Wizards of the Coast has pinned a tin star on Joe Manganiello and the D&D Icons are his gunslingers, he tells Lucca Comics & Games
Joe Manganiello used the D&D Icons panel at Lucca Comics & Games 2026 to set out his vision for the new historical strand he’s heading up at Wizards of the Coast. The One Piece and True Blood actor shared the frustrations of seeing his projects shelved by the Dungeons & Dragons publisher, before agreeing to come back if he could clean up the town with his chosen gunslingers.
“I felt that at the time, Dungeons & Dragons was heading in a direction creatively that was not in line with my heart, my soul. And so I stepped away. I had also developed a TV script for a series adapting Dragonlance and that was put on the shelf. I was hired also to direct and produce the 50th anniversary documentary for Dungeons & Dragons. That was put on the shelf. So I walked away,” Manganiello told the corwd in Lucca.
“Two years I spent away, and the leadership of Dungeons & Dragons changed, and in came Dan Ayoub. Dan asked me to go to lunch with him and he said, ‘I’m now in charge of Dungeons & Dragons, and I want you to come back.’ And I said, ‘Okay, this is the moment in the Sergio Leone film where you ask me to be the sheriff and help you to clean up the town. I need a badge as a sheriff. And then I need to be able to bring the people that I know, the gunslingers, back into town to help me clean it up and restore order.
“And he said, ‘Yes, you can have a badge. Yes, you can invite anyone back that you want. I said, ‘Okay’ and that is how Dungeons & Dragons Icons started. My first phone call, Tracy Hickman. My second phone call, Margaret Weiss. And it thus became the rebirth of Dragonlance with the original creators. So I met with Tracy, met with Laura [Hickman], met with Margaret, and now here we are relaunching.
“Then after that, there were several other calls made that we can talk about as well. I know that Luke Gygax had come into possession of Gary Gygax’s lost maps and is going to publish them independently. I said, ‘Damn, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could invite Gary Gygax’s work back to Dungeons & Dragons for the first time since 1985?” He agreed, and so now Greyhawk will relaunch with Gary Gygax’s work.
“From there, I called Bob Salvatore and I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could tell some adventures in gaming using your characters, the Drizzt characters?” Bob says, “Sure, let’s do it.” So those were the first phone calls, and here we are.”