D&D 5E (2014) Musings on the likelihood of future products

[TwoSix]

ANYDAY NOW!
Explorer's Guide to Ivalice/Spira/Hyrule or whatever other JRPG setting is left unexploited by official TTRPGs.

Man, just the thought of a Final Fantasy themed D&D sourcebook (with a Job system!) gets my '90s kid heart thumping.

 

[humble minion]

I don't think we'll see Ravenloft. We'll probably see another horror-themed and Ravenlofty adventure along the lines of CoS at some stage, but i don't think an actual setting book will happen. The setting has always been weird and disjointed and a bit incoherent even by early-edition D&D standards (and i say this as someone who really likes it) and making a strong setting book out of all the various monster-of-the-week adventures that are the building blocks of the original product line is not an easy thing to do. Plus I'm not sure what the rights status is - White Wolf owned them during 3e and put out some wonderful stuff, has the rights to that material reverted to WotC? It could be a minefield...

More MtG settings seem inevitable. Judging from the very early glimpses of Theros, it could also cover some quasi-Epic level material, in lieu of a dedicated Epic Level handbook? Though I have nowhere near enough knowledge of MtG to guess what other settings might get books devoted to them.

Dark Sun I suspect we'll see eventually, but probably not soon. If it were anywhere on the near horizon, WotC wouldn't still be spitballing around ideas about how to make the very basic bits of psionics work. Speaking of which, my guess is that the entirety of psionics will be found in the 5e Dark Sun sourcebook. Some of the subclasses etc might make it into a Xanathar's 2 at some point, but a psionics sourcebook looks vanishingly unlikely.

I'm less convinced than some that we'll get a Planescape setting or planar sourcebook. Specialised sourcebooks really seem to be out of fashion. A planes-traversing mega-adventure maybe, or a Xanathar's 2 type book with significant coverage of the planes, maybe, but Ravnica has already done one pass over the 'entire campaign setting in a single city' ground and I can't see it being done all over again with Sigil in a big hurry.

I reckon we'll see some sort of Asian-inspired book at some point, though I don't think it'll be a re-do of Kara-tur or Rokugan or any other D&D attempt at covering this ground. I suspect WotC will try to partner with some sort of Chinese or Japanese media or games property for this, thought that may mean the book is weighted heavily towards one particular culture from the region rather than being about a generic fantasy Asia and trying to cover all the bases from ninja to Chinese dragons to Mongol horse archers, the Celestial Bureaucracy, and penangallans...

Spelljammer I think is a pipedream. It'll get mentions here and there as nod-and-wink easter eggs for us oldies, but I can't see a serious attempt to make a setting out of it. It hasn't been touched since 2nd ed and wasn't a big seller even then, and it's not like there's a huge grassroots groundswell of support for it.

And there'll be more adventure hardbacks. They'll all be nominally located in the forgotten realms. There won't be a FR sourcebook.

 

[atanakar]

The bones tell me that Spelljammer as an adventure book with rules for the ships at the back, similar to Ghost of Saltmarsh, is very likely.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I am most curious to see what they do for the 50th Anniversary.

I think it would be great if they could issue some commemorative reprints of old classics. That seems like low-hanging fruit.

But what will they do with 5e?

 

[Lem23]

My guess would be Anniversary edition, which would either be a version of OD&D with historical notes, commentary, etc, and essays from people involved, or v 5.5.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

No, you're right, I forgot about those, even though I played the hell out of Dogma and DA. Are Dark Souls and Bloodborn in the same ''world''? That would make a horrifying setting (Remember Perkins saying ''I you liked CoS, you'll like what I'm working on'' ?).

As of D.A, I played a lot of Dragon AGE from Green Ronin, but IIRC, the license is kinda in a greyplace/void for now That's sad cause it would allow WotC to propose a High Fantasy yet dark, gritty and low magic setting, which I would adore.

Bloodborne and Dark Souls are in different "worlds", and Demon's Souls is either a different world or the distant past of Dark Souls. The main issue is that Bloodborne and Demon's Souls are IPs owned by Sony, whereas Dark Souls is an IP owned by Fromsoft (all the games are by Fromsoft of course), so it's unlikely you could license them together.

Re: Dragon Age, yeah it is kind of a pity, it'd be an interesting full circle if WotC published a Dragon Age RPG, but I don't think it's likely. I do think a 5E-system-based DA game could work (with a completely different magic system, classes, and races of course). If it wasn't for the issues Bioware had after Casey Hudson left, we'd probably have seen another DA game already (when he left in 2014, it looked like Anthem was 12-18 months from release, DAI was due out soon, and DA4 to start development soon thereafter, and Andromeda was also looking like it was a year or so from release - instead things fell apart without him there, and after DAI the DA team was dragged over to work on Anthem and Andromeda, and both Anthem and Andromeda just slogged on for years, whilst limited work was done on DA - Hudson is back now, came back to find Anthem arguably less far along than when he left it, and essentially kicked it out the door, and seems to be going ahead with a new DA4).

 

[Burnside]

Much as I like Planescape and Dark Sun, their popularity outside of guys in their 40s-50s who still use the word "module" even though WotC stopped using it 20 years ago is minimal - and even in their heyday, these settings were not very successful financially. The fact that this board overwhelmingly consists of that demographic could lead one to believe there is a demand for those settings, but WotC's market research doesn't bear that out. Each has a Gen X cult following but not a growing fanbase.

Exandria is the money setting right now. Nothing they release in 2020 will outsell the Wildemount book. If they don't release more Exandria stuff, including a hardcover adventure, they will have dropped the ball. And I'm not saying that because I particularly want Exandria stuff; it's just that it's very clearly the best business move they could make right now. WAY ahead of Planescape, Dark Sun, or Spelljammer.

Kara-Tur or any iteration of "Oriental Adventures" is a PR disaster waiting to happen for them unless they hire a team of Asian creators to make it. Otherwise I'm sure they'll have the common sense to avoid it.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Much as I like Planescape and Dark Sun, their popularity outside of guys in their 40s-50s who still use the word "module" even though WotC stopped using it 20 years ago is minimal - and even in their heyday, these settings were not very successful financially. The fact that this board overwhelmingly consists of that demographic could lead one to believe there is a demand for those settings, but WotC's market research doesn't bear that out. Each has a Gen X cult following but not a growing fanbase.

Exandria is the money setting right now. Nothing they release in 2020 will outsell the Wildemount book. If they don't release more Exandria stuff, including a hardcover adventure, they will have dropped the ball. And I'm not saying that because I particularly want Exandria stuff; it's just that it's very clearly the best business move they could make right now. WAY ahead of Planescape, Dark Sun, or Spelljammer.

Maybe.

That's actually a pretty sound analysis, except for one thing that I'm not sure we know (do we?) .... the licensing and IP status of Exandria, and the contractual relation between Mercer and Hasbro.

We know that Green Ronin released Tal'Dorei, and it was ... I mean, it certainly didn't do as well as Wildemount, right? So the Mercer/Hasbro collaboration is mutually beneficial.

...but in the long run, in terms of making ALL THE MONEY (which is what companies like Hasbro like to do), they will want to pour more resources into developing the IP that the completely own and can develop further, and less money into IP that they do not completely own.

So more Exandria? Sure. But these things can be complicated.

Kara-Tur or any iteration of "Oriental Adventures" is a PR disaster waiting to happen for them unless they hire a team of Asian creators to make it. Otherwise I'm sure they'll have the common sense to avoid it.

I think that there are two factors; the first is that they are more than aware of the sensitivities that they need to deal with (see what happened with just Chult).

On the other hand, with wuxia, anime, and the general ubiquity of Asian culture that has been mainstreamed here, I think that we will see some type of themed sourcebook that is more Asian-inspired fantasy as opposed to the pseudo-Western that we see.

Al Qadim, on the other hand? That might be quite a bit harder.

 

[S'mon]

I'd be hoping for 5e Gamma World like how they did 4e Gamma World, but more integrated into core 5e as an alternate setting. I'd love a 5e Star Frontiers/Space Opera setting, too. I'd say these were 'not impossible'.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Ravenloft has got a great potential for the market of teenages, young adults and fans of supernatural romance. I guess the future titles will be a "heroes of horror", a compilation of modules about the grand conjuction, the remakes of the house of the gryphon hill and Bleak House: The Death of Rudolph van Richten, and later an almost spin-off, a expanded version of the adventures set in Manifest, the city from "Ghostwalk".

Ravenloft as an action-live production? remember when some years ago an anime based in Castlevania was only a project.

* Most of us agree WotC should ask advice to Asian companies, but Asians shouldn't reject the idea of a Wuxia D&D but to see this like a golden opportunity to introduce their culture into western society, like a bridge. Who would want a new Oriental Adventures? Otaku community.

* If Mutant Year Zero has got a videogame adaptation, why not Gamma World? But 5th Ed isn't ready yet for other genres as space opera, far west and post-apocalypse.