D&D 5E Volo's 5e vs Tasha's 5e where do you see 5e heading?

[UngeheuerLich]

You're going to do a soft reboot because you personally don't like the default implementation of one class? Even though it apparently works just fine for a lot of people?

No. I do it because at some point the cost of entry is too high.
If 90% people play with Tasha by default, at some point it is the better choice to carry it over into the core rules instead of telling new players to buy two books.

 

[Minigiant]

The thing is

Fans who hoped for crunchier modules of the past or for fluffy modules into new territories D&D didn't expire much before have not received them from WOTC from Volo's to Tasha's.

They can wait for the future. However if the premise of the thread is to judge the future by the current and past of 5e, there is no evidence WOTC is attempting those kinds of modules and ceding content creation of them to third parties.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

The thing about an ad populum argument is that it is naive and misses the fact that, first and foremost, D&D is a business and the books are product.

It isn't a question of if 5e will reach the point where sales of core books dips enough for WotC to release a new edition, it is when.

I am not sure about this. I think that current wizards strategy is to make this statement invalid.

I think that the current strategy is to make D&D a multimedia franchise (video game, TV and movies). In this scenario a failed new edition could make the multimedia initiatives still born. So we are going to see edition stability while the multimedia push is continuing. If the multimedia strategy is successful, then there is billion dollar multimedia franchise sitting on top of a TTRPG.
At that point WoTC becomes even more cautious with regard to new editions. That is not to say there will be no new editions but I would expect to see then trialled in another format, a sci-fi game or some such.

 

[ph0rk]

I am not sure about this. I think that current wizards strategy is to make this statement invalid.

They can't keep releasing stuff that makes bits of the core books deprecated if they plan for them to remain evergreen.

I think the evergreen thing really just meant the life of the edition; not for all time. Maybe they think they meant for all time, but I don't see Hasbro (or whoever WotC gets sold to in the future) will really let that happen.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

What you're seeing with Pokémon isn't a real 'growth' so much as a speculator bubble. Some popular Youtube bought vintage boxes of Pokémon, found some cards worth a fortune and every idiot out there think they can make money buying cardboard designed for playground children and profit... None of them realize that old cards get valuable because of rarity, and that rarity is born from the fact nobody cared to preserve their cards for 20 years! Most cards they're buying today won't be worth enough to counter the cost of buying all those packs because EVERYBODY will have them! Even in twenty years there will be a glut of them on the market. It's a ridiculous position honestly. And even if a card is valuable today because of its impact on the competitive scene... Pokémon uses a SET ROTATION format, meaning those cards will be useless when the next rotation come... Yu-gi-oh! is also seeing this kind of speculation affecting it (as did all the Sports card). This is the same kind of bubble seen in comics in the 90s and with Star Wars prequel toys.

MTG, on the other hand is seeing a proper 'growth' (a lot of it has to do with its online arena I'd wager and the fact that there is a few casual friendly format like Commader).

I'm sure there's a measure of truth in this, but there's also what looks a lot like some deep arrogance in the "my game is growing steadily, the one that's selling way more stuff is just experiencing a speculator bubble - so are all the other TCG and just old-fashioned TCs that are experiencing huge sales!". And the claim was that MtG was seeing "massive" growth - over the exact same time period this bubble has been building up, and other TCGs have been seeing big growth. It would be a hell of a coincidence if there wasn't any link between the phenomena.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

They can't keep releasing stuff that makes bits of the core books deprecated if they plan for them to remain evergreen.

I think the evergreen thing really just meant the life of the edition; not for all time. Maybe they think they meant for all time, but I don't see Hasbro (or whoever WotC gets sold to in the future) will really let that happen.

Evergreen was the approach when 5E was an apology edition that WotC was afraid wasn't even going to win back PF players or hold on to 4E players.

Evergreen is unlikely to be the approach when you've been seeing 33% year on year growth and allegedly have 50m+ players.

 

[ph0rk]

Evergreen is unlikely to be the approach when you've been seeing 33% year on year growth and allegedly have 50m+ players.

Yep. Sooner or later someone will get the idea that you can sell some substantial fraction of those 50 million players an updated PHB and DMG.

And, really, 7 years seems like a fine point for that conversation to start. There are a number of tweaks made in addon books that will make it into some sort of PHB/DMG 2. I just hope (vainly) that some sort of Darksun + psion book comes out first.

It won't, at least not with psionics, but I would very much like for it to.

 

[ph0rk]

We're talking about a commercial product. If anybody at wizards knows if or when there will be another edition they are not talking.

They shouldn't, lest they Osborne effect themselves.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think that the current strategy is to make D&D a multimedia franchise (video game, TV and movies). In this scenario a failed new edition could make the multimedia initiatives still born. So we are going to see edition stability while the multimedia push is continuing. If the multimedia strategy is successful, then there is billion dollar multimedia franchise sitting on top of a TTRPG.
At that point WoTC becomes even more cautious with regard to new editions. That is not to say there will be no new editions but I would expect to see then trialled in another format, a sci-fi game or some such.

A "failed new edition" is a bizarre and frankly slightly paranoid idea. The closest D&D has had to that was 4E, and that took vast effort to create a "failed new edition". The stars had to absolutely align in a totally fantastic way.

To be successful with a new edition, all they really need to do is two things:

1) Retain 2E-ish levels of backwards-compatibility with 5E adventures.

2) Implement a relatively cautious 6E that's more like 1E-2E than any other edition change, implementing all the ideas they're half-implementing in 5E, and fixing some stuff.

Combine that with attractive new art and visual design, maybe better writing, better optional rules and DM suggestions in the DMG, and later an updated MM (one of the selling points will be that you don't need updated MMs initially), and boom you just sold a ridiculous number of physical and digital copies. If you release you own digital product instead of letting DDB take your money, at the same time (or just buy DDB), you make even more money.

Re: "even more cautious" and "trialled in another format", I think this is half-true. They're likely to stick to a 1E-2E-style incremental change model, rather than the revolutionary changed of 3E/4E/5E, so that is "more cautious" than previous editions. However, I don't think they'll but putting out 6E's changes in another format, because it would be incredibly obvious and worse PR than just putting out 6E. I do think we may eventually see another RPG with a different system from them, because of the vast potential for selling it the now-vast base of D&D players, but not for a while yet.

 

[Undrave]

I'm sure there's a measure of truth in this, but there's also what looks a lot like some deep arrogance in the "my game is growing steadily, the one that's selling way more stuff is just experiencing a speculator bubble - so are all the other TCG and just old-fashioned TCs that are experiencing huge sales!". And the claim was that MtG was seeing "massive" growth - over the exact same time period this bubble has been building up, and other TCGs have been seeing big growth. It would be a hell of a coincidence if there wasn't any link between the phenomena.

I mean that M:TG was seeing growth before the bubble started, at least from what I know. I'm not invested in any TCG at the moment mind you, it's just my perception of the current state of the games from various players of the different games that I know. I know M:TG also got hit in some markets by the speculators, I just know the worse frenzy we're seeing is about Pokémon.... but sports cards also got hit with it and most TCGs are hard to find in general.

There's also been COVID related delays in the past year that didn't help.

I'm not saying Pokémon didn't pick up new players, either. There's tons of stories of people picking up the game to play with their kids while in lockdown, for exemple. I'm just saying the recent shortage, overwhelming the production numbers, have more to do with the speculation and scalping than with those new players. The various big names are already upping their print run as a reaction (so that won't help the stupid scalpers in the long run either).