It was there a few years later Dungeons and Dragonsas a company and as a brand. Big brands like Baldur’s Gate 3 and the release of the “5.5” sourcebook have won. MCDMand the departure of the franchise’s Guide Light Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins. A completely creative shake-up and a new pair of hands at the helm Dan AyubD&D joined Gen Con in hopes of a new start.
Most of the “New” Dungeons & Dragons are opening up to a new partnership for D&D Beyond Platform. The digital platform is home to both the first party and homebrew content, and has begun hosting adventures from businesses that historically didn’t expect to link to Wizards of the Coast Juggernaut. In addition to new content from Kobold Press and AAW Games, you can also watch Cthulhu by Torchlight From Chaosium, and one of the bigger Shockers from Gen Con, A hateful safe Adventure pass from Paizo. The main architects of this more open D&D that go beyond the ecosystem are Laura HomanDungeon & Dragon product architect. After working in DreamWorks, Nickelodeon and the world for two and a half years Magical gathering, Laura has spent the past seven months managing the old and new partnerships where D&D has created a central part of her strategy. We had the opportunity to choose a bit of her brain and see what this process looks like on every level.
What was it like to help you work with these third-party publishers beyond this more open D&D?
Personally, it’s really rewarding. I’m from the LA Art Community. I am a huge artist, creator and supporter. You can see people spotlight their content in D&D Beyond and really integrate it with their tools, allowing everyone to use it. There is the kind of growth offered to creators and the excitement that brings you to easily access and view fans and players, and have the visibility that you know the product is basic support.
We had the Chaosium team here this week, and now we have Paizo. Neither is necessarily a D&D company. Are these relationships and discussions that took place before you were caught up in the role?
I was involved with a team that ensured that Collaboration was strong in providing D&D. D&D Beyond has limitations within the tool and was created for 5E. This is the overall framework. Our team is called LoreKeepers. They are the people who really incorporate that content into our tools and suggest ways to make a better player experience better optimized or better. Paizo and Kaosium were the best partners. They were so happy and were willing to work together and tweak things everywhere. But I’m really excited to see other kinds of cross-collaboration. So, our last people may be interested in it, but now we can immerse our toes in those worlds, hopefully that will lead to more people getting excited about those products. And the opposite is also the opposite Chall of Cthulhu Or, Paizo wants to soak their toes in 5e.
Where Chaosium makes coastal wizard content, can we see, for example, a coastal wizard creating collaborative content within the Chaosium ecosystem?
Outbound can’t say anything. That’s not my job. But inbound, it was something we could control. My job is to bring cool content to D&D. So they are the kind of target I would target. I’m a huge lover and I’m advocating for genre content. I played Call of Cthulhu a few times. I’m a big fan of other people. And I think that really provides that the elder horror vibe is something we really don’t have. One thing I see on the roadmap is trying to find the different thematic products and different content tones we don’t currently offer.
This is a fascinating theme for me as D&D status in the industry and D&D is like a toy box that is not as open as it is now. Are you interested in the conversation being like bringing these companies?
D&D has a history, and that has become a fumble. But I really think the team we have now is very open and very committed to promoting such transparency and collaboration, not just the 5E community, but the community as a whole. So I think it really shows us, along with Paizo, that we are about to work together. When it comes to talking to potential partners and creators who are interested in coming at the end of the day, our current framework is that we need something that looks like 5E. Some people make it more comfortable than others. Some people want to retain more core mechanics that our toolset cannot integrate. So we have to have those conversations about the best player experience for those who want to buy this. Do that. If our tools can’t support half of the product, is that okay? And what does that mean? So we have a pretty open joint conversation about it, appreciate each other’s work and walk through their content – what it does and can’t.
And then, what are we specifically trying to impose on D&D? We’ve done these player packs, which are smaller drops of classes with subclasses. Is there anything about this if you can’t support the entire product?
Are you involved with the VTT side? What information about map rollouts and integrations?
I work closely with the BT team team to make sure that the map is on the same page as it is open. I think all of us are really excited about what we can say from the end, at least. Currently, I’m not very hungry for adventure content, but I feel that when the map is open, people can do it because they’re not behind the paywall, so more people can go on an adventure. I think it will definitely make all the products simpler and more “click and play” for more people. I hope that more people want to interact with it.
Can you talk about the process of getting that integration? Let’s say I am Avantresfor example, I want to bring it The curved moon To the system. Is it a situation where they have to code and make all the technical changes? Or it’s like they give you a PDF, it’s your team, then your team is the team that creates and generates content.
So there is now a “white gloves” service. So the partner is to provide a PDF of their own, whether in progress or completed. Either way, we start reviewing it and make sure it’s the rules we can support, what we can support with our tools. They’ll negotiate certain things like “Yeah, we can’t support this”, “Can we tweak it”, or “Can we make these feats and backgrounds into special mechanisms or new species?” So you can tweak it slightly to make it a better user experience with the tool. But then it’s pretty much inside.
Our team will get the InDesign file, create it on every system, and propagate it all to create the compendium and all other assets you will get when you buy the product. So it tends to be very supportive at first and then hand over more to our team. Our team integrates, updates and creates content. We have made the tool for the goal set, making sure the review phase is all accurate. So when you start adding new mechanics and new additions to your character sheet, it’s kind of limited, at least as long as it’s automated. Sometimes we can support things and say, OK, you do it like this, more homemade ways. But again, it’s all a trade-off and there’s a very open debate to see if they’re comfortable and whether they’re happy with what that means.
Images via Dungeons & Dragons
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