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

[M_Natas]

Rare, no, but certainly a minority of customers.

That's up to debate. I haven't seen this kind of complaint broadly. But I am also not super keyed in and just keep one eye on reddit.

Are 15 year olds mad about Spelljammer? I'm guessing not.

I play D&D only since 2018 and I found the spelljammer Boxed set very lacking.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

This is anecdotal based on a lot of players I spoke with about Spelljammer back then, but I think the reason it didn't do well was that players of that time period were very resistant to making D&D to sci-fi like. As soon as they heard space travel, they just shut down and were not open to giving Spelljammer a fair shake. That attitude has relaxed a great deal over the decades.

 

[Reynard]

This is anecdotal based on a lot of players I spoke with about Spelljammer back then, but I think the reason it didn't do well was that players of that time period were very resistant to making D&D to sci-fi like. As soon as they heard space travel, they just shut down and were not open to giving Spelljammer a fair shake. That attitude has relaxed a great deal over the decades.

Which is ironic, since if Spelljammer had actually been sci-fi instead of... whatever it is, me and my group would have been much more interested.

 

[Maxperson]

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

A small sample...

View attachment 274733

The complete books didn't have a lot of crunch in them. The vast majority of it was just lore. Monster mythology was just Deities and Demigods for non-human gods, but I will count that one. And the options books put out right before the end in an effort to save TSR were mostly junk and too late.

For most of 2e(until the options books near the end), virtually all the crunch was in the core books. The settings were where that edition was at.

Edit: I did forget the magic item and spell compendiums. Those were really good, but at least from the magic item compendium perspective they were just reprints of thing put out in modules, dragon magazines, etc. Not sure if the spell compendiums were that way.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

This is anecdotal based on a lot of players I spoke with about Spelljammer back then, but I think the reason it didn't do well was that players of that time period were very resistant to making D&D to sci-fi like. As soon as they heard space travel, they just shut down and were not open to giving Spelljammer a fair shake. That attitude has relaxed a great deal over the decades.

I bought it at the time it came out, and was enthusiastic about science fiction D&D. Big fan of the Barrier Peaks module. My problem with it was it wasn't science fiction enough. It was just based around weird discredited 18th century science, and was too much up itself with it's own cleverness to be actually playable.

I was very disappointed with it, a seriously missed opportunity.

 

[Reynard]

I bought it at the time it came out, and was enthusiastic about science fiction D&D. Big fan of the Barrier Peaks module. My problem with it was it wasn't science fiction enough. It was just based around weird discredited 18th century science, and was too much up itself with it's own cleverness to be actually playable.

I was very disappointed with it, a seriously missed opportunity.

At least we got Dragonstar a decade or so later, and Starfinder another decade after that.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

At least we got Dragonstar a decade or so later, and Starfinder another decade after that.

Starfinder is pretty much what I expected Spelljammer to be!

 

[ersatzphil]

[tangent]

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

[/tangent]

I'll second that. A complete mini setting and a stealth update to Al-Qadim? Along with tons of lore and usable NPC characters? That book is awesome.

 

[edosan]

I've got a gloomy feeling that a bunch of Youtubers discovered that bashing WotC was a lucrative endeavour during the OGL mess

They were already out there, there are a lot of OSR people that spend more time complaining about 5e than actually playing stuff they like, or so it seems.

Unfortunately I think more of them have realized you can get a lot more clicks being part of the echo chamber of 5E SUX DOOD WIZARDS IS EVIL and this guy seems to be one of them.

 

[Zardnaar]

Heh you don't have to like the YouTubers but you must be living under a rock last 15 years not to realize they exist. They're not really influencers in the traditional sense.

If WotC screws up again a'la 4E that edition war is nothing compared to what would happen now.