Who’s Steering the Ship

At Gen Con 2026, Wizards of the Coast showed us what Dan Ayoub’s new direction looks like. D&D Icons brings Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman into new Dragonlance work, R.A. Salvatore into material connected to Drizzt, and Luke Gygax into unfinished work from Gary Gygax, tied to his father’s vision. Joe Manganiello leads the initiative. These are people whose names carry weight because of the worlds and stories players already love. Putting them into the development of new material gives their judgment a renewed place in D&D’s future. The guest list matters because it tells us whom management is inviting to help define the game.

That is the change I have in mind when I question the timing of the new union effort. Wizards is reaching beyond its in-house team and giving recognizable creators a public role in shaping its settings. Icons works in collaboration with the studio⁠, but that collaboration means the studio’s existing voices will share influence with people management has deliberately brought into the room. I read that decision as a move toward the creative identities that made these worlds worth buying and playing in the first place. Ayoub does not need to announce a political retreat for me to see a possible challenge to employees who want their own views to guide the material. Management can change a company’s direction by changing whose judgment it seeks.

On October 6, the D&D team and Studio X, which develops tabletop Magic and Duel Masters, announced their intention to unionize⁠. Their stated reasons include compensation, career progression, and instability at Wizards and across the industry. My argument concerns the power that organizing can also protect: the ability to influence what gets made. Employees who believe management is moving away from their preferred creative direction have a reason to organize before that change is complete. A union would give them a stronger position from which to object, even though it would not automatically give them editorial control.

The March 2025 cuts to most of the Sigil virtual tabletop team help explain employees’ fear of losing their jobs. The Arena team’s successful union effort also gave the D&D and Studio X organizers an example to follow and people ready to help. Those circumstances explain the opportunity to organize and some of the concerns behind it. They do not explain the Icons guest list. That was a management decision about the people it wanted helping shape future products. Job security and creative influence can matter to the same employee at the same time, and a union can become a means of protecting both.

A union can give staff a voice and still leave them losing the editorial fight or their jobs. At Deadspin in 2019⁠, an already unionized newsroom resigned during a dispute over management’s direction; the parent company survived. At DNAinfo and Gothamist in 2017⁠, the owner closed the publications a week after New York employees voted to unionize, citing insufficient financial progress. Neither case establishes the Wizards organizers’ motives. Both show that collective power cannot guarantee agreement over a company’s direction or keep an owner from closing the doors.

At Wizards, Icons makes the influence question concrete. Weis and Hickman have their own understanding of Dragonlance. Salvatore has his own understanding of Drizzt. Luke’s work brings Gary Gygax’s unfinished material and vision into the company’s future plans. Their involvement gives management additional people to consult when deciding what belongs in the products. I welcome that because I want these worlds to retain the qualities that made players care about them. My suspicion is that employees who have treated the in-house team as the voice of the settings may see this arrangement as a loss of influence. That is my reading of the change, grounded in whom management has chosen to bring into the work.

I want dangerous ruins, memorable villains, strange monsters, and adventures worth playing. People with different beliefs ought to be able to sit at the same table and enjoy themselves, and buying a D&D book should not feel like signing up for somebody’s political campaign. Icons gives me a reason to be hopeful about the creative direction of the game. The union has not said it objects to the initiative or its creators. Management has publicly changed whom it invites to shape the settings, and the organizing effort deserves scrutiny in that context.