D&D 5e has failed

[Kaelik]

I mean, honestly if we are doing the "why did 5e succeed" thing again, I think the answer is still just:

"5e shows that podcasting and twitch were good for the TTRPG business"

I don't think it tells us anything about what type of game people like. If we lived in the same media landscape but 3.5 was released it would probably do similar numbers.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I think there's demand for more 5e splatbooks than WotC has been putting out.The 3e/3.5 pattern of two splatbooks a month was falling apart by 2007, but the current pattern of two splatbooks and two adventure paths a year seems like leaving money on the table and creating lots of room for some of the streamers and youtubers to get their own publishing lines started, which might turn into pathfinder-style competition for the inevitable sixth edition.

This feeds into Kaelik's point - I don't think there's going to be 'pathfinder-style' competition by the time 6e rolls around because Hasbro and Wizards will have strengthened the brand to the point where 95% of the fantasy TTRPG content that most normal people see on the internet will be 5e-related. Pathfinder? We'd be lucky if people even knew about it beyond MAYBE "that one old game that was like, really hard or something". I only foresee further consolidation in the future, because that's just kind of where we are as a society right now.

[Chamomile]

5e has at least two Pathfinder candidates: Matt Mercer and Matt Colville. It is not currently clear whether or not being named "Matt" is a prerequisite to major success in the current market, but available data strongly indicates this is so.

For serious, though, if 5e got phased out for 6e and Matt Mercer released the Critical Role RPG which was just using the OGL to reprint 5e but with different phrasing and the gunslinger in the core rulebook, he has very good odds of successfully absorbing 5e's playerbase. Likewise if Matt Colville released Routelocator or something, although he wouldn't have the advantage of already being directly associated with and controlling the IP of what is almost certainly the currently most popular D&D setting. Pathfinder didn't have that advantage either, though, and they pulled it off, so I think Matt Colville could steal the 5e audience if 1) WotC released a 6e that was a significant change from 5e and 2) Critical Role did not update to 6e (whether they stayed with 5e or retired the project, and obviously if Critical Role switched to Matt Colville's new game that would be even better for Colville's project).

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Wouldn't that be because half of 5e's success is due in part to those two dudes? You're right in that Critical Role is about the only thing I could see supplanting D&D's control over the virtual marketplace. If those two actually teamed up and decided to release their own not-D&D, I could fathom another Pathfinder situation.
Now that I say that, I kind of hope it happens. Anything to get WotC off their asses and actually trying to make something fun.

[Chamomile]

Sort of. Mercer is in a position to eat D&D's lunch if they ever try to move on to 6e because he is like 80% of D&D's de facto marketing power, but Colville is in exactly the position Paizo was in: A major third-party content creator who is generally liked by the fan community, and who would therefore have an automatic mandate to save fantasy roleplaying if D&D ever switches to a new edition and people don't like it. Mercer might not even need that opportunity, but Colville needs WotC to make a 4e-style blunder to have a chance (assuming he even wants to, which I doubt he does - the point here is the circumstances under which he could, not whether he ever would).

[Bigdy McKen]

I don't think 6e is on WotC's mind right now, honestly. 5E officially dropped in like 2014(?); at this point in 3E's life cycle, they had already released a revised edition.

I think they are quite content just sneaking rules revisions into Xanathars and Tashas rather than doing a straight-up 5.5. Some of the chuddlier fans are wailing that Drow and Orcs are no longer stand-ins for Mexicans or whatever, but they managed to avoid a massive fan upheaval like when 3.5 was announced, and I'll bet they're looking to avoid the same thing that happened in 2008.

My guess is that they'll either publish an updated 5E core with a few of the revisions we've already seen with the promise that it will be backward compatible (much like Pathfinder was "backward compatible" with 3.5) or part of the new online tabletop initiative they're peddling will be core rules as a "living document".

If, and that if is doing a lot of heavy lifting here admittedly, there is anyone on the D&D team who has a lick of sense, they will beg, bribe and blackmail their top streamers like the Crit Role folks, NADPOD and Adventure Zone to switch to the new edition if they ever were ballsy enough to slap 6th Edition on a D&D book.

[Stubbazubba]

I think if they're looking seriously at 6e it's driven by Hasbro, not the D&D team. Hasbro just promoted WotC to a major level of its corporate structure, and of course that's mostly due to Magic, but D&D's brand has been absolutely skyrocketing in value over the last few years with Stranger Things, Crit Role, BG3, and the movie in the works. Some announcements from WotC make it sound like they're going to increase their release schedule and/or plus up the team, which is a really weird thing to do this late in the edition, unless you're starting to test out ideas for a new edition, Book of Nine Swords-style.

But either way, my read is that D&D is finally out of the doghouse with Hasbro, and are being allowed to, you know, have goals again. Whether that's a new edition or a revamp or something else is less clear.

My theory, though, from reverse-engineering Amazon sales rankings, is that 5e's core book sales have increased year over year the past several years, and I don't think 2020 was any different, since most indicators say D&D became more popular during pandemic, not less. When your core books keep growing in sales, you will never, ever replace them with new ones. 6e should not happen, business-wise, until that finally tips and comes back down.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I think if they're looking seriously at 6e it's driven by Hasbro, not the D&D team. Hasbro just promoted WotC to a major level of its corporate structure, and of course that's mostly due to Magic, but D&D's brand has been absolutely skyrocketing in value over the last few years with Stranger Things, Crit Role, BG3, and the movie in the works. Some announcements from WotC make it sound like they're going to increase their release schedule and/or plus up the team, which is a really weird thing to do this late in the edition, unless you're starting to test out ideas for a new edition, Book of Nine Swords-style.

Do you think this is analogous to how comic books are mostly preserved as brands that can be exported to other, more profitable forms of media like video games or movies? I'm getting that impression, although I will fight a comic book nerd over whose hobby is more popular.