D&D 5E Am I no longer WoTC's target audience?

[Urriak Uruk]

You're right in general but for me 5e is the best edition I've played. By far. It rekindled my love of the game. My memory is hazy but I feel like I'm more enthusiastic about it now than I was as a 12 year old.

This is true! In an ideal world, D&D will create content that both brings back in old players and invites new ones. This is what Wizards is trying to do, and honestly I think they've done an incredible job, and that's why it's the most successful edition ever.

But of course this isn't going to satisfy everyone. As people here have said, the older players want updates of content they played when they were younger (Dark Sun for example), or they want more player options to keep the gameplay fresh.

So content like Critical Role, Rick & Morty or Acq. Inc. is going to be frustrating to those people. Now I think that a lot of content is being updated for older players (Eberron was just updated, and Descent into Avernus feels like a Planescape adventure).

I think it's pretty clear that fresher and current content, like Wildemount, is perfectly capable of making money (it is now #2 on Amazon for D&D books). This isn't always the case (Rick & Morty is #17, and Acq. Inc. is #33). At the same time, Eberron is #4 and Xanathar's #5, so older gamers are driving purchases too.

For individual products, one is tilted for one market or another. But overall, it does not seem to me like Wizard's has very narrowly defined who its target market actually is. I fully expect at least one product this year to be released which are meant for more established players.

 

[Parmandur]

COBOL? Talk about ancient psuedo medieval technology.

Yeah, that's literally my father's programming language from his programming days...

 

[jasper]

Yeah, that's literally my father's programming language from his programming days...

HEAVY BREATHING "PARAMANDUR I AM YOUR FATHER!"

 

[jasper]

Now fetch my inhaler and have you seen my glasses?

 

[Oofta]

Yeah, that's literally my father's programming language from his programming days...

Dang whipper-snapper. Back in my day we coded in machine code. We didn't even have 1's, we just made do with 0's! And we liked it! We coded right down to the bare metal and heaven forbid if a vacuum tube blew! Now get off my punch cards!

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The reboot of Star Wars coul be in 2027 (or maybe after the 50th Anniversary, as homage), and then I hope jedis and Skywalkers not only as main characters, and other factions, not only jedis and siths, as Force adepts, but without that stupid manicheism about light and dark side of the Force. For me its cosmic philosophy is as a real martial artist watching anime about ninjas with ki-trained superpowers.

And Star Wars is a good example of how sci-fi get old bad and soon. Today new generation of fandom talk about mobiles, interactive holograms, augmented reality, nanotechnology, parallele universes, digital immortality and mind-transfer.

* The door for the return of the Dark Sun isn't closed at all. But there is a project really too big and it needs more time. Maybe they are working for the metaplot adding new regions within its feywild zone, "the land within the wind", and from here the eladrin are exploring, lauching expedetions, reconquering and reconstruting in the tainted zones from other continents.

The main candidates to be adapted to videogame (apart of FR, of course) are Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Spelljammer, and maybe Birthright for a project as "Warhammer: Total War". This means some worlds could come return after the videogame because this could be the right advertising. And I dare to say the same about media adaptation to the big or little screen.

 

[Zardnaar]

The reboot of Star Wars coul be in 2027 (or maybe after the 50th Anniversary, as homage), and then I hope jedis and Skywalkers not only as main characters, and other factions, not only jedis and siths, as Force adepts, but without that stupid manicheism about light and dark side of the Force. For me its cosmic philosophy is as a real martial artist watching anime about ninjas with ki-trained superpowers.

And Star Wars is a good example of how sci-fi get old bad and soon. Today new generation of fandom talk about mobiles, interactive holograms, augmented reality, nanotechnology, parallele universes, digital immortality and mind-transfer.

* The door for the return of the Dark Sun isn't closed at all. But there is a project really too big and it needs more time. Maybe they are working for the metaplot adding new regions within its feywild zone, "the land within the wind", and from here the eladrin are exploring, lauching expedetions, reconquering and reconstruting in the tainted zones from other continents.

The main candidates to be adapted to videogame (apart of FR, of course) are Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Spelljammer, and maybe Birthright for a project as "Warhammer: Total War". This means some worlds could come return after the videogame because this could be the right advertising. And I dare to say the same about media adaptation to the big or little screen.

Light side/darkside is a big thing inStar Wars while the feywikd thing was a very bad idea for Darjsun.

There's certain things one expects from certain franchises and if you get away from it those franchises often get into trouble.

Main reason is if you change whatever attracted people to that whatever in the first place you tend to lose your existing fans and often fail to get new ones.

There's plenty in Dragonlance and Ravenloft for example that I don't like. To make it appeal to me though they're gonna lose fans who like whatever DL and RL offer.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

A demiplane within Athas shouldn't be impossible, it would be something like their own version of an antinuclear shelter.

Other option could be allowing WotC staff to publish their own reboot of the D&D worlds in DM Guild. If it doesn't work you don't worry because it is not canon. That is the reason I mention so many times the chronomancers and time spheres, because allowing a D&D version of Marvel What If? or DC Elseworlds would be nice.

 

[Parmandur]

Dang whipper-snapper. Back in my day we coded in machine code. We didn't even have 1's, we just made do with 0's! And we liked it! We coded right down to the bare metal and heaven forbid if a vacuum tube blew! Now get off my punch cards!

My dad did, indeed, learn to code with Punch cards.

 

[Zardnaar]

A demiplane within Athas shouldn't be impossible, it would be something like their own version of an antinuclear shelter.

Other option could be allowing WotC staff to publish their own reboot of the D&D worlds in DM Guild. If it doesn't work you don't worry because it is not canon. That is the reason I mention so many times the chronomancers and time spheres, because allowing a D&D version of Marvel What If? or DC Elseworlds would be nice.

It's more should Athas gave a string get presence. Since several species were wiped out in the cleansing wars and there's not much in the way of vegetation probably not.