It seems Dungeons & Dragons can’t go a week without the brand becoming embroiled in another controversy where fans savage their current direction. This time, with the unveiling of a new crochet book, D&D has drawn criticism from one of the original creators, Robert J. Kuntz, for their ridiculous attempts to garner a female audience.
It’s no secret that D&D wants to radically change the demographic that plays their fantasy tabletop roleplaying game. While 90% of the hobby is dominated by white males, Wizards of the Coast continues to push to try to get more women and minorities to play the game.
It started in 2023, when Executive Producer Kyle Brink gave an interview revealing the designer’s bigoted biases.
“This is not the face of the hobby anymore,” Brink said, referencing his white male features, “and I think there’s been mistakes made in years past where people assumed that D&D players were all, you know, white dudes in a basement. This has been a faulty assumption for a long time and gets more and more false every day. And so in my viewpoint, guys like me can’t leave soon enough.”
In the 2024 edition of the Player’s Handbook, it was noted that the vast majority of images featured BIPOC or female characters, and a controversy was stirred up regarding an image of “Mexican Orcs” as the company attempted to humanize orcs and remove the perception of them as an allegory for black people by turning them Hispanic.
Last week, the official D&D X account came under fire from a new picture as they were trying to tie the game to the release of the new Taylor Swift album, with a strange black woman with crazy eyes. Now, the company is once again pushing for a different audience by unveiling a crochet book.
The company posted, “Announcing the first official Dungeons & Dragons Crochet Book! Crochet your favorite creatures, wearables, and household items with twenty patterns inspired by the Dungeons & Dragons multiverse,” with an image of the cover.
They followed up with their own comment, “Create your own dangerously cute Owlbear Cub plushie, arm yourself with the Gloves of Missile Snaring, and pack your belongings in the Bag of Holding. On sale March 2026 and available for preorder now.”
This was met by derision from fans who are confused as to why D&D is spending its time pushing crocheting products rather than its core game, where the 2024 edition was underwhelming to say the least.
Fantasy author John A. Douglas of The Black Crown said, “Dungeons & Dragons is officially a brand for middle-aged women and men with testosterone levels equatable to a eunuch.”
The most poignant criticism, however, came from one of the original D&D creators, Robert J. Kuntz, who quote-tweeted, savaged the concept, saying, “There's nothing left to what we worked so hard to achieve 1971-1974. Nothing but loose threads...”
It’s very clear this is a clear miss for D&D again, where they’re barking up the wrong tree to try to pursue a modern audience rather than refine their game that people used to love.
What do you think of D&D crochet? Leave a comment and let us know.
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Just put a cat and a bottle of wine on the cover, with some fem-boi in skinny jeans wearing a +2 Nose Ring of Mostly Peaceful Violence.
The Monster Manual can be renamed the MAGA Manual.
This is destruction wrought by Luciferians. Follow the money and who bought who.
I have no problem with them putting out DnD crochet book, or a coloring book, or stickers, whatever. My problem is how they seem to be doing this instead of working to produce good, useful gaming material.
...but then again, I'm not sure they've put out good, useful game material for quite a while now, so maybe there's no real loss.