Marvel at the Lord of the Star Wars Rings

One of the biggest news items from Gen Con 2026 was related to RPGs, and since I don't normally cover RPGs, let me quote from Matt Bassil's article in Wargamer (with some links added):

Dungeons & Dragons has officially adopted Magic: The Gathering's Universes Beyond model of IP crossovers, with Wizards of the Coast partnering with other franchises to release crossover products in 2026...

[T]he first installment in the Universes Beyond D&D line will be the World of Warcraft book dropping in November 2026, stuffed with loads of new DnD classes and species.

And, in the closing moments of Wizards' Gen Con 2026 D&D Keynote, it brought literal Darth Vader to the stage to reveal possibly the most shocking crossover imaginable: D&D x Star Wars is a real thing, coming in 2027's "Season of Rebellion".

In an evening of almost constant thrills, positivity, and sheer relief — after two years of an incredibly sparse D&D release schedule — the words "Dungeons & Dragons Universes Beyond" brought forth a distinct moment of groans and grumbles from an otherwise jubilant crowd.

Shocking...or eye-rolling? In a 3 August 2026 article on Rascal, Thomas Manuel wrote:

Ever since that infamous "under monetized" comment from a former Wizards of the Coast CEO, there's been widespread speculation around what steps will be taken to remedy that situation. Alongside microtransactions, D&D becoming a "platform" for licensed content like Magic the Gathering was probably the one bandied about the most.

(For background on the "under monetized" comment, read this 9 December 2022 article by Chase Carter on Dicebreaker.) Thomas Manuel goes on to say:

[I]f MTG is any indicator, [WotC and parent company Hasbro] will also make a lot of money in spite of opposition from enfranchised sections of the fanbase. 

In some sense, it's exactly the same situation as the indie sphere, just with bigger numbers. TTRPG studios have been chasing licensed IPs in a big way the last five years because they need to stand out in a competitive market. They need big projects, not even to grow, but just to stay still and maintain teams of 5-10 employees. (This deserves its own article and will get one.) WotC are only really in competition with themselves, but that doesn't make the task easier: they're turning to licenses and nostalgia — law and chaos — to get big numbers on the table just like everybody else.

Everything Old Is Old Again

What's interesting, though, is that announcements like these don't "stand out in a competitive market". They're just more of the same. For example, in an 11 August 2026 article on Entertainment Weekly, Nick Romano wrote about a Star Wars / Marvel crossover comic that will be released in 2027 to coincide with Star Wars' 50th anniversary:

Titled Star Wars/Marvel: Hope Assembles, the five-part limited comic book series will launch in January 2027, Entertainment Weekly can exclusively reveal.

Figures like Chewbacca, Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Princess Leia will join Earth-616 — the primary continuity in which most stories of Marvel Comics take place —and mingle with the likes of Captain America, Black Widow, Spider-Man, and the Hulk. Meanwhile, Doctor Doom and the Marvel rogue's gallery will join the likes of Darth Vader and the Galactic Empire.

Because of course Doctor Doom. Also, Disney owns both Star Wars and Marvel, so it's not like a deal between these two properties is mind-blowing in terms of its implausibility.

And the name of the series: "Hope Assembles"?! It's better than "A New Avenger", I suppose, but it feels lazy and obvious. Will this story offer anything other than a chance to resolve whether a light saber will slice through Captain America's shield? I read many Marvel / DC crossovers in my youth, and those vaporous stories meant nothing and had no impact on any character or fictional world.

To continue, on 26 August 2026, Upper Deck Entertainment and Hasbro agreed to "a multiyear global licensing partnership to produce trading cards and tabletop games around iconic IPs including Transformers, GI Joe, Power Rangers, M.A.S.K. and Jem and the Holograms", according to an article in Forbes from Rob Salkowitz. From the article:

"We've been highly focused on the entertainment sector if you look at what we've done with Marvel, Disney, DC, Alien, Harry Potter, and videogame properties like Halo and Blizzard," President of Upper Deck [Jason] Masherah said in a phone interview earlier this week. "Hasbro is really like a crown jewel when you think of how many people grew up with Transformers, GI Joe, and Power Rangers."

A crown jewel that others can have if they also pay the licensing fee, which cheapens the glamour associated with said jewel . After all, doesn't Renegade Game Studios already have multiple deck-building games based on Hasbro properties such as Transformers, GI Joe, and Power Rangers? Yes, it does (along with My Little Pony)! Doesn't Renegade also have RPGs based on these same properties? Yes, it does! But apparently the tabletop games license for these titles was still unclaimed, so now Upper Deck will fill that hole in the market.

Additionally, in August 2026, McDonald's announced a collaboration between SpongeBob SquarePants and One Piece. From an article by Natalie Fear in Creative Bloq:

McDonald's has had some iconic collaborations over the years, from Travis Scott to Crocs, but its latest move might be the strangest yet. Fusing the worlds of US cartoon royalty and Japanese anime, behold, the SpongeBob x One Piece Happy Meal...

Coming to McDonald's across the globe throughout August, the Happy Meal will include 1 of 12 collectable crossover toys, such as Patrick as Zoro, Mr Krabs as Jinbe, Squidward as Sanji, and, of course, SpongeBob as Luffy.

Well, of course, who else would SpongeBob be? Until a few years from now when McDonald's releases a multiverse version of the SpongeBob x One Piece Happy Meal with each character in one series appearing as each character in the other series. Gotta collect 'em all!

Everything's a Copy of a Copy of a Copy

This might not be news to you, but The Lord of the Rings is a hot property these days:

• In November 2026, Office Dog will release The Lord of the Rings: Circle of Conflict.
• In Q4 2026, Ares Games will release Hope and Despair, the latest entry in its War of the Ring: The Card Game line, while Sieges of Middle-earth, the latest entry in its War of the Ring line, awaits a release date.
• In August 2026, Grand Gamers Guild announced The Hobbit: Riddles in the Dark.
• In May 2026, asmodee announced Play to Z, Sirius Dice, and Game Toppers as partner publishers that will release Middle-earth related items.
• In April 2026, Stone Blade Entertainment announced The Lord of the Rings: Ascension.
• In March 2026, Restoration Games announced The Lord of the Rings: The King's Gambit, with this being an updated version of the 2000 game Star Wars: The Queen's Gambit, thereby trading one license for another.
• In January 2026, Office Dog released The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers – Trick-Taking Game, one year after releasing The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring – Trick-Taking Game.
• In the second half of 2025, Zygomatic released Spot it! The Lord of the Rings.
• In October 2025, Office Dog released The Hobbit: There and Back Again.
• In August 2025, Z-Man Games released The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship.

This is a non-exhaustive list, yet at the same time an extremely exhausting list. The Lord of the Rings is a giant book, yes, but it's finite and complete. The same goes for The Hobbit. J.R.R. Tolkien has been dead for fifty years, but his work is being re-heated and served over and over again. (When I worked in a game store in the early 1990s, we sold the Middle-earth Role Playing line from Ice Crown Enterprises, along with the introductory Lord of the Rings Adventure Game.)

I was really struck by this feeling of exhaustion while including Cryptozoic Entertainment's DC Deck-Building Game: Green Lantern Corps in a round-up of licensed game designs. I searched on BoardGameGeek to find a link for that game, a link that did not exist at the time, but I did find links for two Green Lantern-based CMON titles: DC Super Heroes United: Green Lantern Corps and DCeased: Green Lantern Corpse.

Am I Being Hypocritical?

In 2023, I published a video titled "Are Publishers Trying to Steal Your Money?", with the screenshot reading "In Defense of the Cash Grab":

I still believe what I said in that video: Publishers are trying to sell items, so they release items that they think will sell. If you don't want to buy it, don't.

Also from the video, I find it odd when people feel the need to comment "Not for me" on a game announcement without giving some context for the statement that might be beneficial to others, e.g., "The publisher releases games with terrible rulebooks." — and if you just don't care for, say, Star Wars, then writing "Not for me" is meaningless to others regardless of an explanation. Let folks enjoy what they want to enjoy instead of implying they're wrong for enjoying it.

Many of the Middle-earth titles listed above have been well-received and financial successes — and publishers are banking on more successes in the future. In 2025, I spoke with a publisher's representative about a then-unannounced LotR licensed title and asked whether they thought the market was going to be too saturated, and they essentially said it didn't matter how many LotR games were released. The buyers will be there. (Stone Blade's crowdfunding campaign for The Lord of the Rings: Ascension received more than US$2 million in backing, for example, despite delivery of the game not being anticipated until December 2027.)

So what's the problem? I should just ignore all of these Lord of the Rings, Marvel, Star Wars, etc. titles and focus on other game releases, yes?

Yes, I should...yet I'm also in the position of someone who writes about new games for a living, so I cover many of these announcements since I know some segment of the audience will be excited about them.

For me, these titles are falling into the bucket of "the king is dead and we need to find a successor", that is, game settings used so frequently that they feel like nondescript wallpaper, that feel generic instead of evocative because we've re-visited them so many times. Guess we're destroying The One Ring again? It's Monday, so we gotta go blow up another Death Star. We've seen it a hundred times, and now we're seeing it again.

The funny thing is that the games I like tend to be equally repetitive — Collect these cards. Dominate this area. Reach the finish line before anyone else. — but I think the difference is that the theme and setting of these games tends to be vanishingly present, so I ignore it and focus solely on the gameplay.

This exhaustion is definitely a "me" problem, and my solution has to be to focus on covering non-IP games and games with lesser known (to me) IPs. Mention licensed Star Wars / Marvel / LotR /etc. titles in passing since folks will want word of them, but spend more time researching and writing about novel settings — that is, novel to me. In that post with DC Deck-Building Game: Green Lantern Corps, that's pretty much what I did. I knew of Jack Vance, Sarah Maas, and Dashiell Hammett, but I'd never read anything by them, so I researched them in order to have some idea what I was writing about and see what I might be missing.

One thing I was def. missing was knowledge of Dashiell Hammett in this fab suit:

Now I'm more enlightened and feeling good about expanding my fictional horizons. Excited to see what comes next...