Wizards of the Coast could be increasing the number of new Dungeons & Dragons products released every year. During this week’s Habsro Investor Presentation, Wizards of the Coast president Chris Cocks discussed the ongoing success of the Dungeons & Dragons brand, which is anchored by the popular tabletop roleplaying game. “For Dungeons & Dragons, we’re coming off our best year ever,” Cocks said. “We are aiming to capitalize off that momentum in 2021 with new formats and storytelling opportunities in our main campaigns while increasing the cadence of those releases.”
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Cocks didn’t provide any further details about Dungeons & Dragons’ future plans, but his comments seem to suggest that Wizards of the Coast may be increasing the number of core products released in a given year. Traditionally, Dungeons & Dragons has aimed to release between 3-4 titles in a year. In 2020, those books included two campaign setting books (crossovers with Critical Role and Magic: The Gathering), a full-length adventure campaign titled Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, and a rules expansion. Additionally, Dungeons & Dragons also re-released its most popular adventure Curse of Strahd as a boxed set and released a variety of smaller products. Given the popularity of the game’s current Fifth Edition ruleset and the dearth of worlds barely touched by recently released products, there is likely some untapped market share to be had, especially as not every D&D player purchases every D&D book.
Of course, the major worry of longtime D&D fans is that Wizards of the Coast will try to release too many D&D products. The publisher of Dungeons & Dragons have often flooded the market with new releases, which leads to unbalanced rules and unintended exploits that can significantly hamper the enjoyment of the game for more casual players and DMs.
To date, Dungeons & Dragons’ tabletop team has already announced two releases for later this year. The first, Candlekeep Mysteries, is an anthology of short adventures set in the Forgotten Realms, while the second, Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, is a campaign setting book that explores the gothic horror-inspired world of Ravenloft. Both will be released in the first half of this year. The wider Dungeons & Dragons brand will also expand through a variety of other media, including video games and a slate of movie and television productions.
