when handling those elements.

My point is that Eberron isn't just steampunk noir. It has a lot more richness and depth than you're giving it credit for.

I flipped through the Player's guide for 3rd edition and it certainly didn't imply there was anything approaching diversity in any of the regions. It was very cut and dry of "this nation is race X" all across the board. Two explicitly exclusive Elven nations (even reading ALL peoples in the region were elve), an explicit Dwarf nation, an explicit Gnome nation, an explicit Halfling nation, an explicit Goblinoid nation, a region where only Warforged lived and a region that was inhabited primarily by Orcs and enough humans to make half-orcs. That sort of list certainly implies to me that everyone keeps to their own region and doesn't bother anyone else.

Aundair, Karnath, Breland, and Thrane all all "human" kingdoms with sizable chunks of other races living in them. The Eldeen Reaches is likewise mixed racially, as are the Shadow Marshes. There is no warforged "nation" unless you consider the band of warforged living under the Lord of Blades in the middle of the Mournland a "nation". As for the rest; yes there are humanoid nations. How is that different than the Elven Kingdoms of Celene (Greyhawk), Evermeet (FR), Rockholm, Alfheim and the Five Shires (and the Broken Lands) of Mystara, or any other nation not predominantly human?

The races clearly indicate which race exclusively has which mark and even the Aberrant mark can only be placed on one of the 6 markable races (which just so "happened" to be the ones in the 3E PHB). Which means the moment you have an inkling a mark is being used, you know with absolute certainty the race that is using it or if you think you are going to fight someone with a mark, you know precisely what they are capable of. It is a lot like having races assign specific spells to your sorcerer. (Although... either Warlock or Sorcerer subclasses might be the perfect way to implement a mark's abilities if only multiclassing worked a bit better.)

Yeah, the seven PHB races got a token tossed to them because WotC knew people would gravitate towards the "kewl new" races and wanted to give the standard-races a reason to be important. Most of them were basically a first-third level spell with limited combat value anyway; who freaking cares if you know a halfling MIGHT (if he's marked) have a healing SLA once per day?

Warforged and Shifters are pictured throughout all the Eberron art as out and proud in the open in all the various art. Though I did come across a picture of an anti-Warforged protest, so I guess there is some indication that there is meant to be some distrust of them. There has just been a very poor job done conveying this. It would be far more interesting if a Shifter had cool powers, but they'd best be sure they can trust those around them before using them and they must be quite certain not to use their abilities publically and might want to kill any witnesses to them transforming.

Because their PC races. Shifters, Changlings and Warforged have the same drawbacks as Drow and Tieflings do in most worlds; distrusted but not pitchforks and torches. If you want a D&D setting where anything non-human is cause for a lynchmob, try Ravenloft.

So if playing two Eberron-setting games and a cursory skim through the originally printed player's guide leaves one with the feeling that the setting tends to utterly eschew its unique elements in favor of generic ones and falls very short of its potential in favor of buying 100% into MMORPG mentality, it doesn't bode well for the setting as it has been previously presented. If it is going to really be its own thing, it needs to start with something that really pushes its most unique elements to the forefront.

Two reasonably poorly-executed Eberron games and looking at the pictures in the ECS doesn't make you an expert. You're focusing on how YOU want Eberron to be, not what Eberron IS. Eberron is Pulp. Eberron is noir. Eberron is one part Pirates of the Caribbean, one part Sleepy Hollow, one part Maltese Falcon, one part Indiana Jones.

An AP that involves a dragon-mark using family engaging in malicious activity that the PCs need to root out and confront. Make it mystery story with chases across city streets and combat in tall buildings. Make persuasion, intimidation, athletics, investigation, history and arcana checks more common than initiative checks and have the adventure involve many morally gray choices that ask the players to prioritize their values as often as "kill the evil demon-summoning baddie". And display both the shining and the ugly sides of the world as the players explore it.

Name me one successful intrigue module (WotC, TSR, Paizo, or other) that does this and I'll accept that. Eberron CAN be done like this, but that's not all Eberron is. A good Eberron AP could just as well be a chase to stop the Order of the Emerald Claw from obtaining an ancient Quori weapon of doom that forces them to chase agents across Sharn, to Xen'drik, an into the Temple of a Forgotten Giant King whose mummified remains believes themselves to be living God. That's just as much Eberron as your suggestion too.

The point is, if one is going to do a setting at all, then the most ideal situation is that at the end of it one should say "I just couldn't have done this story in Forgotten Realms" and outside of a few key races and possibly powers, I just have never seen that. And... really.. given how shallow Warforged and Shifters and such tend to be handled, usually you could have just told the story in Forgotten Realms just fine.

If that's the case, I guess we can kiss support for Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and Mystara goodbye. Talk about settings that bring nothing the Realms can't do to the table...

Yes, I'm assuming no people spontaneously become fans of a setting they've never played, read, or own the books of. That's not really much of assumption.

It's also not much of an assumption that it's unlikely a new player to become a fan of the setting and not have access to the books. Anyone playing and learning of Eberron is either playing with an established group (who would have the books) or has been playing since 2009-ish (when the 4e book was released) and thus not really a "new".

Funny, I seem to recall buying the book in 2003 without ever having played the setting before that and loved it. I must have somehow subconsciously already been a fan of it.

Yes, they could fill a book with Eberron material if they wanted. The point isn't that it's impossible to write an Eberron book. A theoretical Eberron book could discuss a lot of topics or get into many details of the world interacting with the rules, and provide all sorts of new subclasses, spells, rules modules, and the like. But none of that is absolutely necessary to run the game.

Nothing in the SCAG was needed to run the Realms and yet we got it...

That said, did the 4e book go into detail on how the treasure assumptions changed between 3e and 4e?

Only the whole "Magic Items are no longer purchasable" thing...

WotC is not a charity. They're not here to give away content at a loss. They're a business. Releasing dozens of campaign settings is not a sound business strategy, nor is spending too much of their time on free PDFs unrelated to products that generate income. They're trying to enable Eberron fans and give them something. It's small but the advice is there. But they're not going to just decide to publish a 300+ page book for fun.

I wasn't expecting charity, I want WotC to take my money. Apparently, their "sound business strategy" includes releasing sub-par video games while ignoring topics people might want spend money on.

But I'm also a Ravenloft and Dragonlance fan. Neither of which have seen as much 5e love as Eberron has, even if just a half measure. It's supper insulting to fans of every other world to insist and ask for more when Eberron has already received so much more attention and content than anywhere else save the Realms.
That said, I'd love a second version of the Eberron content. Warforged are in my setting, as they were core in 4e. And warforged were also in the Realms in 4e, along with shifters, changeling, and the like. So that's content that's useful for everyone. But they're busy folk. And I'd like to see new UA content, rather than a repeat month.

Guess what? Neither of them are getting the material you need to run them either I guess. Ravenloft is going to be reduced to an Expedition-like megadungeon more in line with Castlevania than Realms of Horror, and Dragonlance is going to languish except for where they can quote the novels for nostalgia. If we don't push WotC with SOME measure of interest, we're not getting anything.

One of the central conceits of Eberron was that it would have a place for just /everything/ in D&D. In that sense, it'd've been a perfect setting for 5e, which was supposed to be so all-fired all-inclusive.

But, it does mean that until 5e rolls out it's version of (or deterministic conversion rules for) all that's come before, any version of Eberron will seem 'incomplete.' Though, it'd be just as fair to roll out an Eberron now that has a place for everything in 5e, and that's it.

One of the big misquotes of Eberron is "If it exists in D&D, it exists in Eberron." This is usually used to assume Eberron is a big dump-truck full of every-last-splat ever made. It's not. It's a place where you are not limited in what can exist there, not that everything MUST exist there.

Take Dragonlance. Its list of "not alloweds" is long: halflings, orcs, lycanthropes, warlocks, tieflings, dragonborn, psionics, healing-bards, etc. Its not a setting you can drop any old module into and have it work. Eberron is supposed to me (and nearly is: a few corner cases like Queen of the Demonweb Pits might not work).

 

[Staffan]

If you can tell me where and how in Forgotten Realms you can have steampunk technology and skyscrapers and so noir style detective/espionage in regards to noble houses and crime families in Forgotten Realms, I'd really like to know how you play yours because I've never much seen anything approaching it. I was saying focus on what makes it unique as all I have ever seen from it was a complete focus on the things that make it exactly like GreyHawk or Forgotten Realms except it is more childish, anime-esque and shallow when handling those elements.

The adventures published for Eberron were:

1. Shadows of the Last War, where the (low-level) PCs get hired by an agent of a dragonmarked House go to the Mournlands and explore parts of a ruined House Cannith research facility, trying to keep ahead of agents of both the Lord of Blades and the Emerald Claw (the latter being lead by a vampire-wannabe changeling). It starts in Sharn, and moves to Darguun before entering the Mournlands. This is a super-Eberron-y adventure, full of elements that do not fit in any other setting. My only beef with the adventure is that almost all the foes in it happen to be immune/resistant to crits/sneak attack, and many have DR, making rogues feel useless in large parts of the adventure - but that's a game design problem, not one that has to do with how Eberron-y it is.

2. Whispers of the Vampire's Blade. I'm not as familiar with this adventure, but it has the PCs following a villain all over the continent of Khorvaire in order to re-acquire a powerful magical blade he stole. Set-pieces include a masquerade ball, a chase/battle on an air ship, and a three-way battle on a lightning rail train, the latter of which includes pterosaur-riding halflings.

3. Grasp of the Emerald Claw. Again, the Emerald Claw are involved (probably lead by the villain from Shadows of the Last War, unless the PCs killed him). PCs travel to the continent of Xen'drik in an elemental-powered submarine. There they meet an elf associated with the Chamber, a secretive organization of effin' dragons who study and try to manipulate the Draconic Prophecy. They travel into a ruined giant temple in order to locate a creation pattern that may have had something to do with the creation of warforged.

4. Voyage of the Golden Dragon. I know little of this since I don't have it, but it features the PCs protecting a highly symbolic airship from pirates, thieves, and saboteurs.

5. Eyes of the Lich Queen. The PCs get some form of artificial dragonmarks, which should be impossible, which drags them into all sorts of weird places - such as making a jail-break in Thronehold where they have to free a man-in-the-iron-mask style prisoner, and getting involved with the dragons of the Chamber, among other things.

All these adventures are highly thematic, and would be very hard to work into other settings without serious overhaul to the point where it would probably be easier just to write your own.

I flipped through the Player's guide for 3rd edition and it certainly didn't imply there was anything approaching diversity in any of the regions. It was very cut and dry of "this nation is race X" all across the board.

The "homeland" nations are fairly dominated by their respective races, though certainly not exclusively so. The setting book has the Mror Holds as being about 65% dwarven, Zilargo as 60% gnomish, and the Talenta Plains as 80% halfling. But the "human" nations are highly integrated - they're generally about 40-50% human, with Thrane topping out at 70%.

The thing is that since pretty much the whole continent was a single empire for almost a thousand years, and much of the commerce of that empire depended on dragon-marked houses, that lead to the different races spreading out a lot. And eventually, large portions of them integrated into the nation of Galifar, or at least its five constituent nations.

The races clearly indicate which race exclusively has which mark and even the Aberrant mark can only be placed on one of the 6 markable races (which just so "happened" to be the ones in the 3E PHB). Which means the moment you have an inkling a mark is being used, you know with absolute certainty the race that is using it or if you think you are going to fight someone with a mark, you know precisely what they are capable of.

You're generally not going to fight people with marks - or at least, not ones that have the dragonmarks as their primary source of power. While some dragonmarks can be used offensively, they are primarily forces of creation and support. Of course, there's nothing stopping someone with a dragonmark from exploring alternate avenues of power - for example, one of the main characters in some of the Eberron novels is an artificer with a Cannith dragonmark. She's dangerous because she's a powerful artificer with a lot of magic tricks up her sleeve - but the mark itself doesn't do much.

Warforged and Shifters are pictured throughout all the Eberron art as out and proud in the open in all the various art. Though I did come across a picture of an anti-Warforged protest, so I guess there is some indication that there is meant to be some distrust of them.

You might want to base your opinion of the setting on more than some pictures you've seen and a pair of computer games that had some Eberron names glued on, rather than actually being based on the setting. Basing your opinion on Eberron on Dragonshards is like basing your opinion of Forgotten Realms on Blood & Magic.

It would be far more interesting if a Shifter had cool powers, but they'd best be sure they can trust those around them before using them and they must be quite certain not to use their abilities publically and might want to kill any witnesses to them transforming.

Shifters are obviously a different race, just like elves are. They're not humans who sometimes wolf out - they look really feral to start with, and occasionally grow even more feral. In most places, they are an underclass, but they're mostly not considered to be werewolves-in-hiding. It's even fairly likely that lycanthropes came from shifters, not the other way around.

An AP that involves a dragon-mark using family engaging in malicious activity that the PCs need to root out and confront. Make it mystery story with chases across city streets and combat in tall buildings. Make persuasion, intimidation, athletics, investigation, history and arcana checks more common than initiative checks and have the adventure involve many morally gray choices that ask the players to prioritize their values as often as "kill the evil demon-summoning baddie". And display both the shining and the ugly sides of the world as the players explore it.

Now, that would actually be cool.

 

[Uchawi]

With 5E the question is whether a setting has enough nostalgia, whether that is forgotten realms, an adventure like temple of elemental evil, or a pocket dimension like Ravenloft.

 

[GreenTengu]

If that's the case, I guess we can kiss support for Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and Mystara goodbye. Talk about settings that bring nothing the Realms can't do to the table...

That is really the heart I am getting at.

Putting out setting after setting after setting where the mood, technology, government, theme, aesthetics and such are all 100% identical and they are completely inhabited by exactly the same peoples who relate to one another in exactly the same way and everyone does everything in exactly the same way with every adventure starting with a bunch of likely random people meeting at a tavern and such cliches of how things have always been done... but the cities have different names...

That's just not worth the effort for it to be supported as a real setting. The competition for default is over, and GreyHawk and Mystara had every chance, but ultimately Forgotten Realms won out as the default.

So if you are going to tell a story in D&D, there needs to be a reason you aren't using the default. And it can't just be that you threw a dart at a board and happened to land on a different name. There needs to be something just fundamentally different about the setting that changes the whole tone, mood, pacing and conduct of the players in their roles to make it non-default.

Eberron, Dark Sun, Planescape, Spelljammer and maybe Dragonlance to an extent can all to this, but only if they are put out there and introduced with their core differences being front and center as the pillars for the story. That is the only way you are going to generate any real interest for the setting among masses.

Sure, probably for any of them you can take any of the sort of more generic Adventure League adventures and so long as A, B, and C are not core components and you make adjustments to D, E, F, G and H, then by all means the story could conceptually take place in one of those other settings. And that's fine that default adventures that are sort of generic on tone and theme can be placed into the setting as well.... But that just isn't the best way to introduce the world.....

And giant guide books giving every small detail out have been tried and it hasn't always been as successful in the past as it could be. Many people will only give it a cursory look, figure they got the idea and then toss it aside. Why spend hours pouring over what is effectively an atlas unless it is either the first time you have ever experienced doing so or you are really into such dry, factual material.

Being able to tell a story, being able to immerse your player in a narrative, that not only take place in the setting, but allows them to really experience something new that they just simply wouldn't with the standard fare, but makes it very clear very quickly that they are not in the Realms anymore and it is necessary to engage in this in a very different way than before.... That is what is going to hook the players.

After that point they are free to either start making their own adventures in the setting or to adapt other adventures to take place within it. And that's great! But you really need that original narrative to be a unique and engaging experience to draw them in first.

Because if your adventure comes across as something that would have worked just fine in default, the players are right to question why they need to learn new names for the things they already learned when they are effectively the same exact things with a slightly different coat of paint.

And maybe it would be best to license these settings out to other companies who have a proven track record and allow them to run with them. Because it seems like WotC doesn't have a staff large enough to do more than the absolute bare minimum at this point.

 

[Jester David]

Funny, I seem to recall buying the book in 2003 without ever having played the setting before that and loved it. I must have somehow subconsciously already been a fan of it.

But until you read it you weren't a fan.

My point is that anyone who is a fan either has the books or has not prioritised buying them for low, low prices. There's not a huge audience chomping at the bit for Eberron. Some new people might buy the setting (and become fans) and some old Eberron fans might buy a reprint, but not every Eberron fan will bother re-buying the campaign setting.

Nothing in the SCAG was needed to run the Realms and yet we got it...

We got it for several reasons.
One, to help make characters that fit the Realms when playing in the storylines.
Two, to work with organised play as players in that - many of which are brand new to the game, let alone the Realms - needed something to help them make Realmsian characters.
Three, to synergize with the video games (in case they were huge hits)
Four, to help people who are playing in the Realms to update their game to the post-Sundering era as the world has changed, so the book tides people over until a larger Realms setting book is released.

Only the whole "Magic Items are no longer purchasable" thing...

That's an assumption but it doesn't take much to tweak it. Every world requires some customisation. Eberron needing some changes and advice is nothing special. Dark Sun require so much more.

I wasn't expecting charity, I want WotC to take my money.

No, you just want them to spend tens of thousand dollars and months of work making a large and expensive product for a small subset of the audience for a very small return.

I'd like a Ravenloft boxed set with a cloth map and deck of Tarokka cards.

Apparently, their "sound business strategy" includes releasing sub-par video games while ignoring topics people might want spend money on.

They didn't release a subpar video game. They just licences the IP to a company that turned it into a subpar video game. They took a gamble with whomever would pay the most for the D&D name and it didn't pay off.
And given "no one wants to spend money on" SCAG it sure is selling well.

Guess what? Neither of them are getting the material you need to run them either I guess. Ravenloft is going to be reduced to an Expedition-like megadungeon more in line with Castlevania than Realms of Horror, and Dragonlance is going to languish except for where they can quote the novels for nostalgia.

Yup. I know. So rather than whine or complain I'm just doing the content myself. I'll be happier with the results that way.

If we don't push WotC with SOME measure of interest, we're not getting anything.

But I also know my desires are not always those of the majority and I need to accept not all the content is aimed directly at me. There are a lot of odds and ends n the D&D back catalogue that someone loved more than anything. I'm sure someone out there loved the eff out of Chronomnancy. Or Day of the Comet. Or Birthright. All that has just as much right to be updated as Eberron. If not more as WotC likely wants to retain the trademarks.

 

[Noctem]

I'm also really looking forward to this content. Some of the best campaigns I've ever run happened in Eberron

 

[Shasarak]

But I'm also a Ravenloft and Dragonlance fan. Neither of which have seen as much 5e love as Eberron has, even if just a half measure. It's supper insulting to fans of every other world to insist and ask for more when Eberron has already received so much more attention and content than anywhere else save the Realms.

I am not sure how it could be super insulting to fans of every other world by asking for some more. What on earth are those other fans doing? Sitting quietly in the corner hoping that Santa will bring them what they want for Christmas because they were good.

Nah, if you want something then at least be honest about it.

But I also know my desires are not always those of the majority and I need to accept not all the content is aimed directly at me. There are a lot of odds and ends n the D&D back catalogue that someone loved more than anything. I'm sure someone out there loved the eff out of Chronomnancy. Or Day of the Comet. Or Birthright. All that has just as much right to be updated as Eberron. If not more as WotC likely wants to retain the trademarks.

Man, I love Birthright but I always played it as a Kingdom building sim so I do not know that I would need to see an updated setting.