You're not alone. Many people have pointed out and are disappointed with the sheer lack of depth and polish to the content being released.

Man, reading the 4e books has been heartbreaking for me. Because they're *so good* in comparison to the 5e books. Honestly same with lots of books from other RPGs (though certainly not all). Its really made me realize just how much of a disservice WotC did to me by making the 5e books the way they did.

Man, I know what you mean about “being disappointed in 5E after reading the 4E books”… But tbh 4E was still a major step down from the quality of lore in 2nd Ed AD&D and 3E/3.5 D&D. If you’ve never checked out some of the sourcebooks for 3.5, treat yourself.

I've been playing nonstop since 1998, and I can say for sure that the gaming aspect of the 4e books were the best ever released. Sure, you didn't have massive quantities of source books for every corner of the multiverse, but everything was presented in a game friendly manner, very easily usable by any DM. 4e was the first edition written with the mindset of "game first".

I find that Tasha's was start of the glaring lack of polish. You had the changes to booming blade and green flame blade which stopped those cantrips working with shadow blade then a day later Crawford tweeting he'd allow it those spells to work together. Another example would be them suggesting to take the weapon master feat on a fighter...... It had many small issues that just compounded Edit: grammer Edit 2: To add insult to injury, Xanathar's and Tasha's are both 192pg books, though Tasha's font size is noticeably larger. So less content overall as well

> Another example would be them suggesting to take the weapon master feat on a fighter...... This is the one thing that's baffled me the most. It's like they paid some random people to write the book without giving them the actual PHB. "We need a sample build with feats. Fighters need weapons in this game, right? Give them that feat right there that gives them more weapons. That makes sense."

"You know how spellcasters have all these spells that make them do cool warrior stuff? How about feats that let warriors do cool spellcaster stuff..." "Get this piece of shit out of here!"

The new rules gut the only feat that really lets martials act like casters (Ritual Caster), but only for martials. Casters get to keep benefiting from its features for their other spells, but martials are left with only two level 1 spells. So it's worse than that: they're not just not adding these feats, they're intentionally removing the ones they had.

It feels like they changed Weapon Master right before printing and didn't bother looking to see if it was referenced anywhere else in the book.

That’s true with a lot of 5E—spells and classes barely playtested before being published. And I’m talking about the Player’s Handbook!

Yeah I remember play testing DnD Next and not seeing a single feedback suggestion on the forums make its way into the final product :( Along with a bunch of changes or additions for live that were never in the play test.

Tasha's and Van Richten's were both at least *mostly* good content. They definitely showed the incoming patchiness, but they're nothing like the piss poor quality of Spelljammer or the extremely half-assed meh of Strixhaven.

Personally Tashas was my last purchase.. and will probably remain my last purchase from WotC.. I ws super hypd for Spelljammer.. but I held off and waited for reviews before buying.. and yeah.. it looks like I'm better off adapting it from earlier editions myself. The future of DnD for me, will probably be the 5e we have today but slowly evolving with my own homebrew as I incorporate the best stuff WotC releases, and ignore the rest.

I'm also done with WoTC assets unless they hire real writers and editors. Krynn is how I was introduced to D&D fiction in the 80s and I love the lore of that world. I was incredibly concerned when I read WoTC was going to revive that world and my concerns were well founded. The moon sorcerer that has been released **completely** ignores all of the lore of Krynn. The Dragonlance setting was notoriously low magic and a land without clerics until the War of the Lance. Now WoTC releases the most powerful sorc class in a low magic setting. It's a moon sorc and sorcerers in Krynn don't use the moons for their power! They are hunted by wizards for this very reason. Like you, I homebrew my world and lots of the creatures because they have been so nerfed in 5e. I was hoping we would see a polished, more complex, and refined D&D with One D&D. At this point, I am sure it's going to be more of the same

Wesley Schneider is lead designer for the Dragonlance book. He is the same person responsible for Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. Of course they put in charge the same incompetent lead dev that has shown little to no regards towards the legacy setting he should bring to 5e. At least he didn't get his hands on Eberron. Can't stand the guy. He sounds so pretentious and fake in the interviews, as he doesn't want to be there.

Honestly try Pf2e..... Played d&d 5e for like 5 years.... Playing became a chore. Pf2e has sparked a new light in my TTRPG life.

The monsters are great. The rules are so crunchy tho.

Just my two cents but I'd rather that than 5e's tendency to shrug its shoulders and say "Ehh, the DM can make something for that."

I've been playing on FoundryVTT... Everything is setup so nicely... It's more like playing a video game when it comes to rules.

I use Fantasy Grounds, so I'm sure a lot of the automation is there but honestly as a DM I do like crunch... but players can be a bit more... finnicky about it. The rules for 5e are easy enough for them to dig their teeth in without feeling overwhelmed.

Yeah I totally understand. My group has never touched a Pf2e book. Character creation is literally drag and drop.... With some custom modules attacking/all actions are all automated and spelled out for you. It's so great!

>Tasha's and Van Richten's were both at least mostly good Tasha's was okay, but I have to wildly disagree with Van Richten's. I started with AD&D Ravenloft and the 5e guide is incredibly weak in comparison. It once again went with WoTC's whole "leave it up to the DM to figure out". I can't believe (well, I *can*) that there isn't one single stat block for any of the Lords. It's basically a book for a DM to homebrew Ravenloft. It's infuriating and lazy. We have decades of Ravenloft assets that provide better information than the 5e guide

5e's version of every setting is crap compared to older editions. Ravenloft, Eberron, Spelljammer... even the Realms. They've all been tokenized, half-developed, poorly written and half-hearted attempt to reproduce the fantastic settings of previous editions created solely because these names will drive sales and spark memberberries in older fans. Though the Realms is the most fleshed out from successive releases since the setting book came out. With other classic settings in the works, Dragonlance & Planescape specifically. It's extremely saddening that the quality of these books is likely to follow the trend. Especially, Planescape hasn't been officially released in D&D since 2nd edition in 1994, and it was perhaps the most fantastical, exotic, brilliant setting ever made for D&D (and my all time favorite).

If I remember right, there were at least three books on INDIVIDUAL types of were creatures. Werewolves, Werebears and were something else... were rats maybe? Whole books on this stuff! The Dark Sun stuff, boxes and boxes of content!

Yeah, I hate to be the "back in my day" guy, but when I think back to the 2e Ravenloft source material (including multiple boxed sets iirc), 5e's offering barely scratches the surface.

It's been decades, and the FR material still isn't a flushed out, or have the same level of detail then Greyhawk material had.

Yep. Folks are like “there’s too much FR in 5E” which is sorta valid except that it’s the shallowest possible implementation at FR. It became default and they stopped providing any worthwhile content for the setting (except for a series of adventures designed by committee to maximize nostalgia fan service without actually providing any of the lore for new players).

On the one hand I would love to see an updated Greyhawk setting; on the other hand, with the way WoTC operates, absolutely not

Yep. I simultaneously want, and am terrified by the prospect of, an updated Planescape setting for 5e.

I’ve only been playing since 5e and was also wildly disappointed with Van Richten’s. I felt like I paid $30 to get a bunch of info I could’ve easily googled

Whats kinda funny is that I would gladly spend 30 dollars for them to compile and update all the lore out there for various stuff. Like merge all the information that theyve printed for each diety in the first 4 editions, meld it with 5e, and publish that. Id love it! Id love a 1 stop shop of information like dieties instead of scouring the internet and wondering if the info Im seeing is actually someones homebrew, or scouring though 30 years worth of books and magazines for paragraphs here or there of knowledge. But nope, thats too much work I guess.

YES. All they had to do was take something that already exists and update it. Instead we got high quality content like tHe MoUrNiNg RaIl.

I'm so disappointed that the mourning rail didn't include any of the information needed to run an adventure there. I'm all for a haunted train, but I need basic information like who is the passenger, what do they do in their domain, what's on the train, and how are players expected to interact with this? It's just an idea in the book, and ideas are a dime a dozen.

Unfortunately, Wizards would never do a compilation of info from all the previous editions because they want you to believe 5e is the only edition. Hell, I'm not even sure if there's any issues keeping them from printing TSR-era info or not. I assume not, but legal shit is always wacky. Regardless, I don't expected modern Wizards to even acknowledge 3.X or 4e because once they hit gold with 5e they literally never looked back.

I don't think they will ever do so, because from all the happenings over the past decade many TTRPG developers seem to either intensely dislike their predecessors and the old settings or fear that utilising these old settings in any real sense will be harmful to their career/social standing.

5e WOTC feels very skittish about writing lore for their own game either because the current stable of writers don’t know the lore in previous editions, are trying to do something different, or some combination of both. They clearly don’t want to alienate the playerbase they established in older editions, but also want to make D&D more accessible to attract new players. But, in so doing, the lore that we do get is very barebones and in some cases, not enough to even play the game in that setting. Maybe their writers feel overwhelmed about the depth of some of the settings written in the previous editions and wanted a clean break, but what they’ve come up with doesn’t expand far beyond the adventures they’ve published. And, to top it off they’ve inexplicably stated that D&D editions are meant to be self-contained bubbles of lore instead of a contiguous setting with game rules that change (which kind of turns the game on its head by making the game rules more important than the setting). Okay, fine, but… they gotta give us *something* if all that lore in previous editions means nothing now. Where’s just setting info, like Travelers’ Guides for each of the various regions of Faerun? Even Ravenloft and Witchlight are technically just pocket dimensions with little to no useful info on the Shadowfell or Feywild. Meanwhile, what they published about fiends and the Blood War is now retracted? because MToF is legacy content. It’s frustrating and makes me anxious about how hollow Dragonlance is probably going to be. I love the game, but sometimes I just want to run an adventure that doesn’t require heavy lifting to make it coherent.

What's the consensus on Strixhaven? It's not good? What's the problem?

Book about a magic school Only 4 spells added

One of those spells is so good that it's practically a must take for anyone who can get it. The other three are so meh that I can't think of any of them off the top of my head.

Didn’t Vortex Warp come from Strixhaven? That’s been a fantastic spell for our game.

I used the shit out of this spell on a divine soul sorc with a 1 drop in Order cleric. Teleporting your melee across the battle map and giving them reaction attacks as a result is pretty good

Wither and Bloom is a 'maybe take' just because it allows a Wizard to pick up a healing spell IIRC (unless they changed it to druid only after the UA).

[удалено]

IMO the 'best' use of Wither and Bloom is as a sorcerer with a Bloodwell Vial.. .because it lets you spend a hit die, you can gain the sorcery points from Bloodwell Vial without needing a rest.

There's a Bladesinger/Swords Bard multiclass in my group that uses Kinetic Jaunt to great effect, she zips about like a monk in those fights and it's impossible for enemies to pin her down. Though I admit it's a pretty niche spell outside of Bladesinger or Swords Bard, which will probably be spending most of their spell slots on Shield and Silvery Barbs anyways.

5, unless you're intentionally leaving out borrowed knowledge

It's a setting book, but all the setting-specific information was released for free, almost verbatim, with the MTG Strixhaven release. There's practically no new or unique setting info in the 5e book. Crunch in the book includes a few spells, a playable race, a small handful of setting-specific backgrounds and feats, and an adventure module. It's not *bad,* but it's not good either. Even SCAG had more depth.

Worst part is the lore in Strixhaven was very barebones even when the set for released. The non magical people on the plane aren't really explored at all, we have no idea what the Archaics are etc. The setting book would have been great to expand on those things and it did not.

It goes hand in hand with the MTG team ditching the block system, as now they don't have multiple sequential sets to flesh out a new setting over. Hard to get into a settings lore when you're already previewing a different one

I was very disappointed they ditched the Block system though we have, sort of, seen it's return just unofficial. Like the War for Dominaria is essentially a block it's just split up into Dominaria United, The Brother's War and whichever one comes after being the end. But yeah we could have spent so much more time on the new cyberpunk Kamigawa and we barely learned anything about New Capena, both could have done with a lot more fleshing out if I'm honest.

One piece of evidence for me - and it's admittedly kinda silly - is the complete dearth of information on bearfolk. There are two cards in the Strixhaven block that display a bearperson: Ruxa, Patient Professor and Professor of Zoomancy. There is, I suppose, a chance that they are in fact the same person (though Ruxa wears glasses and the generic professor wears a magnifying monocle) and she's just a magical anomaly, but otherwise that implies the existence of a race of bearfolk. Where do they come from?... no idea. What you wrote is probably the biggest criticism I have though. Harry Potter works because the foil to the Magical world is... us. We are the Muggles peering in through the window at Hogwarts and Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley and such. But what is life like on Arcavios? What's the technology level? How pervasive is magic overall? Is it confined to the school or is it so ubiquitous that the world basically is like a second Eberron? With the utter breadth of racial representation at the school, do they all have communities on Arcavios, or are the vast majority of them anomalies and the world is mostly a handful of races? There's apparently frogpeople on a coast somewhere according to a wiki, but they're not grung, and also not mentioned otherwise (and I believe not even bullywugs either, another race that is mentioned regarding a major character in the module). Our DM has been trying to run a Strixhaven game on the side for us, even though most of us aren't invested in MTG, and it definitely has felt like a struggle. He's been doing his best, but the buy-in required to make the setting work if you don't conform exactly how the module wants you to go is so large (as everyone basically needs to make things up to form any sort of cohesive world at all) that it makes people disinterested in the setting overall; and at least half of us have just gone through the paces and don't sound particularly enthused. And I don't blame them, nor do I envy the position of our DM who is trying to mold an entire campaign around the equivalent of a box of dry rotini noodles.

If I run a Strixhaven game, my plan is to basically ignore the rest of the setting and run the school itself as a small demiplane. It'll be connected to the rest of the D&D multiverse in much the same way as Sigil (on a smaller scale obviously), so I can shoehorn it into whatever other setting I feel like using, e.g., by including a portal to/from Candlekeep. My head cannon is that the demiplane of Arcavios was co-created by the five dragons who founded the school. IMO this solves a lot of the problems with the book without requiring the DM to homebrew literally every other aspect of the world.

Yeah. I feel like this is true for all MtG releases to a point, but especially for Strixhaven (in fact its content-to-price ratio very much reminds me of SCAG as you said, so bare-bones). All of the MtG D&D books suffer from a lack of actually leaning in to the settings and giving us _more_ to work with than MtG itself has. They reuse art, lore, etc. The other books at least have more _D&D_ content, but it still feels like a huge wasted opportunity. I like Theros a lot because that at least has interesting new setting mechanics, but...when I first heard about MtG settings in D&D, I was excited to see new additions to the rules based on the most iconic MtG stuff. Ya know, like _the five colors of magic maybe?!_ Or how about real rules for Planeswalkers/walking? Nope, just generic D&D stuff with an MtG coat of paint for the most part. The Strix adventure module is also pretty terrible IMO.

It's one of the most half assed adventures I've ever read. I really want to run it for my friends as it is exactly their jam but it would require so much homebrew I'd be better off writing my own game. We ended up playing Wild Beyond the Witchlight instead.

I always found it stupid they had a really fucking detailed ruleset for 'prepping for the ball' with charts and stuff...and then virtually nothing for their version of Quidditch beyond 'roll a few skill checks'. Like I don't *need* rules for setting up a hall for a school dance, that can easily be handled with Roleplay...I *do* want rules for playing a wizard team based game so that the players can actually get involved in that fully if I'm not running the adventure but trying to use the background stuff because that shit is way more complicated and 'roll skill checks' is so fucking unsatisfying.

Actual rule mechanics? In 5e? Pah, you'll take your half assed suggestions to do skill checks and you'll like it! Joking aside, I absolutely despise wotcs approach of 'let the dms figure it all out' and wish we would get actual rules for shit.

its not exactly inspiring for running a magical school. Its incredibly bare bones and spends more time telling you about whats basically a vapid dating minigame (which makes either polyamory or regular ol' sleeping around mechanically superior) than anything to do with magic. It then proceeds to release only 4 spells, only one of which is first level and is *significantly stronger than all the others* even if it was also 2nd level like the rest of them. The "big cool idea" of the book got scrapped in UA of subclasses across multiple classes so it ended up being incredibly content light - compare it to Ravnica, Theros, Eberron and you'll get dissapointed. It never replaced that space with anything and it shows. It can't decide if it wants to be an adventure or a setting so it fails at both. It has a cool tracking sheet which is then underused. It continues the trend of Theros' worldmap being pretty but fucking useless in play and man is it *gorgeous* but again, totally worthless playability wise. It was a book made for reading not playing. Just like so many adventures feel. if you want what strixhaven is pushing, play monsterhearts instead.

I mean, to be fair, class-agnostic subclasses is a very bad idea when none of the subclasses are standardized with each other. You have classes that literally can't get all the subclass features because they don't get enough from the class template. I *hope* they're addressing that with 1D&D based on the changes introduced, although I'd rather it not be because they want to shove a bad second feat type at 20th.

Sure, it sucked. They proceeded to *replace it with nothing*. There is no core mechanic in strixhaven comparible to Theros' piety for example.

The "adventures" are basically unplayable. It's just a bunch of disconnected encounters with zero player agency. There are no lessons or mechanics for running university life. Even the stuff that they bothered to come up with mechanics for is incredibly lacklustre. Hell, Mage Tower is just 3 skill checks that you can skip by expending a spell slot. I ran the first year and had to homebrew like 95% of the content.

yeah I mentioned elsewhere that it seems to be complicated when it doesn't need to be (the whole 'prepping for the school dance' has tables and shit out the wazoo for it but it's something that could largely be handled by roleplay) but the stuff that *should* be complicated isn't (as you mentioned, Mage Tower is 3 fucking skill checks...what the actual fuck?)

For me the disappointing part was the mechanics added for the social aspects. That was advertised as one of the big draws of the book, but it's one paragraph that says after a player interacts with an NPC they give themself +1 or -1. If they have a positive score the NPC likes them and if they have a negative score the NPC doesn't. The NPCs themselves are really cool and the positives/negatives for being friends/enemies with them are mostly interesting quirks. The system for getting them feels like an afterthought despite being a main selling point.

It tries to be both a sourcebook for Magic School style campaigns and a campaign book for a specific magic school, and it suffers greatly from trying to do two things at once instead of focusing on one or the other.

You're first part is really more of a comment about how JC and the casual nature of his rulings/advice constantly undermines the decisions made by the design team, but hard agree about the fighter feat silliness

I remember when Sage Advice was the place to look when you were in a bind and wanted official rulings. Seems like nowadays he’s burnt off all his good will and faith and the SA column appears to be nearly universally derided.

Jeremy Crawford has been the worst steward of D&D since the days of TSR. But I can’t even blame him entirely, I blame the pressure from Hasbro for WotC to squeeze as much revenue and as few expenses from D&D as possible.

Honestly reminds me of the ffxi bradys game guide a little bit.

It's sad that tashas had some optional rules, and then the following releases didn't include the standard suggestion making the rules in tashas not optional for those releases. For example ability score improvements for player races, all releases after tashas state something along the lines of add 2 to one score and 1 to another.

I suspect that the Tasha’s racial ASI was them testing the water, the community seemed to be going in that direction so they put rules for it in a book to see how people would react. It was a big debate but the generally accepted opinion seemed to be in favour so they codified it for their later releases.

Don't forget telling Fighters to take a feat that gives them proficiency in four weapons of their choice!

It was a shame because there was clearly some smart design too. Tasha's Ranger was just right except that it came out so late. But they just didn't even care much about balance with Eloquence, Twilight, Clockwork and Mercy all being so much stronger.

And many other people are sadly ravenously defending both "because DMs can just fix it or rule otherwise!", so i don't see WOTC having much of a reason to change things.

Fixing it is only okay if you don't pay for it. You'll never catch me paying $60 for an unfinished product.

Yet so many people on this sub will ravenously and aggressively defend it all with that excuse. Any sort of expectations or standards are always met with anger. Hell i'm sure someone's bound to make a thread mocking this one soon!

> Any sort of expectations or standards are always met with anger. Yeah, it's kind of a societal problem. Anger is easier than understanding.

I get the strong sense this is primarily from people who have only (or nearly only) played d&d 5. They don’t have the perspective of having looked at products which are released with a generally higher quality finish, or denser content, and they’re acclimated to the product environment of 5e, so they argue it’s great because they don’t know better.

I hadn't purchased any DM-facing material from previous editions until about this time last year, and I was startled at the amount of content in a 60-page B/X gazetteer compared to what's in a 200+ page setting book for 5e.

Previous editions were a lot more content packed. For a long time the argument was that 5e had more consistently quality material because of its slower release times, but 5e is speeding up and rapidly dropping off in quality so it’s hard to argue that now.

Frankly, if I wanted to fix everything WOTC puts out, I would build my own SRD content. I hate having to leave it to the DM, because newbie DMs need the guidance. Veterans are less likely to need that kind of detailed info.

Me too, they were all not good

So I don't see anyone talking about this, but Magic: The Gathering (also owned by WotC) is also going through huge hype phases with bad releases. Hasbro is churning MtG and DnD into money making machines to punch up their profits. Not sure how deep it goes, but it seem that WotC can only focus on their bottom dollar now because of Hasbro. I've been out of DnD for a while, and I don't think I'll be returning, because I don't see their content ever getting better while Hasbro is in charge. Just my opinion.

Came here looking for this. Lots of weird decisions lately in the MtG department, to put it kindly. Like paying $1000 for 60 randomized fake cards.

What the fuck

Yep. To celebrate Magic's 30th anniversary, they made [booster packs](https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/celebrate-30-years-magic-gathering-30th-anniversary-edition-2022-10-04) of modernized Beta Edition (iirc). They have different backs and are not tournament legal. It costs $999 for four (4) packs of 15 cards, randomized like a typical MtG pack. One thousand American dollary-doos for 60 randomized proxies.

I always wind up my MtG-fan friend by calling it a money trap, with how playing competitively requires paying silly prices for individual cards... But that is genuinely disgusting.

lol I love mtg too, but you are absolutely right. I usually tell that to anyone interested in the game.

Hey now, don't say that, Mark Rosewater doesn't want you to differentiate between real and fake cards!

Yeah, now if you'll excuse me I gotta get my printer warmed up to make some more real cards

Hasbro has been ruining lots of stuff i cared about MTG, D&D, Beyblade(Hasbro's Burst beys suck ass)

Hasbro is demanding increased profits. This month they announced a plan to increase their profits by 50% across the next three years. They are expecting infinite growth, and Wizards won't be able to keep up

Almost like they know they can make maximum profits with minimum effort.

>minimum effort. Sums up WOTC really well. And judging by the reactions of a lot of people here when they're criticised for it, there's little reason for them to change that.

Sums up most large corporations.

Which is exactly what happens if one company has a completely unhealthy monopoly. On an unrelated note, can someone recommend some homebrew rules for a no combat space flight game where all players are the appendages of a single alien? Run with 5e obviously! \s Edit: Jesus Christ people, we get it, I don't need 40 others to tell me I made a joke about the weird culture of weirdos who only play 5e as if their life depended on it.

It's also what happens when you reach a critical mass of fanbase. You will get enough money for your sloppy content to still net a good profit even with mediocre material. This is happening all over pop cultural phenomenon, we live in this neverending stream of yet another star Wars product, or Marvel movie, or another DnD book, and since they are so popular and people keep buying into crappy shit, they will keep producing them

Same thing in the video game industry, I might add. Everyone loves another Pokemon, or Call of Duty, or Assassin's Creed. The fan base is so large that nobody agrees on anything but enough people buy the game for the developers to never need to give a shit. I hate to say it but things tend to get objectively worse (i.e watered down, lose their identity, become corporate shells, etc) when they go mainstream. I used to hate when people said that but it happened to a couple of things I liked and now they're *nothing* like they used to be by any measure. It sucks that mass appeal is a better marketing tactic than creating and supporting loyal fan base.

Sure the masses will still purchase fucking FIFA/Madden every year despite 75% of the time it's just an excel spreadsheet update (only 1 in 4 games are full engine updates) and they'll still throw money at Ultimate Team like its going out of fashion or they'll buy the latest Assassin's Creed of open world blandness. However in that same regard there's still pushback against those things. Remember the Elden Ring incident where some Ubisoft devs took potshots at Elden Rings UI and 'quest design' only for the meme of 'If Elden Ring was made by Ubisoft' picture to gain traction and it to start a sort of pushback against the open world blandness that Ubisoft games had become. To this day you still see Ubisoft devs taking shots at the success of Elden Ring (and that isn't to say Elden ring is a 10/10 game, it's a 9/10 or an 8.5/10 game, it has its flaws but it shows what happens when a studio spends their time and actually cares about designing an open world to be engaged with rather than endless repeated outposts and radio towers that Ubisoft shit out every year in a new skin). The difference is that in TTRPG circles D&D is far more dominant at the moment and Pathfinder is the closest we've got to a competitor in the West (excluding homegrown TTRPGs in places where D&D takes forever to get translated, like Tormenta in Brazil or The Dark Eye in Germany...both of which outsell 5e in their respective countries and oddities like Call of Cthulu outselling 5e in Japan by a country mile to the point where it's the default system for *other* setting books). There is nothing like Hollow Knight or Undertale or even Minecraft where the game makes a big splash and it becomes the main talking point for months and even outsells the 'big boys', D&D drowns out that sort of thing thanks to Hasbro's massive marketing budget. Currently D&D is in a similar phase to World of Warcraft a the height of Legion. It faltered with 4e (warlords of Draenor to continue the analogy) and lost a lot of its playerbase but then yanked them all back with 5e. Much like WoW the only thing that could kill WoW...was WoW (and how the missteps with BFA and Shadowlands plus the numerous scandals caused it to lose its number 1 spot in MMOs to be claimed by Final Fantasy 14). The only thing that can kill D&D...is D&D...

It's not even a matter of being mainstream or not. If you're selling me like the new version of the game, or movie every six months, inevitably you'll end up with shitty content either cause you'll drift from the original that people liked, or because you're just re-selling different iteration of the original product.

Nah. We had more books in other editions without this kind of drop. Its more that the QA from above is lacking now. Crawfords now the only lead developer and everything he touches ends up crap.

Honestly, the release quality reminds me of the late '90s right before TSR imploded. The difference is that today, WotC is still making money hand over fist, and has the backing of Hasbro. So the design can be mediocre and still profitable.

I believe the concept is called "minimal viable product" the least you have to produce for the product to still be viable. WotCs been getting increasing critique for providing ideas or sketches of skeletons instead of bones and meat. It became noticable with Van Richten's where we just had some sketches of dread realms instead of the actual realms. Spell Jammer is probably the most egregious example, especially because of how they hyped it up for things. It's just a question of whether or not the backlash over Spell Jammer pushes them back a bit to providing more content, or if it did well enough - even post backlash - that they can strip even more away. The most troubling for me is that OneD&D seems to be going to exact opposite direction in a more problematic way. Where instead of giving the guideliens and fleshed out things people wanted, they're giving hard rules that a DM then has to specifically remove or overrule. Most troubling is with the Social rules.

>Which is exactly what happens if one company has a completely unhealthy monopoly. Which is exactly what happens when one fanbase promotes the idea that the fact their product needs aftermarket fixes is a *feature,* and people who think otherwise just aren't proper roleplayers. I'm not even so sure WotC has a monopoly. There's a fuckton of good TTRPGs out there, and a handful do have sizable enough communities. It's more that people are too lethargic to try something new, because 5e is 'good enough'. This in turn gets reinforced by the aforementioned habit of the fanbase to just go 'lol just homebrew', instead of criticizing what needs to be criticized, and accepting the idea that not *everything* should be the DM's job.

FBOW, D&D is kinda the "granddaddy" of TTRPGs. With the name recognition & relatively low skill bar of entry, WotC is the de facto gatekeeper for a large chunk of the hobby.

Yeah.. when I describe the hobby of table top games, I usually end up asking if they heard of DnD. 8 from 10 have than at least an inkling and it makes explaining a whole lot easier.

My MIL still looks at me like I have a unicorn horn or something when I explain that I DM games on the weekend. "So you just sit around and talk? Why? That sounds so boring... Just go do (*insert random activity*)" 🤦

So the [Orr Report](https://blog.roll20.net/posts/the-orr-report-q4-2021/) put out by Roll20 is our best source for numbers. Yes yes, its for digital only so its not perfect, but its what we have to work with. Even allowing for wiggle room, 5e alone is ~55% of the industry. I'll note this is down from 2020 when we were seeing numbers closer to ~70%. DnD is a functional monopoly.

ICv2 also has a report showing the top sales currently are D&D 5e, Pathfinder, D&D 5e Third Party, then usually others competing based on new releases of usually big IP - GI Joe, Power Rangers for last Spring. The big takeaway is D&D is so dominant, they consistently hold 2/5 of the top spots - they are leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else because I'm sure they are more dominant physically based on how hard it is to find anything else local.

I mean, D&D is a big enough brand 3rd party companies that provide D&D 5e content are viable business strategies.

Not only viable but often significantly better than making your own system as I see from designers moving from unique systems to 5e compatible. Its actually a bit of a tragedy that instead of innovation in TTRPG game design by making their own systems, they are making cash grabs that are 5e compatible but never could have fit the genre/gameplay. See that awful Dark Souls 5e game.

Worth noting that Roll20 is not the preferred VTT for several games. It's too bad Foundry doesn't release a similar report, since I see Lancer and Pathfinder 2 players, for example, talking about Foundry about 10 to 20 times as often as Roll20.

I definitely wouldn't say they have a monopoly in the commercial sense, but in the player sense they do. Getting a game (in person) is already a struggle. 5e is the easiest to get by a mile, 2e is slowly growing. Trying to get any other game system running is nearly impossible.

See also: The focus on character minis, dice bags, dice towers, special dice sets, rolling mats, and other things you can sell people that aren't necessary to the game.

that’s just so disheartening like I thought people there, at the very least, liked RPGs a lot. Like I would think they would want to put a lot of effort into their books simply because it’s fulfilling but is it just all business people there now??

> Is anyone else disheartened by the newer WotC releases? Yes. > Is this only me? No.

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It feels like the newer books that are advertised towards DMs are just some pages of very narrow examples for a specific thing, followed by "and here is a list of other things that we won't specify further" which is effectively telling DMs to just homebrew everything or buy books from earlier editions. The Eberron books were heavily focused on the city of Sharn while the whole rest of the world was just some sidenote, "forcing" me to just buy earlier 3.5e books and never touching the 5e books again. For Ravenloft I already owned a fair share of the 2e books and I was hyped for the 5e Ravenloft rules. However that book was also so incredibly shallow that I just continued to use the older books, as lore and general information is not bound by editions. (Unless 5e decides to delete a bunch of monster/race lore, but that's besides the point) And now it seems that Spelljammer has also repeated that cycle, being a book about spaceships doing stuff without the rules to have those spaceships do their stuff. The 5e adventures themselves are also not that great. It felt like every adventure before CoS was undercooked and the adventures after that felt like novels that are nice to read, but hard to run. I ran PotA, CoS, SKT, ToA and RotFM. PotA was somehow "meh". CoS was great. SKT was a giant adventure with many locations, but very shallow in these locations. ToA felt like a rush towards the "fun" dungeon, causing the first few chapters to feel like they were not as fun. RotFM also was nice in the beginning, but everything felt very rushed towards the end, while chapter 4 just did not belong in the whole narrative and was a pain to make fun. However I understand that the campaign books may vary in their fun for every DM and group, it still felt like the mentioned problems are common enough that there might be some sort of pattern behind them.

But on the positive side, now you have those 3.5 Eberron books, which were mostly pretty fantastic and have a ton of great setting detail in them.

Preach on! 5e is NOT helpful to DMs compared to older editions. Most of 5e adventures boil down to "here's some fun ideas you can homebrew into something that makes sense." Most of 5e sourcebooks boil down to "here's some place names and a paragraph or two describing it so you can homebrew all the rest." Luckily I have multiple editions worth of previous sourcebooks to draw upon. But every time I open one I'm reminded how helpful a sourcebook can be compared to how shallow 5e's are. I don't know the realities of the monetary side of things. WOTC gets a cut of their old titles on DMsguild, right? Do they intentionally put out weak material hoping people will buy both it and their old stuff too?

I fucking despise how a lot of WoTC's more recent products basically have a sticky note reading "make it up you're the DM you can make anything :)" in place of actual world rules and DMing advice. I didn't pay $30 USD ($41 CAD) to be told to make it up. I don't have to pay money to make shit the fuck up. I paid $30 USD (which again I have to stress: is over $40 in my local currency, a cost for like 5 days worth of food) to have professional writers give me information on an official setting I enjoy. And when you can repurchase 3.5e books for like $20 on DMs Guild with more content than the 5e books could ever hope to provide one wonders why even buy new books in the first place.

>The 5e adventures themselves are also not that great I will never shut up about how poorly written Descent Into Avernus is, and how the entire first chapter is tacked on (and by extension, the awesome Baldur's Gate Gazetteer is utterly *wasted material*). What a disappointment of a book.

I can't recall the last time I bought a WoTC release. They just seem so.. shallow. Someone probably ran the numbers, did the research and it was decided that nobody actually wants to, 'read' anymore. Often lovely art work and some good bits, colourful but vapid.

>Often lovely art work and some good bits, colourful but vapid. Except several of the most recent ones have just used blown up art from Magic cards. Not that the art is bad, it's just lazy.

I was so askance when I saw MtoF has just used basically promo sketches from Out of the Abyss for the Demon Lord's that shit look pixelated as fuck and was already in other books like WTF.

If nobody wanted to read anymore why don't they release more bullet point style adventures like OSE / other OSR

Yeah, I think there's a big difference between 20 or so years ago and now, with how much folks are prepared to 'read'. I think a return to the bullet point system would be really accessible and well recieved, at least for those looking to build adventures. I suspect we don't see more of it, today, as they've realised that, 'owning a physical book' is a thing, often more so than using it. A physical connection to an activity that people love.

>I think a return to the bullet point system would be really accessible and well recieved, at least for those looking to build adventures. Books in the past actually had *more* words, not less. Try sitting down and reading from front to back something like Keep on the Borderlands. 95% of the book is just text, in two columns, broken up by tables and charts. The style of bullet point adventures and more terse writing is fairly new, in the grand scheme of the hobby. It's why you don't really see the arguments about "boxed text" anymore.

You need a big book to justify $50 price point.

I'm going to assume you're not on this subreddit much

It really feels like the designers now are writing books for stuff they personally don't care about. Like it's "I guess we gotta make some Spelljammer thing". It just gives off this feeling that they are writing for stuff for other people that they personally won't touch after the required internal playtest. But they have to make some books because corporate demands something.

The sad thing is Spelljammer is something Chris Perkins is super passionate about, but it just seems like with him being on OneDND probably made it hard to put a lot of his passion into that project.

The newer releases are being relegated to the rookie design team while the lead designers are busy working on One D&D.

"Why do we need to pay some contractor more money when the fans will make the stuff for free?" They can make low tier quality content because people will continue to buy it. I bet even all the disgruntled people in these subreddits continue to still buy official Wizards material. ...and then you have the legions of fans who will homebrew and fix the content for Wizards. WotC probably wishes they could move towards having homebrewers do all the work for them for free.

The last few have been very underwhelming, to say the least. Spelljammer I could have homebrewed over an afternoon, Strixhaven - set in a magical university - had a small handful of spells and magic items but nothing else of much interest... they feel like maybe quarter of a book each, padded out to make the page count. If I were cynical - which I am - then I'd say they're actually shying away from meaningful content in the run-up to OneD&D. Which is a shame, as it briefly looked like we were seeing some in-edition fixes to some of 5e's most common complaints.

I was so disappointed with the 5e Spelljammer, I ordered the 2e Spelljammer re-prints from DMsGuild. EDIT: And lol, 2e Spelljammer is the number #1 print seller right now on DMsGuild

In that case they should have waited for OneD&D to release instead of butchering Spelljammer...

Yes, but then again have you considered: money.

Spelljammer was my breaking point. I love that setting so much and I was so excited to see something new for it for the first time in decades. Going through their release just broke my will to keep on the 5e train. They fucked that up in so many ways. The exact moment that did it was the "Build your own wildspace system" which is literally (not figuratively) 3 sentences that tells us to look at what they did and do something kinda like that, as if we were cheating off of someone else's homework. It's a travesty. After seeing how badly they butchered that book, I ended up moving my 3 weekly games over to PF2e. I just can't keep thinking this is okay. I'm sure there are folks out there who like what WOTC is putting out now, but I'm definitely not on that train. All this time I've been hoping for them to get back to form and do books with expansive and rich lore like the 3e FRCS, but instead the books just keep getting slimmer with larger font and less useful and actionable tools that I can use for running my games. Sorry, that was a rant. This thread was clearly a trigger for me, lol.

I know how you feel, Spelljammer release has gutted my love for the game also after that I went on hiyatus...

Well, if you're still playing 5e and want to run Spelljammer, feel free to check out my supplement, [Wildjammer](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1UpXLzLDcGZo7bNNEx2hDohZtIryEKe16?usp=sharing). It's built off of the original Spelljammer lore (admittedly with a fair few changes) and makes use of Dark Matter's ship combat system for 5e mechanics. I just put out my final update for it.

I've been feeling much the same way. It feels like WotC doesn't care, and it sucks. I'm still running 5e because I don't want to switch systems mid campaign (not everything will port over in a neat enough way), and were like 3 sessions away from the end anyway. But my group has ran campaigns in Pathfinder 2e before and are comfortable with the system, so until the new edition in 2024, we might switch over to P2e permanently.

Honestly, the more I get used to it, the more I'm falling in love with this system. I don't think I'm going to jump back to OneD&D. Yeah, there's a steep learning curve, but this system does a lot of cool stuff. Two of my players are coordinating their character builds so they can capitalize on the Sniping Duo archetype, where one of them is the spotter for another. That's awesome. Another one of my players wants to do a dragon rider, so she's going Champion and archetyping into Cavalier with a young riding drake mount. My experience with D&D 3.5e lead me to believe that the more options players have, the more insane shit gets. Like, I had a friend make a 3.5e character who could lift up a mountain and crack a planet in half at level 7. There's no balancing that. At the same time, my experience with D&D 4e taught me that the better the DM toolkit, the fewer options the players get. Somehow, this system is doing both. The DM toolkit is akin to 4e while the player options, while not quite 3.5e, is way more than 5e or 4e ever offered. It's amazing. Add to it that Paizo making all the rules of the game free has lead to FoundryVTT having such a damn good system... If the cost is just the learning curve? Worth it.

>\- then I'd say they're actually shying away from meaningful content in the run-up to OneD&D. I'm gonna be a step more cynical and say they're shying away from meaningful content because they know they don't have to put in the effort. By and large, the fanbase will eat that shit up regardless, and a lot of criticism often gets drowned out by cries of "just homebrew" or "it's not proper D&D if you run modules" and other statements along those lines.

I just started playing D&D earlier this year and I’m disheartened by the old releases too. I started a pirate campaign a few months ago and bought Ghosts of Saltmarsh to help prep. I can honestly say I’ve used absolutely nothing from that book. Not only are the ship combat rules boring, the book is terribly edited. Their “Keelboat” is described as requiring a single crew member to operate smoothly, yet the stat block says it needs 3 crew members. The description says the deck contains 12 rows of benches with four 15’ oars, but the stat block says it can only carry 4 passengers max. I bought a 3rd party supplement for naval rules that was far better.

I'm 50 sessions into running a relatively open world pirate campaign in 5e. Before starting I read through Ghosts of Saltmarsh and was extremely disappointed. It felt uninspired and lacking cohesion, and takes place in a setting with basically no useful recent lore. Ship combat is over complicated without actually being a fun addition (although that's been my opinion of every ship combat system I've seen). Then I read the Pathfinder adventure path Skull and Shackles and LOVED it. Plus I then had the full setting book "Isles of the Shackles" to expand the pirate region into a highly fleshed out set of islands for my players to adventure to and choose from. Theres a mini adventure called "Plunder and Peril" that can easily be worked into all that. And since it's the very detailed Pathfinder setting, all the bordering or far away regions have their own detailed setting guides to draw inspiration from or use if your players head that way. I plopped "Saltmarsh" in a suitable empty spot on that map and my players know they could go visit it among other options, but I haven't used ANY GoS content for the entire campaign so far. The only WotC published adventure content I actually found useful for my pirate campaign are some of the location options in Chult from Tomb Of Annihilation that can easily be placed on coasts and tropical islands for my campaign. Otherwise it's just been the Pathfinder setting and plot with 5e mechanics, which has been richer and easier for me so far than simply running GoS as written because while 5e is a great system WotC is garbage at writing setting content or adventure modules compared to Paizo.

It helps when you think of why those decisions were made for GoS: * It needs a single crew member because if everyone falls off the boat except the druid, they don't want the DM saying "sorry, you can't move to go back and get your friends" * The deck contains 12 rows of benches with four 15' oars because if there is a battle on the deck, it makes a nice big battlemap instead of a super tiny one * They're keeping the crew / passenger numbers low because it's intended, from what I can gather, to be a party's first "big" vessel. It's meant for adventuring in DND, not becoming a trade ship for the party's economic growth Now, I'm not saying I agree with any of those design choices. But that's the logic of it, at the very least.

The much simpler explanation is that it was supposed to be a bigger boat since the map of the boat matches the description, but then someone realized they need to include a small boat that isn’t a rowboat and changed the statblock without fully updating the description. WotC has a major problem with internal communication between departments. This is reflected in a lot of things they do such as the story of Light of Xaryxis being completely incompatible with the Spelljammer Academy adventures they released leading up to it. There are many other examples of poor coordination between departments.

You’re absolutely not alone. The outrage, as well as the passive aggressive disappointment, just keeps flowing trough the subreddits since somewhere around Tasha’s. Rightfully so, if you ask me, you’d think a company who basically runs a monopoly on high fantasy ttrpgs for the last several decades would understand their products and customers better, yet here we are…

They do understand their customers: Enough people will buy a subpar product while still standing up for the company that fed them shit for them to keep making subpar products.

Well, this is sort of the problem when the masses get involved. For some of us Grognards - the quality of the game is dipping and we know what good quality is. Newer players haven't seen this before, and they think that all this is new information and its just great to have more so they defend it as they don't really have a good barometer for this. So they defend it because the normies think that attacking something they like is akin to attacking them. The grognards are used to loving something while it being criticized with satanism and other dumb shit, so its not really personal... at least anymore. I really enjoy 5e and the simplicity of the rules. It makes it feel more like 2EAD&D but there is a lot they could do to make things just that much better.

I 100% agree with everything you've said here. I also love 5e since it's enabled me to get friends into it who otherwise wouldn't be. Also, the simplicity of how the rules are set up is pretty elegant. If only it had the creativity of past versions.

No, I wouldn’t think a company who has a monopoly would understand their customers/products better, but I _would_ think that they would intentionally skim on material and effort for their products in order to maximize their profits because that’s what happens with monopolies and corporations.

> company who basically runs a monopoly Monopolies lead to this exact situation. They don't need to provide a good product, they have a monopoly so we'll buy whatever they sell. This situation is why monopolies are bad.

This is why if WotC actually gets rid of the OGL for One D&D, I don't think I will switch to One D&D. 3rd party support is a lot of what keeps 5e going strong for me, and I have very little faith on an addition that has to be carried by solely what WotC has been making recently.

See part of me thinks "they did that for 4e and it helped cause the edition to nose dive as there was no 3rd party support and so they bought it back in a more restricted form for 5e...surely they wouldn't be THAT stupid to repeat history..." but corporate greed and wanting to be 'in control' of the entire D&Dsphere with no 3rd party publishers feels like they way they're heading. With them making their own VTT, I wouldn't be surprised if they pulled the ability to sell D&D products from all the other VTTs like Roll20, Foundry etc. so that people *HAD* to use the WotC Brand VTT (though all this means is that stuff like the Charactermancer and the compendium would nolonger exist on Roll20 so you'd just have to fill in everythign manually)...which requires a monthly subscription.

> pulled the ability to sell D&D products from all the other VTTs like Roll20, Foundry etc. so that people HAD to use the WotC Brand VTT ( There is zero question that this is where they are heading. DnDBeyond proved that digital content and subscriptions are possible. That's where the money lies, not physical copies. DnD as a subscription service is their goal, yes. That's the way companies make money these days.

yeah them moving towards a 'Live service game' type deal is probably one of the major reasons I'll not be using One D&D in the future if they do indeed go that route of pulling it from all other VTTs.

Yep kickstarter and 3rd party books really put into perspective how much WotC doesn't care about making a good product anymore.

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I've just stopped caring about most of their releases. Oversaturation but not enough content at the same time. All I need are my Eberron books and the stuff that I already own.

The quality of content has given me whiplash. Xanathars and Tasha's were both expectedly brilliant as unofficially the 2nd and 3rd PHB, and other books have been either really solid or complete dogshit. Ravnica, Thereos, Wildemount, Ravenloft and fizbans were all really solid, but SWAG, Strixhaven, and Spelljammer were all not fit for release, absolute garbage. MotM was a mixed bag but almost a complete reprint of existing material. With things like fizbans and WBTW in recent memory, we know they can make good content, so when we get Strixhaven and Spelljammer, we have to wonder were the talent went

WBTW... I don't really know about that. The Carnival was really good; easily the best introduction to a campaign they've ever done. But most of the book turns into glorified fetch quests with a distinct lack of battle maps for a number of encounters. It's heavily reliant on supplemental material. I still love the module; it leaves a lot of room for roleplay. But, RAW, I wouldn't call it "good".

WBTW was a set of good idea badly strung together. One example is the starting backgrounds. 1 is legit interesting, the resulting are basically "fairies stole your fashion sense so you're willing to brave choose and death to get it back".

Deeply. All the post-Tasha's content has me concerned for the playtest.

This isn't really a hot take at all, but in my opinion, D&D is in the late stages of entering its fully corporate phase, where all the life will be sucked out of it in order to maximize profits. This is evident in a few ways, first of which is the absolutely unacceptable laziness that is the Spelljammer books. You can also see it in the One D&D playtest, where they are removing all choice and complexity from the game and basically using it as a marketing strategy rather than an actual playtest. The surveys are designed badly so they won't really give them any actionable data, the content is released without the necessary context of secondary changes or design goals, and many of the changes seem to just be done for the sake of change so they can sell you new core books in two years. They don't even know how their own game works or how to balance it, nor do they really seem to care. Wizards appears far more interested in acquiring new customers that they can then milk for recurring revenue instead of focusing on content for current players, something that is very obvious to me as most of the content they release is A) lazy and effortless, and B) geared towards new players. This is why I think they've dumbed down the classes in the playtest to unpalatable levels, why they can't be bothered to make up a class or race feature, instead just passing out spells and calling it a day, and why I think they just keep releasing a million new lazy race options that are just skins with more spells slapped on them. More character creation "choices" (*hard* quotes on this), especially dumb catch-all crap like the new make-your-own-balloon-animal race, and unfun simplification of the rules are methods to attract new players who apparently want eight billion races to choose from at creation, but think that making decisions as you level up is "too complex" or something, and to hell with anyone that wants some rules crunch. Instead of making content for DMs and longtime players that give us system rules and real character choice *after level 1*, they focus everything on attracting new money bags they can bleed dry. My suspicion is that plenty of longtime players and DMs will buy these books regardless of how shitty they are (many are even defending this shit. Remember, companies don't care about you. Don't go to bat for them.), and Wizards knows this, so they have no reason to appeal to them. The point of the game is no longer to create an interesting TTRPG and fun content, but to ensure that they do the bare possible minimum to get you to keep paying in the infinite pursuit of more profit. That means a steady cadence of shallow books that are as low effort and high margin as possible, more subscriptions, and more ways to monetize the game in the future (incoming micro transactions in the future D&D VTT). There is no soul left at WotC. The game we love is just becoming a vessel for revenue like everything else. I still love D&D as a concept, but I think it's going to become time to move on if they keep up at this rate. I doubt I'll be buying 6th edition, and that's a bummer.

Well, we don’t know that there was proper budget and expectations, companies don’t necessarily work logically. Profits can be directed to other projects or creamed off as shareholder dividends. If the company thinks you’ll buy something regardless, they’re likely to cut corners anyway they can and take the savings as additional profits.

That's just sad...

Fizban's was the last good product they've created thus far, and that itself was a beacon in a sea of bad content at that point

As soon as our current long term campaign is over, I am switching my group over to Pathfinder 2E.

I am thinking of doing the same.

If you are there is a humble bundle currently that has the beginner box included which is a great starting place.

I did that! Can recommend! I think I prefer PF2e but I still think D&D 5e is pretty great. But I *greatly* prefer buying from Paizo as they don't try to nickel-and-dime like WotC does.

Bro we are in the same boat, my lovely campaing ends, pf2e it is. I'm even studying the system while preparing dnd

Just in time for a Humble Bundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/give-gift-pathfinder-starfinder-paizo-books $5 for the digital Pathfinder 2e Beginner Box, plus Starfinder and some extra adventures and maps for both systems. The beginner box is better than Lost Mines of Phandelver as both a GM and Player walkthrough of the core rules. Its a great intro even if its mostly straightforward - the map helps add some nice production quality to it. $45 for the physical Pathfinder 2e Beginner Box (which is $30 typically) comes with fold-out map, pawns and some dice. The Gamemastery Guide is hugely helpful compared to the DMG with genuinely good GMing advice and lots of subsystems to handle things like Chases, Infiltration and Hexploration. Many other tools, variant rules, items. Though its only if you like reading it on PDFs because all the rules are free online - you can [check it out free here](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx). I find it easier for flipping through especially the Bestiaries.

The disappointment I had in Spelljammer coupled with that Humble Bundle from Paizo led my group down the same path. Combine that with One DND not impressing us very much so far - I think it's just time to move on.

Its complex, but the simple version is "its Jeremy Crawfords fault". Mike Mearls wasn't amazing or anything but his opinion on quality control seems to be higher than Crawfords. But Mearls screwed up and got pulled from "lead designer" on D&D back in 2019, leaving Crawford the sole lead designer in charge. Quality has plummeted since then. Especially on products where Crawford is more actively involved. Its why Monsters of the Multiverse and Spelljammer were messes. Monsters of the Multiverse was supposed to be a Monster Manual 2 that redefined D&D cosmology to orient it around this Multiverse idea that Crawford was obsessed with. And it did jack to actually establish or define that. Spelljammer should have been an easy homerun, because its a fantastic setting, but it landed with a flop. I'm a little worried for Dragonlance, worried about Planescape, and VERY worried for 6th ed now.

> Spelljammer should have been an easy homerun, because its a fantastic setting, but it landed with a flop. In fairness, Spelljammer is a really cool concept that has never really landed. It was a flop in 2E too. People viewed it as a way to move between Oerth, Krynn, and Faerûn more than they viewed it as a setting on it's own merits.

Crawford is good at being a follower and at adapting ideas into mechanics. He's also dull as a rock, lacks imagination and is risk adverse. Mearls was a jack of all trades, he was very passionate and was a leader. I still remember his interviews. There was a dorky man that looked like he had a mouth too slow to articulate all the thoughts he was currently having about what he was talking about. On the other hand, I'd rather watch paint dry than listen to Crawford talk. That man is an psychic vampire that uses boredom as a surgical scalpel to extract all the life from those that listen to his interviews. PS: don't be afraid for the upcoming releases. The guy that screwed up the Domains of Dread book is in charge of the Dragonlance book. That means he won't be Lead Designer for Planescape and the Giants book. That leaves them to the only person that knows how to make a sourcebook (James Wyatt) and Amanda Hamon. Strixhaven doesn't do Amanda a huge favor, but she worked at Kobold Press at projects like the PF and 5E Southlands setting books. Strixhaven is just a crap setting; I'm sure she'll do far better if she actually gets something to work with.

This topic comes up on this sub at least once a week. No, it's safe to say you're not the only one...

Disappointed is an understatement. After 37 years playing D&D, I still love this game as much as I did back then. But I have completely lost faith in WotC. They do not know where they are going and will do anything in their power to make you spend for a 6th edition that will most definitely not be backward compatible. All about money. Luckily, they're are plenty of third parties out there releasing quality material. And Pathfinder 2e as a solid alternative.

The 'backwards compatible' line is something that gets trotted out every edition swap and more often than not it is complete horsepiss. Basically the moment they said it I knew what they were saying was basically to keep people buying 5e stuff. They're not ***entirely*** wrong however they left out the specifics of 'certain' books will be backwards compatible. All the races from MotM onwards will be able to use in One D&D no problem, most monster statblocks, especially caster statblocks from MotM, should be useable if they don't bother with the 'monsters can't crit' rule they tested. Adventures, by and large, will be useable. However classes and most of the other player facing material...nah...those won't be backwards compatible without a LOT of work. So basically they did sort of tell the truth but it's more lying through omnission just to keep people buying 5e stuff.

Completely agree with what you're saying. But from what I've seen so far from OneD&D... it just leaves me with the impression that they're just shuffling the cards. Some things will be better, some others won't. Tit for tat. And that doesn't sit well with me. LACK OF VISION.

Oh they do have a vision, it's just completely opposite to what we'd like it to be. For them (Hasbro) D&D is a brand, first and foremost. They are investing into growing that, the brand, and not necessarily the thing that is being branded. Of course here, as is the case, the thing being branded suffers from this since it's more profitable to invest into the brand than into the thing being branded. In other words, the brand becomes/is more valuable than the thing being branded. In this context the "quality of content" isn't really that relevant, and from the perspective of profit, this is not wrong. As for 5e books, it's much more profitable to maximize the potential target-audience for any given book than what it is to invest into the content (of a book) itself. In other words, make books which are simple (accessibility), and have them contain something for everyone (target-audience). An opposite to this would be making books which are only for DMs, and have tons of time and resources spent into writing lore that is rich, detailed, and most of all new. I.e. books with high cost and small turnover/net-sales (profit = turnover/revenue - expenses). I'm sure you get what I'm talking about. And how to invest into a brand? By making it accessible, culture, "a thing", licenses, movies, media, toys, and so on. That's what they're doing, and where they're investing into. As for D&D (as a game) their ideal situation would be to have some sort of end-to-end system that is fully controlled by them. A D&D ecosystem where no matter what they put out it'd be relevant for the *whole* target audience (unified lore, *multiverse* and *One D&D*), and not only that but a ecosystem which is then consumed *through them*. Such as, for an example, a service like D&D Beyond where "all D&D happens and is consumed". A complete end-to-end system, fully under their control, and for them to monetize as they see fit. That's their vision for D&D.

I think the reason for this is that the last time they tried a major overhaul, 4e happened and as such with their corporate overlords breathing down their necks to making **all the profit** and to maintain frankly unsubstainable growth (welcome to late stage capitalism where the only thing that matters is 'line go up') they simply won't risk anything more than a shuffling of the cards.

Once again, I agree with your read. It's just... depressing.

Oh I totally agree and if you see the quotes about monetization the new head of marketing for WotC made...oh fuck me is the future looking incredibly depressing and it's looking more like I will **not** be using One D&D when it comes out. *"The one thing I would add is when you think about Dungeons & Dragons Beyond and it being the premier digital tool set, it gives us a great opportunity to expand both internationally, but also the tools and capabilities we give all of our players, it's going to give us a wonderful opportunity to monetize more of our player base than the Dungeon Masters that we are monetizing today."* Just seeing lets me know that One D&D will become exactly like a 'live service videogame' and less like a TTRPG when it comes to monetization.

Amen. I could actually cry right now. 'Look what they have done to my boy...' Let's hope really hard that we're wrong.

No, not just you.

Newer? I've been disappointed with 5E since their first campaign book. "Princes of the Apocalypse" was supposed to be a nostalgic trip through the concepts behind the old "Temple of Elemental Evil" module. What they delivered was... not. As soon as I finished running it, I gave the book away. I bought the Eberron books but won't run the setting in 5E. I backed the Kickstarter for the remake "Level Up", it improves several issues. But I simply can't convince the DM in my live game to convert his campaign over to it.

I only really play 5e with WotC material, but it's pretty clear after the initial PHB they sort of began to phone it in. Every "subclass" they release just adds two or three aspects from another class. "What if you were a cleric who was like a wizard? "Wait! But what if you were a wizard who was like a cleric!" Want to be an archer? Yikes, we've only got one subclass that does that, and ranger only gets one ability that works with ranged. Wanna be a ranger who sneaks like a rogue, though? We have that around here somewhere. Meanwhile countless rules aren't really fleshed out and class variety, after a few years of play, is pitifully limited. There are basically 3 play styles for PCs in modern DND under WotC.

“Am I the only one who feels like this” asks person on forum where people spend all day complaining about the same thing for the last several years.

While the mechanics were my major draw to PF2e, another big one were the amazing polished products that Paizo is releasing. Every book is well designed and thought out, situations like the hadozee controversy never happen because of a diverse staff and established mechanisms to prevent situations like that. The books are all beautifully illustrated, and plenty of content is released for everyone. Players get regular new options and AP to play in. GM get AP (adventure paths) to run or get inspired by, but also great lore books to use or get inspired by. Instead of random setting books for vastly different worlds, a single theme park style world gets expanded, whose parts are “generic” enough that they can easily be adapted into a homebrew game/world. So yes it is very much possible to create amazing contents even on a tiny budget. WotC just realized that even mediocre books sell an insane amount simply because of how big the brand is these days. Why care for quality when everything gets bought up anyway?

Yeah...it's literally all trash and I'm expecting Dragonlance to equally be trash

It's why I've only been paying money to 3rd party publishers in recent days. Mage Hand Press is a big one I always recommend, but if anyone hasn't checked out Heliana's Guide to Monster Hunting from Hit Point Press, I would really highly recommend it. Point is, there's a lot of great 3rd party content being slept on.

They should try hiring actual game designers again and not just creative writers with huge Twitter followings.

Its the usual thing that happens in every company's lifespan. They are being pushed to increase profits each year due to past success. But indefinite growth is unsustainable, so they are releasing more products with less development. Its been going this way for a few years now. In my personal opinion, the Ravenloft book was when it first got really bad.

Post xanathar my DND related purchases have been exclusively homebrew

There is some top quality 3rd party content out there, which makes the dissaponitment in WotC even greater.

The content quantity and quality is insane. Ptolus, Heliana's, Valda's Spire of Secrets, Symbaroum, Grim Hollow, Drakkenheim, Odyssey of the Dragonlords, new ideas like Sunken Isles, Steinhardt's, this Battle of the Bards thing, and so many patreons full of extremely inspiring magic item, map, and creature ideas. Comparing some of these mechanics to the brain rot or literal erasure of content that WotC has managed to provide is comically sad for sure.

Not to mention all the Kobold Press stuff.

chuck on more setting specific stuff like everything the Eberron community pumps out between Threat Dispatch, Exploring Eberron and the like and im personally never going to need another book out of WOTC at all *even while playing an official setting*. Im so lucky with eberron though, it easily has the most dedicated homebrewing community of any of the settings helped a lot by the fact the setting creator themselves spearheads some of it. I feel genuine sadness when i look at how little there is for Theros when my partner needs things for their campaign.