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Wild conjecture on why the 2024 #dnd rules are what they are
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Apr 30, 2025
I have some dubious opinions about why things went so wrong with the 2024 #dnd rules. I don’t have nearly enough information to back us these opinions, and it is possible that I am wildly incorrect, but this is what I come up with when I connect the dots. #dnd5e #2024dnd #ttrpg #hasbro #dungeonsanddragons
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well let's talk about why the 2024 rules
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happened and I I'm going to offer some
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thoughts on why I think things have gone
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so poorly in about August 2023 we
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started getting the first play test
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documents for what would become the 2024
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rules and the plan was there would be
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about a year of play test material for
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just the players handbook and then
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leading up to the release of the new
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rule books we would get play test
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material from the dungeon master's guide
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and the monster manual that wouldn't end
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up happening but I don't think it was
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entirely the fault of the D&D design
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team because a lot of really crazy stuff
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happened around them so the announcement
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of the 2024 rules came on the heels of
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the OGL crisis so like they were already
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on bad footing with the community but
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they start doing the play test August
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2023
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early 2023 Hasbbo Hasbro starts doing
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mass layoffs like Hasbro has been
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struggling for a really long time
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they're a toy company in a world where
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physical toy sales are declining so
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they're not doing great wizards of the
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Coast was notably kind of their cash cow
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and was doing really well coming out of
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COVID dnd Wizards of the Coast and Magic
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the Gathering were all doing really
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really well so Hasbro looks at Wizards
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of the Coast with dollar signs in their
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eyes and says like "Okay how can we
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monetize this audience more how can we
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get more money out of these people?" So
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yes like there is some cash grabbing
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going on here no question but we're also
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approaching the 50th anniversary of Dn D
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the 10-year anniversary of fifth edition
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and at 10 years fifth edition is like
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the first or second longest running a
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single edition of the rules so it's it's
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been around a good long time an addition
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refresh isn't an awful idea and as the
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designers have said like when do you
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roll over to a new edition when the
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warts on the existing edition are too
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large to ignore and continue forward now
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I don't I don't think that was the case
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with the 2014 rules like some rules
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patches and a few adjustments and things
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would have been great but um you know
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maybe the designers saw it differently
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and of course there's that pressure from
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Hasbro to continue driving sales to get
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those big numbers to you know provide
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some profit but in typical corporate
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fashion early 2023 Hasbro does massive
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corporatewide layoffs including at
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Wizards of the Coast so Wizards of the
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Coast loses some employees in early
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2023 and then they do it again in
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December of 2023 they laid
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off,00 people who worked under Hasbbo's
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corporate umbrella crucially these
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layoffs affected the D&D design team
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specifically they lost a couple of
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designers and they lost a couple of
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editors and you know based on recent
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products the D and D design team's
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editors have been struggling as it is
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like the the recent books are you know a
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lot of typos a lot a lot of issues like
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that that should be caught by editors
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but they are simply overworked and
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underst staffed and losing a couple of
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people to layoffs certainly didn't make
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things better so the timing of when the
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second round of layoffs happened is
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really really close to when they would
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have been designing the 2024 Ranger so
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it's entirely possible that the reason
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we got the Ranger that we did is because
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they had to make do with the people that
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they had and the time that they had the
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the entire play test timeline for the
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2024 rules got condensed we never saw
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play test material for the dungeon
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master's guide or the monster manual
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really except for the bastions um so
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just simply based on the timing I really
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do think that Hasbro's corporate layoffs
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really hit the 2024 rules hard the
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design team at Wizards of the Coast is
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small it's not a ton of people like
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maybe 10 maybe 20 i And you can learn
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all of their names pretty easily because
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there's so few of them so losing even
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one person is a huge hit to a team that
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small
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and I mean we we can talk until we're
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blue in the face about how how absurd it
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was to lay off folks at Wizards of the
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Coast when that was the only profitable
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part of Hasbro but you
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know these decisions get made at a high
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level by people who are looking at
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numbers on a spreadsheet uh so somebody
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high up at Hasbro needed some skulls to
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make shareholders happy and uh now we
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live with the results in the 2024 DND
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rules
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