Wizards of the Coast has a new Head of Dungeons & Dragons Franchise, and he’s bringing “back” key talent, according to recent social media posts. The new head is Senior Vice President Dan Ayoub, who’s been at Wizards of the Coast since 2022, most recently as Senior Vice President, Digital Games. He had an 11-year stint at Microsoft, ending in 2021, and held positions with several video game companies in the 00s.
Ayoub pasted a photo on X (embedded below) of himself with Tracy and Laura Hickman, Margaret Weis, and Joe Manganiello, with text indicating it was a return. “When I took over D&D, I had some very specific folks I wanted to bring back to The Table,” he wrote. “Today, I had the honor of welcoming these folks back home.”
It’s not clear what Ayoub meant by “back,” since Weis, the Hickmans, and Manganiello have all had long associations with Dungeons & Dragons. Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman have been writing Dragonlance novels for Random House, which is also publishing hardcover collections of older Dragonlance material, most recently with a Manganiello foreword (see “PRH Will Release ‘Dragonlance Chronicles’”).
The current work by Weis and Hickman on Dragonlance novels for Random House began after the settlement of an acrimonious dispute during which Weis and Hickman sued Wizards of the Coast for terminating their licensing agreement for the property (see “Weis and Hickman Announce“).
In the more distant past, Weis and Hickman wrote novels directly for TSR, and later for Wizards of the Coast (see “WotC to Publish New Dragonlance“); and the Hickmans wrote sourcebooks and other RPG materials for TSR and WotC (see “’D&D: Curse of Strahd’“).
These latest moves are part of significant churn at the top of the D&D team at WotC in the wake of the D&D 2024 launch. Ayoub replaced Jess Lanzillo, who left her job as Vice President of Franchise and Product for D&D last summer (see “Lanzillo Leaves WotC“), and ended up at White Wolf as Creative Director for World of Darkness (see “Lanzillo at White Wolf“).
Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins, who led the Dungeons & Dragons design team for decades, also left WotC last summer, in their case for Critical Role’s Darrington Press (see “Designers Join Darrington“).
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