If you're basing that decision whether or not to innovate on what "most people want", then it is absolutely based on a certain percent. We just dont know what that percent is. The majority will never want to innovate, so using that as your sole metric leads to stagnation.
You're using percentages differently from the person I replied to. They were suggesting that wotc wasn't operating at even 75%, as if they were being lazy or uncreative. Percentage of the player base that like a thing is an entirely separate discussion of percentages.
And considering how popular many new ideas have been in 5e, your "the majority will never want to innovate" line is flatly false.
You can make major subsystems that work seemlessly with the base game system. The reason it wasn't before was due to the restrictive and complex rules of past editions and as a way to sell more books.
Citation needed.
But you could easily have A Rune List section then allow Runecrafter Wizards learn a rune on level up in place of a spell or have a Giant Barbarian invoke the spell of a Hill, Stone, Frost, Fire, Cloud, or Storm rune during a rage.
Sure, if some of those runes are in the PHB as part of the core system. If they're instead in Tasslehoff's Pockets of Everything, and you release a subclass that uses them in The Gatewatch Guide To The Planes, you've no made the second book require the first, rather than only requiring the PHB.
What about the people who want to use Rune but not Feats? On the DMs and players who already have other ideas for their very few feats but want to have runes?
Bonus feats tied to backgrounds are already a thing. If a group wants to use runes but not feats, they don't need to allow feats in general to allow bonus level 1 feats tied to a story element.
Seperating it out into it's own system could allow for Tasha's like trade and class trades. A dwarf could trade out a martial weapon proficency or rogue trade a Skill profieciency for knowledge of a rune.
See above.
The only way this ideas works is if they are treated entirely as magic items, or are somehow new proficiencies that aren't more powerful than existing tool proficiencies. So, adding to an existing system.
Maybe as part of an "implement proficiencies" expansion that runs alongside weapon proficiencies, giving access to a "spell attack" themed to a given implement, but that would be a
huge departure from how the game currently works, and would probably, again, need to be self contained in
one book.
Not really how I interpreted it. Even if that is true, one could easily set the book during the period of the war between Gods & Mortals vs. Dragons & Giants.
But why would you? That's a hyper-limited "setting". I think they're more likely to seed First World stuff in the spelljammer book than set a whole book there.
I don't really know why Discworld matters here, never said the world should be on the back of four elephants standing on a turtle.
Perhaps you haven't gotten around to reading "Small Gods"? I was replying directly to your comment about the gods.
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