D&D 5E Revisited Setting News: Its not the 2023 Classic setting, but rather for 2024

[LuisCarlos17f]

Ravenloft can be Scooby-Doo or Fankelda's Book of Spooks, but it also can be "mature" like the classic 30-40 horror movies, or worse. Sometimes insinuating is better than showing.

There is a good reason to suspect about a reboot of all settings: to cause the obsolence of the previous lore. If you know this thanks the fandom wiki and the cheaper PDFs from DM Guild, then who will want to buy the new and more expensive books that tell again the same plot? But now when I rembember it I wonder because we haven't in the last years more novels and comics based in D&D worlds but FR.

 

[dave2008]

Possibly something to do with the core market being 12-17?

Along those lines I think it has to do with wanting each book to sell a certain number of volumes. They had previously mentioned every book they release should sell 100,000+ copies but the number is probably different now.

If they were willing to sell less books, they could go out on the edge more and target the non-core market. But that is not the plan for 5e.

 

[Parmandur]

Right. Non-horror fans point to 5E Ravenloft and say "that's horror" while horror fans break their spine from doubling over laughing. Which does not bode well for any of the more "mature-themed" settings that WotC owns.

Absolutely, because "horror fans" aren't the target demo: teenagers are. Making an MCU-ish action Setting with Horror dressings and elements is the point. And yhat does indicate what WotC will do with any future Settings. Whether that is boring well or I'll is up to personal taste. I let my kids read D&D books, so I'm fine with a prediction table standard.

There's a difference between Disney, the animation studio that pushes songs and love stories in all their films, and the Disney subsidiary Marvel which does the PG-13 superhero stuff. When I see 5E Ravenloft, I think Disney the animation studio and theme park, hence the reference to Haunted Mansion. Goosebumps might be too scary.

The top three biggest films of all time are Avatar, Avengers: Endgame, and Titanic. Of those, only Endgame is a Disney film.

Well, first of all...Titanic and Avatar are Disney films now. But I meant in U.S. box office (since the target audience is realistically American teenagers), so I was referring to the Force Awakens, Endgame, and the new Spiderman movie.

The MCU is the gold standard for PG-13 in this day and age, and what WotC is aiming for in tone. Yes, Ravenloft and Curse of Strahd are like MCU level Horror, not what "Horror fans" might go for.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If they were willing to sell less books, they could go out on the edge more and target the non-core market.

Or they could just give all their money away.

But that is not the plan for 5e.

There are 3PP to cater to no non-core markets.

 

[dave2008]

There are 3PP to cater to no non-core markets.

I agree, and I think that is WotC's stance. I was just pointing out why they are not doing it. The issue with 3PP is for some reason some people just will not look at it. I hear that complaint a lot on these forums.

 

[eyeheartawk]

It seems you misread my question as I did not ask for a comparison. I asked:

"What do you like about Inferno Road? I just read the description and it tells me next to nothing about the adventure."

So what do you like about it and what is the adventure about?

No, I get it. I just don't have the booklet nearby and read it years ago. Broad strokes, it's got tons of cool random tables, especially for generating hell vehicles and for deciding what kind of soulgrub you are.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

The problem is that in most ''grimdark'' settings, the writers dont seem to know the difference between horror and edgy stuff. As a big fan of horror and proud edgelord, most of what pass as ''grimdark'' is a good dose of teenage angst layered upon overly lethal gameplay (looking at you LotFP). And even though I happen to like those kind of things, I can probably guess that it is not what a huge part of the market desires

And to say that OG Ravenloft is horror...is like saying Rime of the Frostmaiden is an horror adventure...

D&D ''horror'' is like a Resident Evil ''horror'' : it can be creepy, it can be gross, you can fear for your life a few times, but in the end you're still dropkicking infected villagers to explode their head, unload a magnum-load of lead in the body of monsters and finish it off with a rocket launcher appearing from thin air.

And you know what, that suits me just fine.

 

[Parmandur]

The problem is that in most ''grimdark'' settings, the writers dont seem to know the difference between horror and edgy stuff. As a big fan of horror and proud edgelord, most of what pass as ''grimdark'' is a good dose of teenage angst layered upon overly lethal gameplay (looking at you LotFP). And even though I happen to like those kind of things, I can probably guess that it is not what a huge part of the market desires

And to say that OG Ravenloft is horror...is like saying Rime of the Frostmaiden is an horror adventure...

D&D ''horror'' is like a Resident Evil ''horror'' : it can be creepy, it can be gross, you can fear for your life a few times, but in the end you're still dropkicking infected villagers to explode their head, unload a magnum-load of lead in the body of monsters and finish it off with a rocket launcher appearing from thin air.

And you know what, that suits me just fine.

For real core genre horror, Call of Cthulu is on standby.

 

[overgeeked]

Absolutely, because "horror fans" aren't the target demo: teenagers are.

Right. Which was the point being made that launched this whole tangent. Adults marketing things to kids often sanitize things beyond where the kids actually want them to be. Hence my comment about thinking "young teenager" but instead landing squarely in the 6-10 year old range. Those teenagers are horror fans. They're also Marvel fans. And they're also My Little Pony fans. And RWBY fans. And Helluva Boss fans. And anime fans. Etc. So targeting just the fantasy superhero demographic is a bit short sighted. It's clearly working gangbusters for them, but that's also causing cognitive dissonance when dealing with older, more mature-themed settings. Like say the Disney theme park that is 5E Ravenloft.

The MCU is the gold standard for PG-13 in this day and age, and what WotC is aiming for in tone. Yes, Ravenloft and Curse of Strahd are like MCU level Horror, not what "Horror fans" might go for.

Right. Which is why the Call of Cthulhu is booming (NFT problems not withstanding) and the OSR is having a golden age. It's wild to me that D&D is so popular that even badly done remakes of older D&D editions sell better than some amazingly done non-D&D games.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

For real core genre horror, Call of Cthulu is on standby.

Yeah, and that's not say that 5e cant do horror.

The soon-to-released Dark Soul 5e will probably be more ''horror'' than most of WotC's releases if they can translate the feeling of mystery and crushing isolation from the videogames to paper.