Greg Bilsland on D&D Partnerships Expanding Classic Settings

For a long time, the team at Dungeons & Dragons has produced material for their iconic settings, whether the traditional fantasy of the Forgotten Realms or the horror-adjacent fantasy of Ravenloft. This usually meant the occasional book, followed third-party supplements with creators eager to bring new life to the setting. A new set of arrangements are seeking to do more with this.

Executive producer Greg Bilsland announced at the D&D keynote during GenCon that the company was partnering with a number of other publishers to help ensure that fan-favorite settings would continue to get material throughout the year. The projects confirmed so far include a Ravenloft book by Ghostfire Gaming, a Forgotten Realms book by Kobold Press, and an Eberron book by Visionary Production and Design.

However, this is more than just the third-party book that you might see on DM’s Guild. It’s a closely developed project written by others and published by D&D themselves.

“I really like to think of it more as a partnership where we are the publisher of record doing distribution for them and helping shepherd the IP,” Bilsland told TTRPG Insider. The goal of these new partnerships is to help ensure that official D&D supplements continue to be released for popular settings while the core team focuses on other projects. The publishers will be provided with appropriate guidance by the D&D team, Bilsland said, to ensure that anything they write matches what D&D imagines for the setting.

At the same time, it allows the publishers to bring their very distinct abilities to the setting. Ghostfire Gaming, for example, has an outstanding record of dark fantasy products from the last decade that would easily mesh well with the D&D vision.

Ben Byrne, creative content director at Ghostfire Gaming, confirmed to TTRPG Insider that they were working on this project, and that the agreement was built on an extensive relationship over multiple years.

Multiple Ghostfire alumni have been hired to D&D’s team in the last year, including James Haeck and Shawn Merwin.

The books will be official D&D books (including a matching cover design that will fit in with most 5.5e physical releases to date.)

They will also be released in line with thematically appropriate seasons, Bilsland said. He gave the hypothetical example of an Eberron “sword and sorcery” adventure that might be released in tandem with the upcoming Season of Sword & Sorcery scheduled for 2027. The goal will be to look at each of these themes through various lenses and to offer readers new options to try as they see fit.

This also appears to be a priority for Dungeons & Dragons: Icons, a new program where classic authors from the game’s history will produce new material for settings like Greyhawk and Dragonlance.

It also provides the hired companies a challenge, since they may need to combine the “horror” vibes of Ravenloft with the “survival” aesthetics of Dark Sun.

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