First note, Gen Zers are starting to age out of the target audience for D&D, Gen Alpha is the upcoming target.
As to Greyhawk...it is perfect. The actual Setting itself, at core, is a 32 page 1E booklet worth of information, which is the ideal size for a chapter in the DMG (we know now that Greyhawk and "how to build out your Setting" is Chapter 9 of the new DMG). It follows all the core assumptions of D&D, everything in the new PHB and MM will fit in without issues.
It is nearly a blank slate, a canvas for a DM and players to develop in play. Forgotten Realms is too detailed for this purpose, Eberron is too quirky, Nerrath is too little detailed.
And Greyhawk is a touchstone to the origins of the hobvy.
Are Zoomers aging out of the D&D market?? I was thinking the opposite. I always assumed D&D's core demographic was high-school/college aged people moving up through young professionals, which would be Gen Z. The former is the group that has the time and the passion to play the game, with the latter being the older version of the same group, but now with the spending power to buy all the content they wish they still had time to play.
How old are the older Gen Alpha kids? 10? 12? I can see this generation getting into D&D, but probably mostly through the influence of older, Zoomer siblings, or Millennial parents.
The 7th Edition DMG has a good chance of including Eberron in it, once Millennials and Gen Z folks are fully in charge over at WotC.
WotC never called me back about my application for President, but once they do I plan on cashing in on the 3e Nostalgia for 7e. Calling the initiative "Back to Back to the Dungeon"
Cause it’s the 50th anniversary of D&D.
This really feels like the answer. It's a big anniversary for the game. The new books are more of a refresh than a new edition, so they're not really trying to push anything
new. New gamers are going to buy into the system simply because it's the current one available. What they really want to do is try to re-capture all the old, disenfranchised customers who skipped out on 5e, and were likely to skip out on 5.5e as well. Over the last decade with the explosion of the OSR it's become obvious that this demographic is still hungry for more stuff, and they're willing to spend money. I think they're trying to give these customers something to buy, and in true Hasbro fashion that something is Nostalgia.
"Remember GreyHawk? Remember Melf? Remember the old D&D Cartoon?"
Fading because the author is hellbent on destroying the goodwill of the very audience her books appealed most to. We were too young to notice the blatant fat phobia, low-key antisemitism, and general milquetoast pro-establishment political stance when we first read them, and were so enthralled by the world and fond childhood memories to be too critical of them once we got older. But, once she took the mask off, the spell was broken and we all collectively realized they were never really as good as we had built them up to be in our own heads.
Truly one of the greatest bag drops of our time.. She could have just shut up, and spent her days swimming in her Scrooge McDuck pool of money.. I will never understand rich people and their inability to not be public nuisances.
The “lore” of Greyhawk is really about the “lore” of Gary Gygax’s original campaign. There is very little published, official lore. But there are a lot of people who spent years trying to figure out what pieces of the DMG and the PHB were part of Gygax’s campaign versus Arneson’s, and what Castle Greyhawk’s levels were really like, particularly while he was alive and answering questions on forums like Dragonsfoot.
I think this is possibly a big selling point. This is the 50th anniversary.. So they can offer nostalgia for those looking for that, they can offer history for the people looking for that, and then at the same time, to a new player who doesn't know or care about Gygax, or Greyhawk.. It can all still be used as reference material. It seems like a good choice for casting a wide net.
