First off, let us look at what is being discussed - a stream-lined, less lethal ruleset, with more super-heroic characters and a large penumbra of character-focused merch and services. I think as a whole it is a reasonable extrapolation of current trends and is a scenario worth teasing out a bit. I agree that a) it is unlikely to happen soon, that 5e has road ahead of it b) that should it happen it may occur as part of a fork to both keep the existing play base and cater to the new and c) if it happens, it will be after the stickiness of the new generation of gamers has been proven for a little longer.
But imagine this all comes off and we are in the bold new Deathtrap-6e space; what do we see? Short answer:
- a more character centric game, including portability to tie-in media
- a streamlined system
- lots and lots of merch
- adventures focussed on roleplay and guides how to run them
So within this I agree with the potential for a more character focused game, where that character is the focus of a large comets-trail of merch and services. I like the idea of my character being portable between games (old school) and other media (ooh, shiny) - bringing my guy into Baldurs Gate 3 would be cool. Or porting between a hypothetical MMO and a next gen VR single player adventure (awesome!) If amazing loot is available in the AAA VR game, that can be brought back out to the MMO or to your table? Theres a potential gold mine. The best way I saw this put was that only the DM will buy accessories like DM screens but every player could buy character focused things - so lots more marketing to players seems reasonable to me.
It also makes business sense as the minis market is 4x compared to RPGs. If we look at the reported numbers for the US market then if even ~10% ($35M) of the spend on miniatures can be turned towards RPGs that would be ~40% more spend in the RPG space.
Next, I think there is a contradiction between scrapping theater of the mind (to push more minis) and also making a more character focused experience. Unless I am gravely mis-understanding things, a big block of the character work is happening during roleplay. The couple of catch phrases and high tension of combat are great for what they are but not really for character development. Similarly, really expressing a characters abilities with the full use of the environment and infinite possibility of imagination is (to me) somewhat contradictory with saying 'everything on a mat, you have 6 squares movement, go'. On the map, we are tactical, things are bounded by their very nature. In theatre of the mind you can be more cinematic, swing on chandeliers, etc. If the characters are to get lots of focus, I can see a push towards unbounding things from the battle-mat. I have no idea how that tension would be resolved.
Making the setting more family friendly, I can somewhat see though I do not think it is unuseably unfriendly at present. In particular I think the point about bringing back something more 'cross-planar' like a Planescape variant makes sense. If character portability is going to be a big thing and if players can be sourced from campaigns, home games, MMOs and all sorts of weirdness, then trying to hammer together some sort of table cohesion is going to be a challenge. Why are all these folk in a small town on the Sword Coast? If everyone can express themselves to their fullest and then rock up to a table, we are going to have to open the aperture for 'what is reasonable to be walking around' - and a new-generation Sigil could work for that. The success mode for this would be something like 'Into the Spiderverse' - extreme difference of origin and style that make sense in context.
If we have a less lethal setting and also retain character advancement on a strictly defined basis, through everyone doing Adventurers League or similar sanctioned products, I could see there coming an issue where players will 'advance out' of their preferred play space.
Looking at a pair of recent surveys asking "What was the usual level of your character when you finished a campaign" (Facebook 5e group, N=1054) and "Which level do you like to play most" (Elderbrain Twitter survey, N=2044) it seems most players prefer Tier 2 which is a relatively narrow band to play in. Automatic levelling from Adventurers League or similar, would not give so many sessions before they progress to a less preferred tier. For a new edition this would need some tweaking to both keep the 'I get to level up!' excitement without rapidly pushing people out of where they want to be.
Recalling once again the expressed preferences of people at the table for Roleplay (1/2), Exploration (1/3) and Combat (1/6) and assuming that there is the drive towards using shared resources to promote character portability, then I could see a need to really change the way that DMsguild adventures are written to cater to these different requirements. The premise of many Adventurers League modules at the moment is 'find the thing, murder it, take its stuff' - containing mostly combat, some puzzles, not a great deal in the way of fodder for roleplay. For a new character forward edition, more focus would be needed on RP opportunities, making those interactions meaningful and lots more help and guidance for DMs to pull it all off. If we look at how people are currently playing - despite the vast majority of players being new-school (~80%) it is still less than half of all players doing role-play as performance. 60% of interviewees by the D&D Research Wizards indicated that they narrate their characters activities, whether in 1st or 3rd person.
Of this entire group just 54 out of 1006 (~5%) respondents mentioned RP for therapeutic purposes - suggesting that while it exists, it is not a focus for any but a few. Therefore while driving towards a more character focused play could be a reasonable direction, the level we want to hit is 'escapism' not 'therapy replacement'.
I have seen some very crunchy takes on how 'social encounters' could be systematised which I am not sure whether that is the way to go. Similarly, while I have a lot of time for Spire and its system of Stress and Consequences, I think it may not be popular with those who want their characters to mostly succeed. Going the full Critical Role heavy 1st person "let us deal with your demons" RP is a heavy lift for many DMs. If it requires the level of story-telling genius of Matt Mercer to run a game plus a table of professional voice actors to play it then that is just going to lead to frustration and dissappointment. We just cannot pitch that as the baseline.
The old apprenticeship model of learning from experienced DM's cannot be sustained in the current explosive growth in numbers so passing on lessons learned and how to deal with tables will need to be conveyed through some other channel. I would have said it is through watching and learning actual plays but I have encountered stiff resistance to the idea from peers I have spoken with, comparing it to trying to learn tennis by watching Wimbledon - fair enough. If we are looking for market opportunities then I could see Matt Colville's Running the Game videos called out in any future DMs guide or Matt Mercer on Masterclass or even opportunities to DM 'pro players' to get feedback and so on. If Beadle and Grimm can up-cycle a $50 product to 10 times the price then for sure WotC could market DM tutorials.
So to bring this back to a close - it all seems like a plausible direction to go but also with potential to over-shoot the runway for most people. I could well see a fork happening with support for 'classic' and 'heroic' lines happening in tandem, with 'fork-agnostic' expansions as some books are currently being released 5e/PF for example. I think the core driver of steering towards a model where there are lots more things for a player to buy makes sense from Hasbro's point of view and the 4e/5e experience has shown that they can experiment and the market will remain out there if the idea is a dud. Should 6e tank then a return to form with 7e or '5e Gold' or the like could walk it back and pretend it never happened.
I would be interested to see these new 'RP-heavy' settings - why not, these are something we have not had before - and similarly I would be interested in trying out this multi-mode character portability. I personally am not going to seek catharsis through my character meeting their demons, but if others are going to turn up at my table seeking that then I'll be interested to read whatever setup and story guides get issued.
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