Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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I'll admit, I've been pretty checked out in general since the 2024 edition was released. But I've just heard about this latest announcement of D&D Universes Beyond, and I'm honestly astonished at the audacity of it. I've seen what this did to the Magic community and game; the idea that it would be deployed here, and under the same name, is hard for me to even believe. Yes, I know Wizards reports that Universes Beyond has been a profitable move for them with Magic; I don't believe I as a player care about how profitable the game I play is, however. It just reads as completely out of touch.
Maybe they'll do better in 10 years or so when they release 6th edition, but I don't think I have any faith left in them right now.
This is nothing new within the history of D&D, there's been IP crossover products in previous editions, including World of Warcraft and Star Wars.
As for what it's done to MtG, apparently while elements of the core fanbase have been vocally unhappy, it's still had great sales and brought a lot of people into the game. I personally have anecdotal experience that aligns with this—I have a friend who got into MtG following the Doctor Who set, and another following the 40k set. So it's seemingly working as intended.
As for the effect it'll have on D&D, it'll be nothing compared to MtG to the point I think a comparison between the two is moot. I can't do anything if my thematically coherent Slivers typal deck is forced to go up against a Doctor Who/TMNT/Hatsu Miki/Godzilla deck. I have zero control there and if I don't like the "thematic incoherency" that's a me problem. However in D&D if I don't want to play a WoW game, I can just not play a WoW game. If as a DM I don't want my players taking Star Wars themed options, I just have to say "No options from the Star Wars book" or, more reasonably "You can take XYZ options from the SW book, but you must reflavour them to fit". It's no different from letting a player taken an Eberron option in a Forgotten Realms campaign, or a Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica option in a Greyhawk game.
Do keep in mind that the profitability of a game directly affects how you play it. It affects how many books you get, the quality of those books, the amount of extra features and services you get access to (such as DDB) and how well supported and developed those features and services are.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
I've only been playing for about six years so might have missed the hooha when it was released but was there this much "D&D is dead" talk when the Rick and Morty expansion came out? There's been two Stranger Things releases and I know the second one of those didn't generate this much gnashing of teeth. As Davyd says if you don't like it then don't use it, unlike MTG where everyone wants an edge in a competitive game D&D is a collaboration between friends so it should be easy enough to agree on what is and isn't allowed. And voting with your wallet is and always has been the best way to tell a company what you want, just don't be surprised if your wallet ends up out voted if people do what these third party IPs
Remember when D&D announced a New Edition, a Star Wars Tie in, a WarCraft tie in, a whole new partnership with 2nd party publishers, a new open gaming licsense, and a 3rd party offical liscene? The year was 1999/2000. It was what saved D&D as WotC ended up purchasing TSR at that point. People complained about the change to thAC0, they complained about MtG owning D&D, people complained the old books were no longer valid.
2000 ¬2007 was one of the best times in the D&D hobby space.
Where was this righteous fury when they did Rick & Morty and Stranger Things back in 5.0? This is nothing new, they just appended a label to it now.
Yes seriously, and I am very interested in it. Don't yuk my yum.
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It’s a gimmick, but as people have noted it’s not particularly difficult for people/tables to avoid the content if they don’t want it, and I am curious how they intend to tackle Star Wars.
I'm curious what you think is gimmicky about the Warcraft product? It's a world that feels ready-made for DnD campaigns with some unique class/subclass twists and what they've announced seems like a large amount of content for players in general and I think the "boss monster" concepts and professions could be interesting to DMs regardless of whether they intend to use the Warcraft campaign setting.
I mean, boss monsters and professions are basically the definition of gimmick, especially if they end up as a one-off concept. Plus it’s absolutely in part an attempt to leverage the property name to sell copies to people who want it as a WoW collectible. Which is fair, just also gimmicky to me.
Thanks for clarifying, our definitions of what is a gimmick are not the same. I think showing DMs new ways to create unique BBEG fights could be universally valuable to the game. I've seen Youtubers take their own swings at this. Professions are no doubt going to be light but sound like something that some % of players would enjoy regardless of campaign world. The subclasses certainly sound like things players in general will enjoy regardless of world used, and I'm guessing most other player-facing content will be like that, too. I guess one person's 'gimmick' is another person's 'crossover marketing' when it comes to a beefy product that delivers a lot of substance.
Partly because its not Warcraft.... its WORLD of Warcraft. And that comes with a lot of mechanical baggage, because its a mechanics focused game. How do you translate a rotation heavy MMO into a 1 action per turn TTRPG, where you only have 20 levels to spread skill progression. So it raises the question of what WoW players expect, because DnD lacks the capacity to mimic that kind of game play and its pacing. On the flip side, most of the big story enemies end up as Raid Bosses. And raid design paradigms are going to have a problem if any of it is going to become dependent on things that require dice rolls. The difference practically demands a bespoke rule set. And I'm not convinced that kind of time would be allowed to design and test a variant rule set. I could be wrong..... I hope I'm wrong. But no one can fault me for concerns about WotC putting out something half baked, in proportion to how much money it stands to make.
So the only reasonable option is to ignore what makes WoW "WoW" and reskin DnD..... which is boring for existing DnD players, and probably boring for WoW players. Having been around during the flood of IP licensed TTRPGs of the 90s, the results were so wildly inconsistent, that it motivated my friends and I to try and port or recreate things in a better matching system. I rarely say this.... but Paladium rules might be a better choice, because that has built in support for high action counts per turn.
You left out a Diablo tie in around then as well (two versions, one that was 2e facing I think and one that was 3e facing but very oddly 3e based)
I'm personally looking forward to a new "D&D Star Wars" edition. I liked the 3e based d20 Star Wars, mechanically. The big thing I'd like to see come back is Wounds & Vitality as an alternative to Hit Points. One of my favorite 3.x mechanics.
Not only in D&D, for all the RPG hobby. Some studios were even "save" by d20 licence
I doubt you're getting anything like that. It's most likely going to be D&D reskinned to be Star Wars
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Ha! I just, minutes ago, tried to explain the upshots of the Universe Beyond concept as having the potential to get somewhat "Riftsy." :)
One mechanical system, myriad crunch and fluff that can work together...even if they maybe shouldn't.
It seems very unlikely that they're going to modify the rules of D&D to make it play mechanically like WoW. If that's the experience you want, then you can just play WoW.
The point is (presumably) to let you get the kind of play experience D&D offers, but in the warcraft setting.
It likely won't be as bad for D&D as it is for MTG, and if it is, then we can shrug and play on with our physical books, PDFs and homebrew.
that is why I am so Vehement toward ownership and customer rights, because the hobby can go on if the corporation collapses.
Hell's smells, people are still playing with TSR materials and that ship sunk long ago. All because of preservation and physical ownership.
Also D&D doesn't have a competitive scene that drives the ever growing need to keep up with a shifting meta, so adoption of the new stuff is not as mandatory as MTG.
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For people who say Star Wars isn’t a good fit for DnD: there is an order of knights who live in a temple, learn to tap into the life energy of the universe to control move things with their minds and can turn into ghosts when they die, and live in a temple. Palpatine is essentially a lich. And for those who haven’t seen Clone Wars or Ahsoka, there’s a coven of witches who can, among other things, preform necromancy
I'm disappointed too. Profitable? Probably. Creative? Not really. It's the same tired trend we're seeing everywhere in media now: milking existing IP instead of taking risks on original stuff. D&D designers have benefited from this incredible talent for building entire worlds from scratch, and trading that for brand collabs feels like giving up part of what made it special to me in the first place.
And it's not like the original settings are being neglected in favor of bold new ones, either. So far in 5.5e we've had a Ravenloft book, two Forgotten Realms books, a Greyhawk book on the way, an Eberron book, and two more Forgotten Realms books coming. Not to mention that a solid chunk of the 5.5e books we've seen so far just rehash the same options that existed prior to 2024. Now WoW and Star Wars? "What has been will be again, and what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."
Between recycling old settings, repackaging existing mechanics, and importing external franchises, it doesn't appear that Wizards is interested in greenlighting anything genuinely original. That's what stings the most. It's not just that "Universes Beyond" is the path they've chosen, but that it's happening instead of anything fresh or creative.
Directly? Not at all. If WotC went out of business tomorrow, most people wouldn't notice, obviously aside from those locked out of DDB content. Third-party creators will still exist; they've recently been the backbone of what makes D&D flexible and fun.
And let's be honest: by pushing Universes Beyond into D&D, it looks to me like profitability is coming at the expense of original creativity. We could have gotten fresh campaign settings, innovative mechanics, or worlds that only D&D could create. Instead, we're getting licensed IP and recycled options. So yes, profits matter, but not when they replace the very things that make WotC products worth my prioritizing in the first place.