Okay, I wasn’t expecting I’d be dropping an article today, anyway.
Wizards of the Coast is up to more shenanigans again this past week. They announced five new releases for Dungeons & Dragons which have been met with a resounding “What?!?” from the YouTube/X (Twitter) gaming crowd. They also turned the Exodus TTRPG loose on the world, quietly, secretly, like they almost don’t want to claim it. I also see the article from the new guy in charge of D&D has surfaced again.
Here’s the article by Dan Ayoub on D&D Beyond about the game’s supposed new direction. I’m going to encourage everyone to read the article and use their own discernment. It’s not really news given how old the piece is, but it has come up again in light of their most recent release plans.
Here is the link to the Exodus RPG site, not to be confused with the two or three other TTRPGs with the exact same title. I really don’t know what they were thinking with this one other than it would have been a lovely tie-in to the upcoming video game. I don’t have anything negative to say about it. It’s D&D 5E in space with some mecha. Kinda like that game I’ve been wanting to create myself.
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.
Then there’s the crux of today’s discussion, the upcoming releases of five new products just in time for the holiday season and beyond. The Forgotten Realms books, a player’s guide and the “adventure” guide which is aimed at Dungeon Masters in November. I still think it’s a massive misstep by the company, but they’re going to do it regardless of what I say. (I’m a squeak in the void as far as Hasbro/WotC goes.) We’ll talk more about Forgotten Realms further down.
Then there’s the coloring book for the Dragons of the Realms. This isn’t even the first coloring book they’ve released. We used to color the black and white artwork in some of the old books. (I never did, but my players thought it was cool to desecrate their own books. I mean… decorate their own books.) It’s a cute little holiday add-on item for people who don’t know what gaming books to buy their loved ones and friends who game. Cool. Is it an Earth shattering money maker? No.
There’s a new artificer book coming this month (August 2025.) It might even already be out as of time of writing. I think this is another one that was released with a massive whimper. It was playtested heavily on Unearthed Arcana. Again, this was a mistake in my opinion. Eberron deserves better, but 2025 is not the year for it.
Then we come to the two official journals due to come out in November. One is a Player’s Journal; the other is a DM’s Campaign Journal. This is just basically another quick add-on item for holiday shopping. It’s cute but not a huge release. The DM’s journal is supposedly packed with forms for building a campaign and blank space. I’m going to be creating a similar work for Dragonbane in PDF, only without a ton of blank space and I bet it won’t cost nearly as much.
My good friend The OG GM has famously said, “You can buy a player’s journal at the local Dollar Store for 99 cents. It’s called a notebook.” It comes in two kinds: college or wide ruled. Draw your own cool cover, though.
There are also any number of Etsy stores and publishers selling unofficial player’s journals for relatively cheap. This offering smacks of a cheap cash grab by WotC for the holidays for the checkout stands of Target more than a major, impactful game release. This is not the kind of thing that’s going to bring me or other older fans back to D&D. It’s a yawn without much of a purpose from a company that should be banging out epic hits, not a notebook with prompts.
That brings us to the “controversial” item being screamed about on social media, The Book of Many Patterns. It’s a book of D&D themed crochet patterns. Get your hooks ready for this, because now you can make a beholder, owl bear, or gelatinous cube stuffy yourself at home with yarn. Much like the coloring book and the journals, I guess if that’s what you’re into, go for it. Not my jam. Another example of a whimper from a company that should be hammering out massive adventures and epic sourcebooks.
With all the new releases, it’s what we’re not hearing that bothers me most.
See, Dungeons & Dragons has always been about expanding beyond the core three rulebooks. The Player’s Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master’s Guide have always been at the heart of the game, but it’s only a start even for homebrewers. Technically you can get by with the free SRD if you’re just looking to kitbash a game together without all the bells and whistles.
D&D is known for epic sourcebooks and adventure modules. Anyone who knows much of anything about the game should be aware of this. If you look back over various past editions, it is very obvious that supplemental material is what holds up D&D as a game, not crocheted owlbears and dragon coloring books.
I’ve said in past articles what they need to do to grow the game. Monster Manual 2 is an easy option to make money and it’s a slam dunk because all the writers have to do is rewrite old monsters for 5E. Unearthed Arcana or PHB2 is another slam dunk. Just cmpile the Artificer and all of the subclasses, etc from the other books. This book is mostly crunch with a little art.
Then there’s a matter of Dungeon Master support. You know why Daggerheart is appealing to players and GMs? They have worldbuilding seeds cooked into the core rules that can be blown up into full campaigns and worlds. Why is D&D so insistent on living in the past? Screw Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, Planescape, Spelljammer and all the other stale old campaign settings. (Yes, I can’t believe I’m saying it, but Greyhawk, too.) D&D needs an injection of imagination like new worlds, new magic, new lore, new campaign settings.
A simple DM’s Journal with a lot more blank pages than actual thought or effort is not getting the job done. WotC needs to produce a Worldbuilder’s Toolkit that encourages DMs to use their imagination. D&D should just be a solid foundation for an entire geyser of fantasy worldbuilding. If Dan Ayoub is serious about encouraging people to write their own adventures and create Third Party Product, then why not give us a sourcebook to fuel those imaginations?
WotC is still mistakenly, stupidly operating from that manupid Cynthia Williams quote about “We need to monetize the players.” I’m sorry, but NO. Let that comment made during a conference call with Hasbro higher-ups go rot somewhere. It’s 2025. Forget what she said because she has long since fled the scene and had no gawds awful clue what she was doing anyway. Start making books for Dungeon Masters and players in general again.
Why do we keep coming back to this stuff?
Hard to believe though it is, I actually care about D&D. I grew up on D&D. I wanted to be Gary Gygax when I grew up. Game designers are my heroes. (Looking at you, OG.)
D&D has, up until a few short months ago, been the flagship product of the TTRPG hobby/industry/culture. I’ve debating dropping Dragonbane and just going back to making D&D content. Behind the curtain, I can make any game work. I can manipulate any game system to do what I want it to do at the table. It’s not that hard.
Dragonbane is just shiny, simple, efficient, fun, and has more solid mechanics than D&D. Dragonbane is more like Basic D&D was back in the day. There’s no complicated class/subclass mechanics. The spells are concise and few in number at the moment. I can still grind out a character in 15 minutes on a piece of regular notebook paper. I practically have the whole character creation process memorized at this point.
But ears perk up when they hear “Dungeons & Dragons” way more than almost any other game. Recently Daggerheart, Cosmere, and Draw Steel are getting the majority of the attention. Well known DungeonTubers and D&D social media influencers have swapped their D&D shtick for Daggerheart and/or other games. Or at least until Critical Role Campaign Four was announced.
Suddenly I can hear the screeching of brakes as DungeonTubers stop dead in their tracks and pivot back 180 degrees. I’d almost bet money next week we’ll hear a handful of DungeonTubers switch back to D&D and we’ll hear about how D&D 5E.2024 is so wonderful. People listen to Matt Mercer and company. People listen to DungeonTubers. (As evidenced by the D&DTubers having subscriber counts in the tens and hundreds of thousands.
I consider going back to D&D daily just to grow the channel and then switch back to games I enjoy playing, running, and talking about a heck of a lot more. But then I remind myself of the current Daggerheart effect of all these people jumping from the D&D bandwagon. WotC is steadily losing their audience, and their printed content is not getting gamers back.
I’ve worked retail.
I’ve seen fads come and go. Legend of the 5 Rings CCG, Dragon Dice, Pogs, fidget spinners, even electronic LED dice are awesome for about three months, maybe a year and then gone. Right now I think Hasbro/WotC is trying desperately to get the quick buck. That might be cool for quick impulse buys during the holidays. I don’t see it sustaining the D&D game. You can only sell so many plush owlbears and campaign journals before customers are going to ask, “What game is this for?”
That leaves three routes for D&D to go on. First, WotC is banking on video game profits. That’s great, but if this year has taught us anything it’s that the video game market is becoming increasingly volatile. I wouldn’t bet the farm on everything being a hit like Baldur’s Gate 3.
Electronic sales? That’s a huge unknown in terms of sales. The only thing we know is that Hasbro/WotC cut a heap of employees. Project Sigil did the biggest belly flop since 4th Edition. WotC dismissed Todd Kenreck from D&D Beyond and now we’re getting a handful of their loyal DungeonTubers interviewing D&D “greats” like Makenzie DeArmas.
Second, WotC foolishly thinks their current product trajectory is going to save them. Sorry, going back to the Sword Coast and Baldur’s Gate again and again isn’t going to help. Ravenloft has been done to death, vampirism, and death again. Greyhawk? As far as I can tell, that ship already sailed. Eberron? They are throwing stuff at the wall and praying something sticks. They NEED something new!
Third, there’s Stranger Things and now Critical Role to try to boost D&D’s sagging sales. It worked once before, right? Don’t get me going on the Critical Role thing since they announced they won’t be using Daggerheart. But what is WotC going to do next year after the show is dried up and the actual play views start tanking? They’re okay taking advantage of that wave of popularity, but then what?
Behind the scenes, I think this is all some plan to gradually wind D&D down to become another board game like Monopoly, Clue, or Chutes and Ladders. The 2027 D&D or 2030 D&D will just be a boxed board game with characters to fifth or tenth level. Player’s Manual, DM’s book/Monster guide, and an adventure for new DMs to learn on. Maybe WotC has just given up and now they’re going to lean on Magic and video games.
How many game companies from the 1970s, 80s, and 90s have games that survived this long? How many times have major TTRPG IPs changed hands over the years? World of Darkness used to be a D&D killer. It’s all over the place and coming back around to White Wolf last I heard. West End Games? They dried up after the Star Wars license went to… sigh (WotC) and then Fantasy Flight and now Star Wars is dead. GURPS? Champions? Mayfair Games? Pretty quiet nowadays.
Dungeons & Dragons is one of a rare breed of tabletop games that has withstood the test of time. Other than the really bumpy transition years between 2E and 3E when the company changed hands to WotC, it’s gone pretty well up until late 2022 with the announcement of D&D One or whatever they called it that week. Indecisiveness, design by committee, utter corporate ineptitude, the Great D&D Open Game License Debacle of 2023, horrible public relations moves, and other failures have been probably the worst in D&D history (but they don’t want us to know much about D&D history because they hate the founders.) I think right now there are Wizards of the Coast employees larping as a “D&D team.”
There’s a reason Dan Ayoub wants to hand D&D off to Third Party Producers.
The very notion of this “D&D as a franchise” tells me that they don’t know what they’re doing with the game. We’ve been given this massively over bloated ruleset as a base and now everything is in the hands of others. Official printed content is probably going to dry up and blow away between now and 2027. But hey, that’s just my take on it. Maybe I’m wrong.
To me it just seems they need to go back to an older D&D game-first model where the TTRPG influenced the video games and the tchotchkes. Baldur’s Gate 3 wouldn’t have existed had it not been for BG 1 and 2. Thank you for Forgotten Realms, Ed Greenwood.
I’ve seen what the skeleton crew left at WotC is producing for books. We’ve been saying for years now that the DMsGuild over on OneBookShelf (Roll20) has writers and artists that far and away outshine a lot of the official product. (Okay, minus that one lady and her seemingly personal quest to bring D&D to its knees which might explain why she’s still there.) I don’t think WotC has ever been as desperate for writing talent as they are right now. How hard would it be to have a couple of these writers contracted to create a new adventure once or twice per month to put up on D&D Beyond as official content? Maybe even put out a print compilation with some nice art and maps every year? You don’t have to get Deborah Ann Woll or Matt Mercer for every project.
Handing off of D&D really happened about two years ago following the Great D&D OGL Debacle of 2023 when multiple game companies launched their own fantasy TTRPGs to get away from the WotC license. That’s where Daggerheart and Draw Steel came from. You know, two of those games that are currently burying D&D with their sales?
I think people are burned out on the WotC shenanigans if they know what’s going on and tired of lackluster releases (Dragon Delves, for example) if they don’t. The social media drama such as the recent Showgirls thing turns off the old gamers, while maybe appealing to some of the more current 5E crowd. That new terribly overpriced starter set is enough to turn off most new players who can read a price tag.
Now we sit back and watch things unfold until the next PR controversy or critical misstep. Life goes on for the DungeonTubers, shills, unaware, and WotC. We’ll wait until the next big screwup to have more to talk about. It’s still following about a one or two week cycle. Until then, let’s get back to gaining and not worry about all this BS.
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 