Im with you on this, but I think there is considerable risk to WotC as the only ones capable of doing a mutli-product offering. It may bring in more players and success and overall happier community, but it could also split them and cause a dip in overall sales. ITs a risk wher eI think WotC is asking is the juice worth the squeeze? I know there are way more customers now than ever before, so some of the past lessons about too many product lines might be too cautious of a tale, but without any serious competition I just dont see WotC making this move.
Perhaps. But then again, WotC has already shown they’re willing to take risks—for example, crossing brands with
Magic: The Gathering,
Stranger Things, and
Critical Role, each aimed at niche or outside audiences. Those products don’t appeal to everyone, but they still consume development time and represent selective gambles. The real question isn’t
if they risk fracturing their audience, but
how they choose to manage it.
If fans of 4E, older editions, or even the 2014 version of 5E have drifted away because the current model doesn’t serve them, the audience is already fragmented—just in a way that sends their money elsewhere. So what’s the better business decision: keep reshaping the core game and hope the next iteration pleases more than it alienates, or offer complementary versions that let players rejoin the brand on their own terms?
Imagine a “D&D Lite” or “D&D Tactical” released alongside the mainline system. Would existing fans care? Probably not—they still have their preferred experience. But those who left for alternatives might come back to a familiar name that finally fits their table. That’s not fracture; that’s reclamation.
In a sense, this is what 5E already tried to do (and, for the most part, succeeded). It promised unity through modularity—a single, flexible framework that could accommodate any table, no matter the edition or playstyle preference. But somewhere along the way, that vision either proved impossible to realize or was quietly outsourced to the OGL ecosystem to sort out. The result is a system that’s stable, familiar, and wildly successful—but also stagnant. For every new player it welcomes, there’s another who’s drifted away, not out of disdain, but out of disinterest. The game didn’t fail them outright—it just stopped evolving in ways that mattered to them.
I don’t believe WotC will ever take the route of formally splitting its design focus—and most of us already know that. But that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? Once we accept it won’t happen, we stop thinking about what
could make the game better and start settling for what we’re given.
And I guarantee—that’s exactly what they’ve been banking on for years.
