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.

 

[WinningerR]

Under the previous structure, what prevented the different chunks of the business from working toward established franchise-wide initiatives?

Nothing prevented it, but nothing required it either. The four groups frequently collaborated, but only on initiatives they all agreed were in the best interests of their businesses. If, say, the Entertainment folks were trying to put a big push behind convincing a TV studio to produce a Dragonlance television series, they might ask the tabletop RPG group to schedule one or more new DL products to make their pitch more attractive. The TTRPG group was then free to do that, or not, based on whatever they felt was best for the TTRPG business.

In my experience, ambitious franchise-wide collaborations were almost impossible to pull off. Entertainment, Video Games, and TTRPG products all have long lead times, and the schedules for quality Entertainment and Video Games are particularly erratic. People wonder why we didn't have a Baldur's Gate tie-in product ready to go when Larian launched its video game or a Stranger Things product ready when Netflix dropped a new season. To do that, we would have needed to know the release dates of BG3 or a Stranger Things season 18-24 months in advance, and that was basically impossible. Release dates for BG3 and the most recent season of ST literally slipped by years as they came together. WotC actually tried to tie a TTRPG release to BG3--DESCENT INTO AVERNUS. It shipped years before Larian was finally finished. (There's also the question of whether or not it makes sense to expend one of D&D's few product slots on those sorts of tie-ins, but that's a longer discussion.)

There are ways to mitigate some of these problems but they're expensive.

 

[mamba]

nvm

 

[Argyle King]

Nothing prevented it, but nothing required it either. The four groups frequently collaborated, but only on initiatives they all agreed were in the best interests of their businesses. If, say, the Entertainment folks were trying to put a big push behind convincing a TV studio to produce a Dragonlance television series, they might ask the tabletop RPG group to schedule one or more new DL products to make their pitch more attractive. The TTRPG group was then free to do that, or not, based on whatever they felt was best for the TTRPG business.

In my experience, ambitious franchise-wide collaborations were almost impossible to pull off. Entertainment, Video Games, and TTRPG products all have long lead times, and the schedules for quality Entertainment and Video Games are particularly erratic. People wonder why we didn't have a Baldur's Gate tie-in product ready to go when Larian launched its video game or a Stranger Things product ready when Netflix dropped a new season. To do that, we would have needed to know the release dates of BG3 or a Stranger Things season 18-24 months in advance, and that was basically impossible. Release dates for BG3 and the most recent season of ST literally slipped by years as they came together. WotC actually tried to tie a TTRPG release to BG3--DESCENT INTO AVERNUS. It shipped years before Larian was finally finished. (There's also the question of whether or not it makes sense to expend one of D&D's few product slots on those sorts of tie-ins, but that's a longer discussion.)

There are ways to mitigate some of these problems but they're expensive.

Thank you for answering.

The example of not knowing the release date of BG3 sheds a lot of light on things.

From my own subjective viewpoint, that's alien to how I would have thought things worked. I'm more accustomed to 'backwards planning': having a set end date for the goal and then planning back from that end date to today to fill in what the timeline should look like for all elements involved.

Edit: I can understand that delays happen. Covid was unexpected, as were other things. So, there's not much of a way to plan for that, but I would think that even a vague idea would be preferable to none.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Nothing prevented it, but nothing required it either. The four groups frequently collaborated, but only on initiatives they all agreed were in the best interests of their businesses. If, say, the Entertainment folks were trying to put a big push behind convincing a TV studio to produce a Dragonlance television series, they might ask the tabletop RPG group to schedule one or more new DL products to make their pitch more attractive. The TTRPG group was then free to do that, or not, based on whatever they felt was best for the TTRPG business.

In my experience, ambitious franchise-wide collaborations were almost impossible to pull off. Entertainment, Video Games, and TTRPG products all have long lead times, and the schedules for quality Entertainment and Video Games are particularly erratic. People wonder why we didn't have a Baldur's Gate tie-in product ready to go when Larian launched its video game or a Stranger Things product ready when Netflix dropped a new season. To do that, we would have needed to know the release dates of BG3 or a Stranger Things season 18-24 months in advance, and that was basically impossible. Release dates for BG3 and the most recent season of ST literally slipped by years as they came together. WotC actually tried to tie a TTRPG release to BG3--DESCENT INTO AVERNUS. It shipped years before Larian was finally finished. (There's also the question of whether or not it makes sense to expend one of D&D's few product slots on those sorts of tie-ins, but that's a longer discussion.)

There are ways to mitigate some of these problems but they're expensive.

This matches up with how I imagine to be the case. I am not sure the "Franchise model" will make much difference here.

I am of the opinion that Sigil was a solution looking for a problem and if the same effort had been put into D&DBeyond WoTC would be better off.
I think that D&DBeyond needs a better UX experience. I should be able to go to sources and see only my books and or adventures.
It is starting to get hard to find stuff.
Have some campaign management tools that only reference the material I select and hyper link entries.
A lot of the bones of it is there.
That said, they should not over integrate things. One should be able to use Maps on its own even in a system agnostic way. Allow a DM to cure their own token collection.

 

[WinningerR]

Thank you for answering.

The example of not knowing the release date of BG3 sheds a lot of light on things.

From my own subjective viewpoint, that's alien to how I would have thought things worked. I'm more accustomed to 'backwards planning': having a set end date for the goal and then planning back from that end date to today to fill in what the timeline should look like for all elements involved.

Edit: I can understand that delays happen. Covid was unexpected, as were other things. So, there's not much of a way to plan for that, but I would think that even a vague idea would be preferable to none.

That’s certainly the way the TTRPG studio operated, but our production was much more predictable than video games or entertainment. Video games are famously difficult to schedule and project manage; I worked on a ton of them and delays—sometimes lengthy delays—are more the rule than the exception. (Unless we’re talking about a franchise like Madden or CoD where gameplay is largely unchanged and you’re basically just creating new content each year.) Like most prestige TV, STRANGER THINGS wasn’t on a rigid schedule; production doesn’t go forward until the creators/writers decide they are ready; and after that, the producers have to start playing scheduling Jenga with their actors, etc.

 

[Faolyn]

If we have more kids I would totally go for a stuffed Owlbear instead of a stuffed bear as a toddler toy!

It's a corporate reorg, so the name is just that - a name. We'll see what changes about their actions.

Hey, you don't need kids as an excuse to buy a stuffy!

 

[bedir than]

Like most prestige TV, STRANGER THINGS wasn’t on a rigid schedule; production doesn’t go forward until the creators/writers decide they are ready; and after that, the producers have to start playing scheduling Jenga with their actors, etc.

Additionally even though most of the world abandoned covid restrictions, when this season of Stranger Things was filmed there were still restrictions in Hollywood. That slows things down, escalating costs (waves at Honor Among Thieves)

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I think the shift from pre-2020 to post-2020 was pretty stark, not only in design but also in brand management. The concept of storylines coordinated across various media vanished, for one. Beforehand, we had streams, game expansions, boardgames, etc. all themed around the same concept. The way books were written and the density of setting information also changed substantially to a minimalistic approach that makes coordination harder.

Descent Into Avernus was a fine tie-in for its time, as it was released to coincide with the early access of BG3 (and it did). It is also a hardcover adventure, and therefore much more likely to work as a converter of DMs into BG3 players rather than the other way around.

BG3 was fully released in late 2023, well beyond 2020. The fact that there was no tie-in in 2023 for wide release meant to target BG3 players who could feasibly become D&D players is the real missed opportunity. The four years that elapsed between 2019 and 2023 should have been more than enough for WotC to prepare proper tie-in coordinated products.

Also I also found it strange that MtG had no tie in worth mentioning for D&Ds 50 anniversary. Huge missed opportunity. Like not even secret lair. Nothing tying into the new edition, nothing.

This really feels like it explains alot. A complete lack of synergy.

I wonder if it has to do with Cythia Williams leadership?

 

[boofnoodle]

To me, it sounds like moving to a "full franchise" model means that nothing will be done in house other than coordinating the projects to make sure that the items produced by the franchisees are what Ayoub wants and are bringing in enough revenue.
Perhaps I'm being a bit pessimistic, but I see them eliminating the D&D design studio and all or nearly all the in-house designers. The new core books are out now, so these can serve as a framework for everything the franchisees produce, including future rulebooks. This move may have been in the planning stages for some time, which would explain why D&D's senior designers have been fleeing the company like rats jumping off a sinking ship. Think of how much money it would save to get rid of all you designers & artists and just let other companies do all the work for you. You get a big share of the profits for licensing out your brand, you have no development costs, and you take none of the risks of producing a product that doesn't sell.

Worked with a company (rhymes with Lasgro) through a licensee agreement and this how at least one of their other major franchises work. You make the content with their brand, you pay them to "rent" the brand/do a profit share, and then on their side they have project managers who oversees tons of projects to make sure it doesn't go off the rails... But none of them IP experts. We would run into inconsistencies all over the place, we would ask for specific brand guidelines and they would give us like 20% and the rest was "write it up and we'll approve." In the process we would catch problems with other released projects, literally as it was on shelves, where we pitched something which was a riff off of a currently live product and they told us we were wrong, no one had ever done X, so I sent them a photo of their branded product on the shelf in a local department store. In another case we hit a 3-4 month back and forth over concept approvals and they had to get "their expert" who was "really busy" to come review and he turned out to be a contractor himself and of course we knew our stuff and he gave us the greenlight and suddenly we were approved. I've worked with a couple other IP holders and this is sadly common.

 

[Peter BOSCO'S]

What I want to know is when we can finally have a D&D amusement park roller coaster.
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Legal won't let them do that, the payouts to the families of those poor missing kids were a big part of why TSR had financial problems....