I wonder how it will mesh 5e with Studio Ghibli style adventures. It doesn't seem a natural fit.

Let's be real.

People aren't KS'ing this because they're actually going to run it, they're KS'ing it because of the art/concept.

So it doesn't really matter how well it actually works in practice. You could have stuck any reasonable system on this and it would have sold at least 60-70% as well. Saying it's D&D/5E gives it extra kick because people can tell themselves they actually intend to run it, even though in reality, like 90% of them are going to just ooooh and ahhhh over the cool art.

Which is not a bad thing, to be clear - art is absolutely the lifeblood of TT RPGs imho - and games should be able to sell in significant part on good art, but it does mean the system is somewhat irrelevant here.

(This is also how they can afford to have such a far-out delivery date. With worse art, the delivery date would be a serious deterrent. But people know they're getting something lovely so...)

This again raises the question of why WotC hasn't ever bothered to throw any bones to fans of JRPGs, anime or Studio Ghibli more specifically, given how many third party projects like this are out there and Eyes Wide Open being a Mithril seller on DMs Guild. I think because WotC still, perhaps foolishly, care about how well D&D settings actually work for D&D. They've released a couple in 5E which are questionable, but only really a couple (and one of those was Spelljammer, an existing D&D setting!).

Anime/JRPG-style conceits don't work at all well with Crawford et al's keen-ness on with full caster supremacy (even if it's no longer anywhere near LFQW) and martials as being forced to be this sort of "grounded" slightly lesser alternative who just don't get to do anything dangerously cool even if they can sometimes have "big numbers". It's also why we have multiple half-arsed "fighting casters", but no full-on spellblade-type class.

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