Eberron It Is? [UPDATED & CONFIRMED!]

As I said in the other thread, the question is now whether we're just going to see DMs Guild and PDF support, or whether, once the psionic and artificer rules are set, we'll be seeing something more substantial in the way of an actual published book. I have a feeling that once the necessary rules are in place (with a likely rules expansion book early next year for new classes and races), we'll be seeing a full book, and this is just to whet the appetite and get things started...

 

[Remathilis]

Absolutely. If they had released Dark Sun instead of Eberron not one person on the internet would have complained about their decision.

I'm assuming you forgot the sarcasm tag on this, because otherwise you are dead wrong. Personally, my desire for more Dark Sun is 76th on the list of settings I want to see done, slightly below Jakandor and a smidge above wherever setting the first D&D movie was set in.

 

[Remathilis]

That's what worries me. An early access PDF sold to us to playtest is NOT the template that I'd like to see. Neither is hamfisted corporate IP-sharing products designed to "expand" the player-base, potentially at the expense of the core audience and the long-suffering fans who have put 5e in the position for its resurgence by buying the products to this point.

As a customer, I prefer to be engaged, not milked...

Don't fret, there's plenty of Forgotten Realms to explore if these experiments are a failure...

 

[kenmarable]

Yeah, it is puzzling.

I don't think 3e or 4e players make up that much of the 5e player base anymore. It's a chunk for sure, but enough to release a setting just for them? Maybe they think Eberron will be a better fit for the new non-hobby players than something like Planescape or Dark Sun.

Well, not sure about that claim about 3e and 4e players (my anecdata says it’s more 50/50 “new to 5e” vs “3e” but my anecdata is useless and I haven’t seen hard numbers from WotC). However, from what unscientific internet polls on a variety of sites have shown, that when asked about favorite past settings, Eberron is consistently at or near the top of all of them. Planescape is always right up there as well - and, oddly enough, seems to have grown in popularity the past few years. Other ones tend to rotate more based on the audience of that site, but it seems quite clear that at least in what you can conclude from unscientific polls but on a variety of old and new sites, Eberron is one of the most popular old settings.

Plus (anecdata again), a lot of the new-with-5e crowd that I know and interacted with have been interested in D&D’s past and past settings. So its absurd to think that an Eberron release is just for past players. New players are interested as well!

 

[Dungeonosophy]

It's cool there's a sort of "Eberron product guide" included in the book. Gets everyone up to speed.

 

[ad_hoc]

Well, not sure about that claim about 3e and 4e players (my anecdata says it’s more 50/50 “new to 5e” vs “3e” but my anecdata is useless and I haven’t seen hard numbers from WotC).

This post from ICv2 in 2002 talks about how WotC were stoked to have sold more than 1 million total copies of the core books for 3e (so probably 400-500k PHBs). So that was up to 500k PHBs over the course of 2 years. (Interestingly, at the bottom of the article WotC estimated that 20 million people worldwide have played D&D counting every edition)

In May 2018, WotC estimated that there were over 15 million active 5e players in North America alone. Since then sales have continued to rise - The 5e PHB is currently selling better than it was at launch 4 years ago.

Even if every single player of 3e were to play 5e now they would still only make up a small amount of the players.

https://icv2.com/articles/games/view/1021/over-1-million-d-d-3e-rulebooks-sold

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...he-Da-Vinci-Code-meets-Gangs-of-New-York-quot

 

[Parmandur]

"This book and a theoretical print release will be designed to complement each other, though some material (artificer, races) will be duplicated."

https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/1021497273757458433?s=09

So, it looks like the idea, at least one of their potential models, is for this book to be it's own thing, fluff and lore wise, with a future book product repeating only the rules material. So, Eberron aficianados get something from this book, but the crunch is free to appear in a real book. I dig this, hard.

 

[thundershot]

Good for those that want this. Bad for me who wanted Spelljammer and Dark Sun...

 

[Parmandur]

Good for those that want this. Bad for me who wanted Spelljammer and Dark Sun...

To be honest, this seems to make both of those, and any other, settings getting support much more likely.

 

[kenmarable]

This post from ICv2 in 2002 talks about how WotC were stoked to have sold more than 1 million total copies of the core books for 3e (so probably 400-500k PHBs). So that was up to 500k PHBs over the course of 2 years. (Interestingly, at the bottom of the article WotC estimated that 20 million people worldwide have played D&D counting every edition)

In May 2018, WotC estimated that there were over 15 million active 5e players in North America alone. Since then sales have continued to rise - The 5e PHB is currently selling better than it was at launch 4 years ago.

Even if every single player of 3e were to play 5e now they would still only make up a small amount of the players.

https://icv2.com/articles/games/view/1021/over-1-million-d-d-3e-rulebooks-sold

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...he-Da-Vinci-Code-meets-Gangs-of-New-York-quot

There is a lot of fuzzy math here comparing between comparing sales numbers to active players and and 3e’s sales in the first year (with sales numbers still increasing) to 5e sales active players after several years of growth, not to mention the words “counting every edition” are never mentioned anywhere near the 20 million active player number and so on, which shows that no one has hard numbers other than WotC. (Besides even with the 5e PHB’s great sales numbers, the number of people who bought the book is likely much smaller than the number of active players. Pretty clearly that’s been the case for every edition.)

Sure, 5e is selling great and selling better than 3e and a lot of that is from awesome growth (which is awesome!), but there’s no evidence in these numbers that players of older editions are an insignificant number of 5e players without making a lot of unfounded assumptions.

I have no idea what the number is, but from WotC’s actions, they at least seem to consider both the players of all previous editions and new to 5e players to all be worthy groups to target.

 

[Dire Bare]

Lot of folks are assuming a future traditional hardcover release . . . . there has been no official word on that, and personally, I don't think it's going to happen. Mearls did confirm via twitter that once this book moves out of "beta" (or early access, or whateveryouwanttocallit) they will offer a POD option (which, I suppose, could include a hardcover option).

This is obviously another 5th edition product experiment by Wizards (well, even years in almost everything seems to be), and I think we'll get the updated digital release, a POD release, and that's it for this book. And, that's it officially from WotC on Eberron, although we now have the setting open on the DMs Guild. In fact, Baker mentioned on his blog that he's working on a supplement to the book with more character options (no timeline on release) with Rudy Rutenberg, and it's my guess this will be through the DMs Guild, rather than directly through WotC.

If this proves profitable enough to balance out costs and time on WotC's end . . . we're likely to see a similar treatment for other past settings.