D&D (2024) Greyhawk Confirmed. Tell Me Why.

[Staffan]

Would you be willing to place Eberron in the Core Rules ala Golarion and have every supplement reference Eberron to get all that?

Maybe? I think Eberron works better as something for the D&D fan that's getting bored with the core stuff and want something a little different without getting too crazy.

I can barely do a book a year. A book a month? I would stop paying attention to anything WoTC is selling, because I just couldn't afford it.

I would not expect everyone to buy a book every month. Not every book is for every player. But I think a publishing schedule of a book a month would be fine, because that would allow for some more variety in the schedule. So you could get 2-3 Eberron books, 2-3 FR books, 2-3 adventures, a rules option book along the lines of Xanathar's and/or a monster book, 1-2 one-and-done settings, and maybe a book expanding the rules on some topic (psionics, martial adepts, nautical adventures, etc). This is something that could almost certainly be done profitably, but it probably wouldn't be the path for maximizing ROI.

And I'm not sure I would want to have only two to three settings, because we have a fairly good idea of exactly what that short list would look like.

2-3 supported settings, with one-and-dones sprinkled as needed/desired.

I love Eberron as a setting, but that sounds like far too much. Breadth of humanoids? The vast majority of humanoids are covered very very well, you could slide the few that aren't into a different book. A psionic specific book? Don't see the appeal. It might work as a generic psionics book, but that will barely sell, and Eberron specific psionics? I don't think there is even a niche for that.

The psionics book would probably work best as a generic psionics book, but designed with an eye toward how psionics operate in Eberron. Basically, making sure the rules fit the world where they're most likely to see use.

As for the humanoids, I'm thinking an exploration of the various humanoid cultures in Eberron, along with stat blocks for various roles. Orcs, for example, have three distinct cultures: Shadow Marches (with their tensions between pro- and anti-aberrant factions), the Demon Wastes and their age-old devotion to the Flame that Binds, and the more classic orcs in the Mror Holds. Plus the House Tharashk offshoot from the Shadow Marches culture. Get in a bit on what makes each of these tick, and provide some stat blocks for representatives of each culture (Shadow Marches could have hunter, chief, druid, and aberrant cultist, for example). Then do a similar thing for goblinoids, exploring both the nascent nation of Darguun and the lot of goblins in the Five Nations. Go into some detail on Droaam, the factions operating there, and the Daughters of Sora Kell. Some of that stuff might work better in sourcebooks covering the locations instead of peoples, but still.

 

[Hussar]

I gotta admit. I'm with @Chaosmancer on this. If WotC went back to the Book of the Month club, I'd nope out immediately. Heck, I already did that in 3e and in 4e. At least in 4e, they had the Tools so that you could just pay a subscription and get all the material in a nicely searchable format. But, nope, I'm perfectly happy with 3-5 books a year and make every release an event.

 

[Remathilis]

Maybe? I think Eberron works better as something for the D&D fan that's getting bored with the core stuff and want something a little different without getting too crazy..

The level of support your asking for would require Eberron (or whatever setting you want supported to this level) to be D&D's only setting, like Golarion is Pathfinder's. There isn't a market for book of the month niche products. Your only hope is that the Monster Manual has Eberron lore, each module is set in Eberron, the dragon book is Eberron based, the giants book is Eberron based, etc.

 

[Parmandur]

I don't think much adeptness is required, is it? A bit of Googling or a post on ENworld seems like it would probably do the job.

But the bigger thing to my mind is, why would anyone who has never seen the map in The Isle of Dread, or never heard of the GAZ series, even want to play in Mystara/The Known World?

The notion that, if WotC were to publish Mystara stuff, they would drum up hitherto-unrealised interest in the setting strikes me as pretty fanciful. Whatever interest there is is due entirely to experienced and old-time D&Ders.

Not quite sure what to make of it, but TenSpeed Press is putting out a big "Worlds of D&D" artbook later this year, and they are covering FR, Greyhawk, Eberron, Dragonlance...and Mystara.

Based on the pages put out so far, they seem to be planning to use those 5 worlds as a foil for how different flavors of heroic fantasy can be used by a DM. So Mystara might make a little bit of a comeback, in some form.

 

[Parmandur]

I can barely do a book a year. A book a month? I would stop paying attention to anything WoTC is selling, because I just couldn't afford it.

And I'm not sure I would want to have only two to three settings, because we have a fairly good idea of exactly what that short list would look like.

I generally buy all the WotC books. If they go down that root, I would probsvly stop buying any at all. Heck, the past two years have been a bit too heavy in releases, IMO.

 

[Nikosandros]

I generally buy all the WotC books. If they go down that root, I would probsvly stop buying any at all. Heck, the past two years have been a bit too heavy in releases, IMO.

Yes, the current pace is, IMVHO, more than enough. I'm also involved with other games and the current output is already more than I can ever hope to play

 

[Staffan]

The level of support your asking for would require Eberron (or whatever setting you want supported to this level) to be D&D's only setting, like Golarion is Pathfinder's. There isn't a market for book of the month niche products. Your only hope is that the Monster Manual has Eberron lore, each module is set in Eberron, the dragon book is Eberron based, the giants book is Eberron based, etc.

Paizo sells at one or two orders of magnitude below WOTC, and they can make it work with about two to three books a month – sure, not all of them are 256-page hardbacks, but a significant portion. I have no doubt that Wizards could still make a profit doing one book per month. Whether that would be enough profit for Hasbro is another matter.

I generally buy all the WotC books. If they go down that root, I would probsvly stop buying any at all. Heck, the past two years have been a bit too heavy in releases, IMO.

I do not understand this sentiment. I don't buy everything Wizards releases. I look at a new release and decide whether that's up my alley or not (usually not). Having them make more books would give them more opportunities to make a book I do want.

 

[Parmandur]

I do not understand this sentiment. I don't buy everything Wizards releases. I look at a new release and decide whether that's up my alley or not (usually not). Having them make more books would give them more opportunities to make a book I do want.

Seems pretty basic to me: I can swing buying a few large books I am interested in, but once there are too many books I'm unlikely to buy any. Too many options means...get nothing.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I would not expect everyone to buy a book every month. Not every book is for every player. But I think a publishing schedule of a book a month would be fine, because that would allow for some more variety in the schedule. So you could get 2-3 Eberron books, 2-3 FR books, 2-3 adventures, a rules option book along the lines of Xanathar's and/or a monster book, 1-2 one-and-done settings, and maybe a book expanding the rules on some topic (psionics, martial adepts, nautical adventures, etc). This is something that could almost certainly be done profitably, but it probably wouldn't be the path for maximizing ROI.

While yes, not every book is for every person, you need people paying attention to your announcements for them to know which book they are interested in. If I decided to skip the January, February, March, April and May releases... am I even paying enough attention to know that June is a book I'd really love to have?

Additionally, there is an inevitable dip in quality, because the team would need to do three times as much work per year. You could maybe get that quality back by hiring more people, but considering WoTC just cut a bunch of people, that would be a hard sell, and if the products don't all sell at the same rate as the current books do, then each book needs to be more expensive to make back the additional money spent on the larger team... which makes people less likely to buy, especially since people say the current books are too expensive.

I agree, it could theoretically be done profitably, but after training the player base and the employees for the last decade on the current release schedule? I don't think it could be done in a practical sense.

2-3 supported settings, with one-and-dones sprinkled as needed/desired.


The psionics book would probably work best as a generic psionics book, but designed with an eye toward how psionics operate in Eberron. Basically, making sure the rules fit the world where they're most likely to see use.

As for the humanoids, I'm thinking an exploration of the various humanoid cultures in Eberron, along with stat blocks for various roles. Orcs, for example, have three distinct cultures: Shadow Marches (with their tensions between pro- and anti-aberrant factions), the Demon Wastes and their age-old devotion to the Flame that Binds, and the more classic orcs in the Mror Holds. Plus the House Tharashk offshoot from the Shadow Marches culture. Get in a bit on what makes each of these tick, and provide some stat blocks for representatives of each culture (Shadow Marches could have hunter, chief, druid, and aberrant cultist, for example). Then do a similar thing for goblinoids, exploring both the nascent nation of Darguun and the lot of goblins in the Five Nations. Go into some detail on Droaam, the factions operating there, and the Daughters of Sora Kell. Some of that stuff might work better in sourcebooks covering the locations instead of peoples, but still.

Well two things.

1) You also need to account for how many books a person would need to carry with them. Traveling GMs are a thing, and the more books you need to carry, the less you will invest.

2) Again, especially for the Humanoids, Keith Baker has already released that book for 5e. I don't remember if he covered the orcs specifically, but the Ghaal'Dur were covered in quite a lot of detail. Now, this isn't true for all settings, but WoTC does have to weight the potential benefit of an "official" release against the fact that a highly respected creator is using DMsGuild (which makes them money) to sell the same product. Would they make enough money to justify the cost, especially in the face of an existing revenue stream for the same content?

I just don't think they would.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I generally buy all the WotC books. If they go down that root, I would probsvly stop buying any at all. Heck, the past two years have been a bit too heavy in releases, IMO.

Yeah, I wouldn't be buying most of the stuff being released this year, but it IS the 50th anniversary and I AM a fanboy of DnD. If it was any other year? I wouldn't do it.