It's been just over one year since Dan Ayoub became head of Dungeons and Dragons. For many reasons, 2025 was an interesting time to take over. Wizards of the Coast had just finished the rollout of D&D 5.5e. Yet the game's community was still reeling from a controversy now two years old: the OGL debacle. Trust was at an all time low when Ayoub became the face of the brand.
Since his promotion, rebuilding trust has been a top priority, and Ayoub tells me he's not done yet. He describes his first year in charge as a mix of "really rewarding" and "fucking terrifying". He shares the wins he's proud of, the lessons he's learned, and the hopes he has for D&D's future.
We trade stories of our home games; he's DMing a first-ever campaign for his 14-year-old son and friends, and it tells me a lot about his approach to shaping Dungeons and Dragons. Ayoub has talked in past press events about his 'holistic' approach to the brand, but the force driving his decisions is personal, individual. His strategy is intensely human, and his greatest achievement since becoming head of D&D? He thinks it's listening.
Wargamer: Just over a year ago, you took over as head of D&D, and you began with some bold promises. A brand-new franchise model, listening to community voices, and earning the trust of the community. Do you feel you've delivered on these promises so far?
Dan Ayoub: I like to think we have made great strides. Bluntly, we're recovering from a lot of missteps - very loud, very public missteps. And we're not going to fix it in one year. I can talk 'til the cows come home, but we've got to show more than tell, and that is going to take some time. I'm very conscious that it's going to take a lot of time to win back the trust to the extent that I would like. Having said that, I think we've started strongly, and a lot of these things are still happening behind the scenes.
The intent of the franchise model was to bring everything under one roof. Videogames don't sit over here and do very disparate things from TTRPG and entertainment. You're going to start seeing more of that come together in terms of listening.
Honestly, if I would give myself good grades on one thing in particular over the past year, I think it's been listening. We established the community council. I've personally spent a bunch of time talking to not just fans, but retailers and consumers.
And then, of course, there's the classic creators. On a personal note, as a fan, I was very personally frustrated by some of the breaks I had seen happen with the people who created what we're all enjoying today. I think we made great strides there.
I'll be honest with you, Mollie. I don't think I'll ever get to a point where I feel like 'okay, I don't need to do this any more'. I think this conversation always needs to be happening. I'm always going to want to be listening.
I love D&D, and the reason I took this job is because I want to get it back to how I remember it. I want people to share the types of stories you and I just shared, but there's a road to that. I'm very hard on myself, particularly where that stuff is concerned, and I don't think I'm ever going to be satisfied, but I will absolutely be holding myself to those promises I made at the beginning.
Repairing broken trust has been a theme in many of your discussions of D&D. That means we need to talk about the OGL. Where did Wizards go wrong, and what lessons has your team learned since?
D&D is about, for, and by the fans. That's the first fundamental point that we can never lose. I think, over the course of several years, we lost sight of what was important. We lost sight of who our audience was.
Another way the brand veered off course is making the mistaken assumption that there's a one-size-fits-all for D&D, which is absolutely not the case. It's certainly not my job to tell you how to play D&D. It is my job to give you the tools and fun experiences with which you can jump into it.
But I don't want to skirt the focus of your question. It was a rug pull, right? A lot of people and businesses were built up around a specific thing. Trust was given to the brand, and people rightly felt the rug was pulled from under them. In some cases, it's caused damage we are still trying to fix today. So I understand the hesitancy of 'okay, here's this new guy saying all these things'.
My biggest takeaway as I step into this role is that trust takes a long time to build and a second to break. I'm keenly aware it's going to take me a long time to repair this, but my hope is people will give the benefit of the doubt as we continue to show that lessons have been learned. This is a new direction, a new voice, and a new spirit and energy behind D&D.
Coming into a senior role after all this happened must have been quite a bit of pressure. This didn't just change how people view D&D and Wizards of the Coast; it had ripple effects on the entire industry. It changed the ecosystem.
It really did. I'm a big Dragonlance fan, and it was kind of like when the mountain dropped and reshaped the geography. It fundamentally changed the ecosystem and everything about it.
And it was a fucking terrifying decision point for me. I've been playing D&D my entire life, and I was very aware of the state of things when I was coming in. I love this thing so much. There was always that fear: 'God, I don't want to do anything to damage this thing I love so much'. But at the same time, I love this thing so much, and I can't bear to see it in this state.
I approached it from a place of love first and foremost. What do I want to see as a fan? What do I want? But I'm not going to lie, it was absolutely terrifying coming into it. I feel like we've made some great strides just in that year, but I don't think that journey ever stops.
The OGL has been on my mind ever since the Gen Con Keynote. A large part of that keynote announced outside creators would be working on D&D, from Icons to the new Ravenloft and Forgotten Realms books. I thought, after years of everyone being siloed and isolated thanks to the OGL, it was interesting how everyone was beginning to collaborate again. What inspired this move?
Honestly, it's the right thing to do for D&D. I don't want us to be the only voice for D&D, and part of the challenge for the brand is - let's be real - that's what happened. The voice of D&D was only coming from one place, but that's not how D&D grows.
I want to bring more people in to tell more stories. D&D means very different things to very different people. We can't tell all of the stories, and I'm certainly not arrogant enough to think there aren't brilliant storytellers all over the world. I want those voices.
What was rewarding for me was, when we laid out that we want to bring all these voices back, I was thrilled with the level of excitement from these partners. It was almost like this exhale of relief.
We're constantly having meetings with the partners we talked about [at the Keynote], but other partners as well. I look back on my own memories of when I thought D&D was at its greatest, it was when we had all these other voices. And I know not one voice works for everyone. We can't make every product we release be for everyone, but everyone should see something for themselves in our roadmap.
And the only way we can do that is bring on partners. We had a partner in the office today, just running through ideas, and it was honestly a bunch of shit we would not have thought of. Those kinds of voices energize the brand, and we're only stronger when our partners are with us.
It feels fitting considering that the product being made is a game that only functions when everyone works together.
Absolutely. There's almost an irony to it. The fundamental mantra is don't split the party, and we went ahead and split the party.
So now, how do we make sure that everyone is together, excited, and has a piece they can feel ownership over? That goes for classic creators, too. We reached out to Margaret [Weis] and Tracy [Hickman] and Luke [Gygax] and Bob [Salvatore], because these are fundamental voices. As I said at Gen Con, we stand on the shoulders of giants. Those folks, as we quickly learned, still have a lot of stories to tell.
Returning to D&D's past is exciting, but with so much focus on established designers, settings, and characters, how are you helping to shape D&D's future? How are you opening the door for new designers and new ideas while also celebrating what came before?
We're in early stages now. You're going to see us talk about a few other things over the course of the coming year. Don't take this literally, because it's a bad example I'm going to use, but I was a big fan of Dragon [Magazine] back in the day. Its modules were a great way to find new talent, mechanics, and systems.
I'm absolutely not launching a magazine or anything like that, but one of the things I always loved about D&D is how it found places for new creators to come in with new ideas. And, when they resonated, there was a way to amplify that so it could grow into something else. We need to and want to create those kinds of opportunities.
Then there's the question of how you make new fans as well. There are going to be multiple lines within D&D, and bringing new folks into it is a huge part of what I want to do. Someone is going to get to sit in this chair and celebrate D&D's 100-year anniversary, and that only happens if we continue to grow and bring new fans in.
We're doing things outside of the RPG. There's the recent Netflix announcement and the stuff we're doing with HBO. Obviously, Stranger Things has been a fantastic way to bring in new fans.
But, to use the Icons example, I want to make sure that throughout that, there is something for everybody. Whether you're curious and want to get in - and we'll be making announcements around that topic soonish - all the way up to someone that's been playing since 1974.
These aren't the only voices you've brought in. You've also created community advisory groups to bring more voices to the table. How has working with these groups gone?
It has been great. The candor has been fantastic. People are good about talking to us about where they feel we've gone off the rails in the past, and about what they don't want to see. But it's been a good mix of positive too.
In that first session, they gave us great feedback on the positive side of the seasons model, and I have huge thanks to them because their feedback was 'you're doing all these cool things, but you're doing a terrible job telling people about it'. It was actually after that debrief we said 'we need to publicize our roadmap, they're absolutely right.'
We've had product ideas that have gone away as a result. When there's weird things we want to try out, they're a great first point for us. It's hard to read the cereal box when you're on the inside, and having a layer of people who are extremely comfortable telling you 'you guys are fucking dumb, and here's why' is really helpful for us.
It's worked better than I could have hoped. It's certainly something we're going to continue. I would like to think of other types of setups we can do for more direct feedback. The advisory board's never going anywhere, but we've been playing with other models as well, because I don't want to lose that hands-on touch. It's something I value personally. It's why I go to shows myself - I love to hear from people directly.
That's it for our landmark D&D interview with Dan Ayoub - for now. What's your take? At this pivotal moment for D&D, what do you most want to see Dan and his team deliver? Come join the free Wargamer Discord community and let us know - there's sure to be some serious discussion on this one!