WotC Wizard's Future Plans Has 3 Big Problems: Ft. The Professor of Tolarion Community College

[LuisCarlos17f]

Let's remember the DMs who don't follow the previous settings, but they create theirs getting a piece from here and there. Some DMs create amazing mixtures, mash-up or crossovers, for example Spelljammer/Star Wars/Star Trek, or an alternate postapocalyptic Dragonlance, where Krynn was destroyed by a planar invasion of the defiler dragon-sorcerers from Athas(Dark Sun).

If WotC is reopening old settings, it is not really to sell new sourcebooks, but to make money with the DMGuild and to promote the line for future projects as multimedia franchise, for example an animated cartoon of Dragonlance, maybe in Paramount+?.

I guess the plan with D&D-Beyond is to sell the "singles parts", for example only the pages about dragons or PC species.

Hasbro is interested into to use the D&D brand to conquest the digital market, but this is not easy, even for the main and biggest videogame companies. Even these can fail some times.

Not even Hasbro CEOs can safe if the company will be still independient avoiding all possible acquisitions by a bigger megacorporation. The strategy could change radically if there is a future merger.

 

[Maxperson]

Forgotten Realms is the default setting for the game so it's not really the same, but even so, nope:

List of Forgotten Realms modules and sourcebooks - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

List of Eberron modules and sourcebooks - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Also, both of those examples are besides the point because both those settings were designed to work pretty much seamlessly with the base rules of their edition, which was not the case with some of the 2e settings. I will grant that the Eberron setting was the closest they came to repeating TSR's pattern (WotC always wants to push that Magic synergy), but it still doesn't compare.

The reason 2e split the players was that there were almost no books put out for it. You had the core books and some monster books. Nothing like Tasha's. Nothing like all the 3e crunch books. All that the players could attach themselves to was their favorite setting(s).

3e had several highly detailed settings and nothing like 2e happened. Until you can get past that fact, your claim that 5e putting out detailed settings will fracture the player base is overblown.

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm not convinced D&D "influencers" actually move the needle much. But what do I know?

It's more social media now.

Hell in 4E a YouTube video got around 40k views that was mocking older D&D. Some people blamed that contributing to 4E demise.

Now the bigger YouTubers get that with pretty much any video and there's multiple YouTubers with similar views.

Throw in the rest of social media and a general building of negativity towards WotC (mostly on the magic side of things).

OGL drama just ripped the plaster off. I knew about the MtG drama despite not buying the product since 2010. Because I watched a single video that snowballed from there.

 

[humble minion]

You had the core books and some monster books. Nothing like Tasha's. Nothing like all the 3e crunch books.

Dunno about that. The 2e 'complete book' series was pretty comprehensive - the Complete Book of Elves was utterly notorious for its brokenness in an already elf-overloaded edition, Complete Book of Gnomes was seen as a sign that 'TSR is out of ideas' and things got as granular as the Complete Necromancer's Handbook and even the Complete Sha'ir's Handbook, which was a guide to one kit for one class in one setting. And then there was the Players Option books, Tome of Magic, Ships and the Sea, Stronghold Builders Guidebook, Arms and Equipment Guide, and a terrifying array of spell and magic item compendiums etc etc etc.

Problem was that TSRs release cadence was just so fast that all these generic topics got covered and it didn't even come close to filling out all the release slots, so they ended up doing things like cranking out multiple Ravenloft modules a month for several years.

 

[Scribe]

@Scribe

Sure, I just disagree with the characterization.

IMO it’s a good thing that 5e setting books are light manuals on running games with certain themes and assumptions that differ from the standard. I’d rather have that than the splintered lines of 2e or even the hodgepodge of 3.5 or the constant flow of new lore from 4e.

And that's fair. The loose approach of 5e just is doing nothing for me at this point. Its a 'me' problem.

 

[Clint_L]

The reason 2e split the players was that there were almost no books put out for it. You had the core books and some monster books. Nothing like Tasha's. Nothing like all the 3e crunch books. All that the players could attach themselves to was their favorite setting(s).

3e had several highly detailed settings and nothing like 2e happened. Until you can get past that fact, your claim that 5e putting out detailed settings will fracture the player base is overblown.

Okay, so we're moving the goalposts now that your last point was disproved. Well then, as I pointed out in my first post on this subject, this is coming from Lisa Stevens and others who were in charge of figuring out why TSR failed, so you are welcome to explain to them why their theories were wrong, based on your own extensive research into the subject.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Okay, two points:

1) The idea that WotC are currently producing TOO MUCH stuff is compete nonsense. I have seen what too much stuff looks like.

2) So called "influencers" are a blight on modern existence. Pontificating puffed up popinjays too dumb to realise they have no idea what they are talking about. IGNORE.

 

[Jadeite]

1) The idea that WotC are currently producing TOO MUCH stuff is compete nonsense. I have seen what too much stuff looks like.

It's not the total number but the felt decrease in quality. If a company isn't able to produce a good product every other month, yet keeps doing so at the cost of quality and substance, they are producing too much. And if a company somehow manages too release a good product each month and keeps doing so, they aren't releasing too much.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It's not the total number but the felt decrease in quality.

That's a subjective view, but I haven't noticed any discernible change in quality over the 5e era. It's always hovered around the "average" mark.

As for previous eras, when they DID produce far too much stuff, there was a shotgun effect - some really great hits in amongst the disastrous misses. Due to rose tinted nostalgia specs people remember the hits and forget the disasters.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I think people of the generation generally represented on this board think of "settings" in big hardbound book form (or, potentially, boxed sets). For example, lots of folks disliked certain changes in Ravenloft, but no one said it wasn't a proper setting book. And while folks bemoaned the PDF only Eberron "book", Rising from the Last War is pretty much universally loved.

For this particular subset of the Fandom, the bare bones setting presentation of Spelljammer and Dragonlance just doesn't cut it. But, I would wager we aren't the majority of the customer base, and we're shrinking every day.

So it is perfectly reasonable to say that the Spelljammer style is "bad" but that doesn't mean it's "wrong" if you catch my meaning

yeah I have seen newer school people complain even if it is just they have less to inspire them, some times divides are not that big.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

For this particular subset of the Fandom, the bare bones setting presentation of Spelljammer and Dragonlance just doesn't cut it.

It's just a desire not to reprint old material. All that stuff is available for free on the internet.

Yeah, that's not so good for people too old to automatically go to Google if they want to know something about a setting.

 

[Jadeite]

That's a subjective view, but I haven't noticed any discernible change in quality over the 5e era. It's always hovered around the "average" mark.

As for previous eras, when they DID produce far too much stuff, there was a shotgun effect - some really great hits in amongst the disastrous misses. Due to rose tinted nostalgia specs people remember the hits and forget the disasters.

Of course it's subjective, but outside of obvious spelling errors, layout issues and books falling apart, there isn't really an universal metric to the quality of a RPG supplement.
In my opinion, Eberron and Wildermount are far better Campaign Settings than the Spelljammer Set. It could be worse, of course. It's not like the Bank of America accused Hasbro of devaluing D&D by releasing to many supplements.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Of course it's subjective, but outside of obvious spelling errors, layout issues and books falling apart, there isn't really an universal metric to the quality of a RPG supplement.
In my opinion, Eberron and Wildermount are far better Campaign Settings than the Spelljammer Set. It could be worse, of course. It's not like the Bank of America accused Hasbro of devaluing D&D by releasing to many supplements.

The Spelljammer set is a different format, and therefore not directly comparable. And lets not forget the original Spelljammer boxed set was an unmitigated flop. But there is just a general deviation about a mean, not a trend. The naffest 5e setting book was Theros (2020), by far. It was so bad that it is pretty much forgotten. The best, VGR (2021) was later.

 

[Jadeite]

As someone who owns the complete Arthaus Ravenloft, I was underwhelmed by the 2021 version.

 

[humble minion]

The Spelljammer set is a different format, and therefore not directly comparable. And lets not forget the original Spelljammer boxed set was an unmitigated flop. But there is just a general deviation about a mean, not a trend. The naffest 5e setting book was Theros (2020), by far. It was so bad that it is pretty much forgotten. The best, VGR (2021).

Funny how subjective these things are. For me, Eberron is far and away the best setting book WotC have done, Theros and Wildemount a step behind it. I genuinely LIKED Theros! I intensely disagree with the angle that VRGtR took on the setting, but looked at purely on its own merits and wilfully ignoring all the decades of Ravenloft lore that I much prefer, it's a pretty competent setting book. Only the number of holes it leaves for the DM to stitch together, and its incoherent approach to the Dark Powers striking me as major boo-boos, so it's another half-step behind. SCAG trailing the pack, it's a skimpy inadequate setting book that spends too much space on generic (and mostly underpowered) character options and not enough on setting, but it's usable. Ravnica I haven't read.

Spelljammer is, looked on as setting book, waaaaay down the bottom of the pile. But increasingly I'm wondering whether we really can look at it as a setting book at all. It kinda tries to bridge the gap between adventure and setting, a bit like the equally disappointing Strixhaven did, but because it spent a third of its page count on monsters (that were mostly stolen from Dark Sun and were utterly out of theme with the rest of the product), and most of its shipping weight on useless cardboard, it did neither job adequately.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

But the adventage of Spelljammer is this allow to add all possible elements from the rest of D&D multiverse, and even if you wanted, also the battle-bus of Fortnite: Battle Royal. It returned because Hasbro knows they can sell action figures of giffs and that type of things.

Sorry but I don't like the format of Player's sourcebook, monster book, and a module. I don't want to buy adventures, among other reasons only they can be read by the DMs.

And they are too expensive. I say in the sense if I spend the same money in a book by other publisher there are more pages with more crunch and/or fluff.

 

[SAVeira]

Okay, two points:

1) The idea that WotC are currently producing TOO MUCH stuff is compete nonsense. I have seen what too much stuff looks like.

2) So called "influencers" are a blight on modern existence. Pontificating puffed up popinjays too dumb to realise they have no idea what they are talking about. IGNORE.

So, agree with you. When I hear talk from "influencers" I tune them out as more often than not, they add nothing of value to any discussion. The whole OGL mess has shown me that there is a lot of people out there that think of themselves as D&D influencers, who I have never heard of and who I am shocked anyone listens to.

 

[SkidAce]

The reason 2e split the players was that there were almost no books put out for it. You had the core books and some monster books. Nothing like Tasha's. Nothing like all the 3e crunch books. All that the players could attach themselves to was their favorite setting(s)....

Not sure "almost no books put out for it" is the phrasing you are looking for.

A small sample...

 

[SkidAce]

The reason 2e split the players was that there were almost no books put out for it. You had the core books and some monster books. Nothing like Tasha's. Nothing like all the 3e crunch books. All that the players could attach themselves to was their favorite setting(s).

3e had several highly detailed settings and nothing like 2e happened. Until you can get past that fact, your claim that 5e putting out detailed settings will fracture the player base is overblown.

Sorry, didn't mean to pile on to a point someone had already made.

 

[SkidAce]

[tangent]

BTW, the Complete Necromancer's Book is fantastic, I still mine it for use.

[/tangent]