The RPG Pundit has broken news of a potential bombshell development in the Dungeons & Dragons world: Wizards of the Coast is allegedly preparing to launch a sixth edition of D&D, abandoning the disastrous 2024 edition that has driven fans away in droves. Even more intriguing, the rumor suggests that legendary creators Ed Greenwood and Tracy Hickman are being brought back to help salvage the franchise.
“I had said that was going to be one of the possibilities of how Wizards of the Coast was going to handle Dungeons and Dragons in the future,” RPG Pundit explained in his video breaking the news. The source of this information came through a leaker who RPG Pundit considers credible: “It’s somebody that I consider to be trustworthy in this and that I believe would not make something like this up.”
The timing of this rumored reboot is particularly telling given the spectacular failure of the 2024 edition. The 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide infamously incorporated BDSM fetish community practices in the game for safe spaces, having players make an X with their arms if they feel triggered by a situation, and requiring a DM to stop the game and address the player in question.
The 2024 Player’s Handbook is filled with imagery of BIPOC and female characters at a margin of more than five to one for white male characters, about the direct opposite of the demographics who play the game. Dungeons & Dragons came under further scrutiny after it was revealed that senior designer Jason Tondro penned a forward to a history book on Dungeons & Dragons, calling Gary Gygax misogynistic and accusing him of cultural appropriation.
This prompted Elon Musk to raise the question as to how much Hasbro costs for him to buy the parent company of Wizards of the Coast and save Dungeons & Dragons from all of these woke controversies.
The new 2024 Monster Manual has made a lot of woke changes, including removing orcs but also adding gender ideology elements to creatures like hags, succubus, and sphinxes. Fans have been vocal in complaining about the mistreatment in the game.
Former World of Warcraft lead designer Mark Kern aka Grummz posted about all of the troubles this edition of D&D is having so far, saying, “Half Elves GONE from new DnD Player’s Handbook! DnD 2024 has done so much damage to Dungeons & Dragons thanks to Wizards of the Coast woke designers: - Removes Half-Elves from the game (due to it being somehow racist...what, are they about racial purity now??? How is that not even more racist?). - Removes Half-Orcs (same reason). - Removes Orcs as monsters from the Monster Manual. (Because they think Orcs are black people, but it’s okay, they made them Mexican in their new art instead!). None of this was offensive to anyone. Their virus infected brains are out of control and spinning racism where there is none.”
The Legendary Creators Return
According to RPG Pundit’s source, Wizards of the Coast has approached Ed Greenwood and Tracy Hickman to work on the sixth edition. Greenwood, creator of the Forgotten Realms setting that has been D&D’s default campaign world since the late 1980s, brings unparalleled world-building expertise. His creation of Faerûn and its intricate pantheon, geography, and history has shaped how millions of players experience D&D.
Tracy Hickman, along with his wife Margaret Weis, created the Dragonlance setting and authored the legendary Chronicles trilogy that introduced Raistlin, Tanis, and other iconic characters to fantasy literature. Hickman’s work on classic D&D modules like Ravenloft demonstrated his mastery of adventure design and atmospheric storytelling.
RPG Pundit noted the curious nature of this recruitment: “Ed Greenwood and Tracy Hickman were both asked to come and work on the sixth edition product.” However, he expressed skepticism about what role these creators would actually play: “I’m not sure what he would actually have to really contribute on that respect, you know. So, um, unless he’s only asked to like do a little blurb in like the setting section of the DMG because they’re going to use the realms, you know, that might make some sense.”
RPG Pundit suspects the real motivation is purely marketing: “There is also a real possibility, what I’m getting to here is that there’s also a very real possibility that all three of these guys, if you include Luke Gygax, are there exclusively to sell their name, right? The only thing that Wizards wants from them is those names, right?”
A Desperate Attempt at Legitimacy
The rumored involvement of these legendary creators represents a transparent attempt by Hasbro to recapture the trust of longtime D&D fans who have abandoned the game under current leadership. By associating the new edition with names that evoke D&D’s golden age, Wizards hopes to signal a return to the game’s roots after years of ideological corruption.
RPG Pundit was blunt about the likely reality: “They want to be able to put on the credit section of the book or maybe even in the cover, who knows, right? They want to put Ed Greenwood, Tracy Hickman, and Luke Gygax, right? Or maybe even just Gygax or something just to show the guy, damn it. Right? That’s what they want. They want to do that because then they know nerds are going to see those names.”
This cynical calculation assumes that fans will overlook the current design team’s incompetence if they see familiar names attached to the project. The strategy treats Greenwood and Hickman as nostalgia bait rather than as creative forces who could actually improve the game.
RPG Pundit pointed out the fundamental problem with this approach: “Neither of them has enormous, um, enormous skills in the game design part of things, right? Both of them are mainly known for the worlds they made. They’re mainly known for the settings they made, right? And for the stories they told.”
He continued: “Ed Greenwood has practically no real experience as a game designer, as a rules designer, or things like that, right? So he would serve no useful purpose in that sense.”
Even Hickman, who has more game design experience, “is not known as like some mass, at least not, you know, like Gygax or Monty Cook or the RPG pundit, right? a guy who, like, knows people who know how to make a game, right?”
The Current Team’s Incompetence
RPG Pundit’s assessment of Wizards’ current design team was devastating: “You’ve got like they just hired another chick. Gez, I wish I remembered to have checked her name before starting this video. This woman, who is basically connected to young adult science fiction stuff, like basically the entire industry of publishing has been taken over by feminist women, millennial women who worked on young adult novels.”
He described how this takeover occurred: “They took over the mainstream publishing and then, in turn, went on to only put their people everywhere, right? And now it’s being expanded to other areas. That’s what’s basically happened with fifth edition is that it became it it was taken over by YA publishing people right that were that are that are the same you know the the feminist intersectional trans bloggers right and uh vegans and all that they’re they’re a cabal they’re a sect and now they’ve expanded into here right and those people know nothing about anything right and they ruin everything they touch.”
The comparison between the current team and the legendary creators is stark: “Hickman would immediately be probably the most experienced and probably um, yeah, the most experienced and the most suitable game designer uh, in the entire team if he was part of that team because I know what the rest of the team is, right?”
Why This Matters Now
The timing of this rumored sixth edition reveals Hasbro’s panic over declining D&D sales and the franchise’s damaged reputation. The 2024 edition was supposed to capitalize on D&D’s resurgence following the success of shows like Stranger Things and Critical Role. Instead, it alienated the core fanbase while failing to attract the “modern audience” that Wizards claimed to be targeting.
RPG Pundit explained the strategic calculation: “They’re hoping that that’s going to work and and I think most likely all three of them will be purely there for that for the name just to have the name on there so then they can say look and it was you know we had additional material uh additional advice pres presented by uh you know Tracy Hickman and you know Dragon Lance remember Dragon Lance how cool Dragon Lance was right we’re going to we we made Dragon Lance in fifth edition and completely ruined it. Remember that. No, don’t remember that. Don’t remember that. Look, Tracy Hickman. It’s Tracy Hickman over there. Right. That’s what they want to do with these guys, I think.”
The rumor of Luke Gygax’s involvement adds another layer to this nostalgia play. As Gary Gygax’s son, Luke carries the weight of D&D’s creator, even though RPG Pundit noted that “Luke is friendly with because he does the OSR thing because it works for him, too. But he fundamentally is not on that side, right? He is on the side of, you know, allowing these ideological terrorists to come in and do whatever they want with the game.”
The OSR Alternative
RPG Pundit’s analysis highlighted how the Old School Renaissance (OSR) movement has already provided what D&D fans actually want: “We already know what D and D is, and we know that all of the best D and D games ever made were not made by Wizards of the Coast, right? And all the best games made in the last few years weren’t made by Wizards of the Coast.”
He pointed to his own work as an example: “The number of OSR games I could give you that would be better than 5.5 edition, right? That would be miles away from these guys. There are tons of them. And of course, there are better games than 5e itself that I helped make, right? remember that I was one of the guys that worked on 5e, and I made it, and I made it to be super popular, right?”
RPG Pundit’s involvement in the fifth edition’s development gives his criticism particular weight. He helped create the edition that became D&D’s most commercially successful version, yet he acknowledges that “it’s not my favorite game and it’s not the it is the it was the bestselling D&D edition of all time for exactly the thing I made it to be, right? But um that doesn’t mean that it’s the best version.”
What Sixth Edition Needs (But Won’t Get)
RPG Pundit outlined what a successful D&D reboot would require: “The thing to do here if you want to like save Dungeons and Dragons is to go back to making something that is going to have as much of a classic feel and a classic look, and that is going to have the peak appealing aspects of the previous edition, a fifth edition. I mean, not 5.5. Forget that one completely, right? Um, and give it a kind of a new edge, right?”
Instead, he predicted disaster: “What you don’t want is to recreate. Oh, no. Now we’re going to use like dice pools, and we’re going to have this, and that, and like to invent all this stuff that is not tied in any way to the D&D traditions of how the game is designed. um that would be disastrous, right?”
The current design team’s track record suggests they’ll pursue exactly the wrong approach: “These guys, these guys are are it’s impossible that they’re going to be able to make anything worthwhile. And it’s highly probable that they’re going to make stuff that is that most gamers are going to see as a travesty, an absolute travesty. Worse still than 5.5 cuz now they’re going to be like, ‘Oh, well, but this is the thing, guys. Now we can do whatever we want, right? That we don’t have to follow any of the rules, you know, which is exactly the wrong thing to do right now.”
The Verdict
This rumor, if true, represents Hasbro’s recognition that the 2024 edition has failed and that drastic action is needed to save the D&D brand. The involvement of legendary creators like Greenwood and Hickman signals an attempt to recapture the magic of D&D’s golden age, even if those creators are being used primarily for marketing rather than actual game design.
RPG Pundit’s assessment was measured: “I would rather. Yeah, I would rather that official D and D was really good, made by good people who knew what they were doing, who respected traditions, not a bunch of alphabet soup psychopaths, right? Um, but people who are actually proper gamers, right? And who made a proper game of D and D. If they did that, that would be great.”
But he acknowledged the reality: “We don’t have that, and it’s unlikely we’re going to have that anytime soon. So, we’ll have to just deal with things as they are, not as we wish they would be.”
For OSR players and fans of classic D&D, the sixth edition rumor changes little. The games that capture the spirit of Gygax’s original vision already exist outside of Wizards of the Coast’s control. Whether Hasbro can salvage D&D’s reputation by associating it with legendary creators remains to be seen, but RPG Pundit’s analysis suggests that without fundamental changes to the design team and philosophy, even Greenwood and Hickman’s names won’t be enough to save a franchise that has been systematically destroyed by ideological corruption.
The question isn’t whether faithful D&D exists - the OSR has already answered that. The question is whether Wizards of the Coast will finally admit that their approach has failed and allow the people who actually understand D&D to fix what they’ve broken.
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I think it's too late. I do think that most people are just like me - once I get pushed out of something I loved, I tend to mentally separate from it to the point where I lose all interest and move on to something else. I have rarely gone back to media or entertainment that chose to shit on me.
D&D hasn't been fun for a long time. Probably around 4E, when the player demographics stopped being people who loved the game and became people who played the game ironically. Theater kids, out of work actors, etc. Not nerds.
I dropped the game years ago when I ended up in a Roll20 online party with a DM and all players under 18. I tried to back out when I realized they were all under age but the DM begged me to play and teach them how to roleplay. The DM was a good kid, but his friends were girls and a gay kid none of whom had any real interest in the game. Which soon became apparent when they decided that all of their characters wanted to form a harem with my PC. That was when I quit the table and the hobby.