“Dungeons & Dragons” is trying to court new and returning players this weekend at Gen Con, North America’s biggest tabletop gaming convention.
The brand revealed a deeper investment into classic products and new partnerships with “Star Wars” and video game titan “World of Warcraft.”
“‘World of Warcraft’, at its heart, was inspired by ‘Dungeons & Dragons.’ It has a lot of familiar motifs and types of characters, so we have a lot of shared DNA,” said Laura Hohman, product architect at game maker Wizards of the Coast. She oversees “Universes Beyond,” what Wizards’ calls the crossover effort that originated years ago with “Magic: The Gathering,” the company’s billion-dollar trading card game.
But despite the new branding, “Dungeons & Dragons” has pursued these kinds of crossovers for decades.
“‘D&D’ does have a history of doing this previously in other editions,” said Hohman. “We did a collaboration with ‘Star Wars’ in the early 2000s, so it is new to this generation of the game.”
“Dungeons & Dragons” executive producer Greg Bilsland said the time is ripe for a return.
“‘Dungeons & Dragons’ has brought a lot of new people into the hobby with things like ‘Stranger Things,’ so this is the perfect time to kind of fuse those things back together and give all of those ‘Star Wars’ and ‘D&D’ fans what they’ve been asking for,” Bilsland said.
Many such fans work at NPR’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
“Some may call it a cash grab,” said NPR audio engineer Valentina Rodríguez Sánchez. “That could totally be what it is, but it’s going to definitely work on me.
“I live in a galaxy far, far away,” she continued. “I’m wearing NASA socks.”
Fellow audio engineer and dungeon master Carleigh Strange is more skeptical.
“What are they going to offer me that I couldn’t make up myself or that my friends and I couldn’t make up ourselves?” she asks. “And how much money are they going to want from me?”
After all, anyone can make up their own “Dungeons & Dragons” adventures, rules and settings for free. Wizards of the Coast has allowed third-party publishers and fans to distribute content based on the game for decades.
Players got so used to the policy that a leaked plan to charge licensing fees sparked outrage in 2023. Wizards of the Coast abandoned the change, and now positions itself as the best source for official game content in a market crowded with alternatives.
“You know, one of the dirty secrets of ‘D&D’ is you really don’t need a lot of books to make your own content,” said Bilsland. “One of the things that ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ provides is integration with our digital tools like ‘D&D Beyond,’ as well as books with beautiful art and official options that just make it much easier for any person coming into the game.”
Some longtime players are unconvinced by that pitch.
“They have a basic misunderstanding of the nature of the game,” said Mike Czaplinski, a computer system support administrator at NPR who’s played ‘D&D’ since 1979.
“Everything you need to play ‘Magic: The Gathering’ you get from Wizards of the Coast — with ‘D&D,’ the only one who really needs to buy stuff is the [dungeon master],” said Czaplinski.
Garry Butler, a desktop support technician for NPR who’s played ‘D&D’ since 1986, agreed.
“Unlike ‘Magic: The Gathering,’ where you have to buy cards all the time, you just have to buy a book,” he said. Most players, Czaplinski and Butler contend, won’t invest in “D&D” books like “Magic” players do in collectible cards
Yet by introducing “Universes Beyond” into “Dungeons & Dragons,” Wizards of the Coast clearly hopes to imitate the lucrative strategy that’s ballooned “Magic: The Gathering” revenues.
The game is also doubling down on its own intellectual property, from Greyhawk, a setting developed by “D&D” co-creator Gary Gygax, to Dragonlance, a beloved world dreamt up by duo Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. It’s also returning to a mature setting that hasn’t seen an official product for well over a decade.
“I was recently joking that you were not supposed to have favorite children, but Dark Sun is definitely my favorite child,” said Bilsland. “It is a world that starts not after the apocalypse, but during one. You’re witnessing the world dying in real time as you play. But you have a chance to maybe carve out a little bit of hope and redemption in that world.”
Bilsland said that fans can expect more regular updates to these existing worlds, alongside “Universes Beyond” crossovers.
“We like to say, not every product for everyone, but a product for every person,” said Bilsland. “If you’re not into horror like Ravenloft, which we just released, you might look ahead to something like Dark Sun or a science fiction universe like ‘Star Wars.’”
Ultimately, Bilsland sees “Dungeons & Dragons” as a cure for a global “loneliness epidemic.”
“‘D&D’ has this magical effect at creating cohesion, camaraderie and friendship,” said Bilsland. “If releasing more products to welcome people into the hobby is the way that we’re able to reduce a little bit of the loneliness in the world, then I think it’s worth making more products to do that.”
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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