Take the Winter 2026 D&D Community Survey

This survey is clearly designed with Wizards of the Coast knowing they have shit the bed with fans. I feel like they’re trying to gauge by how much.
Answer: A lot .

I took the survey. I have one thing to add.

I know you have passionate people who LOVE D&D and are frustrated by the direction. Listen to them. The Maps stuff is exciting, and the new tools are nice when they eventually show up. But it's all locked behind Official Corporate Speak with legal sign-off. But you do have people who want to do the best they can, and I know corporate is working hard to ruin the company.

Having to feel like I need to apologize for liking D&D sucks. Join the community again. Talk to real people. That doesn't mean surveys. You don't have a face of the company anymore. You're like the McDonald's CEO of RPGs now.

Thank you. This is a great summary of how so many of us feel about the state of the game and company.

It’s unfortunate that the real people who decide where to go and what to do next are the people who are driven by dollars and cents. They should be listening to the community and taking there feedback and sending that through the hierarchy. 

Quote from DamnScoutOne >>

Having to feel like I need to apologize for liking D&D sucks. Join the community again. Talk to real people. That doesn't mean surveys. You don't have a face of the company anymore. You're like the McDonald's CEO of RPGs now.

Amen

The survey is being weird on my computer, that might just be me but I do think that you should take a look and mayby fix some bugs.  

My big feedback in the survey was this: I want communication, consistency, and quality. 

A lot of 5.5e felt rushed and not substantive enough to make a full shift immediately. A lot of prior adventures and campaigns including Spelljammer, Planescape, Vecna, and the last Eberron book felt half-baked. And now it took 3 months to find out what the next book is. Earlier communication, consistency in cross edition rules and lore, and higher quality adventures and rules. 

Quote from nstavish2014 >>

My big feedback in the survey was this: I want communication, consistency, and quality. 

A lot of 5.5e felt rushed and not substantive enough to make a full shift immediately. A lot of prior adventures and campaigns including Spelljammer, Planescape, Vecna, and the last Eberron book felt half-baked. And now it took 3 months to find out what the next book is. Earlier communication, consistency in cross edition rules and lore, and higher quality adventures and rules. 

 

Amen

I split paths with D&D at 4th edition and went to Pathfinder 1e. Two other people whom I individually respect both gave me information about D&D 2024 that made me willing to give it a full read before denouncing it. In the process of that I was offered an interesting job. There is an Inn, a literal Inn, where people are constantly asking "Do you host D&D games?" And the owner has offered me the job of being the in house Dungeon Master. The caveat being that all anyone wants is D&D 5.5e. So, to run my games and tell my stories in this place, this is what I have to do.
I will still be running Castles and Crusaders, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and Old-School Essentials on other VTT and in person.

Quote from AethelGood >>

This survey is clearly designed with Wizards of the Coast knowing they have shit the bed with fans. I feel like they’re trying to gauge by how much.
Answer: A lot .

This was the vibe I got as well. 

I'm really raising my eyebrow over some recent changes to the books as well as dndb (and the app) itself. 

Quote from nstavish2014 >>

My big feedback in the survey was this: I want communication, consistency, and quality. 

A lot of 5.5e felt rushed and not substantive enough to make a full shift immediately. A lot of prior adventures and campaigns including Spelljammer, Planescape, Vecna, and the last Eberron book felt half-baked. And now it took 3 months to find out what the next book is. Earlier communication, consistency in cross edition rules and lore, and higher quality adventures and rules. 

I made comments about quality in the survey myself. I've looked at the info screen of the upcoming books and I'm kind of cringing (Well... not 'kind of'). I'm glad to see that we're getting a new Ravenloft book but, my god, it looks so lackluster (and, considering the quality of recent books, I fear it will be on the inside as well). I have to wonder if it will just be a copy and paste of the older sourcebooks with some 5.5 abilities slapped on, mixed in with some AI writing and art. A lot of the books recently have seemed so amateurish, I'm beginning to wonder if I should go ahead and apply to be a contract writer instead of feeling intimidated.

Quote from Gamblemaniac >>

It’s unfortunate that the real people who decide where to go and what to do next are the people who are driven by dollars and cents. They should be listening to the community and taking there feedback and sending that through the hierarchy. 

Yeah... I can't help but feel like it's all about the Hasbro shareholders now and not the customers. I'm getting second hand KPI stress. I get that this whole thing is about profit and has been for a long time, but if you lose your customers, what are you going to pay your shareholders with? What will happen if you're increasingly slammed with negative reviews? Are you willing to sacrifice long time players and just focus on bilking new players/kids who cycle in and right back out?

I know the people here are saying you should be listening to the people here, but take it with a grain of salt. These people are full time haters. I mean, the quality of criticism is "I've seen a picture of a book and oh my god it's going to be so lackluster."

Please keep working to get better. I love that you're bringing back encounters and working on supporting the players in official ways. Keep that up. Please make info easier to find. Be clear where to find AL stuff. Make quality stuff and get it to the players. I think the new team is on the right track and this year is going to be big for them and seeing what they can do. Support them. Get the stuff to us.

Oh, and stop doing weird online only bundles for your stuff where things are locked away. Just let me buy things. You make it hard to get content and people are just going to steal it.

In my case i still love the game, but I don't really love the core game. I buy every book to support my server and share with friends, but almost everything produced by WotC itself feels very homogenous and samey, lacking the soul it once had. To this effect i have turned to third-party content makers to rekindle the love for the game.  And most of the really good stuff is slow to be adopted here. I've had to become very familiar with dicecloud and avarae.io to actually enjoy new classes and new love. so when I reviewed it was not cause i hate the game its more I'm heartbroken by it

Compare the spirit and energy of Ravnica to Lorwynn, and this becomes most evident, lorwyn was my favorite plane with rich lore and history. and you get mostly just templates out of it.

Just hand the IP over to people who actually care and keep Hasbro from sticking their greedy fingers into it. Still haven't forgiven the OGL crap or so on. The best thing for this community and this IP is to distance itself from WotC along with Hasbro. Our next source books and additional content are going to be AI. If a company cannot even hire an artist to do art on their MTG cards, I doubt they are going to continue to employ competent writers. I nominate Wolfgang Bauer to take over, he'd do everyone a favor.

It boggles my mind how many people here are pure haters and haven't played 5.5e at all. Is it perfect, no? Does Wizards/Hasbro have the best track record? No. They are, however, slowly taking steps in the right direction. More importantly, my three weekly tables are thoroughly enjoying 5.5e as an update to 5e. Trying to stay as unbiased as possible, we're just having fun with it.

No one said I wasn't trying 5.5e, my issue is with the parent company fumbling its way through the dark and trashing beloved IPs. They have messed up plenty and most of my gripes were addressing 5e content. My hate is for Hasbro and the WotC leadership for poor decisions and flubbing of current and future content. I have no want to buy overpriced content when I can get infinitely better content for cheaper from artists and people who genuinely have love and care for what exists. 

I would love to see the results of this survey, but I very much doubt we ever will.

I think one of the reasons trust has dropped for me is that it feels like D&D is being managed with corporate revenue expectations that don’t really match the nature of the hobby.

I completely understand that Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro need to make money. That’s normal. But D&D has always been a product people buy occasionally and then use for years. You buy the core books, maybe some adventures or supplements, and then you play with your friends for a long time without needing to buy anything else.

When a hobby like that is pushed to deliver constant revenue growth, it can start to feel like every decision is about monetization. That’s when players begin to feel like the goal is extracting more money rather than supporting the game and the community.

For me, trust would improve if it felt like the business model matched the way people actually use D&D. Players are generally happy to spend money when something genuinely improves the experience, whether that’s great books, good digital tools, or helpful services. But when it feels like the main goal is recurring revenue rather than improving the game, it creates skepticism.

I think D&D works best when it feels like a hobby being supported, not a product being pushed to hit aggressive growth targets.

Wizards must create a class builder for DnD Beyond

A little disappointed that the survey covered video format actual-plays, but not podcast actual-play shows. NADDPOD has literally one of the most successful patreons ever!

In addition to all the feedback I and others have shared around how Hasbro is just screwing up the game (yes, Hasbro), I would also like to ask you to please stop asking about cookies if folks don't want non-essential cookies. Just let it go. The constant harassment is making me want to avoid the site completely.