Hasbro BEGS Old School Dungeons & Dragons Fans to Come Back?!

0:00Well, something's going on over at Wizards of the Coast, over at Hasbro regarding Dungeons and Dragons. Gary Conn announced that Luke Gygax is coming back into the Dungeons and Dragons franchise. Luke is, of course, another one of Gary Gygax's Ernie Past, either last year or the year before RIP. But this is an interesting move because this comes after it's been confirmed that we have other legendary TSR designers being called back to work on Dungeons and Dragons. And I have a theory as to what's going on, so you're going to have to follow me here. We're going to talk about this before we get into it any further. Please subscribe for more pop culture news, views and rants. I want to give a shout out and a thank you to Gabe who sent this over this morning. I've missed this news because honestly, I am so checked out from anything that I've done. Dungeons and Dragons at this point. I think a lot of people are because it's not Dungeons and Dragons, right?

1:00It really isn't. It's the brand, but it's not the beating heart and soul of the game anymore. And let's be honest, the game always was players. It was always the players who made the game. But the way that Hasbro has treated their, well, they're not meant to have Hasbro's people. Treated the TSR crew who created the game and they've tried to distance themselves chasing after Tumblr shippers and fanfic writers and whatever of the critical role crowd to get in no fence. Matt Mercer, he's an okay guy, but there's definitely an audience that they cultivated on Tumblr that infected Dungeons and Dragons and turned it into an OC character generator, a fanfic larping system, right? And they've kind of taken the game out of the game and made everything about just creating their own characters and acting and whatever. And that's fine. You want to do that at your table. That's fine. But then what happened was the powers that be at Wizards of the Coast chased after that audience and it just be get, it be get even more, quote unquote, wokeness and you

2:06had more and more progressive people coming into the platform and wanting to change the game, change the system, change the hobby itself, then it went from that to, you know, gatekeeping, keeping out all the street white dudes because, you know, by default they're toxic and any conservatives. No, we can't have you in the game anymore, even though Gary Guy Gaxx, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons was a conservative. Actually, a lot of, it's so weird we had the satanic panic because a lot of the people, the OG D&D creators were Christian or, I guess, Christian adjacent. They were definitely on the right side of the aisle politically, not that it should matter. But Gary Guy Gaxx posed a very interesting, interesting dilemma to this progressive Wizards of the Coast because his politics were very libertarian, very right-leaning and they tried to denounce him or at least bury him. It was so weird. When I saw Jen Conn, Jen Conn did, they had like a round table with their mods there and

3:09they were clearly younger tumble rights and they couldn't even pronounce his name correctly because I don't think his name is uttered very much in the halls of the convention that he created, Jen Conn, he created that. But now, yeah, one of his sons, Luke, is coming back and again, this is after Ed Greenwood, I guess, is coming back. I think Margaret Wise and Tracy Hickman are coming back for this next iteration of D&D and what I think is going on is they fucked up and they know they fucked up. I think they're trying to come back on Bended Need to the old audience. I'm going to tell you why because I think the progressive audience they know is going to leave. Why are they going to leave? Well, it's not the new hotness anymore for one thing. The OGL debacle caused a lot of issues and let's talk about where they're at as a business. They just got the Harry Potter license. These activists don't like that. In fact, they've been trying to get Hasbro to give the multi-million or billion dollar

4:15license up because they don't like JK Rowan. They also don't like AI art and the current CEO of Hasbro has said repeatedly that they're going to use AI. Now, they're saying they're not going to use it in magic and in D&D. I don't think that is the case. I'm going to tell you, I think they're currently using it. They're just not broadcasting that they're using it and they're hoping they don't get caught. They know that consumers as long as the quality is good, don't care. The consumers, most consumers, don't care. The people that care are activists and a lot of them are like fan artists and whatever, and they know they're not going to get a job now. Painting magic cards if the robot can paint the magic cards, right? And for the amount of work that they have to produce because it keeps slamming out the universes beyond sets, they're going to use AI. They're going to cut corners, right? I think this is why we had a whole bunch of people get gone last year and the year before.

5:19And you look at, you know, kind of the landscape right now. They had that 5.5 or whatever the hell they're calling it, 2024, addition of D&D. It did not sell well as far as I know because they would not be rushing out in another version of Dungeons and Dragons. But now they're doing it like seasonal, like magic, the gathering, I guess. It's very, very confusing, right? Because here's the thing, your company like Hasbro, you have to crank out product every quarter. It's not like, hey, I can put out source books and sell those same source books because I don't have, I don't have to bring in millions of dollars of, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue every year. So I can keep that version of Dungeons and Dragons around for like five or six years until we have to do another update after you know, play testing and whatever. Hasbro is always hungry. The corporate machine is hungry. So they're going to, you know, roll, roll out D&D in this way. So you buy stuff every quarter. That's, that's what the whole thing is about. The reason they're bringing these old guys back is they know they fucked up, in my opinion, they're looking at the numbers. They're seeing that the activists are jumping ship for whatever reason and they know when

6:23they tell them what they're actually going to do with D&D that, hey, there's a wizarding world campaign setting coming and it's using AI generated art. Oh my God, they're going to lose their shit and they're going to swear to boycott whatever. And I think they're already hedging their bets. They're like, fuck them. We're going to go back to the old school fans. The problem is, and I'm going to tell you right now has, bro. And we're going to see this, we're going to see this in real time on X with this, this pose, the survey they're doing because they're trying to figure out, they're trying to figure out how to get the fans back. Once you lose a fandom, once you denigrate a fandom, good luck getting them back. I don't think you're ever going to rebuild like it was before. A lot of people moved on to other systems and they did that during the OGL. A lot of people just noked out and decided to go back and play, you know, first or second edition D&D or whatever, or home brew or, you know, one of the myriad of other independent systems because you, you fucking piss them off.

7:23And really your old book still work fine, right? Since you're making up a lot of stuff yourselves, you don't really need new source books. D is so you can go back and play second edition. I know people they're playing second edition right now. And those books are from 30 years ago, you know, so yeah, they're going to have a real hard time with it. They're going to have a real hard time with it because they pissed off, they pissed off the old school fans chasing the new progressive audience and then they've pissed those people off too. So this is, from where I'm sitting, this is a Hail Mary Pass to try to salvage what they can from Dungeons and Dragons because the people that actually buy the books for the most part are the old heads. The new players, they steal the PDFs. Let's, let's be real, right? And D&D sold very, very well during lockdown, stranger things and all that. Well, stranger things is done and Netflix shot themselves in the foot there too. The ending was terrible and that, that, that whole audiences moved on, right? And we're not in lockdown anymore.

8:24So yeah, and I think they want Dungeons and Dragons to be as profitable as magic to gathering. So they need your money, fam. They need you to come back. But this is after they put people in charge that literally denigrated old school fans in the fucking 50th anniversary retrospective talked about all the, all the white dudes from the flyover states that made the game and how it wasn't very diverse and inclusive and then they took the warrior from the cover of the red box set. If you remember that, and they're like, oh, we're finally going to make a mini of this, this character, which they already made a, an action figure of that character, by the way, right? Very iconic piece of probably the single most iconic piece of Dungeons and Dragons art. Ever, even if you know nothing about Dungeons and Dragons, you've seen the cover of the red box. They took that warrior, turned him into a thick brown woman and said, here you go, fam. Here you go. This is how we're going to celebrate 50 years at D&D because we're going to be a lot more progressive going on. And we've had endless articles written about how toxic Dungeons and Dragons fans are for,

9:24like, 10 years, 15 years now and all kind of blood into the academic, academic discussions over orcs being racist and this has been racist and that being racist, everything's racist, racism, misogyny, running rampant in fantasy, blood over in the Dungeons and Dragons came from the Tolkien crew, right, because they, they wanted to paint Tolkien as being a racist and misogynist and a bigot in a homophobic and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you know, because early D&D basically was an unofficial Tolkien game, I mean, let's be honest, you know, it was. And so all this stuff kind of, you know, became this perfect shit storm and then, you know, I had all these new people coming in and I don't think they're going to be able to pull it off. I'm going to, I'm going to tell you the truth. I admire their attempt and I have a lot of respect for the people that they want to bring back, but you've already told the fans to fuck off. I don't know if they're coming back. I don't know if they're coming back.

10:30I will see. I mean, it's got to be a really damn good product, I think, to get people to come back. And if we have more of this nonsense that these conventions with, you know, people gain canceled and culled out and racist, you're a homophob, whatever. Yeah, I mean, it's just, I think a lot of people are just staying very, very far away from Dungeons and Dragons, which is a damn shame. I mean, it really is. And like, I don't know Luke Gaigax, but he seems like a pretty solid guy. Everything I've heard, I know people that do know him. And they said he's really solid guy. So, I mean, this is a good attempt, but let's, let's talk about this and then we're going to go out and see just kind of the reaction to them looking for feedback on X. It's not going well for them. Again, ICV2 has it hat tip to Gabe for sending this over Gary Conn. Let's see where we're at. 18, is that where we're at? 18 news. D&D design team brings Luke Gaigax back into the franchise, head of D&D franchise. As a Dan Ayub, addresses recent release information delays, the hobby channel and future plans. Okay. There are quite a few bits of news to come out of this press

11:34conference, which was led by Gary Conn, founder Luke Gaigax, and the new head of the D&D franchise, Dan Ayub. I think perhaps the biggest bit of news to come from this event was that Luke Gaigax will be collaborating with D&D design on upcoming projects. Gaigax specifically noted he will be lending his expertise on the Greyhawk setting to future projects. Oh my gosh, guys. I grew up playing Greyhawk. Yeah, that was his dad's, his dad's world. That was like that was for the longest time, the default. I believe the default D&D world and then kind of forgotten realms took over. But the names on the Greyhawk map are named after not only my family, but my friends and relatives. It's a place where I experienced all those adventures as Otis the Ranger, places we visited in those early campaigns were all seminal memories for me. Yeah, be a damn shame to bring back Greyhawk and not have a Gaigax involved, right? They went on length about the passion for the D&D brand and that he's aware of how D&D design may have gravitated away. Okay, he's aware of how D&D design may have gravitated away from fan expectations in the last

12:35several years. Wow. Okay, so they're admitting it. They're admitting it. He addressed the gap in new release information that occurred at the end of 2025 and in February of 2026, which was primarily due to team transition and that the creation of some of the new content limited to the team's ability to block releases. They also committed to an annual unveiling of the next year's D&D lineup at GenCon. He addressed plans for the new season model of D&D, which spam roughly three to five months depending on the product release. Yeah, this is, I mean, that's a whole thing. They want D&D to be like magic where there's always new product. If they can't get people to subscribe to D&D beyond like they like and do the virtual tabletop, which is a huge fucking disaster, then they're going to try to get you this way. Like we need recurring revenue. So we're going to put new stuff out every that that's that's my opinion, just as a marketing guy. Like this is this quarter's release. Yeah, we're going to do dark sun or we're going to get a good look with that. I mean, current year, good luck with that.

13:38Yeah, we'll see. For retailers, it would reaffirm the company's dedication to publishing print copies of D&D books. He reaffirmed the D&D brands commitment to supporting retailers. The hobby channel is the beating soul of D&D. I think it's something we've lost sight of a little bit. We started sharing plans with retailers and our plans to support retail part of the plan behind seasons was to help support retail. That is, this is really interesting. Now they do, yeah, again, they do have a new boss. And this guy actually looks like this looks like a guy that would be in charge of D&D, right? I mean, let's be honest, I would like them to, and I don't know if they've done anything about it yet, but I think what would go a long way is to basically put out some kind of a statement or something or make it very damn clear that you don't hate the middle age white guys from the flyover states because they are your bread and butter, right? Those midwestern dude bros or whatever that's where D&D came from. And that's not to say that D&D can't be inclusive.

14:38That's not to say that D&D can't have players from all over the spectrum. That has always been, that has always been the case. Even some of the early D&D ads had women in minorities playing the game, but to to denigrate the people that made the game in the first place makes no damn sense other than to give high fives and fist bumps to the activists that have commandeered the product, the platform. They've taken over the hobby. Tabletop, I gotta tell you, I don't even like tabletop, that whole scene like scares the shit out of me because the only act of violence I have seen in the nerd space, like actual act of violence was when Jeremy Hambley from the quartering got punched at GenCon by a dude who didn't like his videos. I mean, that's just insane. I've seen people get death threats from some of these people. I've seen them try to kick people out of conventions or

15:40get them blacklisted. We're seeing all the nonsense going on now with the Harry Potter, where the Hasbro CEO basically had to come out and say, yeah, we're not canceling Harry Potter. Tough shit. We paid good money for this license. Tough shit. They bullied the same people have bullied smaller publishers out of publishing Harry Potter content. Or if they publish the Harry Potter content, they're making them give that money to trans charities or whatever. They bully these people. You don't have to like Harry Potter. Nobody's telling you you have to like JK Rowling. I mean, personally, I think she should lay off a Twitter. She's not doing herself any favors, but people normies like Harry Potter. It's still selling very, very well. There's all kinds of new brand deals all over the place with Harry Potter. No, Hasbro being a for-profit corporation isn't going to say, yeah, you know, we just dropped you know hundreds of millions of dollars on his license and we're just not going to use it because it's going to make a handful of people feel bad. Yeah, yeah, here are that shit. I feel like we spent good money on this. We're going to make money. Right? And they're also going to use AI and they know these activists are going to be against it.

16:44So they're trying to hedge their bets right now. But just to just to show you where the D&D brand is, this is coming from out Wizards itself. Wizards D&D on X. They said, adventures, we need your insight. Share your thoughts in our latest D&D survey. Okay. Dungeon Delver says, return to things that people still enjoy playing yet you bury or treat like an embarrassment. Yeah, the old school stuff they do. They put disclaimers on everything. This was probably racist because racist white men worked on it back in the 70s and everything was racist. The comments section. A general reminder where it all came from says the fellowship of the thing. Yeah, Dave Arneson. Yeah, Dave Arneson does get forgotten a lot. He does. Uh, everything comes up guy gags, right? Uh, get back to basics timeline cleanse, which is your favorite gaming book. There we go, guys. Uh, here you go. Dungeons and Dragons. What could Wizards of the Coast do to improve your opinion of where we're headed with D&D? What did they say? Sell D&D or release it to the public domain. You have proven you have zero concept,

17:45zero concept of what this game is about. And there's no one in your company who does barring that publicly fire every single person on your design staff and marketing staff. You become infested with cancerous cancerous, uh, cadre of people who chase trends and follow the excel spreadsheet experts who have never once in their lives contributed anything to any known product set. This is why they're bringing these guys in, uh, to to validate what they're doing. Doing actual nothing would be more value add than your current trajectory. See also Star Wars and do not act like you don't know the kind of financial and product death spiral. You're headed toward otherwise you'd never launch this first of a kind ask our customer base what they think of us campaign. This is from one who left D&D and went to Pathfinder after the debacle fourth edition came back for fifth edition. You spit in my face with the 2024 edition. So I'm done. I'm not coming back. Not unless I see seismic shifts at Watson D&D that make Pompey look like a mild tremor. Damn. That's from pony one Kenobi. Uh, Warforge gaming. My feedback embrace variety instead of homogenization. Not every product needs to be designed for every player.

18:51Uh, dang it. I forgot to add, uh, black folks aren't orcs. He racists. Yes, I was scathing. I also have no idea what and these are except for critical role. I'll try try the exit. So this is what I'll do watching the actual play shows. Yeah. No, I see. So this whole space is collapsing. Um, Dungeons and Dragons channels that were actually doing really well five or six years ago. Again, during the lockdown, they're, they're dying. They're dying. Their numbers are atrocious. And there is a split. There's the, the new, the NU fans that came in with critical role and Tumblr and all that shit that want, you know, gave coffee shop baristas in the realms. Whatever you do you boo. It's your table. You do, you do you, but they want that canonized. They want prom. They won't wizard prom, but they don't want Harry Potter, but they want everything. They want to get right up against Harry Potter, but not quite Harry Potter because they don't want to give that big it any money. Um, this shit's dying. It's, it's all, it's dying because you kill the brand.

19:56You chased off the, the bread, but like it's, it's, it's good. It's from a business perspective. It's always good to cast a wider net to try to get more people, more potential customers, but not to the exclusion of driving everybody else off, which is what these motherfuckers did. You basically said, we don't need you stinky old men. Same with comics. See also comics. See also Star Wars. See also Marvel. They all did the same thing. They really, truly thought that purple haired activists from Portland that there were enough of them. You have the ones who torrent everything and don't actually buy shit. They complain online. They talk about it, but they don't actually buy shit. They felt that there were enough of them to replace the hardcore fans who have bought, you know, every book for the last 30, 40 years. They really did because they probably had some stupid 25 year old fresh out of college, you know, marketing, you know, masters degree, whatever coming in and being like, look, all these people are talking about D&D on Twitter. This

20:57is your audience now, not those stinky men. So make sure everybody knows that D&D is a lot more inclusive and a lot more progressive and put some some rainbows on the beholder and they're all going to have a tea party like my little fucking pony. It's like, yeah, I think it might be too little too late. I don't know. I don't know. It's definitely I've most people have moved on or they moved back. They've gone back to older additions. Um, steel court says I gave my thoughts on the survey survey, but I'll expand them fully here. Listen to what I have to say, probably sick of hearing this, but it must be said, you're right, you know, if you're to write this ship, you must fire the placo activists amongst your ranks. That's not demand. It's recommendation. I can understand. You may have thought was necessary at the time, but it's only hurt your core audience. Your base, these people, among you don't believe in escapism, the essence of fantasy, everything must reflect the real world to them and get rid of these systemic prejudices and injustices. Everything

21:58is a grievance. Yeah. Your output has told us in neon lettering that those who are not on board with modern political agendas surrounding identity categories like race, gender, and sexuality. I want to play in worlds where those aren't being considered at least not as direct parallels reality or not welcome. Yeah. Everything's, uh, yeah. Everything has to be like I see myself in this game. And look, you've always been welcome to play any game the way you want to play at your table, same with monopoly, you can play monopoly with house rules as always been the case, but they wanted their shipping, their fan fiction codified and validated by the company and the company did it. They're like, yes, yes, queen. We're going to do that. And they did it and they fucking chased off the core audience. I think anything like that should have been sort of a site like you could have had, uh, uh, you know, a campaign setting that's the, you know, gay, barista, whatever, no offense to gay baristas. I'm just saying like in Dungeons and Dragons, come on. You know,

22:58coffee shops, simulator, whatever. Uh, you could have had that as like a separate campaign world, but kept the core books, dungeons and fucking dragons with swords and spells and dragons and dungeons and shit. Um, that's just, that's going to be, that's going to be the new system. Dragons and dungeons and swords and shit. There you go. Customers, yeah, kickers, these people's customers don't purchase to the degree the diehards do. You've seen the drops and sales from the 2024 update. You now call 5.5. There's a reason for that. 24. Yes. Thank you. This is, this is my understanding of the situation as well. 2014 was before the rots said in many people are just tired of hearing these topics reflected in a hobby. We used to get away from those conversations. And if your argument, uh, back would be, if your argument would be that those conversations deserve to be had. Well, not by you all again, don't listen to the activists. Your game designers and curators of magical adventures, your responsibility to the world is as individuals not as

24:00wazzy. Um, it just goes on and on about, which is actually good. I mean, it's worth checking out his, his thread, but, um, they want to feedback. It's not going well. And then all of a sudden, they're announcing, hey, everybody look, guy, gags just coming back. Hey, everybody marker wise, Tracy Eggman, they're coming back. You like that? I'm at Greenwood. Yeah, you like them, right? I think it's too little too late. That's my personal opinion, but I, I'm gonna be honest. I, don't even know where they would go from here. I think they need to temper their expectations. The years of record sales for Dungeons and Dragons are done for a variety of reasons. Um, honestly, I think they should run it lean and mean and not try to make it a life, a fucking lifestyle brand with purses and pumps. And, uh, you know, it's like, is you marveled this shit and look at the state of Marvel comics right now. Look at the state of the MCU right now. And, um, yeah, and I think Cynthia Williams, I think she did a reputable damage to D&D.

25:05So, I don't know, just my opinion. Gonna wrap it up. Please subscribe. We'll talk later.