D&D General Ch-Ch-Changes

[Ruin Explorer]

I hope not. I enjoy being the DM the most. It is not D&D without a DM for me.

As I said, I'm sure they'll still have some kind of basically tabletop version of D&D for us oldies - with digital assistance and so on, and that'll still have a DM. I just doubt the "main" version will by then.

I'm betting on Exandria. If any campaign setting surpasses FR for the title of "most popular generic fantasy setting", it's gonna be Exandria.

Yeah I couldn't rule that out, but I think even with the popularity of Critical Role, Exandria would need get additional traction, like popular computer games, TV shows, and so on, and maintain that for a while before it could actually overtake the FR. They're getting an animated series, which is certainly a first step there. If it's very successful and long-ish running that could be part of such a transition.

I don't think "organic D&D" will go away, as there will always be a nostalgia component* and it may be that many will simply prefer interacting with real people, rolling real dice, and playing in the realms of real imagination (over virtual simulation). I mean, the rise of D&D's popularity in recent years certainly attests to that.

(*and even as Gen Xers age out, there will be Millenials and Zoomers who feel nostalgia for a time that they barely, if at all, experienced; remember that Stranger Things was created by two brothers who were born the year their show is set in)

I think there's a risk of confusing nostalgia for the '80s and people having nostalgia for when they played or the like. Stranger Things is one thing, but I suspect the Millenials and Zoomers and so on will actually, in 2041, if they're playing D&D "nostalgically" will not be "trying to get back to the '80s", but rather to the '90s, '00s, and even '10s. I mean, I have very little nostalgia, if any, for '80s D&D, but definitely some for '90s D&D, and I see similar here a lot - it seems to be much more common that people wish for '90s settings, for example, to return than '80s ones (for now). I mean, I'm actually slightly surprised we haven't started getting 3.XE nostalgia stuff yet.

 

[MGibster]

nterestingly, Hasbro clearly regretted this decision, because in 2005, they then bought back a lot of the IPs for $65m. So maybe they won't make that mistake again? But by the time 2041 rolls around, that'll have been 36 years ago, which means pretty much no-one who even worked at Hasbro in 2005 will be in upper management by 2041, so attitudes may change a great deal.

Heck. Hasbro started out making pencils, pencil cases, and selling textiles in the 1920s. Who knows what kind of changes are in store by 2041?

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Yeah I couldn't rule that out, but I think even with the popularity of Critical Role, Exandria would need get additional traction, like popular computer games, TV shows, and so on, and maintain that for a while before it could actually overtake the FR. They're getting an animated series, which is certainly a first step there. If it's very successful and long-ish running that could be part of such a transition.

I agree. It's not going to happen anytime soon, IMO, but if the current success of the show and products they have made indicates anything, it's that Critical Role is gonna surpass FR in the future. It will take a TV show, more products, and more campaigns to do so, but IMO, it's very likely to happen.

 

[tetrasodium]

I agree. It's not going to happen anytime soon, IMO, but if the current success of the show and products they have made indicates anything, it's that Critical Role is gonna surpass FR in the future. It will take a TV show, more products, and more campaigns to do so, but IMO, it's very likely to happen.

it does something to FR right now though. A big part of FR's "popularity" comes from the mere exposure effect. As shows like critical role & the chain maintain & gain popularity it spreads familiarity in more than 5e's "nearly every product must be in FR or have the setting faerunized as much as possible" resulting in people being frustrated at FRs plot armor when they try games closer to other settings they are familiar with.

 

[Mind of tempest]

part of the question would depend on what gets considered fantasy fiction to people in 2041 as we are seeing developments of high fantasy in genres which did not have them before such a wuxia and also how people get lead to fantasy concepts as on one hand I was born to geeks but my defult ideas on what is acceptable to call fantasy are different from yours.
or fantasy could become so self-referenchal that nearly nothing changes.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I agree. It's not going to happen anytime soon, IMO, but if the current success of the show and products they have made indicates anything, it's that Critical Role is gonna surpass FR in the future. It will take a TV show, more products, and more campaigns to do so, but IMO, it's very likely to happen.

I feel like "very likely" feels off to me, because it's celebrity-connected, rather than being just an established product, and for all of the 20th century and the 21st century so far, anything celeb-connected, has been... volatile. Even there's no scandal or whatever, stars can suddenly fade, suddenly be outshone. Audiences are often fickle. This is why I think the multimedia aspect is important, because at a certain point, even if all the people who watch streamed D&D and the like switched away to some "hip new thing", if CR has TV shows and games, that matters a lot less, because even if you lose the streaming audience there's no hard link to those other audiences.

The only other problem I see for Exandria is that, if anything, it may be more boringly generic than the FR, so even assuming CR is popular and remains so, I could see a new fantasy setting coming out of the woodwork, one that was sufficiently kitchen-sink but less boringly so, in that 20-year period, and suddenly becoming "THE" D&D setting for a lot of players.

It's interesting to imagine what it would have looked like if we'd had social media and so on back in 1994 (and no, forums were not meaningfully that), when things like Dark Sun and Planescape were coming out. I think Planescape would have been waaaaay bigger than it was, because people would have been talking about it so much on social media etc. I don't think a revived Planescape will have anything near that cachet, it's been done, but a new setting could, if sufficiently clever.

part of the question would depend on what gets considered fantasy fiction to people in 2041 as we are seeing developments of high fantasy in genres which did not have them before such a wuxia and also how people get lead to fantasy concepts as on one hand I was born to geeks but my defult ideas on what is acceptable to call fantasy are different from yours.
or fantasy could become so self-referenchal that nearly nothing changes.

Pretty sure fantasy will just continue to be pretty all-encompassing term for "anything with magic in it". Not sure why you think Wuxia is new to fantasy/RPGs. There have been RPGs featuring Wuxia since the 1990s (Feng Shui, Exalted, and so on). Indeed, D&D has had official Wuxia-inspired sourcebooks before - for example the Book of Nine Swords for 3.5E.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I feel like "very likely" feels off to me, because it's celebrity-connected, rather than being just an established product, and for all of the 20th century and the 21st century so far, anything celeb-connected, has been... volatile. Even there's no scandal or whatever, stars can suddenly fade, suddenly be outshone. Audiences are often fickle. This is why I think the multimedia aspect is important, because at a certain point, even if all the people who watch streamed D&D and the like switched away to some "hip new thing", if CR has TV shows and games, that matters a lot less, because even if you lose the streaming audience there's no hard link to those other audiences.

The only other problem I see for Exandria is that, if anything, it may be more boringly generic than the FR, so even assuming CR is popular and remains so, I could see a new fantasy setting coming out of the woodwork, one that was sufficiently kitchen-sink but less boringly so, in that 20-year period, and suddenly becoming "THE" D&D setting for a lot of players.

It's interesting to imagine what it would have looked like if we'd had social media and so on back in 1994 (and no, forums were not meaningfully that), when things like Dark Sun and Planescape were coming out. I think Planescape would have been waaaaay bigger than it was, because people would have been talking about it so much on social media etc. I don't think a revived Planescape will have anything near that cachet, it's been done, but a new setting could, if sufficiently clever.



Pretty sure fantasy will just continue to be pretty all-encompassing. Not sure why you think Wuxia is new to fantasy/RPGs. There have been RPGs featuring Wuxia since the 1990s (Feng Shui, Exalted, and so on). Indeed, D&D has had official Wuxia-inspired sourcebooks before - for example the Book of Nine Swords for 3.5E.

define sufficiently clever?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

define sufficiently clever?

If I could define it, I could write the book that was sufficiently clever

But in broad terms we'd probably be looking at something actually-novel (as in new)-seeming, like Planescape was, and which was zeitgeist-y to the period it was in, like Planescape was. Planescape brought a large number of elements to D&D that really hadn't been done in any significant way before, and that didn't match with typical expectations of what D&D was about. Further, as noted, those elements matched a lot of what younger (i.e. sort of 16-29) people were looking for in fiction, especially fantasy fiction, in the 1990s. It fit right in with stuff like Neil Gaiman's comics, for example. And let's be real - Tony DiTerlizzi's art was a big part of this - not only was it cool, it was extremely different to typical fantasy art of the period, and again aligned with the zeitgeist, being whimsical and a bit difficult/weird, rather than purely straightforwardly representational.

Obviously it's not yet possible to say what the zeitgeist of the 2020s and 2030s will be, of course.

No-one has done that since, or if they have, it's pretty much sunk without a trace. Even stuff like Eberron, whilst clever and expanding notions of D&D a bit, is essentially far more "inside the box" than Planescape (it also lacked any particularly different art - instead it's art was good but unsurprising).

 

[Mind of tempest]

If I could define it, I could write the book that was sufficiently clever

But in broad terms we'd probably be looking at something actually-novel (as in new)-seeming, like Planescape was, and which was zeitgeist-y to the period it was in, like Planescape was. Planescape brought a large number of elements to D&D that really hadn't been done in any significant way before, and that didn't match with typical expectations of what D&D was about. Further, as noted, those elements matched a lot of what younger (i.e. sort of 16-29) people were looking for in fiction, especially fantasy fiction, in the 1990s. It fit right in with stuff like Neil Gaiman's comics, for example. And let's be real - Tony DiTerlizzi's art was a big part of this - not only was it cool, it was extremely different to typical fantasy art of the period, and again aligned with the zeitgeist, being whimsical and a bit difficult/weird, rather than purely straightforwardly representational.

Obviously it's not yet possible to say what the zeitgeist of the 2020s and 2030s will be, of course.

No-one has done that since, or if they have, it's pretty much sunk without a trace. Even stuff like Eberron, whilst clever and expanding notions of D&D a bit, is essentially far more "inside the box" than Planescape (it also lacked any particularly different art - instead it's art was good but unsurprising).

any idea what is in the zeitgeist now that is not quite do able or would need a whole setting being built to do?

 

[MoonSong]

(*Funny, there was no autocomplete on Tony. Did he delete his account?)

Odd, he hasn't posted anyhthing in almost a year. I hope he is fine wherever he is.