D&D 5E WotC Sept 2023 player survey is live.

[Clint_L]

Whale absolutely is offensive terminology; it reduces the people to whom it refers to mere sources of revenue. Which is exactly the intent, because in reality the people to whom it refers are victims of extremely predatory marketing tactics. Calling them “whales” simultaneously dehumanizes them and disguises the fact that they are most often children with illicit access to parents’ credit card information and adults with gambling or shopping addictions.

Calling someone a "whale" in this context (any context, really) is generally considered offensive: it is suggesting that they are being victimized by predatory marketing practices, with a connotation that they are foolish, spendthrifts, or otherwise easy "marks."

 

[Parmandur]

Whale absolutely is offensive terminology; it reduces the people to whom it refers to mere sources of revenue. Which is exactly the intent, because in reality the people to whom it refers are victims of extremely predatory marketing tactics. Calling them “whales” simultaneously dehumanizes them and disguises the fact that they are most often children with illicit access to parents’ credit card information and adults with gambling or shopping addictions.

I see what you are saying, but my point was that, in regards to D&D books at least, WotC is not doing that (Magic, OTOH).

 

[Parmandur]

Calling someone a "whale" in this context (any context, really) is generally considered offensive: it is suggesting that they are being victimized by predatory marketing practices, with a connotation that they are foolish, spendthrifts, or otherwise easy "marks."

I have seen plenty of people refer to themselves as whales, particularly.whem bemoaning the fact that there are not 6 new D&D books every month. "WotC is leaving my money on the table!"

 

[The Glen]

I'm pretty sure someone did (or is doing) a conversion of the Creature Catalogue to 5E over on RPG.net.

They already did it on the Vaults of Pandius. Quality may vary though

 

[Retreater]

I spend a ton on D&D...but very little of it goes to WotC. Miniatures and terrain are about 90% of my overall outlay, so Dwarven Forge, Reaper, Archon, Wizkids, and their ilk get most of my cash. I suspect this is one of the motivators behind the VTT - to try to get folks like me to send some of those dollars WotC's way.

Oh yeah. I spend a lot on gaming products - books from other publishers, VTT stuff, minis, dice, terrain, Kickstarters, etc. WotC has gotten nothing from me in nearly a year. I've even purchased 5e-compatible products from other companies even though I have no intention of playing 5e again, just because I like to collect.
For my tastes, WotC doesn't produce material worth collecting: the writing is uninspired, the art and production values are substandard, the rules content is lacking.
Compare recent WotC books to Metis Creative's Historica Arcanum line. Or MCDM's Flee Mortals. Or Paizo's Kingmaker Adventure Path. Or various Battlezoo books.
WotC's stuff is just mediocre. And when I've been collecting for decades, it's not interesting enough for me.

 

[LordEntrails]

It's closed now, that was a pretty short survey period. IS it usually that short?

 

[Lupin]

I was in the middle of taking this survey and finished typing up an essay at about the halfway mark only to get "This survey is no longer accepting responses." Did I really hit the cutoff? The survey link banner is still at the top of D&D Beyond....

It's closed now, that was a pretty short survey period. IS it usually that short?

And now I know. They should update D&D Beyond to fix that (or extend the cutoff?).

 

[Parmandur]

It's closed now, that was a pretty short survey period. IS it usually that short?

Sometimes shorter.

 

[Parmandur]

It's closed now, that was a pretty short survey period. IS it usually that short?

Way back when they started this, Mike mearla would still respond to people on Twitter for transparency, and said they closed the same-ish survey because they reached their sample size. Assume the same thing happens now.

 

[JEB]

If they released something small, like an updated 5E Creature Catalogue with all of the monsters from the old BECMI modules converted to 5E

FWIW, The Tortle Package included 5E updates of a small number of Mystara monsters (the decapus, the geonid, the topi, and of course the tortle).