Dungeons & Dragons ruleset could be applied to more brands and IP, just like Magic

polygon.com:

Hasbro is considering using the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset as the foundation for games that explore more brands and intellectual property, the company said Tuesday. CEO Chris Cocks said in a call with investors that Hasbro’s newly acquired digital toolset, D&D Beyond, could become the main hub for that kind of expansion.

When asked about the due diligence that Cocks and his team performed prior to the acquisition of D&D Beyond from Fandom, he transitioned quickly into discussing growth opportunities created by that purchase. Chief among them was expanding an initiative called Universes Beyond.

“There’s a lot of international growth vectors we can do,” Cocks said. “There’s a lot of new exclusive content we can do. You know, we’ve talked a lot about Universes Beyond in Magic, which is this concept of thinking about Magic as a play system and bringing in outside brands or outside IP into that play system. We see potential for that with D&D as well, and we think D&D Beyond can be a primary hub for that.”

Magic: The Gathering Universes Beyond was announced in 2021. It’s a series of partnerships with outside companies that puts their characters and their worlds onto Magic cards. The first batch of partners includes Games Workshop, which is working with Wizards to create a Warhammer 40,000-themed collection of Commander decks. Following that launch, a partnership with Middle-earth Enterprises (formerly Tolkien Enterprises), will put characters from The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy into play. A previously released collection of The Walking Dead-themed cards is also grandfathered into the program.

What would Universes Beyond look like when applied to Dungeons & Dragons? Well, it would probably look a lot like the