D&D General Dan Rawson Named New Head Of D&D

Hasbro has announced a former Microsoft digital commerce is the new senior vice president in charge of Dungeons & Dragons. Dan Rawson was the COO of Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Hasbro also hired Cynthia Williams earlier this year; she too, came from Microsoft. Of Rawson, she said "We couldn’t be bringing on Dan at a better time. With the acquisition of D&D Beyond earlier this year, the digital capabilities and opportunities for Dungeons & Dragons are accelerating faster than ever. I am excited to partner with Dan to explore the global potential of the brand while maintaining Hasbro’s core value as a player-first company.”

Rawson himself says that "Leading D&D is the realization of a childhood dream. I’m excited to work with Cynthia once again, and I’m thrilled to work with a talented team to expand the global reach of D&D, a game I grew up with and now play with my own kids.”

Interestingly, Ray Wininger -- who has been running D&D for the last couple of years -- has removed mention of WotC and Hasbro from his Twitter bio.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Superficial similarities are the first things people see, and often the last. If you don't want that, maybe don't have your entire character creation system superficially resemble an MMO.

4e is a pretty good game, if you buy into their design philosophy. The presentation very much did not do them any favors, however.

since I don't play any MMOs I can't say, but I will say 4e seemed to me to be a lot like making a 2e character

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Superficial similarities are the first things people see, and often the last. If you don't want that, maybe don't have your entire character creation system superficially resemble an MMO.

Eh, the conversation is about the nature of the game, not why it was controversial. I don’t care about this.

4e is a pretty good game, if you buy into their design philosophy. The presentation very much did not do them any favors, however.

Okay.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

No, because you know what I mean and those same complaints are well documented since its release.

Go dig up those old posts and articles you seem to to have willfully dismissed. It's not like this is some new revelation. You are just nitpicking wording and meaning, I don't feel the need to engage further since again, its all well documented.

And the argumentations were mostly made out of thin air back then. So I wanted to know if you are just repeating those or have better ones.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

I don’t trust Warner bros. Even less now after binning Batgirl for the tax write off.

I'd assume an eOne (maybe with Paramount) production. I suggested Weiseman since he'd have time for another project now.

 

[Umbran]

No, because you know what I mean and those same complaints are well documented since its release.

So, you realize that complaints that it was like an MMO are not, in fact, evidence that MMOs were actually the inspiration for the game, right? I mean, setting aside the strange notion that something so large and complex as D&D has only one inspiration...

You don't need threads of complaints to support that assertion. You need statements by the designers that this was the case.

And arguments of the form, "I am correct and if you do the homework you'll see it" are not how solid rhetoric goes. You make an assertion, you give the support for it.

 

[Jaeger]

Both Magic and D&D have multiple movie/streaming show projects in development. How they show that revenue could make a massive swing in reported numbers. eOne and Wizards will share some credit, some way

This is a BIG part of WotC's plan to put the D&D IP over as a 'lifestyle brand'. And they have a ton of money invested in this.

How these shows/movies hit or miss will determine how much more $$ will be willing to toss at D&D IMHO.

It will also be interesting to see how D&D as a TT RPG gets treated if the IP gets put over, and the Tv/Movies, and video games start to bring in more that RPG sales...

 

[Umbran]

This is a BIG part of WotC's plan to put the D&D IP over as a 'lifestyle brand'. And they have a ton of money invested in this.

How these shows/movies hit or miss will determine how much more $$ will be willing to toss at D&D IMHO.

Perhaps, but I don't think that means much.

On the scale of a billion dollar company, the money needed to publish a few books a year is peanuts. But, at the moment, it seems to have a huge return on that investment.

The money to make movies and TV series is much larger. If, say, the upcoming movie bombs, maybe they'll stop throwing in media money. But WotC doesn't need media-scale money to make a game that sells like hotcakes.

And, if the media does take off, I don't think that will mean all that much for the game. For the media to take off, it needs to be self supporting, independent of the game, but using the games tropes for good effect.

 

[Staffan]

Yeah i know that. I'm simply using MMO for its mechanics and feel of the game. Much like Dragon Age Inquisition isnt an MMO but feels like one.

As i said, MMOs were the inspiration for the game.

I think it's wrong to say 4e was like an MMO, in generic terms. However, it took some inspiration from a specific one: World of Warcraft.

It's not like the whole game was a WoW clone, but there were some things that were clearly inspired by WoW:

Roles
This is something of a boomerang. Classic D&D had the fighter, magic-user, cleric, and thief as core classes, and a bunch of other classes that were sort of variations on these. In WoW, classes need to fill certain roles in combat: tank, damage-dealing, or healing – which roughly corresponds to fighter, rogue/mage, and priest (although many classes can fill different roles depending on specialization). And then the boomerang came back to D&D, which made classes built around these roles instead of being built around concepts and then just seeing what that meant.
Personally, I think this was an improvement. A well-composed party has always had the edge over a more haphazard one, mostly meaning "We need someone to defend the others so they can pull off their shenanigans, and someone to heal us up." This meant that people would gravitate to the classes who filled those roles the best, or just deal with having problems (or have a DM tailoring the challenges to the party). But with defined roles, it's easy to say "We need one of these, one of these, and the rest whatever." It also meant that other classes in the same role were expected to hit the same benchmarks: notably, a bard, an artificer, a warlord, and a shaman were all supposed to be as good at healing as a cleric was, which in turn mean that cleric-less parties were just as workable as parties with a cleric.

Encounters
This was something we started seeing in late 3e. In WoW, the game's focus is on boss fights. It's not where most players spend most of their time, but it's where the spotlight is. And generally speaking, each boss fight stands alone. Similarly, late 3e experimented with abilities recharging on a short timer (e.g. many Binder abilities could be used once/five minutes, and Martial Adept classes also recharged with a very short amount of downtime) and in 4e they just made some abilities into one/encounter. They also allowed you to heal fully on a short 5-minute rest, although with a maximum amount of daily healing. The effect was that each encounter was mostly self-contained, and designed to challenge the players on its own (as opposed to 3e, where most encounters were supposed to be cakewalks that mainly eroded your resources so by the time you got to encounter 4, you might actually be in danger.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

That seems like a fair question. You asked for proof. They gave it. They ask for your proof and you banned them? And they are the smiug one?!

I guess I’m blocked now too!

 

[ad_hoc]

If I can use the adventures from 2014-2023 without needing to do conversions I will consider it the same edition.

The 2014 Ranger will be different than the 2024 Ranger but I bet they will both be able to be played at the same table.