Dungeons & Dragons has long been seen as the Kleenex of tabletop role-playing games, a brand that looms so large that it seems to blot out the sun and steal attention from other, similar games. And yet, D&D’s brand is currently on the back foot, unsteadied for the first time in a decade. The recent rules refresh has already produced the excellent Player’s Handbook (2024) and the Dungeon Master’s Guide (2024), but the industry titan feels very much between phases — on the threshold of something new, but still not fully realized.

There are also troubling signs of decay. Despite the clean precision of that spiffy new PHB, on a cool morning, when the wind is just right, you can’t help but smell the enshittification of the beloved role-playing game drifting in on the breeze as its many side projects seemingly wither on the vine.

How did it come to this? First, there was Wizards bungling the lead-up to the big rules refresh. That gave the company a black eye. The OGL debacle made things worse by putting a genuine seed of doubt into the minds of consumers. Suddenly, fans were wondering if Hasbro really did have their best interests in mind. But the real damage came when Hasbro laid off roughly one-fifth of the larger company. While we don’t really know how that’s affected the head count at Wizards, it’s clear from the 2025 schedule that the pace of releases is off. There just aren’t as many books coming out this year as I was expecting.

It’s clear from the 2025 schedule that the pace of releases is off

That’s not all. Project Sigil, the highly anticipated Unreal Engine-powered virtual tabletop, hasn’t been seen much in public since August, when it

© Polygon