Hasbro CEO says "you should expect more" crossovers for D&D

Dungeons & Dragons Welcome to the Hellfire Club box, DM screen, dice, and prop photo laid out on a table — (Image credit: Future/Rollin Bishop)

Hasbro's CEO says that D&D fans can expect more collaborations in the not-so-distant future.

I was able to catch up with Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks earlier this month and, while discussing the company's focus on making video game magic from its many IPs, the Mass Effect-style Exodus came up - along with how it could interact with one of the best tabletop RPGs going forward. What with it having been pitched as "D&D in space," and thanks to Dungeons & Dragons leaning on third-party content going forward, I had to ask if we can expect more of a crossover between Exodus and D&D in the future. (Exodus currently has its own tabletop RPG in development based on Dungeons & Dragons, but so far, the two have remained separate.)

"I don't want to take away any headlines from the D&D team," Cocks says, "but I think you can definitely expect more crossovers inside of D&D. I mean, we've had such a fantastic experience with [crossovers] with Magic: The Gathering. D&D is a fantastic play system that I think is very open ended. You already have a fairly wide spectrum with things like Spelljammer to Curse of Strahd. So you already kind of have the DNA for it handled inside the system. So, yeah [...] You should expect more of those."

Dungeons &amp; Dragons Welcome to the Hellfire Club character sheets and tokens laid out on a map — (Image credit: Future/Rollin Bishop)

At the time of writing, the biggest crossovers we've seen for D&D would be Stranger Things: Welcome to the Hellfire Club starter set ($34.95 at Walmart), Critical Role campaign Call of the Netherdeep ($34.99 at Amazon, down from $50), and MTG setting book, Strixhaven: Curriculum of Chaos ($45.17 at Amazon).

The question now is, what will those crossovers be? We've had tie-ins with Critical Role, Magic: The Gathering, and Stranger Things before now, so what could be next? A full sci-fi setting of some description would certainly make sense, because it's a niche D&D isn't filling yet. (It relies on third-party content like Neon Odyssey for that.)

Another, perhaps more prescient question would be: do we actually need or want these crossovers? Considering the, er, mixed response to MTG's focus on Universes Beyond, I'm not sure Cocks' words are going to be met with open arms.

Personally speaking, I don't mind the odd crossover; I'm actually looking forward to MTG's Hobbit set, for example. But like so many other fans, I don't want it to take over from original IP, or for the balance to swing toward crossovers to the point that we're getting more tie-ins than anything else (something MTG is in danger of right now). I suppose we'll need to wait and see what side of the fence D&D falls on.

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I've been writing about games in one form or another since 2012, but these days you'll find me managing GamesRadar+'s tabletop gaming and toy coverage (I spend my time here handling everything from board game reviews to the latest Lego news). I've also been obsessed with Warhammer since the 1990s, and love nothing more than running tabletop RPGs like D&D as a Dungeon Master.