D&D General Is DnD being mothballed?

[darjr]

Literally people are complaining about the back to back release of three books and the marketing pace is exhausting.

How is that mothballed?

 

[Tony Vargas]

Basically he believes DnD 5e is basically being mothballed, or sidelined as just a legacy thing they do.

It's an idea that made sense back in 2012-14. It looked like D&D had struck out big time, from Hasbro's corporate point of view, and there was a legitimate fear it would be withdrawn, possibly for decades (which, for some of us, would be, like, the rest of our lives), that 5e was a last shoestring attempt to keep it on the shelves.
Then boom, 80s come-back, D&D flies off the shelves, boom, pandemic, VTTs finally take off - sky's the limit.

It's only in context of the idea that, maybe, print books will be falling by the wayside in favor of a subscription VTT model, now that VTTs actually work and have acceptance, that it makes any sense at all, today.

 

[darjr]

True, but hope springs eternal right? That, and the other games released in the past decade were kind of crap until BG3. It's the first AAA single player D&D game released in a long time.

There was. It was so terrible it caught people’s PCs on FIRE.

 

[Oofta]

Its not just more books, but what books they are making, if profit is the goal, more player options and more content about stuff like that, would be made more, but...they dont do that, its not profit, its something else.

You're assuming more books, more options equals more profit. A lot of people are happy with the core book and maybe another book or two that expands on the core. Churning out a ton of material just saturates the environment and can lead to confusion resulting in less sales for each book published and even the core rule books.

Flooding the market didn't work for TSR, 3E or 4E.

 

[overgeeked]

Maybe. It would explain a few head scratchers. But, as pointed out by Justin Alexander, this isn’t new news…this is old news. Ten-year-old news at this point. And production is increasing.

 

[FallenRX]

It's an idea that made sense back in 2012-14. It looked like D&D had struck out big time, from Hasbro's corporate point of view, and there was a legitimate fear it would be withdrawn, possibly for decades (which, for some of us, would be, like, the rest of our lives), that 5e was a last shoestring attempt to keep it on the shelves.
Then boom, 80s come-back, D&D flies off the shelves, boom, pandemic, VTTs finally take off - sky's the limit.

It's only in context of the idea that, maybe, print books will be falling by the wayside in favor of a subscription VTT model, now that VTTs actually work and have acceptance, that it makes any sense at all, today.

Youd think so, but i dont think they are actually giving that money to the TTRPG, they are keeping them on that dirt cheap thing becuase they can make more money while investing less in something that matters less, when the big money is in the brand and IP.
I dont think the situation has changed much from where it was in 2012, the millions dnd is making is not going into the game, its like saying Marvel is bigger than ever, but its not going into the comics thats for sure.

 

[Incenjucar]

I may not like 5E myself but I cannot deny that it's doing just fine and is likely to continue to do so as long as they don't pull another Very Bad Decision like the OGL fiasco.

 

[payn]

Lets see what happens when the VTT rolls out.

 

[darjr]

Ten years D&D 5e has been crushing it. And we still get this kind of navel gazing. It’s exhausting.

That’s longer than most RPG companies exist, Even MCDM by Matt’s plans, won’t last that long.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Nearly everything the guy says here is, in my professional opinion, very stupid.