The Air is Out of the 5E Market

I hear reports of DM's Guild creators' monthly revenue dropping to 1/10th of last year's monthly revenue. Part of this is due to the release of the revised 5.5E edition, which led people to buy that instead of add-ons for what they already had. Additionally, buyers are reading the new books. They are either not interested in add-on content or are concerned about compatibility, which is causing them to hold off on add-on purchases.

Reports of D&D 5.5E not flying off the shelves to the level of a Daggerheart are also concerning. Daggerheart is selling like hotcakes, with physical books and cards sold out, and it is being well-received across the hobby. Daggerheart is the narrative heir to the D&D throne, and the best place for D&D's current crowd of 'story gamers' to migrate to.

People are still waiting for a 5E Kickstarter to reach $1 million, which some say has not happened in a while.

Even the Tales of the Valiant Player's Guide 2 is a slow build towards the stretch goals. I love this game; this is my final version of 5E, and the level of support and compatibility is excellent. Going forward, ToV is my 5E, and I am done with Wizards. 

The air is out of the entire 5E market. The market is still huge, but it is slowly dying. 5.5E was the "mid-cycle console refresh" that never lived up to the first console's initial launch, since people already "have that" and won't move unless something new is brought to the table. Those who feel "left out" by the mid-cycle refresh walk away and try new things, opting to skip the investment in a marginally better experience and deciding to wait for an authentic "next gen" experience.

Daggerheart is the Nintendo handheld that comes along and takes the steam out of the mid-cycle launch.

This has likely sealed D&D 2024's fate as a minor release and pushed up the release date of D&D 6E. A company that is close to Wizards can't "print a fantasy game with cards" and perform better than D&D. The logical outcome of this is, "D&D needs a new version, with cards, today!" I give 2024 D&D three short years before it is replaced by the new, "card-based" D&D 6, which will be as well-received as D&D 4 was, since that was card-based too. I doubt their current team knows how to build a game like that, as there seems to be a severe skill shortage within D&D's design team.

And you see this "experience game" design all across the hobby these days, role-playing games being shipped as boxed sets with tons of components (thanks, tariffs), and a "toyification" of the entire hobby.

Shadowdark has the rules simplicity that D&D needs, and this game has also taken a good amount of air out of the 5E market. It also plays like a board game, almost like a D&D version of Monopoly, with tight, phased movement on the map, every turn. I can hand someone a character sheet, and they can learn the game in a few minutes. It doesn't require a high school education to understand Shadowdark, and that is a good thing since your target market gets much younger.

D&D 2024's 200-buck buy-in, with over a thousand pages of reading, puts the game in the collector's market. It is a luxury item, a book of art that also serves as a game. Both Shadowdark and Daggerheart stay in the sixty-dollar range for the complete game, and Daggerheart even comes with cards.

Shadowdark is like that console with the great JRPGs that hardcore players play on to get their fix, and ignore that mid-cycle refresh since it offers nothing new. In Shadowdark's case, the fix is almost a horror-game level of tension and tactical immersion.

With top designers of D&D jumping ship and heading to competitors, this feels like the Pathfinder 1e era all over again.