When Wizards of the Coast had the chance to launch a brand new edition of D&D to celebrate its 50th anniversary, they opted for a refresh of the game’s current ruleset instead of something entirely new. One reason for this was the potential to grow the game in fresh and exciting ways rather than rehash old settings, stories, and characters.
In theory, anyway. Dungeons & Dragons has opted for the familiar rather than the brand new so far, with campaign setting books focused on Eberron and the Forgotten Realms coming out this year. Another older setting appears to be returning in 2026 as well, because Dark Sun appears to be in the works based on several recent playtests. Also in the works for 2026 is a new Magic: The Gathering crossover with a planned new book set in Lorwyn-Shadowmoor. When speculating on what else could be in the works for 2026 and beyond, one may only need to look at another game released by Hasbro this year for a very intriguing possibility.
If you're hoping to create your own romantasy D&D campaign, it's obviously a good idea to grab the Dungeon Master's Guide (reduced from $50 to $39.95 at Amazon) for world-building guidance. However, getting a tome of ready-made NPCs for use or inspiration in creating your own is also a great start. The incredibly well-received Game Master's Book of Non-Player Characters is 42% less right now, taking it down to $14.45 at Amazon instead of $25. It has almost 3.5K user reviews, 88% of which are five-star.
Earlier this year, Hasbro announced Priorities: Fourth Wing, a new party game featuring the popular Fourth Wing romantasy franchise. While Hasbro often releases new games featuring various popular IPs in an effort to entice fans of the best board games, this marked a rare crossover into the romantasy genre, a burgeoning book field that mixes high fantasy with steamy romance. The game itself was marketed towards Fourth Wing fanatics, but what’s more intriguing is that Hasbro already has a licensing contract with Fourth Wing in the works.
For those unfamiliar with Fourth Wing, the franchise focuses on a young woman who joins her country’s corps of dragon riders. After a dragon chooses her as his rider, she discovers disturbing truths about the oppressive nature of her own country and learns of a resistance attempting to fight a dangerous power lurking just outside of her country’s borders. Plus, there’s a smoldering romance with a brooding dragon rider as well. (You can check out the first book in paperback, hardback, or audiobook form at Amazon if you were curious.)
The Empyrean series that launched with Fourth Wing is incredibly popular, with millions of books sold. It’s also not a bad fit for a TTRPG, especially given that the series prominently features groups of dragon riders, high magic, and plenty of interpersonal conflict. But would it be possible that Wizards of the Coast tries to crossover Fourth Wing into D&D?
Last year, former D&D franchise lead Jess Lanzillo actually commented on the possibility of romantasy crossing over into D&D rulebooks in some way. Speaking with ComicBook at GenCon 2024, Lanzillo called the idea of making romantasy rules an "exciting challenge" and said that D&D’s new ruleset opened the door for that possibility.
"If you’re a person that wants to run some OSR-style, total party kill dungeons, and then all of a sudden, I’m going to make you read 20 pages about courtship or whatever, that isn’t a thing that necessarily we want to bake into the actual core of what D&D is," Lanzillo said. "But say we did want to make something that was more romantasy-oriented, and we wanted to create that stuff around it. Now, we know that’s not going to be a hundred percent of the D&D audience and it might be a totally new audience in some ways. So, the key is how do we create that bridge back to the core rulebooks but just note that the combat might be pretty light or something."
In my view, the key for a potential crossover into romantasy or any other kind of adjacent storytelling to D&D is finding the right balance between rules, guidance, and keeping with the spirit of the world that they’re looking to bring to fans. Romantasy and D&D actually make a lot of sense together, provided that D&D can provide the proper tools for telling a story that’s heavy on romantic interactions and high fantasy content. Many D&D campaigns have a degree of romance, but the key is to find a way to provide compelling guidance that emphasizes romantasy elements without losing what makes D&D unique among TTRPGs.
Given the popularity of romantasy, it feels inevitable that we’ll see some greater crossover with TTRPGs in the near future. Many romantasy worlds are natural fits for D&D campaign settings, given that people are as captivated by the deep worldbuilding found in many series as they are with the steamy romances. If D&D is looking to find new audiences, then they may want to start looking past traditional fantasy and towards the world of romantasy for their next world. After all, many romantasy fans probably look favorably towards roleplaying and would love to dive into a world they’ve fantasized about.
Romantasy crash-course
- See all romantasy at Amazon
- Fourth Wing:
$20.99$13.15 at Amazon - A Court of Thorns & Roses:
$19$9.98 at Amazon
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