But you just have to look at WotC's Facebook comments to see people howl to this day that both of those books aren't "their D&D" and how WotC has completely lost the script by not doing endless iterations of "Under Daggerford" for the rest of time.
I still don't think it really counts as experimentation. And Facebook is the most reactionary Boomer-centric place possible, so like, obviously you'll get a bunch of people who think D&D should have been frozen in amber in like 1E or 2E there, because they're like 55+, but the majority of D&D's audience is like 18-36, and of them, many aren't even on Facebook, and the ones who are, are there to stay in touch with the family (I mean, most 40-somethings I know on there only use it for that). People actually using Facebook as "social media" have got to be completely unrepresentative of D&D players as a whole.
Certainly no-one on even more "30-something" socials like /r/dndnext or Twitter on Reddit saw either of those books as remotely experimental.
The $1 million Kickstarter list is full of examples of people who aren't held back by their fear of such customers to actually carry the ball as far as it probably ought to. Obojima's success (commercial, at least; the book's not out yet, so who knows about artistically) suggests that stuff like Witchlight ought to be a strain of D&D that WotC should regularly be expanding upon, rather than a one and done off-shoot.
Absolutely.
One of 5E's core problems though is that it was an edition born out of fear and attempting to apologise for risk-taking. 4E was genuinely risky as hell in many ways, and it didn't really pan out (nor was it as big as a disaster as some suggest, we have since learned). 5E's whole "one and done" thing isn't a sensible, well-considered strategy, it's more like a lizard dropping its tail when it gets scared. By avoiding actually investing in any specific products or settings (except very mildly and cautiously in the FR), WotC can avoid getting trapped in any corners. But they also can't actually really benefit from the popularity of settings or the like, beyond one book.
So Wild isn't followed up because WotC's strategy for 5E is to not follow up things. This probably hasn't been helped by the one "double-item" release they did, the Dragonlance adventure and board game being at least 50% flop (the board game - you don't end up in Ollie's by being a success!).
WotC's leadership, including Crawford, also seem to be mortally terrified of controversy, despite being unable to keep generating it, so instead of them doing a setting that was a bit bigger, bolder or braver, we've just increasingly scared-seeming and risk-reducing takes at settings - and again, no follow-ups means none of them can be improved or expanded upon nor become more popular. Also something like Obojima might attract some
mild discussion of the fact that it has anime vibes but is largely/entirely by white people, and probably this would go nowhere*, but even that kitchen is WAY too hot for Crawford/Perkins.
They've painted themselves into a corner, and until someone a bit more daring comes along, or they decide, actually it would be alright to produce more than one book relating to something that isn't the Forgotten Realms, or maybe we can stop apologising for our game than now has
at least 3x more players than its previous record, D&D isn't going to do any experimenting. Maybe Hight can encourage them. I hope so. Even if he does we probably won't see the impact for 2+ years, given the way the production pipeline works.
* = Particularly because Japan itself is an imperial power, and constantly appropriates Western mythology/culture, often in quite spectacular ways, and cultural cross-pollination/cross-propriation between Japan and the West has been common for 60+ years.
