Dungeons & Dragons Shifts to Franchise Model, Dan Ayoub Named as Head

Wizards of the Coast has shifted Dungeons & Dragons to a "franchise model," with former Senior VP of Digital Games Dan Ayoub named as the new VP of Franchise for the game. Ayoub made the announcement on LinkedIn late yesterday, announcing the shift in franchise. In Ayoub's words, the new model means that everything related to Dungeons & Dragons - books, video games, film, and TV - will now live under one roof. Ayoub stated that this model will allow for a "strong, coordinated, and well-funded approach for the franchise.

Ayoub comes from the video game industry, having worked at Microsoft for 11 years prior to jumping over to Wizards of the Coast. He notably worked on the Halo video game franchise for years, working as a Studio Head and Executive Producer of 343 Industries. He also worked as an executive producer for Ubisoft and a Game Director for The Walt Disney Company.

When first announcing his move to Wizards of the Coast back in 2022, Ayoub stated that he was a fan of both D&D and Magic: The Gathering, having played both as a child.

 

[polishogre]

So Hasbro decided the issue was they weren't running the D&D IP with enough in-house oversight? Personally, I don't think that's where they keep dropping the ball.

 

[mearls]

I’ve read that statement a few times and I still don’t know what they mean by franchise model, how that’s different from what they did in the past, or what the impact is to me as a consumer.

Franchise model is how things worked from 2014 to 2020 or so. One group steered D&D and worked with licensees to set up their content.

If you've played Baldur's Gate 3, you might notice that they lean heavily into lore from Volo's Guide to Monsters, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, and the Baldur's Gate gazetteer from Descent into Avernus. That's the franchise model in action.

We literally wrote design guides for Larian and then inserted them into D&D products. The basic theory was that a DM and a narrative designer do the same job, just at a different scale. What's good for one works for the other.

 

[bedir than]

Franchise model is how things worked from 2014 to 2020 or so. One group steered D&D and worked with licensees to set up their content.

If you've played Baldur's Gate 3, you might notice that they lean heavily into lore from Volo's Guide to Monsters, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, and the Baldur's Gate gazetteer from Descent into Avernus. That's the franchise model in action.

We literally wrote design guides for Larian and then inserted them into D&D products. The basic theory was that a DM and a narrative designer do the same job, just at a different scale. What's good for one works for the other.

Y'all had people regularly advising Daley and Goldstein during pre-production and filming too, IIRC

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I think this is the real question in the end.

Like, what is changing here? The impression given in the LinkedIn post is that this is a big change.



See the "cannot be overstated" and "massive", but like, is it? Ayoub doesn't specify how things will change and to be clear, D&D wasn't NOT using a franchise model before. That's why he says "full franchise model", rather than just "franchise model".

So what's the difference between his position and say, that of Mike Mearls a few years ago after he left being in charge of the TTRPG and became in charge of the brand?

Like, clearly, Mearls was largely doing what a franchise does when he worked with Larian to get BG3 made, for example. The whole point of a franchise model is that one company retains the IP, branding, know-how etc. and then franchisees approved by that company work, usually in a fairly standardized way, to create stuff for that franchise. But is that what is meant here? Because the way Ayoub is talking about it makes it sound more like he's just using "franchise" to mean "brand".

I mean, at the risk of accidentally leaning on the "PANIC PANIC" alarm, is this another OGL 2.0 situation, just from a different angle and with less attempted coercion? Like, is the intention to, by a combination of carrot and stick, to essentially get some 3PPs to become "WotC franchisees"? I.e. creating content with actual WotC branding, sold on WotC sites (including Beyond), and so on, and privileged above other 3PPs, but with stricter controls on what they can do? And presumably doing similar with books, games, etc.?

Or is this just a fancy and dramatic way of saying "We're bringing all the brand strategy, licencing and marketing in to one place, and funding the actual brand strategy/licencing/marketing department a lot better"?

My suspicion is it's the latter. That in fact, contrary Ayoub's statement, whilst this may well feel "massive" internally at WotC, it won't be "massive" for us, people who play D&D, buy D&D stuff, and so on, unless this makes them dramatically more successful at doing stuff that they were already.

We shall see - personally I'd say 20% chance this is something bad-bad where they try and do a silly thing re: 3PPs, 80% chance this is just "The way we did it before but with more people in technically the same department" and with significantly more funding/employees.

If it is that latter, the one other thing I do suspect is we're going to see WotC videogame studios shut down - at least some of them. Because why do that internally, and take all the risk, when you have a department which should be getting other companies to do that?

I think you are correct, in that we are not likely to notice much if any change. At least not immediately.
I get the impression that teams in WoTC are tightly siloed. This may be an attempt to get more cross team coordination but that kind of culture change in an organisation can be difficult. We will see.

 

[TiQuinn]

Franchise model is how things worked from 2014 to 2020 or so. One group steered D&D and worked with licensees to set up their content.

If you've played Baldur's Gate 3, you might notice that they lean heavily into lore from Volo's Guide to Monsters, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, and the Baldur's Gate gazetteer from Descent into Avernus. That's the franchise model in action.

We literally wrote design guides for Larian and then inserted them into D&D products. The basic theory was that a DM and a narrative designer do the same job, just at a different scale. What's good for one works for the other.

How did that shift between 2020 to today? I’m not sure I could pinpoint the exact difference in a way noticeable to me. Like, for instance, BG3 came out in that time frame despite being a product designed earlier on. If Descent into Avernus was supposed to tie into BG3 in some way, they certainly didn’t align well schedule wise. Also the last few years have also been about designing the new edition. What would the franchise model have impacted differently here, hypothetically?

 

[D&D Dan]

So it looks like WotC had someone do the Marvel presentation for them, back when Marvel was having troubles and they told them the value of the company wasn't in comic books, but in the comic book character IP. And so we have D&D where there are owlbears and beholders and dragons ... and that's something we can market.

The thing that Marvel did at the start was get a lot of smart people together and create a road map where everything built on the last project. I am hoping, but also not very confident, that WotC will be able to do that. People who understand franchising and marketing, that's one thing. People who know what's cool about D&D and what D&D fans like, that's something else. And, unfortunately, the venn diagram for those two groups doesn't overlap that much.

I definitely want that roadmap!

 

[TiQuinn]

I think this is the real question in the end.

Like, what is changing here? The impression given in the LinkedIn post is that this is a big change.



See the "cannot be overstated" and "massive", but like, is it? Ayoub doesn't specify how things will change and to be clear, D&D wasn't NOT using a franchise model before. That's why he says "full franchise model", rather than just "franchise model".

So what's the difference between his position and say, that of Mike Mearls a few years ago after he left being in charge of the TTRPG and became in charge of the brand?

Like, clearly, Mearls was largely doing what a franchise does when he worked with Larian to get BG3 made, for example. The whole point of a franchise model is that one company retains the IP, branding, know-how etc. and then franchisees approved by that company work, usually in a fairly standardized way, to create stuff for that franchise. But is that what is meant here? Because the way Ayoub is talking about it makes it sound more like he's just using "franchise" to mean "brand".

I mean, at the risk of accidentally leaning on the "PANIC PANIC" alarm, is this another OGL 2.0 situation, just from a different angle and with less attempted coercion? Like, is the intention to, by a combination of carrot and stick, to essentially get some 3PPs to become "WotC franchisees"? I.e. creating content with actual WotC branding, sold on WotC sites (including Beyond), and so on, and privileged above other 3PPs, but with stricter controls on what they can do? And presumably doing similar with books, games, etc.?

Or is this just a fancy and dramatic way of saying "We're bringing all the brand strategy, licencing and marketing in to one place, and funding the actual brand strategy/licencing/marketing department a lot better"?

My suspicion is it's the latter. That in fact, contrary Ayoub's statement, whilst this may well feel "massive" internally at WotC, it won't be "massive" for us, people who play D&D, buy D&D stuff, and so on, unless this makes them dramatically more successful at doing stuff that they were already.

We shall see - personally I'd say 20% chance this is something bad-bad where they try and do a silly thing re: 3PPs, 80% chance this is just "The way we did it before but with more people in technically the same department" and with significantly more funding/employees.

If it is that latter, the one other thing I do suspect is we're going to see WotC videogame studios shut down - at least some of them. Because why do that internally, and take all the risk, when you have a department which should be getting other companies to do that?

My suspicion is that for the vast majority of people buying their products, the difference is largely going to be negligible because as you mention, there’s a bit of ballyhooing going on with they are touting this. For a 3PP or partner, it may be a great deal of difference at a business level. But given we don’t know how the sausage gets made at any given time or for a given product, it’s tough for laypeople to see how this impacts them…and honestly maybe it’s not really intended to impact customers.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

My suspicion is that for the vast majority of people buying their products, the difference is largely going to be negligible because as you mention, there’s a bit of ballyhooing going on with they are touting this. For a 3PP or partner, it may be a great deal of difference at a business level. But given we don’t know how the sausage gets made at any given time or for a given product, it’s tough for laypeople to see how this impacts them…and honestly maybe it’s not really intended to impact customers.

Yeah and it's worth noting this was a LinkedIn post, and whilst bound to be reported, isn't a press release (AFAIK) or comment direct to reporter or the like, so the primary audience is people involved with the industry. Clearly not just WotC's own employees, or this would just be an internal email or whatever method they use, but industry people.

 

[D&D Dan]

View attachment 410872​

Wizards of the Coast has shifted Dungeons & Dragons to a "franchise model," with former Senior VP of Digital Games Dan Ayoub named as the new VP of Franchise for the game. Ayoub made the announcement on LinkedIn late yesterday, announcing the shift in franchise. In Ayoub's words, the new model means that everything related to Dungeons & Dragons - books, video games, film, and TV - will now live under one roof. Ayoub stated that this model will allow for a "strong, coordinated, and well-funded approach for the franchise.

Ayoub comes from the video game industry, having worked at Microsoft for 11 years prior to jumping over to Wizards of the Coast. He notably worked on the Halo video game franchise for years, working as a Studio Head and Executive Producer of 343 Industries. He also worked as an executive producer for Ubisoft and a Game Director for The Walt Disney Company.

When first announcing his move to Wizards of the Coast back in 2022, Ayoub stated that he was a fan of both D&D and Magic: The Gathering, having played both as a child.

Terrible picture

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

I definitely want that roadmap!