D&D (2024) Speculation Welcome: What's Next for D&D?

[mamba]

In the video, Professor DM states that his sources tell him that WotC/Hasbro has laid off the entirety of the book production team. (Not the design staff - those responsible for the printing and distribution of the physical product.)

is that part of the December layoffs or a late / weird reference to the Random House deal ending?

Pretty sure they will continue to have books, so it does sound like it ultimately means nothing / is more about WotC internal processes than anything else

 

[Yaarel]

... the December layoffs ... is more about WotC internal processes than anything else

I think this is correct. Hasbro WotC is restructuring internal processes.

At the same time, layoffs including inhouse hardback book distribution, while simultaneously hiring digital content employees, suggests Hasbro WotC expects the digital market to become an increasing percentage of the D&D customers.

 

[Yaarel]

I'm somewhat blended too.
For in-person games, I really want physical copies at the table. (No one buys their own books, so we have to pass around my copies.)
For online games, I like having a physical book nearby, mostly because PDFs load very slowly and aren't a good format for reading (overall). If I'm running Pathfinder 2, I would use Archives of Nethys exclusively for looking up rules. The physical books just aren't great for finding information - especially if you have multiple sources. PDFs are also bad.
I don't use D&D Beyond. Even when I was running 5e regularly, I hated the UI.

For the D&D book PDFs, I tend to have several open at the same time on my laptop.

I rely on the Bookmarks of PDFs to quickly find content. I also modify the Bookmarks, so I can have all the related info in one place, like creating a "virtual chapter" for "Visibility", whose Bookmarks link every reference for light source equipment, obscuration rules, hiding and finding skill checks, invisibility, line of sight, etcetera. This helps access routine content. A "find" then can hunt for a specific term, if I am unsure where it is.

Still a google check for a spell, is often the fastest way to consult it.

The way DnDBeyond lacks a way to quickly jump alphabetically thru a huge list, like a list of monsters, makes it less easy consult − one needs to guess which number (23? or 148?) happens to be the page that one needs.

 

[Hussar]

Well, there is the point that the video will likely be right at some point in the future. At some point we likely will see DnD being primarily digital.

Granted that point could very well be decades from now. But it probably will be right someday. And just like WotC selling off DnD rumours, if you keep making the prediction long enough, odds are you’ll be right.

 

[DavyGreenwind]

My predictions:
May: Vecna Adventure
July: Infinite Staircase
September: PHB
Oct/Nov: MM
Dec/2025: DMG

Dang. So close. Just needed to switch around MM and DMG

 

[teitan]

WotC is madly seeking a way to get away from the OGL that market research groups approve. They'll probably even push back to 2025, depending on those precious approval percentage points... although 2025 ending in 5 doesn't exactly help getting away from "5e."

I wouldn't expect less content per year - that doesn't support their pay-to-play dreams.

They already got away from the OGL and Creative Commons is not reversible.

 

[teitan]

Well, the point was "designer kicked off the edition intimates a new edition is on the horizon" that I was asking about.

except he wasn't kicked off, for all intents & purposes he was promoted to oversee all D&D branding and then to Magic before leaving recently. That was in 2019.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Short Answer:
"Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria!"

Longer Answer:
Some older gamers move away to nostalgia games (OSR) or stuff promoted on old-school social media like YouTube (MCDM). Some stick to 2014 or go back to Pathfinder or 4e (like me). We introduce our players to different game systems and they don't buy into the 2024 printings - and let's be honest, they weren't the market drivers anyway.
Put this way, I GM for 11 players on a weekly basis. I purchase more content than all of them combined. Hasbro has essentially lost me as a customer - so that's 12 customers they lost. I'm not going to be running their games at conventions, game stores, programming at work, etc.

Most Longest Answer:
Nerd culture is going to retreat into the background in the next several years. No, not just because of D&D, but I think it will happen. Game of Thrones has been forgotten. Stranger Things is wrapping up this season. Superhero films have stopped rocking the box office. Comics have been dead for years. The one thing still selling is a direct competitor to D&D - and that's video games.
So we're going to see what happened during the 4e era. We're going to start losing players to Baldur's Gate and other video games just like we lost to WoW. The booming success of 5e was a fluke, and most of the players who came in are going to fade to other hobbies or adult responsibilities. Hasbro might retain 10% of the new fans they gained over the past 5 years. This will probably mean that WotC doesn't generate the income it needs to, Hasbro continues to suffer financially, and likely ends up bankrupt in the next year or so.

This is wildly beyond normal pessimism into the realm of doom-crying.
I will happily put $100 on it. In 5 years none of what you are predicting will have come true.

On the other hand, Doctor Who is 60, the X-Men are 50, Star Wars is 45, and Transformers is 40, and all of them are as culturally relevant as they were 20 years ago. We complain about the endless reboots and sequels, actors playing their beloved characters decades after they first appeared as them, and the collectable market absolutely looking like a late 90s Toys R Us. New media properties are few and far between and the current state of the media is serving up nostalgia to middle aged adults and sharing it with their children.

I'm not saying it's never going to change (geopolitical or climate catastrophe might make the latest Star Trek movie less important) but the fact that geeky things are now mainstream things and a massive part of the culture for decades isn't going away soon.

When it comes to culture, fashion, music, art, nothing ever dies anymore. There are no big wild swings in pop culture, just new trends added to existing trends, forever.

Emo doesn’t die it just gets iterated on and remixed with the aesthetics that can cropped up in the last 20 years.

I know kids who are in high school right now that are building hot rods, and guys older than me who are dropping thousands on the bleeding edge of Japanese import performance and JDM stuff. Southern Rock never died, there are Gen Z bands making new music in that style.

It is so different from the world boomers grew up in, most folks older than me don’t even know how to conceptualize it.