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.

 

[bedir than]

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 Ray and @mearls for sharing so much in this thread.

Thank you @Morrus and the mods for maintaining a space where leaders in the industry are comfortable visiting