D&D 5E In your Years of Gaming, How many Psionic Characters did you See played

[Hussar]

That's a good question. Dark Sun had a release in 4e, so it probably did shoot a bit of adrenaline in the memory of gamers who went over to 5e. What percentage of 5e gamers remembered Greyhawk? And yet there is a Ghosts of Saltmarsh book. Or how about those 5e gamers you mention who remembered Ravenloft? It doesn't require psionics, but the point is that memory for a setting doesn't necessarily mean that the publishers have forgotten it and don't desire publishing for the setting.

Thing is, there is about a page of Greyhawk in Ghosts of Saltmarsh. It's pretty much setting neutral other than that. Sure, it's putatively set in Greyhawk, but, setting it anywhere else isn't a whole lot of work. One certainly doesn't need any knowledge of Greyhawk to run the module.

And, again, Ravenloft was released VERY early in 5e's run. As in 2016 when the market was about half the size it is now. So, it would have been written in 2015, when, although 5e was certainly gaining steam and doing really well, it was still being marketted directly to nostagia.

Look, I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just bringing up the counter argument. Dark Sun is a pretty dim memory and likely something the majority of 5e gamers have never even heard of. I do hope that it hits that 70% mark that's getting bandied about. That would be groovy. But, I do think that folks need to understand that it's becoming less and less likely. I mean, that poll that was linked above put Dark Sun at 25%. That's the death knell of the setting. If only a quarter of the people on En World are interested in seeing it, how much less do think the general public would like to see it?

Even with viruses, I don't think the over 50s are dying off that quickly...

And nostalgia and retogaming has never been more popular.

This poll 5E - Which three topics do you most want to receive official (WotC) treatment? from last week has Dark Sun on a whopping 27%, behind only Planescape (on an even more whopping 40%).

See, but that's the problem again. 40% isn't good enough. That's DM's Guild territory. Which, again, I hope I'm wrong, but, if that 70% mark is the guideline, then, well, none of those settings have enough interest. Ghosts of Saltmarsh largely got a shot in the arm because there were no naval rules in 5e to speak of and no piratey setting. Naval stuff and pirates are always popular. I remember in 3e that I owned at least 5 different d20 D&D rulesets for running sea campaigns. It was very, very popular. So, we get a Ghosts of Saltmarsh.

But, if a given setting can't even break the 50% mark, well, it's probably not going to happen.

 

[Olrox17]

Thing is, there is about a page of Greyhawk in Ghosts of Saltmarsh. It's pretty much setting neutral other than that. Sure, it's putatively set in Greyhawk, but, setting it anywhere else isn't a whole lot of work. One certainly doesn't need any knowledge of Greyhawk to run the module.

And, again, Ravenloft was released VERY early in 5e's run. As in 2016 when the market was about half the size it is now. So, it would have been written in 2015, when, although 5e was certainly gaining steam and doing really well, it was still being marketted directly to nostagia.

Look, I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just bringing up the counter argument. Dark Sun is a pretty dim memory and likely something the majority of 5e gamers have never even heard of. I do hope that it hits that 70% mark that's getting bandied about. That would be groovy. But, I do think that folks need to understand that it's becoming less and less likely. I mean, that poll that was linked above put Dark Sun at 25%. That's the death knell of the setting. If only a quarter of the people on En World are interested in seeing it, how much less do think the general public would like to see it?



See, but that's the problem again. 40% isn't good enough. That's DM's Guild territory. Which, again, I hope I'm wrong, but, if that 70% mark is the guideline, then, well, none of those settings have enough interest. Ghosts of Saltmarsh largely got a shot in the arm because there were no naval rules in 5e to speak of and no piratey setting. Naval stuff and pirates are always popular. I remember in 3e that I owned at least 5 different d20 D&D rulesets for running sea campaigns. It was very, very popular. So, we get a Ghosts of Saltmarsh.

But, if a given setting can't even break the 50% mark, well, it's probably not going to happen.

Um, nothing in that poll goes above 39%. Does that mean that Enworld wants nothing out of that giant list? I don't think so.
Rather, every poster can only vote 3 options out of more than 20. In other words, you can only vote your top 3 most wanted books.

Is anything below your top 3 an undesirable product that you'd never buy? I don't think so.

 

[MGibster]

I remember a player had an opportunity to wish for something and wished for an 18 strength. The DM gave him a psionic strength of 18.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

A better way to look at that poll is that, currently, the top 5 things on the list that respondents want to see officially published from from WotC are (in order):

1) Planescape/Manual of the Planes
2) Dark Sun
3) Psionics
4) Spelljammer
5) Greyhawk

It would be interesting to see the results on of this sort of poll somewhere with a wider response base.

 

[Voadam]

I would not say frequently but it was probably the most common non core thing in 2e and 3e/PF games I played in and DM'd. 4e they came out only in PH3 late in the cycle so there was a lot of other official non-core classes before them including classes from AD&D's and 3's core.

I played two separate soul knives (I think that is the name of the mindblade class) in 3.5 and Pathfinder.

 

[Maxperson]

Thing is, there is about a page of Greyhawk in Ghosts of Saltmarsh. It's pretty much setting neutral other than that. Sure, it's putatively set in Greyhawk, but, setting it anywhere else isn't a whole lot of work. One certainly doesn't need any knowledge of Greyhawk to run the module.

Setting pretty much anything pretty much anywhere is not a whole lot of work, unless the place it's going to is Dark Sun or some other highly restrictive and changed setting. Usually it's just changing some names and plunking it down where you want it.

Dark Sun is a pretty dim memory and likely something the majority of 5e gamers have never even heard of. I do hope that it hits that 70% mark that's getting bandied about. That would be groovy. But, I do think that folks need to understand that it's becoming less and less likely. I mean, that poll that was linked above put Dark Sun at 25%. That's the death knell of the setting. If only a quarter of the people on En World are interested in seeing it, how much less do think the general public would like to see it?

Dark Sun was highly popular when it came out, so the number of newer players that haven't heard of it doesn't mean much. It will probably be highly popular with the new crowd if it gets made. It's a setting that has high appeal to people.

See, but that's the problem again. 40% isn't good enough.

The poll above isn't an accurate representation of the players at large. Further, a lot of people had misgivings about 2e and 3e psionics based on how they perceived 1e psionics(confusing and strange). The new crowd doesn't have a lot of the hang-ups that the older crowd does and would probably just embrace it and go.

But, if a given setting can't even break the 50% mark, well, it's probably not going to happen.

I'd bet that if they think they could hit 70%, they would make it, even if it hasn't currently hit 70% due to a majority of the new players simply not knowing about it.

 

[Maxperson]

Um, nothing in that poll goes above 39%. Does that mean that Enworld wants nothing out of that giant list? I don't think so.
Rather, every poster can only vote 3 options out of more than 20. In other words, you can only vote you top 3 most wanted books.

Is anything below your top 3 an undesirable product that you'd never buy? I don't think so.

This, too. If I wasn't limited to 3, almost everything on that list would have gotten a vote from me.

 

[Lanefan]

This, too. If I wasn't limited to 3, almost everything on that list would have gotten a vote from me.

Problem with their doing everything on the list is we'd be right back to the 2e-3e days of splat overload, which in both instances largely sank those editions.

WotC, to their great credit, seem to have learned that lesson quite well and aren't about to repeat that mistake.

 

[Maxperson]

Problem with their doing everything on the list is we'd be right back to the 2e-3e days of splat overload, which in both instances largely sank those editions.

WotC, to their great credit, seem to have learned that lesson quite well and aren't about to repeat that mistake.

Right. I wasn't suggesting that they make them all. I was only agreeing that the poll numbers would have been much higher across the board if we could vote for as many as we wanted.

 

[Hussar]

Um, nothing in that poll goes above 39%. Does that mean that Enworld wants nothing out of that giant list? I don't think so.
Rather, every poster can only vote 3 options out of more than 20. In other words, you can only vote you top 3 most wanted books.

Is anything below your top 3 an undesirable product that you'd never buy? I don't think so.

No, it means that the market for those things is so fragmented that any one of those products becomes a niche sale that WotC isn't insterested in pursuing.

That seems to be the rather cold equation that's being operated under. Sure, a new Dark Sun might be popular with new players, but, there's no way to know that is there? You have to do the market research and testing and all that goodness before you even consider the project. Same with Psionics or any number of other things. Since there isn't any clear winner for what people want, it's a much riskier thing to do.

Particularly when WotC is really putting all its eggs in one basket with such a slow release rate.