Blue
Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
I expect the future to be similar to 3.5 - I don't mean that in a divisive, "what is an edition" way. Just that when the 3.5 core books came out the players were already used to a greater degree character creation/advancement options and so many tables took existing 3ed splatbook material, tweaked it to work with the new core books, and continued to use it until it was eventually replaced, assuming it was. After the 3.5 core books, the new splatbooks did not follow the previous books exactly, often having both new and updated options in the books, leaving some options to die on the vine, or be fodder for later splatbooks.
I think we'll see things differ even more from the 3.5 model in terms of contents. The "Of Everything" books often were a best-of the character creations from setting books that would do well in other games, but I expect we'll see a demand for them sooner rather than multiple campaign-settings later. Plus the 2024 PHB has had a number of cleric and wizard domains cut that I also think will make a reappearance soon, so my expectation is we will have the first new book primarily focused on character creation/advancement in 2025, a "PHB2" version of Tasha's/Xanathar's.
Ten years into 5e, the game has matured, but it has also lost it's initial luster from when it was "the new hotness". While some tables will likely play with just core books (2024) (as WotC is calling them on their covers), my guess would be that many or perhaps even most tables will not want to shrink their options and as such will continue to use them for now and/or demand new/updated ones be available soon.
I think we'll see things differ even more from the 3.5 model in terms of contents. The "Of Everything" books often were a best-of the character creations from setting books that would do well in other games, but I expect we'll see a demand for them sooner rather than multiple campaign-settings later. Plus the 2024 PHB has had a number of cleric and wizard domains cut that I also think will make a reappearance soon, so my expectation is we will have the first new book primarily focused on character creation/advancement in 2025, a "PHB2" version of Tasha's/Xanathar's.
Ten years into 5e, the game has matured, but it has also lost it's initial luster from when it was "the new hotness". While some tables will likely play with just core books (2024) (as WotC is calling them on their covers), my guess would be that many or perhaps even most tables will not want to shrink their options and as such will continue to use them for now and/or demand new/updated ones be available soon.