I can fix Dungeons & Dragons 5E.2024

Please hear me out on this one. For once this is not Tinfoil Hat Society, but practical advice on fixing the whole gosh-darn brand in terms of the physical TTRPG. This isn’t another wild, kooky conspiracy theory. Fix the game and the brand will follow. Isn’t that how Magic: the Gathering does it?

I would love it if someone in the company hears me out on this one. (Or hire me as a consultant for a year.) If I were in charge of Dungeons & Dragons, I could make the game a darling again between today and June 2027. (Allegedly the next edition is slated for 2027-2028.)

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.

Getting a grip on current reality.

As much as it pains me to say it, Wizards of the Coast is massively failing D&D currently. The fan base is turning away from the game. The Critical Role fans are abandoning the game for Daggerheart. Daggerheart sales are making D&D look third rate. Future product release announcements are met with a resounding, “Meh.” Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Ravenloft, even Eberron aren’t getting anyone’s attention any more. It’s time to move ahead.

Books being delayed for months tends to indicate a serious lack of writing and/or editing staff, something we know has been missing for a while now. It doesn’t help that at least one of their staff writers is known for holding them back (REDACTED.) The other big thing holding up their book releases is constant over-editing and sensitivity readers. There’s easy fixes for everything I just named.

So, sales are tanking all around. The new Starter Box for D&D looks like a gimmicky mess, much like Daggerheart. Dragon Delves came and went with a whimper and is on sale somewhere now. That’s truly sad. Overall sales are sagging on all the physical and I suspect much of the digital products as well. WotC can manipulate the numbers to say whatever they want, not sure if I believe them given the Hasbro lawsuits by investors.

We also have to have a very difficult understanding about something: The old campaign settings aren’t getting the job done anymore. Drop Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, Eberron, Planescape and anything else from “the good old days.” (I mean, it should be easy given the overall disdain for the authors.) Part of how D&D is getting trounced in the market is by a game with six different world seeds or by a TTRPG based on a series of novels by a very popular fantasy author. Since neither of those things inherently contained D&D, it’s time to change up the campaign format and worldbuilding.

Here’s what would get the job done.

First off, blank the slate. Clear off all product releases, DLCs, and whatever else was on the board for 2025. Grab a couple of good writers from DMsGuild. (It’s where they found DeArmas. What’s the best that could happen?) Get a couple of really solid new adventures to drop for Gen Con and the holiday season.

Next, get your full time writing and editing staff together and explain to them they need to produce or get gone. Things are going to get intense. Oh, and fire the damn Sensitivity Readers. They’re slowing everything down in the name of crying about a lot of nothing at this point. Editors are going to get the same lecture. Product is on a schedule now.

The big fix in 2026 (I claim that line,) is to print four big releases every three months plus a huge, boxed set for the Gen Con or maybe holiday season.  The staff is going to have to work pretty hard to get it done. But someone has to step up and take charge of all these projects and make sure they stick to the schedule. All the big industry hyperbole and excuses are gone. Time to go to work.

Four books, and then some.

As I mentioned earlier, Forgotten Realms, etc needs to be scrapped. Take all that extra material i.e. species, classes, subclasses, items, spells, and so on and put them in the Player’s Handbook 2. No big hype or preorders. Just get the thing done and deliver it by March 2026. No long editing process. No big team meetings. No design by committee. Just a team of writers reporting to an editor and a layout editor. Art fits in around the text, not the other way around. No fluff. Just get it done on time.

The next book in line has got to be a book about worldbuilding. One of the biggest advantages of D&D has always been its ability to adapt to a variety of settings. Write a book that talks about creating your own world, campaign setting, campaign and adventures. This book is aimed 100% at the Dungeon Master. This way there is no worrying about bringing back FR, Eberron, Dragonlance, etc.

No video game references necessary. No complicated canonical characters with 40 years of backstory. No getting pigeonholed into someone else’s plots. WotC needs to foster and encourage creativity in the DM community. Also release an anthology of older adventures adapted to 5E.2024. They can been from older modules or even Book of Lairs. That way there’s a little something to pacify players and DMs who don’t want to make their own unique worlds.

Third, and this pairs nicely with the previous releases, the Dungeon Master’s Guide 2. Fill it with even more worldbuilding, campaign, and adventure building advice that wasn’t in the Worldbuilding book. Drop in some info about FR, Eberron, etc as a tip of the hat to the old fans but keep the overall theme moving forward. The old stuff needs to establish itself as fresh, adaptable, and interesting. Put the old settings out as a framework for people to plug in their own ideas and make the old stuff available for the DM and players to interpret as their own creations. Get the DMs and everyone talking about it at Gen Con.

Last, predictably, is the new Monster Manual 2. Do it with the throwback cover. Use monsters from prior editions punched up to 5E.2024 stats and some new art. Release it right around the holiday season because you can’t go wrong with a new monster book. Mention revised dragons in all of the advertising and bring back as many obscure dragons as possible that haven’t been covered in the first Monster Manual. (Gem, mercury, yellow, brown, steel, etc.)

“Nada es imposible.”

Aside from being a slogan of a local area taco establishment, it’s a reminder that “Nothing Is Impossible!” My new albeit imaginary WotC D&D staffers are going to have to perform miracles to get everything in place by the end of the year 2026. I think they could do it with a lot of motivation and several trips to the archives for art WotC already owns. They have to put aside all of the extra flotsam that stagnates projects now and just DO THE THING!

WotC writers need to produce like we did 20 and 30 years ago like their jobs 100% depend on producing results, preferably on a tight deadline. No excuses. No extra running everything through a committee or a team. Sure as hell no extra editing and sensitivity readers. 100% accountability to the editors. Editors have 100% accountability to the project manager and on  up the food chain.

“But Jeff, what about all the digital stuff and D&D Beyond?”

Why, I’m so glad you asked. I’ve practiced this one. Ahem… Who gives a shit about the way we were doing it?

Every physical book comes with a free digital copy on D&D Beyond. Otherwise D&D Beyond is mostly for behind-the-scenes interviews, previews, and advertising like it always has been plus a few bonus surprises. Much like everything else, there will be a few twists with the new regime.

First, bring back Dragon Magazine as an online blog style publication every couple of weeks. Do a video interview with someone on staff talking about the latest upcoming projects. Give us a couple of sample characters from the new book. Do a monster spotlight. Bring back Dragon Mirth. Maybe talk about something every DM faces regularly.

Second, hire two or three writers off of the DMsGuild to commit to creating monthly adventures on digital only for D&D Beyond subscribers. Make sure whatever they’re doing relates to upcoming or recently released projects. They have to be done on deadline. Kinda like Dungeon magazine used to do. Hmm…

Third, and I almost forgot to mention this, bring back the RPGA (call it whatever, this is an example.) Give D&D Beyond members (as in everyone, free or otherwise) a chance to join the membership program that includes an email list, extra D&D Beyond bonuses, sneak previews of upcoming digital projects, etc. Also acts as an Adventurer’s Guild and can be used for Living City type online or in person events with added VTT assets and cool giveaways.

Last, choose one established VTT to be the official home of D&D online. The other VTTs will still have all their regular access, but one will be promoted by WotC. All of the new official content drops such as the adventures for members every month will drop on the officially endorsed VTT first by a month or two. Tie D&D Beyond’s Maps into the VTT of choice and make Maps accessible to all paid subscription tiers. (Or just do away with tiers entirely and have paid versus unpaid.)

The thing to bring the fans back to D&D is the one being completely overlooked.

Conventions. WotC recently announced they were cutting back their convention presence again. It’s like they’re afraid we’re going to notice a bunch of chimpanzees are steering their ship or something. Or maybe they’re afraid of being called out on all their shenanigans. Or maybe they are allergic to feedback from the many fans that they’re continuing to abandon. Possibly a combination of all the above.

If there were a way to do it responsibly and financially, I think Wizards of the Coast should organize their own convention kind of the way Gen Con started. They could hold the first one up near their HQ, currently in the US Pacific Northwest. Then they could think about establishing a presence at a convention in the Midwest (Iowa, hint hint,) and out east somewhere such as Boston or New York. They could also drop one somewhere down South just to keep the masses happy.

Ideally they could send staffers out to run demo games or full on adventures at as many conventions as they could reach on any given weekend. They could also see if various YouTube channels would be willing to run/stream live actual plays. Here’s a chance to get some community going around the game again. Makenzie might make an ideal ambassador for this program. (If she’s busy with conventions, maybe she will be less likely to foul up writing anything other than some adventures.)

I know it’s a dream.

D&D has it well within it’s own power to rise back up and be the biggest and best fantasy TTRPG ever. Right now Daggerheart and latest challenger Cosmere are making D&D look silly. Wizards of the Coast needs to stop fumbling around with D&D the Intellectual Property and start worrying about D&D the actual frickin game like they did 10 or 20 years ago.

D&D fans, including me, just want to see the game get better. I don’t just mean 5E or 5E.2024 fans, either. Old fans and new are wising up to the fact that WotC has been dropping the ball for a few years now. Meanwhile other companies are picking up the slack, and it’s only getting harder. WotC D&D has got to start being next level again or they’re going to vanish and be replaced not just as the top of the TTRPG food chain, but as a company and a game product. Magic: the Gathering might keep WotC alive, but D&D might be toast.

I don’t know how many more ways we can tell WotC they need to quit flopping all over the place and get their acts together. They completely botched D&D’s 50th Anniversary and now they’re in a death spiral headed straight into the ground. They need to stop reorganizing and start pumping out hits again.

In this case, it needs to start at the top. The people in charge of D&D need to see that what they’ve been doing since 2022 with the announcement of D&D 5E.2024 just isn’t working. Wizards of the Coast needs to figure out that they actually have competition and it’s going to pass them up really fast when it comes to fantasy gaming. There will come a day when branding, franchising, and the occasional social media blunder isn’t going to be enough. They need D&D the TTRPG if they want to be successful 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.