D&D 5E Anyone else feeling "meh" about recent 5e releases?

[Hussar]

Umm, sorry, I don't buy that at all. They want D&D players to play Magic? D&D players are a rounding error compared to the number of Magic players. There are several times more MtG players out there than D&D players. As in many, many more times.

To me, this was very cool. They finally got some funky settings and tested the water for D&D players. There was a time when D&D players would have absolutely freaked if WotC tried to get MtG peanut butter in our chocolate. Now, it seems like it got a pretty warm reception. Which means that they can keep slowly adding other elements as time goes on.

Or, put it another way, a fraction of a percent of MtG players would be a MASSIVE boost in the number of D&D players.

 

[jayoungr]

I actually think the Ravnica book is underrated. I wasn't too excited about it either until I saw this video:


... and what they say is, IMHO, spot on. It has fantastic tools for designing a multi-factional city. You can just file the serial numbers off the guilds presented in the book, or use them as inspiration for developing your own.

 

[TwoSix]

I don't know why they need additional starter sets, they should promote the ones they already got instead.
Ravnica, I can see the potential, otoh MtG is huge, if some one would want to set his campaign into MtG universe being, a magic player eventually, he could probably convert the setting without much help.
Someone new to MtG would need much more than one setting book to get into the setting.

I'm not into MtG, and I only have one player out of 6 who is into it, and we've loved Ravnica. No one had problems browsing the book and finding a guild they thought they could make an interesting character for.

 

[dave2008]

In either case, I feel like it's something of a failure, and representative of some strange-seeming, almost TSR-like management decisions at Wotc. Its hard to believe that an update of almost any D&D setting (Spelljammer, Dark Sun, Planescape or even Dragonlance or Greyhawk) wouldn't have both sold vastly more copies but also got more people into 5E, albeit many would be lapsed D&D players. That however would not have had cross-sales, ie caused D&D players to try/buy MTG.

I have no idea how it has sold, and I am not a MtG fan (I played with my son's once or twice, but didn't get into it); however, the book is really interesting and one of the best WotC has put out for my needs since the Core 3.

 

[Shardstone]

Ravnica is a fantasticly written book, a wonderful setting, and a great 5E product.

 

[robus]

OK, you guys are making me curious about it! Damn it!

 

[Vael]

I actually think the Ravnica book is underrated. I wasn't too excited about it either until I saw this video:


... and what they say is, IMHO, spot on. It has fantastic tools for designing a multi-factional city. You can just file the serial numbers off the guilds presented in the book, or use them as inspiration for developing your own.

If the chapter on creating your own adventures in Ravnica is as good as this review makes it ... I might have to buy the book, regardless of whether we end up doing a Ravnica campaign or not. Also, this tech seems ripe for bringing to other settings, maybe the Eberron book will have something like this?

 

[Parmandur]

If the chapter on creating your own adventures in Ravnica is as good as this review makes it ... I might have to buy the book, regardless of whether we end up doing a Ravnica campaign or not. Also, this tech seems ripe for bringing to other settings, maybe the Eberron book will have something like this?

This stuff was in the DMG, too, actually, just Ravnica gets more genre specific with it (Urban High Magic). Eberron will probably continue this trend, and it's probably what James Wyatt is contributing (since he did that for the DMG and Ravnica).

 

[Retreater]

I guess it's good so many people on here like Ravnica. Around here it was a flash in the pan that wasn't bought or used by anyone. I don't know if the local stores even got in a copy. I read some of the previews and it had no interest for me.
TBH, I don't buy campaign setting books. Just don't want to try to become an expert on someone else's world. They tend to have no meaning to me. A bunch of proper nouns of either all consonants or all vowels (or otherwise unpronouncable words) did something to another garbled name 10,000 years ago.
What do I want? Real meat and potatoes stuff. Adventures I can use with my groups. Monsters. Guides to know how much treasure to give out. Encounter building tips that aren't terrible or complex. Traps. Magic items.
What I don't want are weird settings that can't be used in 95% of games, reprints of stuff readily available on DMs Guild. Not when there are obvious holes in the 5e game.

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

What I don't want are weird settings that can't be used in 95% of games, reprints of stuff readily available on DMs Guild. Not when there are obvious holes in the 5e game.

Okay then.

What are those holes?