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Last week, Stephen "WotC_Shoe" Schubert officially assumed the duties of Lead Developer for the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game.
Stephen steps into the position formerly occupied by Mike Mearls, who recently took on the mantle of D&D Lead Designer.
Stephen joined RPG R&D as an Associate Developer in 2004 after eight years spent as a programmer and systems analyst with IBM. His first D&D development projects included Weapons of Legacy and Dungeon Master's Guide II for 3rd Edition.
Stephen is best known publicly for his extensive work on the D&D Miniatures Game, where he worked on 10 sets and two rules revisions and also wrote numerous preview articles teasing fans with hints and bad puns regarding upcoming miniatures.
Stephen was also a key contributor to the new edition of Dungeons & Dragons, particularly in the design and development of monsters for the game. His name appears on the cover of the 4E Monster Manual as well as the upcoming Monster Manual 2 (scheduled for release this May), reflecting the significant impact of his leadership on those two books.
"I'm excited to have Shoe leading the development team," said Andy Collins, manager of D&D development and editing. "He and I have worked together since the day he joined the department, and I know his steady, calm approach to development will be the perfect balance to Mike's aggressive method of design."
For his part, Stephen says that he "still can't believe that people are paying him to do this, and is constantly expecting to wake up and realize that he has to jump on a 3 am conference call."
For those who know more than I about the gaming industry, what is the difference between a Lead Developer and a Lead Designer?
While there's an awful lot of overlap, as a very general rule, you might think of the designer as the writer and the developer as the "editor of mechanics."
For instance, if I write an article for Dragon, I'm the designer on that article--I created both the story/flavor, and the crunch. But when the article goes through development, the crunch I created is taken apart, tested, considered (both in groups and by people with better mechanics than I), and put back together--often with substantial changes.
That may make it sound like "development" is entirely passive, but the development team often comes up with fundamental mechanical systems that the designers are then asked to work with. Take any major subsystem in the game, and there's a decent chance it originated with a developer, not a designer.
But again, these are very loose distinctions, and the two often overlap.
__________________ Ari Marmell
aka
Mouseferatu
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For those who know more than I about the gaming industry, what is the difference between a Lead Developer and a Lead Designer?
According to the WotC system, designers create stuff, and developers tweak it until it works, basically.
The entire scheme comes from Magic the Gathering, I believe, where designers are the people who make cards, and developers are the people who take the original card designs and either balance them so they all work or discard what doesn't. I have seen a lot of different good essays about why they use this system and have separate roles. The biggest reason is that the two roles require different skills: good designers need creative skills and good developers need solid mathematical and analytical skills, and few people excel at both.
For those who know more than I about the gaming industry, what is the difference between a Lead Developer and a Lead Designer?
The designer is the one who comes up with the ideas and mechanics. The developer then takes those ideas and mechanics and refines them. He tweaks and changes to make sure it works within the context of the system.
Exactly. The title should be "Mike Mearls is the new D&D Lead Designer"
Ahh, I see now... and the title of this thread is misleading calling Shoe the new Lead Designer while the article it's referring to says he's now Lead Developer.
Also, if Shoe replaced Mearls because Mearls got moved (laterally promoted? IDK), then who is Mearls replacing? And why wasn't there a news brief about him?
Also, if Shoe replaced Mearls because Mearls got moved (laterally promoted? IDK), then who is Mearls replacing? And why wasn't there a news brief about him?
Rob Heinsoo was D&D lead designer.
__________________ David A. Blizzard
"The only constant I am sure of is this accelerating rate of change" - Downside Up by Peter Gabriel
Essentially Designers are Marketing (who scheme up grand visions and promise people things that don't exist yet) and Developers are Engineers (who do all the heavy lifting to deliver on all those blue-sky proposals).
Then again, I might be a smidge biased in my assessments.
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