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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5231489" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, if you're like me and have a LONG term core homebrew setting then this kind of thing is more or less irrelevant. I expect that the majority of DMs games are only at best loosely connected with 4e canon. In that case some kind of meta-plot event that WotC devises becomes at most fodder for developing stories within our own campaigns. My current campaign for instance has a decent demonic theme going. Maybe some of the ideas from this demonic plague thing will resonate with that and give me some ideas, or I might even adopt a large part of it with suitable modifications to match the assumptions of my setting. So that's a bit of a somewhat contrasting viewpoint. I can see where if you're running FR and all of a sudden WotC's version of FR takes a radical right hand turn you might not be terribly excited by that. Meta-plot can tend to radically change the nature of a setting and its almost bound to change it in ways that the current fans don't like (almost by definition). Maybe though what this will amount to is one possible path for the setting to take. They could release a whole slew of these kinds of things, each one taking the base setting and describing one direction it could take. Then the DM has a nice menu of options to pick and choose from.As far as future releases of 4e material goes I think what we have to realize is that 4e has been on a balls-to-the-wall release cycle for the last 3 years. I have 23!!!! hardcover 4e books on my shelf right now. I don't think 1e and 2e combined released 23 hardcover books in its 20 some year history, and I don't have every book by any means, there must be north of 30 books out there now. I don't think that kind of pace is sustainable for the long term. There are a few more obvious books they can release like a Shadowfell book, a Feywild book, and a Psionic Power book, but the core system is pretty nearly tapped out. No doubt they could squeeze another dozen books out of it over the long term, but there's only so much material people can actually afford to buy and need for their games.Then you toss Essentials into the mix. I think it is pretty obvious that Essentials has stolen a good bit of resources away from extensions to the main system. All the designer manpower working on that had to come from somewhere. My impression is that Hasbro's mandate is for WotC to expand the market for D&D above all else. Simply releasing more books with a narrower and narrower appeal isn't ever going to do that. The only people that are going to buy each new add-on to 4e are people that likely have most of the existing ones, a smaller and smaller audience for each one as time goes on. Certainly something like PHB3 HAD to have considerably smaller sales than PHB1, everyone needs a PHB1, a lot less people NEED a PHB3.So that would be my guess. You're just going to see less really new books and more products designed to support 4e and try to bring it to a wider audience, along with other things that will go with that. The D&D Encounters is a great example. I'd expect to see more things along those lines. Maybe we'll see some things like a new tactical mass combat system or pure TT skirmish system update to try to appeal to the Warhammer crowd and the general wargaming audience for instance. I think the majority of effort on extending and filling in the core system is going to be in Dragon mag where it serves to keep the DDI subscribers engaged. It may also be going forward we'll see a renewed emphasis on DDI too. In the long run it seems to me that having a DDI that has a VTT, a way to find and recruit players for games, and a lot of the sorts of features you see on the computer gaming networks is really the future. D&D as it is requires a lot of commitment of time and energy and the availability of people to play. The whole online dimension could make it much more accessible if it evolves far enough.</blockquote>

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