I honestly don't know the answer to this but I keep thinking as we sit in the humdrum days between releases of anything from WotC - why are there so many damn D&D fantasy adjacent games? Shouldn't this be a time for publishers to be talking about anything else? Where are all the sci-fi games? The horror games? The apocalyptic future games? I feel like a lot of variety is under the surface but it just never sees the light of day.
And I'm sure the answer is that well, D&D is the 800 LB gorilla, and that's what people want to keep talking about. Which is fine, but here we are more than 6 months later, and I still can't tell you why I should choose Tales of the Valiant over D&D 2024, or Level Up over D&D 2024, or even 13th Age and Shadow of the Weird Wizard over any of the 5e games. I'm getting a weird sort of "fantasy setting/system" blindness, and I'm just not hearing or able to differentiate what the elevator pitch is for these games.
Shadowdark has done a great job I think in standing out as different. I've really enjoyed Mothership the past few months, and it is so night and day different from D&D both in theme, setting and mechanics. So what's a prep session look like for Mothership? Or Call of Cthulhu?