WotC, in the Hasbro financial statements and press releases has not confirmed the position you take from Bookscan data.
They have shown, to investors, that D&D sales continue to grow. They've also shown that Direct-to-Consumer is now 60% of their D&D game revenue (which puts to bed this concept...
So this show was 8 episodes direct to Prime with experienced AP performers, but not a previous cast.
It was also highly edited for the 8 episode campaign having a run time of barely under 6 hours.
I put on a different personality every time I play Catan, Pandemic, Risk, Axis & Allies, Diplomacy. These may not be optimized, but instead they are similar to the leadership qualities in Civ the computer game
There's no longer a singular style in the core books.
While that's a choice, it also means that the insistence that modern D&D is pastels and such has no actual truth to it.
It's sad, but my biggest challenge using A5e/LevelUp is Classes.
Because those systems more thoroughly support exploration and social pillars it's harder to integrate in an open 5e ecosystem as the players without that support lose spotlight.
D&D 5e because I want to play something with whoever else I'm with. And I know I can do most fantasy tales with minor revisions.
Twilight: 2000 for my stories of the current day, alt histories and near futures
Ten Candles because I'd want a horror game.
They have a lot of art representing dungeon crawling and gritty play. It's not black and white, but it baffles me that gritty crawler play fans feel like the modern PHB doesn't represent them. There are dozens of pieces in a similar style as below.
I still use gritty realism because despite all the protests from people who don't play with the 2024 rules, the 2024 and 2014 rules work together rather well.
As the SRD isn't meant to play the game but to enable creators to create for profit they don't need to put much into it.
The only subsystems I'm surprised hasn't been added are Traps and Bastions. Both are things that can't directly be created from the released rules. I wish both these and...