WotC D&D Beyond Reveals 'Partnered Content' Schedule

D&D Beyond has published a release schedule for partnered content in the first quarter of 2026. This includes products from Eberron creator Keith Baker, Beadle & Grimm's, and Kickstarter favourites Loot Tavern and The Griffon's Saddlebag.

Partnered content is existing D&D books from third-party publishers on D&D Beyond.

• Exploring Eberron (Visionary Production & Design)
• The Pugilist Class (Benjamin Huffman)
• Faster, Purple Worm! Everybody Dies, Vol. 1 (Beadle & Grimm’s Pandemonium Warehouse)
• Heliana’s Guide to Monster Hunting: Part 2 (Loot Tavern)
• The Griffon’s Saddlebag: Book One (The Griffon’s Saddlebag)

 

[Morrus]

Most of the WOTC staff who were at that Summit are gone, including the guy who gave the mighty yaulp when asking whether people would want their material on D&D Beyond (Dan Rawson).

I still struggle with the question of whether releasing other publishers on D&D Beyond is good for the hobby or not. I look at things like the products WOTC selects and they almost certainly choose ones that complement their own products, which is a very different business model than say Roll20 or DriveThruRPG or Foundry or any of the others. WOTC is both the number one producer on the platform and the owner of the platform itself. This position puts them at a huge advantage over other publishers. The more publishers who publish there, the more centralized it becomes. Sure, its a non-exclusive license which is great, but if they end up with 90% of the market for 5e, what does that matter?

I wrote more about this here:

D&D Beyond Isn't a Fair Platform for Customers or Publishers: mikeshea.net

Yeah we’ve discussed this before. I definitely agree there’s an inherent problem for the industry if the biggest game and the biggest sales outlet are owned by the same company, especially as the market moves more and more towards online models. The latter (biggest outlet) isn’t—currently— true, and it seems unlikely it could ever have the volume and range of content as, say, DTRPG. But conceptually, it is potentially problematic.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I wonder if they had the technical capacity to make it TTRPG Steam, would they?

Oh sure, they absolutely would.

Imagine if you went to Steam and the top 10 games were always Valve games? How would publishers feel then? What if Valve said "we already sell Half Life 3 so we don't need more FPS games on here. We're going to only do the games we ourselves haven't done".

That, to me, is a risk.

 

[SlyFlourish]

Yeah we’ve discussed this before. I definitely agree there’s an inherent problem for the industry if the biggest game and the biggest sales outlet are owned by the same company, especially as the market moves more and more towards online models. The latter (biggest outlet) isn’t—currently— true, and it seems unlikely it could ever have the volume and range of content as, say, DTRPG. But conceptually, it is potentially problematic.

Yeah, I struggle to come up with things that might solve the problem. Right now I only really have one realistic one which isn't very realistic - release PDFs so people can actually own the content they buy.

The danger is also low given how many other RPGs are out there and the open licenses of so many games (including D&D). Lots of people are excited about lots of RPGs even if that number is dwarfed by overall D&D players. I don't know that it really matters.

 

[Reynard]

I don't use Beyond and do not plan to. It feels bad that WotC is working to pick winners here, but but it is their platform and it is up to the 3rd parties to decide if they want to be a part of that. Whatchagonnado?

 

[cranberry]

But where is the smiling beholder?

 

[Morrus]

Oh sure, they absolutely would.

Imagine if you went to Steam and the top 10 games were always Valve games? How would publishers feel then? What if Valve said "we already sell Half Life 3 so we don't need more FPS games on here. We're going to only do the games we ourselves haven't done".

That, to me, is a risk.

Indeed. The market leader also having a gatekeeping power over the broader industry would be an issue.

That said, our conversation here is focused on 3PP D&D stuff. The broader industry includes a lot of games which aren’t impacted by this.

I have said many times that WotC didn’t need to cancel the OGL—instead they could control the third party market. Or at least the bulk of it. This isn’t true at the moment, so it’s only a hypothetical, but it seems that they realised they could achieve the same goal with a carrot instead of a stick. Where people were saying “no way will we pay 40% to use OGL2” they are saying “yeah, sure we’ll pay 40% to be on DDB”. (Those numbers are just random numbers I plucked out of the air — I don’t know what percentage DDB takes, but I have been told by publishers on there that it is very lucrative, and DDB sales are a massive percentage of their overall sales).

 

[darjr]

I wonder if dndbeyond is the future of sales and growth in D&D and if so by how much? If it helps the player base grow by a magnitude I think the other boats would be much higher than now, maybe even if they are 90% of the market.

Would we be in a terrible place if that happened? How much higher do the other boats have to be lifted?

 

[mamba]

nvm

 

[mamba]

My understanding is that it's still a pretty manual process to integrate things into Beyond. Given the complexity of things like a character builder, I wouldn't expect any sort of open marketplace anytime soon.

I assume classes / subclasses are the worst part. Adding an adventure with some custom monsters and items should be pretty simple however

 

[bedir than]

One thing I initially overlooked is that depth of content is for Q1 only.
It's a lot!