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.