I'm not responsible for WotC's profits, and I don't care if they make even more money. What I want is to have WotC's overbearing influence on gaming be less overbearing. This whole thing seems hell-bent on doing the opposite.
Pretty sure they would have carried it if there had been demand, anything else is irrational
I don't think the sentiments underlying these two posts can both be true: that is, I don't see how it can be true
both that there is demand for RPGs that is independent of what WotC decides to do (which can result, for instance, in WotC making poor business decisions by misjudging what RPG consumers want),
and that WotC exercises overbearing influence on RPGing.
For what it's worth, to me there seems to be a fairly consistent demand from the "mainstream" RPGing population. It falls into the genre/mode of RPGing often called
neo-trad. (
Here's a description.) The core features of neo-trad RPGing, as I understand it, are (i) players coming up with vibrant conceptions of their PCs, expressed through a mixture of backstory, performance and PC build; (ii) the GM presenting a vibrant fictional world that those PCs can inhabit; (iii) the actual process of play involves the GM heavily curating the fiction - which includes introduction of both their own and the players' backstory, plus framing, plus consequences - in such a way that the players' conceptions of their vibrant PCs can easily and clearly emerge.
I would expect WotC, in its ongoing development of 5e D&D, to try to further strengthen the support for neo-trad RPGing while also maintaining the technical aspects of the game - which manifest primarily in PC and monster build and in the combat rules (and include the resource management aspects of the game) - which are perhaps less important to neo-trad play but are core elements of the D&D tradition and clearly remain important to many D&D players.
I would expect this to be combined with "monetisation" options, both connected to play and selling D&D-branded stuff more generally.
WotC's approach to licensing will (presumably) be based around both concerns. Keeping Critical Role in the tent seems pretty crucial. Preventing some competitor from establishing a break-out digital platform disconnected from WotC seems pretty important to. (This is a point that I've seen
@Hussar mention.)
Even people who admit they don't actually like or still play WotC-based 5E... still can't help but come here to rant and rave about what WotC does.
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You want me to believe you TRULY care about the larger TTRPG eco-system and want to bring other games and companies out from underneath the shadow of WotC? Break off from 5E once and for all. Stop giving them the press. Because every time you come here onto EN World to talk about it you are showing us all that you actually want to see WotC maintain its position.
It seems to me that many of those posters really want WotC to turn the clock back, from its support for neo-trad to something closer to late 80s or early 90s AD&D (which were pretty similar in style despite the updated rulebooks part way through that period).
There's an apparent belief that if WotC changed its approach, the market would follow and hence there would be heaps of players available for those AD&D-style trad D&D games.
My own view is that that belief is false, and that WotC is following the market more than shaping its preferences. The shaping of the preferences is coming from other and more diffuse places - Critical Role, the way protagonist-based action films have developed over the past 40-ish years (Arnie's films being early examples, and MCU showing how it can be done in an ensemble fashion), the sort of RPGing that 3E and then PF encouraged, etc.
The dogs bark and the caravan moves on.
