WotC WotC needs an Elon Musk

[innerdude]

No, it isn't. 5e's "prime customer base" is people that play and run D&D 5e games.

Yes. Of course. And who is the "hardest core" of any gaming group? Usually the GM. And what did D&D 5e do RADICALLY differently from the past 2 editions?

The bulk of content in the hardcover releases are targeted at GMs running the games---not the players.

And the vast majority of 5e players were introduced to the hobby this edition. I can guarantee you that if you took a pill of all D&D 5e players, the majority of them couldn't tell you the difference between Arcadia and Acheron. I know my players can't, and we've been playing 5e for 6 years now.

"Hardcore fans" are not the target audience anymore, if they were ever. The target audience is the huge group of people brought to 5e through Critical Role, Stranger Things, and the new edition.

Ummm . . . so, what descriptor do you apply to people who suddenly become willing to play D&D because they watched other people play it in a stream?

All these "non-fans" just woke up one day and decided to purchase product without becoming a fan first?

And Stranger Things is set in the '80s. Why would people who lived through the '80s suddenly decide to purchase D&D product again if they weren't already fans?

"Hmmm, I totally missed the D&D trend as a kid/teenager back in '84. I've never played the game ever or had any interest in it before, but by golly, since it's in Stranger Things, why don't I try it now!" (Of course not; they were already latent fans who wanted to rediscover the roleplaying game medium for themselves and their families).

Oh, and who and what exactly are the people who produce Critical Role? They're just "casuals," right? They're not "hardcore fans" of D&D or anything, right?

You've literally just proved my point --- it is massively, massively easier to reach a core audience (fans, current customers) to entice them to spend money than it is to take a completely unknown actor off the street and get him or her to do the same.

The fact that Critical Role favorably introduced new people to the D&D game before they had ever played a single minute of said game is one of the greatest marketing coups of all time. They were already fans before they purchased or tried the product for themselves. If you can't comprehend what a massive shift (and amazing victory) that was for D&D as a product and brand versus the way players were introduced to the game prior to 2015 (basically, get dragged to a game by a friend to "try it out"), I don't really know what to say.

The roleplaying market is, and always has been, delivered downline from the hardcore > casual.

Also, you entirely misunderstand what OneD&D is and what little we know about how it works. It's a rules update to 5e. Not a subscription service. And D&D has proven for the last decade that you can make money just selling books.

Sure, it'll be a rules update and books.

But all indications are that there are plans for re-envisioning of how WotC / Hasbro delivers content digitally, builds off of a digital tabletop platform, etc.

Any time you hear serial release of content on a digital user interaction platform, you're talking about a subscription revenue service.

 

[Remathilis]

You don't need to, but I always liked how all the different pantheons had their spaces on the Planes, and I would hate WotC to just cut that because some people don't like it.

I'm saying in a limited product, wasting space detailing where every Power lives is a poor use of the page count. Leave it undefined and use the space for other more important things. If you want that much detail, it's available elsewhere. If you don't, who cares.

 

[Remathilis]

The PS supplement On Hallowed Ground took up placing real world pantheons among the planes, to the point of giving them alignments. For example, they give Shiva a NE alignment and put him in the negative energy plane, which makes nominal sense in great wheel logic but totally misunderstands the role of Shiva in the Hindu pantheon. Like with a lot of 2e products, it is writing about non Western cultures but not writing for people from those cultures (let alone writing by them). And I'm not even religious!

On Hallowed Ground just took the info from Deities and Demigods (and Legends and Lore) and provided a Planescape spin on it. The original sources were where much of the questionable decisions came from. Much of that was stuff was set in 1e and early 2e. That's not to excuse it, just to point out Planescape wasn't the originator of it.

 

[Remathilis]

Another reason that 5e Planescape is almost certainly going to be a disaster.

If we hurry, maybe we can get WotC to make a different, less controversial book instead. Like maybe a psionics book or something...

 

[innerdude]

And by the way, just to be clear, I have zero vested personal interest in the success or failure of D&D other than it's generally good for the hobby when D&D is good and popular.

I'm not a Hasbro shareholder. I don't actively run D&D 5e. I'm happy if the rest of you are happy with it, since it won't be hitting my gaming table anytime in the foreseeable future.

For the "rising tide" of D&D to lift all boats, the game needs to be good and relevant in the hobby. And to do that, WotC/Hasbro needs to make smart artistic and business decisions. Going after the nebulous "new player pool" isn't the way to do it.

Double down on partnerships with the streamers. Double down on curating content the hardcore GMs and players will gravitate to. The "new players" and "casuals" will come along at whatever pace they will.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

They've had 8 years to update fans on the Great Wheel. They have chosen other paths, unfortunately.

They did give a bit more detail. To a single layer. Of a single plane of existence.

However, they've had other books to write. And I personally don't think "not knowing a lot about the Great Wheel" is bad.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

For the "rising tide" of D&D to lift all boats, the game needs to be good and relevant in the hobby. And to do that, WotC/Hasbro needs to make smart artistic and business decisions. Going after the nebulous "new player pool" isn't the way to do it.

Double down on partnerships with the streamers. Double down on curating content the hardcore GMs and players will gravitate to. The "new players" and "casuals" will come along at whatever pace they will.

Of course, WotC has pursued the "new player pool" as the initial "please come back, we apologize for 4E" strategy. They have consciously worked to make D&D art look more like the broader spectrum of people in the real world, and did the same with the NPCs in the game. They've employed multiple strategies to introduce kids to the game, including a new D&D school clubs initiative. They have introduced ever easier entry ramps to the game for both players and DMs.

And they've also worked with streamers, produced products in response to requests from long-time gamers, and created more advanced products for established players, purchased a subscription service for online tools and are developing a VTT.

This isn't a binary. They can and are following both strategies. And given how successful they are, it looks like both tracks are working.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

They did give a bit more detail. To a single layer. Of a single plane of existence.

However, they've had other books to write. And I personally don't think "not knowing a lot about the Great Wheel" is bad.

We've also gotten three books featuring parts of the inner planes. Ravenloft and the Feywild are a much easier way to get groups into planar adventures, since the hook for the Plane of Shadow or the Plane of Faerie is a lot more obvious than what player characters are going to do in Bytopia or Pandemonium.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

We've also gotten three books featuring parts of the inner planes. Ravenloft and the Feywild are a much easier way to get groups into planar adventures, since the hook for the Plane of Shadow or the Plane of Faerie is a lot more obvious than what player characters are going to do in Bytopia or Pandemonium.

That's because 4e's planes of existence are better adventuring locations than the Outer. And, thus, better designed for D&D.

 

[Staffan]

And I understand why you value "setting consistency". I really do. I think it's often nice to have. If a future edition published an Eberron book that said that the Mourning was caused by Mordenkainen having a wizard battle with Urza, I would be more than a bit miffed because a huge part of Eberron that should stay consistent is that the Mourning is never given a canon cause (and the additional complaint that I think that would be a bad explanation). Hell, I would be upset if my version of what caused the Mourning was made canon, not because I think my answer is bad, but because I love that Eberron has "mystery boxes" that the DM is required to fill. Setting consistency should be respected, to an extent.

But here's why you're wrong. And I don't mean "I disagree with your opinion" wrong, I mean provably, absolutely wrong.

D&D is a game. It's meant to be played, not just have its lore and books discussed and read. "Playability" is a requirement for the game. It's necessary. It's not something that's nice to have or annoying when you don't have it, like with setting consistency. When you don't have "playability", you can't have a game. You can have a game and settings without "setting consistency". They aren't necessary, they're just often nice to have.

The way I see it, each setting has core traits and peripheral traits. To use Eberron as an example, I think some of its core traits are:

• Set two years after the formal end of the Last War, a continent-spanning conflict which tore the former kingdom of Galifar into its constituent Five Nations, and then tore those nations into bits as well.
• Arcane magic as science and as business, first and foremost represented by the Dragonmarked houses.
• Distant and possibly non-existent gods, allowing for a wide variety of religions and interpretations of religion.
• De-emphasis of alignment as a force.
• The Mournlands as the remains of the kingdom of Cyre, a place surrounded by mists and plagued by weird magic.

There are other traits, but these suffice as examples. Any version of Eberron made should adhere to these traits. But there are other things that are not as vital, and the implementation of the core traits can vary. For example:

• The exact abilities provided by the dragonmarks can vary, but the themes should remain. In 3e, the Least Mark of Finding lets the bearer cast identify, know direction, or locate object 1/day (2 for know direction). In 5e, you get hunter's mark and, at 3rd level, locate object 1/day each. In addition, if you are an actual spellcaster a number of spells get added to your spell list. Both are valid interpretations of the theme "the Mark of Finding gives you magical abilities to find stuff, duh."
• The exact abilities and domains offered by various faiths.
• In 3e, one of the defining things about the Mournlands was that living creatures didn't heal there. No natural healing, and most healing magic didn't work. That's not a necessary trait of the Mournlands, though it could be a thing that happens in some regions.

Of course, the major problem when re-interpreting a setting is to identify what traits belong in which category.