Speculating on the Future of D&D

[robus]

And Ravnica, as has been said, it's just pulling together info and art they already had and putting it into a D&D book. Sure, it's much more involvement than Eberron because you have to provide more than just lore, but still...

Was Wyatt the lead on Ravnica? His first love was D&D, so perhaps he’s heading a team to produce these x-products (after the apparent success of his planeshift pdfs)?

 

[Tiles]

The Ravnica book will supply a system to create adventure with the guilds as a mechanism for its structure. It’s not a typical adventure but more of a way to build a adventure?? I’m likely explaining this poorly....

 

[bmfrosty]

I would like to see Greyhawk.I think it would be an interesting old school contrast with Eberron.

I like also to see some rule support/options for tactical gaming in 5e. I am not sure whether there is a market for modularity (I remember than word being used early on ) of game styles rather than game worlds, but I like to see if these rules could stretch a bit wider.

I would like to see Greyhawk, but as it's own RPG product. Use modern mechanics, but the even flatter math, character progression, and turn structure of BECMI. Make it something between DCC and LotFP. Call it D&D Classic maybe. Co-opt Joseph Goodman. Have a whole bunch of optional rules in the back. Race as class. No multiclassing by default.

 

[Mercurius]

Sorry, but I think the most you'll ever see for Greyhawk is a PDF-to-POD treatment like Eberron. Greyhawk is much beloved by a certain segment of aging fans, but has less widespread and contemporary appeal. I am not saying this as a pejorative judgment as I love a lot of music that doesn't hold widespread contempary appeal; Greyhawk just feels a bit aesthetically dated in a way that doesn't translate well to today.

 

[Storyteller Hero]

*shakes magic eight ball*

"The answer is 42."

That clinches it. We're getting 42 new setting books before the end of 5th edition.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Was Wyatt the lead on Ravnica? His first love was D&D, so perhaps he’s heading a team to produce these x-products (after the apparent success of his planeshift pdfs)?

Yes. He wrote all the Planeshift articles also. And he posted on Twitter that this book only became possible because of so much positive response to the articles.

 

[delericho]

My take: 2019 will look very much like 2018. Except in one way, in which it will look surprisingly different.

I have no idea what that "one way" is.

 

[Li Shenron]

I do think that Eberron sets a new precendent for "classic settings" that they are at least strongly considering continuing, depending upon how Eberron does. Presumably the Wayfinder's book didn't take a lot of resources to create: it was mostly one author and as far as I can tell, includes mostly recycled art. The document itself will continue to evolve as they playtest and finetune rules, and eventually it will be offered for POD (once its "finished"). Who knows, maybe they'll eventually spiff it up with new art and produce an actual hardcover book in a couple years.

There really seems no downside to continuing with further PDF-to-POD classic settings, even one or more per year. The obvious candidates, in rough order of likelihood, would be: Dark Sun, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Mystara. After that you get into the "hmm, maybe" territory of settings with less of a following: Birthright, Rokugan, Nentir Vale/Nerath, etc. As I said in another thread, the Forgotten Realms is kind of in its own category. Will they follow a similar approach or will they go full in and produce a hardcover setting book, or maybe even just leave it as a kind of nebulous default setting for story arcs?

If they focus on settings, I think it is indeed possible they will increase the number of books per year. That's because generic books like Xanathar are more easily seen as potentially useful by all gaming groups, while setting-specific books have a smaller target.

Then, all 5e supplements so far featured a blend of fluff and crunch. What I wonder, is what kind of crunch they can fit into setting books, that can really shine as relevant and iconic to such settings. For this reason, I think Dark Sun is the most likely fantasy setting to see a whole book about, at least because psionics is such an integral part of it, and will make such book really "heavy" and important.

Birthright could contain a few very interesting rules modules, but the setting itself has a bit fallen into obscurity through the years. I don't really know, but I think it never had the same popularity as other settings.

Rokugan requires completely different races and classes, and can benefit from a few small rules modules too, but is a no-go because WotC doesn't own the IPR anymore.

But Mystara and Greyhawk? I am not really familiar with them, but at a glance they are such "normal" fantasy settings that I can't imagine how their settings books can have the equivalent weight of Dark Sun. If they do a Mystara or Greyhawk supplement, it'd probably be similar to SCAG, which featured only a small amount of fairly generic crunch (part of which is already reprinted now). I don't see much compelling reason for buying those books for the fluff, when you can buy their original fantasy setting books which are a lot more valuable in terms of fluff (just compare the 5e SCAG with any older edition's FRCS book).

 

[DEFCON 1]

No one should be making any predictions.

Because when you do, you get in your head what you think/hope/want to have happen. And when it doesn't, you'll come here onto ENWorld complaining about it.

As I don't want want the forums filled with threads of nothing but people complaining that they didn't get what they made up for themselves, I'd love it for everyone to just give it a rest for once.

 

[Parmandur]

Sorry, but I think the most you'll ever see for Greyhawk is a PDF-to-POD treatment like Eberron. Greyhawk is much beloved by a certain segment of aging fans, but has less widespread and contemporary appeal. I am not saying this as a pejorative judgment as I love a lot of music that doesn't hold widespread contempary appeal; Greyhawk just feels a bit aesthetically dated in a way that doesn't translate well to today.

It's not even that it doesn't work anymore, it's that all you need to run Greyhawk are the core rulebooks and the OFF for the '83 boxed set. No race or subclass expansion required, no rules to make the assumptions different than core.