Monetizing D&D Fanfic

This little nugget came across my Twitter feed earlier today:

​I don't know M.T. Black, but a quick look at his Dungeon Master's Guild page shows about 70-odd publications. You can follow this hyperlink (or the image link) to see the thread his post generated. 

Suffice to say, there's a lot of support for the idea.  

Before seeing this tweet, I actually had no idea the D&D novel line had been discontinued. A little googling reveals it was killed off quietly, with Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro making no official announcements and enforcing NDAs against the writers involved.

Anyway, Black has a good point in regards the potential benefit of a program like this, at least from the WotC/Hasbro perspective. If the reason for shutting down the novels was financial, this would serve as an alternative with no production cost, funneling money into a revived fiction publishing arm. They could use that to fund the bigger "official" releases. Not to mention the ability to use the platform as a sort of "farm team" to scout for new talent. And he's right that thousands of writers would benefit from having such a big, name-brand platform to showcase their work.

But let's be real. 

What Black is suggesting here is that Hasbro give "official" recognition to D&D fan fiction, in turn for split profits/monetization.
 
I'm not against fan fiction in principal. I think any SF/F writer with a shred of honesty will admit to writing it in one form or another. Hell, one of my very first "serious" attempts at fiction was a Castlevania/Ravenloft mashup, based on a weekend campaign I ran for my brother and his friends.

What rubs me the wrong way about this is the conciliatory, "mother, may I?" dynamic it encourages between the fan writers, and the corporate overlords in charge of the IP.    

In this model, writers aren't encouraged to break out and build their own sandboxes. They're encouraged to keep playing in the one owned by the multi-billion dollar entertainment company, in hopes of getting some kind of official seal of approval at the end.

That kind of closed feedback loop is the enemy of long-term creativity. 

If you write D&D fanfic, and you want other people to see it, there are plenty of sites and boards available. One of them even won a major industry award, if you're after a little name-brand prestige.

But if you want to earn money for your D&D fanfic, then you're better off doing it the old fashioned way: by taking the storytelling skills you've learned, and using them to build something new.