I feel official Dungeons & Dragons has let us down on world building.
I know that might be upsetting for some people to hear. I apologize. I know D&D is a big part of a lot of people’s lives and gaming experiences. Wizards of the Coast’s “D&D production team” (or whatever they’re calling themselves this week) just doesn’t seem to have much of anything going on by way of creativity these days.
Truthfully, I can’t remember the last time the WotC official D&D creators did anything other than let the fans down. Spelljammer? Spaceships without space travel or starship combat rules. Not to mention #hadozee.
Planescape? Sickly rehash of the 1980s-90s series with a lot of bluster for about a month. DMsGuild had better Planescape 5E sourcebooks before and after.
Dragonlance? Achoo! What official setting? It was forgotten and on the shelves at Ollie’s three or four months later.
What about that cool D&D movie? Did it revitalize the Forgotten Realms? Yawn. Nope.
Makenzie De Armas, D&D writer extraordinaire, has never coughed up a setting idea or a full setting. She came up with that Deck of Many Delays, though. Wizards of the Coast was so proud of her and her three years of D&D experience prior to hiring her. Not to mention the massive number of printing errors with that product. Funny how the company who makes Magic: the Gathering can’t get a deck of cards printed for D&D. (Print screwups weren’t Makenzie’s fault.)
Kyle Brink, who was supposed to be some kind of organizational prodigy, never managed to muster the troops and create a new campaign setting or even revise an old one successfully. He was there for some of the whopping non-starters, though. We can only speculate as to why Kyle is no longer with WotC and wish him well wherever he ended up.
What else has there been in the last few years. Candlekeep Mysteries was okay-ish. I seem to remember it getting lukewarm reviews. I actually kinda like it. It was the last official adventure book I bought; I think. Strixhaven came shortly after, and we all know what a travesty that turned out to be.
Even D&D Beyond has adopted other people’s campaign settings as of late. Gloomhaven, Lord of the Rings, Humblewood, Book of Ebon Tides are all made by Third Party Publishers. Of course, none of those titles originated with Wizards of the Coast and can hardly be considered official or canon in the traditional sense.
Someone on X (Twitter) notoriously referred to WotC as “Creatively Bankrupt.”
That’s pretty much what I see happening. The brain trust that created the Player’s Handbook revision and the Dungeon Master’s Guide update seem capable of bashing on D&D’s original creators while simultaneously stealing Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms to bastardize it for a new audience. I find it amusing that the Sword Coast and Icewind Dale seem to really be all the Forgotten Realms ever amounts to with them, though. But hey, Forgotten Realms was created by “an old white dude,” so obviously they can’t give him any credit.
I think the truth is the Wizards of the Coast D&D brain trust wouldn’t know what to do with an original campaign setting if one jumped up and bit them squarely on the arses. That’s exactly what they need, in my opinion. They don’t hear me, though. They’re not able to have a conversation with a (former) fan of the game or anyone else who feeds them fresh ideas, it seems.
Not just sitting around and eating.
If they really stopped to think about it, a fresh, new campaign setting solves several problems they’ve been having with D&D lately. They could build an all-inclusive, warm, fuzzy, cozy game world without all those icky racist overtones from the past designers. You could play a Dwarven Coffee Shop owner or a Halfling Barista and fit right in. There could be famous groups of adventurers who never leave town or fight a monster.
Wait! We can’t fight monsters any more. The new world book could feature completely non violent creatures. No more colonialism or wanton destruction of entire cultures by conquering nations. Why doesn’t WotC do that instead of dredging up another old setting to destroy?
In all seriousness, WotC could build a new official setting for D&D to base every campaign, adventure, and novel going forward and get rid of literally everything we hear them complain about. Why is that so hard for them? They could even integrate it with their shiny new Virtual TableTop with all new maps.
Disclaimer: Statements expressed in this article are strictly my opinion. If you disagree or have a different opinion, that’s okay. I’m not an expert on everything. I’m not always right. I’m just writing from my experience as I know it. Your mileage may vary.
They could pressure the DMsGuild and YouTube shills into writing all the content for the AI to feed on. After a certain point, they could steal all those old modules for the AI to regurgitate adventures in the new campaign world by just changing the name. Some poor live human being like Jason Tondro might get a cramp in his had from writing prompts for the AI, though. I think there will come a point where WotC won’t need people to do anything except advertise whatever the AI shells out.
On the other hand, the writers at WotC could literally come up with a whole new monster manual full of untouchable trademark creatures that only their official modules could use. They could create all new big name NPCs to replace Mordenkainen, Tasha, Volo, etc. They could come up with a whole different pantheon of gods and a cadre of factions for player characters. Why in the heck don’t they do it?
Worldbuilding has become the purview of the Third Party Content Producers.
I think it’s lazy game design to keep rehashing old settings. If I worked for WotC, I wouldn’t want to set foot in a convention, much less give a speech knowing they aren’t doing anything to create new IP but rehashing all the same old junk. We won’t even get into all the public relations nightmares of the past two years starting with The Great D&D Open Game License Debacle of 2023. Oh, the fans remember that one.
Rather than spend the effort to come up with a new campaign world, Wizards of the Coast is relying on fans and Third Party Publishers (3PP) to do the heavy lifting of creating new worlds for D&D. If I were one of these publishers, I would change games, stirp out any official D&D IP, and talk to every company in the industry that doesn’t have product on D&D Beyond. I would tell anyone with a unique campaign world not to sell it to WotC or anyone associated with them. There are dozens of open game licenses out there now for lots of fantasy settings. We don’t need WotC nearly as bad as they need us at this point.
Seriously, we can do so much better. I could probably gather three to five virtually unknown Game Masters in a room for a weekend and we could fart out a new campaign world better than anything WotC has done over the last ten years. Heck, given a month we could probably pop out a campaign world that would knock your socks off. But Wizards of the Coast don’t hear me though.
It’s easier to have some hack shlocky DungeonTuber write a couple of paragraphs and attach their name to a sourcebook than it is just to elevate the guy who probably got stuck ghostwriting the rest of it. Yeah, I see what some of them are doing out there, but I’m not naming names yet. I don’t need a million angry DungeonTuber fans after me while I’m trying to grow my own audience.
3PP might be a great way to go for a smaller game producer like The Arcane Library. Shadowdark was built primarily by one creator. Kelsey Dionne is one very busy lady. Handing off adventure writing and worldbuilding to other content creators makes total sense to free her up for the hundreds of things she does to run the company.
I’m incredibly disappointed in WotC because they have a staff of hundreds and can call up writers from the DMsGuild as they have proven in the past. Oh noes, I’m picking on the big powerful corporation with ridiculous amounts of talent at their disposal. Yet they seem 100% unable or unwilling to build a new official campaign settings. If it were my big, huge company, I’d build a team that did nothing but work on a new world.
I dare say if it were my call, the creative types at WotC would get very tired of meetings and emails about creating new worlds, thinking outside of the box, and productivity that doesn’t come from AI. Best believe there wouldn’t be time for interviews with Screen Rant or Bell of Lost Souls about how old game designers were sexist, racist, etc. They could give an interview that says something like, “Hey, check out this new thing we’re working on. The fans are going to go bonkers for it.”
It’s fantasy to think WotC will do anything but drop the ball, make stupid statements, and cry when the fans don’t worship them properly.
My inner pessimist is loose, but 2025 isn’t looking much brighter for official D&D than 2023 did. We get the Monster Manual in February because… they couldn’t manage to release it in 2024. Why? There’s another one of life’s great mysteries.
Another thing, are there going to be any new monsters in said Monster Manual? I think anything “new” is going to be a rehash of stuff from prior books. All the new art for the MM? My guess is it will be AI generated with a few touch-ups by whatever human gets to erase all the seven finger hands and extra third arms. I’m not even sure why bother with monsters at all given the direction the other two books seem to have taken from the reviews I’ve heard.
Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk are all they seem to care about so far. No encouraging player worldbuilding. No sign of a newly resurrected boxed set from days of yore. Definitely no sign of a new official world. I gotta say I’m pretty disappointed with Wizards of the Coast (again.)
Thank you for being here with me today. I appreciate you. Keep it real, but please strive for positivity, too. Please embrace the things that bring you the most joy in your life.
Jeff's Game Box 