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.

 

[DarkCrisis]

D&D Books will remain but WotC is going to do everything it can to get you to use Beyond instead. Like easily accessible books on your phone via the Beyond App!

Or Beyond only books.

And while you’re here, why not customize a mini? Did you see this weeks limited time Necro-colored Dice? 10% off first purchase! Why carry around those heavy books? Get the starter bundle for half off!

WotC has been and will push for consumers to go digital. It’s just smart for them money wise.

No books aren’t going away. Probably never but it will be the secondary product.
Heck why not just us DTRPG and make it all print on demand? Special discount for game stores who order to fill their shelves.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

This post quoted is interesting both for what it gets right and for what it gets wrong

right well how many times i have heard this line, oh CD's are a fad, records are better or case tapes, i will go as far to say that small USB chips will at some point replace this as well down the road, heck you can fit many gigs on a small chip plug and play now.

At a certain level CDs are a fad most digital music nowadays is accessed via streaming services. A lot of it free but you must put up with the ads.
A lot of people that download and locally store digital music are digital packrats that have terrabytes of music stored. Some more hours of music/video stored that hours of life left to consume it.
But you can still buy physical media and vinyl is making a comeback. It was not too long ago when you could not buy a new record player for love or money.

Once this becomes the norm you will never see many going through ther process of making a book.

Arguably it is the norm for books and books have made a comeback.

How many pay phones can you find in your town compared to 10 years ago.

As far as I know, public phones were always a public service requirement and when the authorities decided that payphone were more serving the illegal activities than the poor, they withdrew support for public telephones. The phones then vanished as they went out of service and were not replaced.

The digital age is great but, people love to use things to gain an advantage or make money, remember when you can buy a game own it and play it when ever you want. Now it's all about an online connection to a server so you don't really own the game or any thing in it, you just bought the right to access it.

This is completely true, but the digital age has been largely consumer driven. The movie and music industry have fought tooth and nail to prevent digital distribution of their product. If it was not for Apple (when it was small and mostly noted for hardware production) getting some good terms for digital distribution of music and movie on iTunes we would be still struggling to prise music and movies out of the walled gardens of the studios.
In fact, with the rise of rival streaming services, we are looking at a second attempt to rebuild walled gardens in the entertainment industry.

Now the digital age is not all good there are a lot of downsides. I expect some time there will be a major human rights issue with regard to online identity and the fact that Google et al. can remove your digital identity by locking your account and there is pretty much no appeal.

Now, the only reason that D&D is not more digital is that WoTC screwed it up so badly in 2008 and the market was not perceived as large enough for the big boy or the Silicon Valley venture capitalists. In my opinion, if you want the metaverse you start off with a good vr implementation of D&D.
Now, if you want Wizards to continue to produce physical media then you need to keep buying physical media.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Let's rebember the physical books keep the value with the time, or it becomes higher, but the videogames become old-fashioned too soon. The books are right for collectors or to be bought for gifts.

The modules are more "short-lived", and here the digital market is better, at least to save space in the room.

Other point is selling DLCs but these being useful for different videogames. For example you buy a D&D pack in the Epic Games Launcher, and with this you get skins for Fortnite, but also for other titles, and more monsters and pieces of artrezoo in other titles. With this the player shouldn't worry about the pack for online videogames because if the servers are closed, the DLC is still useful for other games.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Like…books will be made out of some futuristic material that our lazy descendants will incorrectly still call paper, before D&D stops being books.

Cal: "This isn't paper... it's some kind of metal..."

Crow: "No, sir... that's paper."

- Mystery Science Theater 3000 - The Movie

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Cal: "This isn't paper... it's some kind of metal..."

Crow: "No, sir... that's paper."

- Mystery Science Theater 3000 - The Movie

Tangentially, I have been listening to the audiobook of Gideon The Ninth (extremely recommend) and they have paper only as a luxury, and call thier more common stuff “flimsy” but never explain it.

 

[Delazar]

At this point, the only "books" I still buy are adventures, because I find it easier to leaf through a physical book when I'm DMing a scenario. But rulebooks, monsters books, and settings books, I much more prefer digital, especially databases, so I can find what I need much faster.

 

[Parmandur]

I disagree, but it’s not an important point of contention.

Yeah, I don't object to the idea certainly, I justa skeptical in pragmatic terms.

 

[darjr]

WotC is trying a new magazine style product in the UK. A printed periodical.

It’s a test for that particular product but I’d bet it’s also one for testing the magazine waters.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

WotC is trying a new magazine style product in the UK. A printed periodical.

It’s a test for that particular product but I’d bet it’s also one for testing the magazine waters.

I saw that and if it was here in states I would sign up

 

[Parmandur]

WotC is trying a new magazine style product in the UK. A printed periodical.

It’s a test for that particular product but I’d bet it’s also one for testing the magazine waters.

If they do a magazine here in the future, I would suspect it would be more like a cross between that UK product and Highlights, focused on younger readers. Something to catch the eye in the Supermarket check-out and remember "hey, my kids will like those activities."