Dungeons & Dragons announced it'd be doing a World of Warcraft crossover earlier this week—but it also, additionally, teased a Star Wars crossover at the end of its D&D Vision keynote. Further details can be found on the D&D Beyond site, revealing that the crossover will be coming in 2027 as part of a "Season of Rebellion".

"We want to let our community know that D&D Universes Beyond is additive to the incredible roadmap we have for our own worlds. We have been staffing up to support this initiative and look forward to what the future holds."

And, hey—cool! I like Star Wars, I like Dungeons & Dragons (no really, I do, no matter how much I moan at Hasbro), but there is a small, itchy part at the back of my brain that's wondering if Hasbro is trying, once again, to capture the same monetisation systems it created with Magic: The Gathering and apply them here, where they might not fit.

For context, Magic: The Gathering does heaps of licensed crossovers. We're talking Monty Python, we're talking Assassin's Creed. We're even talking Garfield. No universe is safe, there is no IP that cannot be turned into a little slip of paper. The bountiful world of trademarks is merely fertile soil for the ever-expanding Magic empire.

And, to Wizards of the Coast's credit, a lot of those crossovers have been neat—it's cool to see your favourite series/comics/little black cat thoughtfully represented by game mechanics, whether they be entirely bespoke cards or just reskins. So why am I humming and ha-ing about this? Shouldn't I be happy?

Part of the problem is just the format. I hate to be that guy, but there's already a Star Wars TTRPG. Heck, there's even already a very popular D&D 5e Star Wars fan project. But I think there's this assumption that Hasbro—and, cynically some of its customers—make where they assume that the D&D, D20-based framework can be applied to anything.

And as someone who loves TTRPGs of all shapes and sizes, that just… isn't true. D&D is a great system for grand heroics, dungeon-crawling, and combat—but if you, say, want to do teenage superheroes? You should at least try Masks. If you want to do mech combat, you should at least try Lancer.

The reason Magic crossovers work is because, well, it's a card game. The nature of a Magic match doesn't really change all that much based on what your cards look like, the art within them, or the theming.

This isn't the case for a TTRPG campaign. In a TTRPG, the rules need to work with the story or vibe you're trying to put across.

The two announced crossovers, World of Warcraft and Star Wars, can easily work in a D&D setting. Heck, D&D's had its own space opera setting, Starjammer, for a while. But there is a little part of me that fears Hasbro will start stretching further and further into obscurity, because there's only so much IP out there.

For instance, D&D just isn't that great at horror. There's Curse of Strahd, sure, but I'd like to point out that Curse of Strahd's entire plot involves you finding a cool sword made out of sunlight and going to not-Dracula's castle to kick his ass. A D&D crossover with an actual horror property just won't have the same bite that a good game of Dread or Mothership does.

However, that's only a fear for now—and to Wizards of the Coast's credit, there have been announcements that play more to the system's existing strength, too. We're going to be getting both Dragonlance and Greyhawk settings coming back, with the former helmed by original co-creator Tracy Hickman, and the latter led by Luke Gygax. Plus, Drizzt! Drizzt is here, again. Oh, and freaking Dark Sun. There's tons to be excited about.

A couple of months back I was playing Bhashiva for the first time in Total War: Warhammer 3, having a wild time mauling enemy armies with my tiger horde. But then I fought a siege battle. Not only had siege pathfinding somehow gotten even worse with the update, but despite having spent over 3,000 hours in this series, I was seeing a new gate bug, effectively bricking my unit by perma-freezing them in a destroyed gateway.

Total War's sieges have always been the buggiest component of the games. Hell, the infamous "gate bug", where an enemy unit opens it, splitting your unit in-half, has followed the series through multiple titles and settings at this point. Siege pathfinding is also notoriously poor. I basically never direct more than one unit through a gate at a time, because I know they'll inexplicably decide to climb the walls instead if I do.

And good luck getting those units off the wall. You'll likely instruct them to fight an enemy below, and return two minutes later to see they haven't moved a muscle. I've even seen heroes and lords fall through walls and out of existence while climbing them, which as you'd expect, is pretty detrimental to the war effort. Thank god that bug doesn't seem to exist anymore.

All of which is to say, I've grown accustomed to Total War's buggy sieges over the years, and I still love the series in spite of them, but goddamn am I excited to play a game without gates, or at least with gates so gigantic no unit is ever going to get trapped inside them. Though we haven't seen any of Total War: Warhammer 40k's sieges yet, I'm inclined to think that there probably aren't siege battles, at least not in the more traditional sense we've come to expect from Total War: Warhammer.

Warhammer 40k's sieges are usually of a monumental scale, with giant hive or fortress gates and bastion walls barring the way. There are even entire Space Marine legions who specialise in siegecraft, such as the Imperial Fists and the Iron Warriors, who focus on defense and offense, respectively.

However, once those walls are breached it's more street-to-street urban conflict, relying on positioning, cover, and chokepoints. We already got to see the importance of those elements in the first Alpha Strike livestream, but in a setting with no traditional siege towers, ladder escalades, and where sapping is somewhat redundant, I could see siege maps not having walls at all, and honestly, I wouldn't mind that.

Walls have become a bit of a crutch for Total War's sieges. You feel an obligation to defend them, but the truth is, overreliance often makes for boring battles. The most fun and tactically diverse parts of a siege are when you're in the streets, chokepointing, protecting command points, and cleverly cutting off the tide of enemies slowly filling your settlement. In fact, the only thing I personally enjoy about walls is occupying them with my missile units to turn fire against defenders.

If Total War: Warhammer 40k does have walls, it will make for some of the most punishing sieges in the series, considering the vital importance of cover when most units are range-focused. With airstrikes and orbital lances at our disposal, it would also be relatively easy to breach them (unless they're super tanky). More than likely, the lion's share of the fighting will take place in the streets and districts beyond the walls, which is what makes me suspect Creative Assembly might do away with them entirely.

Either way, it's unlikely that any of Total War: Warhammer's siege bugs will find their way into 40k, especially when the game is using the brand new War Core engine. Will there be new game-breaking bugs to contend with instead? Of course there will. At least, though, we can likely bid farewell to some of the siege niggles that have impacted battles for over a decade.