Dungeons & Dragons, at this point, is an ever-present part of the geek and gaming life. A core pillar, you can feel its influence from gaming to comics and even filmmaking. While not a big tabletop gamer myself, I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to speak with James Wyatt, the Lead Designer of D&D for Wizards of the Coast, as they embark on a huge new project – Dungeons and Dragons: World of Warcraft. Bringing two huge fantasy gaming franchises together seems like a feat worthy of learning about.
Julian Lytle: Hello, so while I know of both properties, I don’t play either game, but I’m interested in hearing what Wizards of the Coast has planned with this new collaboration.
James Wyatt: So, World of Warcraft lets you make your own character and go in and explore the world where all those conflicts have been raging. And now, with D&D World of Warcraft, you can do that on the tabletop and do anything you can imagine in that world. Including changing the timeline, making stories of your own, making a character who is a Night Elf sailor, whatever you want.
Lytle: So it feels like World of Warcraft was, in a way, trying to make a video game version of the tabletop experience to a degree, and now it seems like it’s been around long enough so we can cycle back around to the original version of the intent of fantasy gaming.
Wyatt: Yeah, that is a fair description. I think fundamentally D&D was the inspiration for many modern computer games. The whole idea of, “I’m going to make a character in a medieval-ish fantasy world and fight monsters and explore places” migrated from D&D into video games; tracking experience points is something that originated with D&D. And so yeah, World of Warcraft is a very D&D-like experience in a digital environment. And then bringing it back to the tabletop means that you’re not constrained by development budgets and what programmers can do; you’re only constrained by your imagination.
Lytle: OK, all right, so how does one begin?
Wizards of the Coast Publicist: The only way to start is to start.
Wyatt: [laughing] So, when you’re playing D&D, you usually start by making a character. Just like on the character creation screen for World of Warcraft, you’re going in, and you’re choosing your species and your class, and most of the other decisions that you make flow from that. So with this book, we’ve gone through every class that exists in World of Warcraft and said, here’s how you can use what’s in the player’s handbook plus new stuff we’re giving you here to make a character of this class, to choose your specialization and particular ability you want.
So we did that for every class, and then we did it for every species that’s in the game, plus a few extras. And so that’s your starting point: to have a character in front of you. People often will use miniature figures to represent their characters in the game.
Lytle: Oh, OK. I actually kind of like him right here. Impressive.
Wyatt: So much of the rest of this book talks about how you put together those adventures, highlights the themes that are the major conflicts in Azeroth, the world of Warcraft, and gives suggestions for how to build adventures around those conflicts. You have lots of sample dungeons that are drawn from the game as well, and then a whole bunch of monsters at the very back of the book that you can use to populate these dungeons or other dungeons.
Lytle: I’m guessing the game is open enough to allow people to kind of maybe make their own versions of monsters, or dungeon masters, to figure out, like, you know, I like this rhythm from this version, this random villain that used to be in World of Warcraft before or whatever.
Wyatt: Absolutely. Yeah, that’s a big part of the D&D experience: what we call homebrewing. Basically, anybody can make up a stat block like this. We just do it professionally and get paid for it.
Lytle: Wow, this book is impressive.
Wyatt: Thank you.
Lytle: So what is the usual number of players that you should start with?
Wyatt: We normally expect, or say the game is best with, like four players and a Dungeon Master. But people also will play one-on-one, single player, and a Dungeon Master. That has some challenges, but you can do it because it’s really built around characters with different capabilities cooperating together and bringing their different strengths to bear in a situation. And I’ve run groups as large as nine or ten, which is challenging.
Lytle: That sounds unmanageable. It’s a lot.
Wyatt: [laughs] It is a lot, but it can also be really fun. In addition to the book, we have this Dungeon Master screen.
Lytle: That’s what you guys use to hide so we don’t know what’s happening. Right,
Wyatt: And it’s got cool World of Warcraft art on the outside and then handy reference tables for the DM inside. And then we have this map pack. So it is five double-sided poster maps. These are all locations from Icecrown Citadel, one of the big raids in World of Warcraft.
And so it comes with the maps, these tokens for all the creatures that are in the adventure, and then a link to a digital download for the Icecrown Citadel adventure. Basically a translation or maybe a paraphrase of the WoW raid into a tabletop experience. It’s for high-level characters to face the Lich King himself.
Lytle: Oh, OK. The Lich King is still involved. OK, I remember him from Warcraft III; that’s the last time I was in Azeroth.
Wyatt: Yes. That’s him.
Lytle: Yeah. Oh, this is pretty cool. So this is coming out in November. What brought you guys together to do this collaboration?
Wyatt: You know, the conversation started years ago, and I was not involved at that point. And I don’t even know who initiated the conversation, but the way we’ve been saying it is, it’s a natural collaboration, something that probably should have happened years ago. The two go together like chocolate and peanut butter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. – Maybe better, I don’t know.
Lytle: There’s nothing better than that.
Wyatt: Yeah, World of Warcraft drew a lot of inspiration from D&D, or Warcraft in general. And that inspiration works both ways as well. We’ve been playing World of Warcraft almost since launch, and it certainly worked its way into some of my designs as well. So it really was just sort of a natural collaboration once we got the legal deal ironed out and figured out what the products were going to look like.
Lytle: So you’re the designer, right?
Wyatt: I was the lead designer.
Lytle: So you’ve been playing Dungeons & Dragons and working on D&D a long time. How does it feel now adapting things that are clearly influenced by other people’s own fan or enthusiasm for Dungeons and Dragons? What is it like as a fan yourself interpreting other worlds into an engaging game experience?
Wyatt: I’ve been working on D&D for a long time, like 27 years almost, and I’ve come to really take seriously the idea that I’m a steward of the game. Passing on this long tradition that predates me and will hopefully continue long after I’m gone. And so I approach something like WoW (World of Warcraft) in the same way – this is not my toy to break.
It’s something that I want to present to WoW fans and to D&D fans as authentically as possible, and in a way that sparks delight and joy for folks. And I have tremendous nostalgia hearing the Rafał Liczki music. I want people to sit down at the table and have that same pang of nostalgia.
Lytle: Cause you guys have done a lot in terms of engaging the community and people. I know there are a lot more people playing than ever since the pandemic. I know there are people who made shows and cartoons based on them playing the game, but I didn’t know you guys actually had a show as well.
WotC PR: Our actual play series, Dungeon Masters. They sat down to start their adventures in Azeroth. Our DM, Jasmine Boulard, is like a lifelong World of Warcraft player and was like, there’s a really wonderful moment in our trailer that we, for the season, where they all are gathered around, and she’s like, I’m just so happy I get to share this with all of you. I mean, it’s like, really just like a lovely foray into the world of Azeroth with the folks on that table.
Wyatt: My earliest memory of D&D was 1977. My older brother got the original box set of three little booklets for Christmas, and I had already read The Lord of the Rings and was a deep fantasy nerd. I remember sitting down with these books and desperately trying to figure out how they were a game, and I couldn’t. I mean, I was eight or nine. That’s where I was. How do you play this? I have no idea what is going on here. And I think we’ve made the game a lot more accessible since then, but still sometimes watching other people play is the best way to understand how the game works.
Lytle: So I see there are two different books here. What is the difference between these two books?
Wyatt: The Green cover is just a special cover that’s available in our Wizards Play Network stores. And it comes with a code that you can enter in World of Warcraft to get special goodies. I’ve been holding onto this for a month or so since I got my copy of the book, thinking I’m not sure the code’s ready yet, go and get my Black Dragon mount in WoW. How awesome is that?
WotC PR: Our Wizards of Play Network, which is WPM, has thousands of locations, and part of their location prerequisite to being part of the network is that they have open game nights where they will let people come in. They’ll help you start off, sit at a table, play with some folks to get more of a feel for it. And they’re everywhere. We have so many Wizards Play Network stores.
So that’s that, and then we like to give them an opportunity to have something special with every release that we do to ensure that we’re building back the community that helps play, and that’s directly with them. So they get the cool limited edition covers that have a little bit of a change in the artistic style.
Wyatt: Yes, Morlocks on the front
Lytle: Like, the cover is striking. Yeah, there’s a matte finish with spot varnish over the characters. What are some of your goals in regards to reaching out outside of your usual fan base with this expansion, this collaboration?
Wyatt: So this book is primarily aimed at the overlap of D&D fans and World of Warcraft fans, which I’m pretty sure is a very big overlap. There’s a little bit in the introduction that talks about, OK, if you’re not familiar with D&D, if you’re coming to this from WoW without having played D&D, Here’s what the game is all about and where to go to learn more. On the flip side, there’s what World of Warcraft is if you’re a D&D fan who’s never played WoW before. That’s a pretty short section. Still, we have been talking a lot about ways to get new people into the hobby and exploring things. We have a starter set box, Heroes of the Borderlands, that is a really great entry point for new folks coming in.
Lytle: This might be too early; you might not be able to answer this, but are there future expansions on this plan to go into other parts or bring in other things of Warcraft?
Wyatt: We have hopes and dreams and desires, not plans. I keep joking that I’ll put off my retirement if I get to write a second book. [LAUGHTER]
Lytle: I think I’ve tapped out on questions. OK. Because I’m not- I think if I actually play it, I’ll probably have even deeper questions. Thank you for your time.
Stay tuned to The Beat for more news from NYCC ’26.
