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So, I don't want to complain too much about a free thing, but Hold Back the Dead is kind of a mess. It reads like the remnants of some larger thing that got canceled. I suspect that it started life as a multi-table epic meant to be played at some kind of launch party event for that campaign...

Three recommendations: Spelljammer: Encounters in Wildspace Spelljammer: Encounters in Wildspace - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild 6 short adventures and a bunch of additional encounters A Space Hamster's Guide to Spelljammer A Space Hamster's Guide to Spelljammer - Dungeon...

There are chapters that absolutely can be cannibalized out of the context of the main campaign, but imo more than half of the chapters only make sense as part of the overarching plot. There are stand-alone Spelljammer adventures available on DMsGuild that would support what you’re trying to do.

FWIW, my company's actual play of To Slay a Dragon using Level Up: A5E. You can see how Strife, Supply, Fatigue, Maneuvers, and some of the different spells and magic items, etc. work. In general, Level Up characters are stronger than 2014 characters, but not so much so that you can't use 2014...

I've had occasional instances of somewhat less experienced players expecting certain abilities or spells to function more like they do in BG3. For instance, in a game a couple of weeks ago, a cleric tried to "lawnmower" enemies with Spirit Guardians like you can in the game (in the 2024 rules...

I am surprised at the focus on younger audiences since the biggest breakthrough successes for D&D in the past decade (Critical Role and Baldur's Gate 3) are very much teens & up, R-rated, and didn't set out to please the whole family. I would take my cue from that if I was them.

You forgot Minthara. Currently running for 29 players across 4 campaigns, plus one-shots like one per month or so. Players range in age from 20s-50s; most are in their 30s. I haven't seen any instances of this. I'd say maybe 25%-30% of them have played BG3.

Sort of? But WotC owns and derives royalties from everything on DMsGuild so it's questionable whether those are "3rd party" in the way that Mearls means? Plus, I guess that's not exciting enough for him? I'm not pretending I know what he's talking about, hence my confusion.

But Mearls seems specifically to be asking "If 2024 D&D is so exciting, where are all the great 3rd party products supporting 2024 D&D like we had with 3.0?" There are loads of 3rd party 5E products coming out. Nobody can specifically create a 3rd party product that uses/celebrates the 2024...

Yeah that's a bizarre take. I agree we've passed the current peak, but D&D is a permanent thing in our culture. It'll have another peak years in the future, and then another valley. The brand will be bought and sold again. But there isn't a post-D&D anymore than there is a post-Spider-man or...

I do think the modern cultural D&D boom probably peaked in 2022. However, what does he mean "where are the 3rd party products?" How can there be 3rd party 5.5 products without a 5.5 OGL?

A AAA might - MIGHT - license it only because of the extreme success of Baldur’s Gate 3. Of course, a AAA also might realize, as the Solasta team does, that they can effectively make a D&D game without WotC due to the 5.1 SRD being in Creative Commons.

Video games do. Baldur's Gate 3 had a budget of $100M and that was considered p reasonable since Larian isn't/wasn't a AAA company. A D&D game made by a AAA studio might have a budget of $200M or more (for example, Bethesda spent $300M-$400M on Starfield).

Oh God please not another thread about whether Honor Among Thieves was profitable. I have PTSD.

I enjoy the campaign books too, but there has been an undeniable drop in their quality over the past 4 years and for that reason alone I'm glad to see them pumping the breaks for a year. I hope when they do release another one it'll be more coherent than recent stuff like Turn of Fortune's...

Realistically, due to how expensive print has become, that sort of product only makes sense to do digitally. Even print-on-demand single-adventure paperbacks would be quite pricy.

I loved the movie, but I was really surprised that it was so long, which no doubt ballooned the budget. To me it's clear that a D&D movie should be a tight 90-95 minutes, 100 tops. 134 minutes is crazy to me, but I guess a blockbuster movie has to be that long now? 90-95 movie gets more...

I don't know that they feel it's important that each class have the same number of subclasses, apart from the PHB. They certainly haven't worried about that for the past decade. I expect we'll see books like Bigby Presents, Van Richten's, and Fizban's, and the MTG sourcebooks that add only 1-2...

It was Candlekeep Mysteries. Specifically, the Book of Cylinders adventure - there was an author vs editor meltdown over various elements, mostly about grippli.

If the October book isn't a campaign-length hardcover adventure book, it'll be the first year for more than a decade that there isn't one.