It’s been a bit tough to watch how Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has behaved regarding its beloved TTRPG Dungeons & Dragons the past couple of years. A game that was built from its inception on encouraging fans and creators to use the game to do new and interesting things suddenly saw its shepherd turn corporate IP gremlin. Harmless fan mods for other games got lawyerly attention. And then there was the fiasco around WotC changing D&D’s OGL license to make it far less open in the name of rent-seeking.
If you’re not familiar with what happened and don’t want to read my previous post from 2023 on the topic, I’ll try to summarize it tersely. D&D’s OGL 1.0 license made the game’s mechanics, classes, spells, monsters, and more freely open to use to make other new content. OGL 1.0 was a perpetual license that the game’s creators said couldn’t be revoked. No royalties or payments were necessary. Then the planned OGL 1.1 revision leaked to the world and that license would have had lots of changes. There would be royalties owed — 25% of gross revenue — for larger corporate creators, required anyone generating at least $50k per year in revenue to share revenue data with WotC, and it declared that the new license nullified the previous license, despite it having been a perpetual license.
The D&D world went into a rage. Many theorized that the behavior displayed by WotC led to Larian Studios swearing off making another Baldur’s Gate game. There were questions about whether large and popular D&D streamers like Critical Role would continue using D&D to power their storytelling. Nobody seemed to like any of this.
Unsurprisingly, WotC walked the license changes back. Then they promoted Dan Ayoub to run D&D late last year and tasked him with trying to repair all of the bridges the company had managed to burn down. Hearing him speak with Wargamer recently, I think they may have hired the right person. It starts with him acknowledging the missteps of his employer from a high level.
I like to think we have made great strides. Bluntly, we’re recovering from a lot of missteps – very loud, very public missteps. And we’re not going to fix it in one year. I can talk ’til the cows come home, but we’ve got to show more than tell, and that is going to take some time. I’m very conscious that it’s going to take a lot of time to win back the trust to the extent that I would like. Having said that, I think we’ve started strongly, and a lot of these things are still happening behind the scenes.
Honestly, if I would give myself good grades on one thing in particular over the past year, I think it’s been listening. We established the community council. I’ve personally spent a bunch of time talking to not just fans, but retailers and consumers.
Yes, actions will tell us far more than words, but this is pretty good as far as words go. From a PR standpoint, it’s just about perfect. He acknowledges that the company made serious mistakes, that people were pissed, and that project for restoring trust will be a long one. Then he goes on to say that the most important thing here is for him to listen generally, and to his customers specifically. If he’s doing that, that’s making a connection with fans and customers. And if he acts on what he learns from that connection, that’s how you repair all of this.
He did even better when specifically asked about the OGL 1.1 fiasco.
It was a rug pull, right? A lot of people and businesses were built up around a specific thing. Trust was given to the brand, and people rightly felt the rug was pulled from under them. In some cases, it’s caused damage we are still trying to fix today. So I understand the hesitancy of ‘okay, here’s this new guy saying all these things’.
My biggest takeaway as I step into this role is that trust takes a long time to build and a second to break. I’m keenly aware it’s going to take me a long time to repair this, but my hope is people will give the benefit of the doubt as we continue to show that lessons have been learned. This is a new direction, a new voice, and a new spirit and energy behind D&D.
That feels about as transparent and open as I can expect an executive at a company to be.
He’s right: the damage done these past few years is going to take a while to repair. And Ayoub is going to also have to figure out how to navigate the corporate waters to keep other people at the company from reverting to its previously protectionist, IP-focused ways. Actions will tell us far more than anything Ayoub said in this interview.
But Ayoub seems to love D&D every bit as much as I do. The words spilling from his mouth are good words, with a good sentiment behind them. If this is the start of D&D returning to the explosive greatness it enjoyed up until 2023 or so, then Ayoub will be the hero of that particular story.
