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Stipulated - there is no D&D-killer except WotC themselves. And 5e will not die, even after 6e drops. Too many people glommed onto 5e that will become the 5e Nerdzerkers that kick off the new Edition Wars that will find some hair to pick with 6e and so the cycle will continue.
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The closest thing to a D&D killer has always been the owner of the D&D IP. It's happened twice already (tail of 2E and the 3.5 through 4E cycle) with two different owners. If early indications are accurate, and the game matches what has happened to cable companies and the wicked mouse of the west, WotC may slowly drive off half their audience with 6E. My guess is that it will take almost the entire cycle of 6E to see the outcome.
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^These^
WotC has to kill D&D. The network advantage D&D has is too massive now for a game to overtake it without some serious own-goals.
Being an objectively better game doesn't matter at this point. You need to stay profitable enough, long enough, and WotC acting incompetent enough, long enough, for your games network effect to build to the point that it would be worth the miniscule effort it would take for a D&D player to look at your game system.
Nothing short of WotC pulling a Marvel/DC Comics style self-immolation will do for any other game to have a prayer.
Brand loyalty in RPG land is just that strong.
Yeah, the brand loyalty thing is why RPGs aside from D&D are just not a growth sector. Once gamers get hooked on a particular game, they never want to try anything else. Only a minority of people seem to break out of this.
That's why I've decided to scrap my plans of writing ttrpgs in favor of going into fiction and video games. It may sacrifice the imagination potential that only ttrpgs have, but it means people will actually consume my products. Those are actual growth sectors.
Historically, the closest was Vampire: The Masquerade. It captured the zeitgeist of the 90s, and created an entirely new audience -- goths (including girls) not just geeks.
It's hard to fault this at first glance. But in 20/20 hindsight, it was doomed to fall short because in my opinion WW didn't really understand their market. i.e. Lots of different RPG player besides emo goth kids bought and played Vampire/WoD...
WW nuked themselves with their own metaplot nonsense (along with other issues). And failed to leverage a sufficient amount of their player base to continue building on their initial player network effect on with new editions.
They failed to understand the underlying reasons why Vampire/WoD was so successful, and have been confused ever since why they cannot even come close to that success in subsequent editions.
They rejected the trenchcoat and katana casual players to their complete detriment....
That being said for any game to truly "beat" D&D; it would have to be a medieval fantasy game.
Yeah, the metaplot et al was a huge problem and yet you still have people praising it and being upset about it. Unlike D&D or Call of Cthulhu, WoD shot itself in the foot by limiting itself to a single campaign setting and encouraging its players to be hugely insular even by ttrpg fandom standards. Do you want to play a vampire game without generational limits or 13 clans with ridiculous concepts that seem pulled out of a hat? Well fuck you, the fans who haven't jumped ship already are going to mock and shun you for not worshiping the lore. jfc, this is a game!
Meanwhile, D&D has a bazillion official and unofficial campaign settings, uncountable numbers of adventures, and uncountable optional rules that can completely rewrite how the game flows. Indie companies have created profitable niches by catering to specific unmet needs like non-vancian magic systems.
CoC has a bunch of gods and monsters, but it doesn't really have a coherent canon like a tv show or movie franchise does. Since investigators are generally expected to suffer horrific fates including insanity, mutation, and death, there's no need to have things like politics between the shaggai and the migo that influence the course of history that every subsequent book must take into account.
I've considered making my own urban fantasy ttrpg to capitalize on the decline of WoD, but as I said I don't think my chances are good. Also, I'm pretty sure UndeadMonk is gonna beat me to market and I'm curious to see whether he has innovations that might save me time. Tbh I'd prefer to see revivals of
Nightlife,
Nephilim,
Everlasting,
WitchCraft et al rather than a new game that rehashes the same basic ideas but has to walk around that pesky issue of copyright. The indie game
Feed has a more or less perfect implementation of vampires that has gone under the radar because the author decided not to follow the supplement treadmill that is mandatory to keep rpg communities alive, even though it was released under Creative Commons (basically OGL before it was a thing). Those games may be dead, but the best I can ever do is clone them.