[UPDATED!] The Unsung (Female) Half of the D&D Team!

Now that Jennifer Clarke-Wilkes is no longer at WotC, the core D&D design team of eight people (Mike Mearls, Rodney Thompson, Jeremy Crawford, Greg Bilsland, Chris Perkins, Peter Lee, Matt Sernett, Adam Lee) is comprised solely of men. However, it's easy to overlook the other half of the team, which consists of those not so much in the limelight, and who are essential to the game's success - and who include a number of talented female staff. According to Mike Mearls, the following members of the D&D team are female.

This amounts to 9 hardworking, essential people. Mike lists them as follows:

• all of our data collection, polling, research - done by a woman
• our director of publishing, aka the person who decides what we make - a woman
• our marketing senior manager - a woman
• the four person team who created the look of 5e - women
• our licensing director - a woman
• our marketing art director - a woman

I don't know the names of all of them (I've listed the ones in the credits of the books below). I've dropped WotC's Jeremy Crawford a quick line, as he's been helpful with providing WotC staff names and positions before, and I'll update this if I hear back.

The books themselves mention Kate Irwin, Mari Kolkowsky, Melissa Rapier, Shauna Narciso (art directors), Liz Schuh, Shelly Mazzanoble, Hilary Ross, Laura Tommervik, Kim Lundstrom (brand and marketing), and Emi Tanji, Bree Heiss, and Trich Tochum (graphic designers), which is at least 12 women working on D&D!

UPDATE - Jeremy Crawford has responded with an awesome reply which lists many of the people involved with D&D:

We're putting the finishing touches on Princes of the Apocalypse, so I need to keep this short for now.

Many committed, talented people work on D&D products at Wizards of the Coast, both inside D&D R&D and outside it. The D&D team spans multiple departments, and it works on the roleplaying game, video games, licensed products, novels, and more. Regarding the RPG, which is my focus, the credits pages of the three core books show that many people had a hand in forming the new edition of the game.

EN World currently lists the following people being on the D&D team: Mike Mearls, Jeremy Crawford, Chris Perkins, Greg Bilsland, Rodney Thompson, Peter Lee, Matt Sernett, and Adam Lee.

That list should include Kate Irwin, Dan Gelon, and Shauna Narciso, the art directors who oversee the creation of all art for D&D. The list should also have Bree Heiss and Emi Tanji, who created the gorgeous interior designs of the core books and who worked tirelessly with me, Chris Perkins, and Kate Irwin to lay out those books. Most recently, Kate, Emi, Chris, and I have been collaborating to bring Princes of the Apocalypse to completion. The way we work, art affects text and vice versa.

The list is only complete with Richard Whitters, our amazing R&D concept artist and world builder, who works with Chris Perkins and Adam Lee in shaping the stories and worlds we plan to visit in the coming years. A fun fact: the fabulous condition sketches in the Player's Handbook are by Richard.

The list should name Chris Youngs, Ben Petrisor, Tom Olsen, and Chris Dupuis, members of D&D R&D who work with our video game partners; who work on board games, like the upcoming Temple of Elemental Evil; who review numerous licensed products, like the WizKids miniatures; and who are part of our internal testing of the RPG.

The list needs Nathan Stewart, Liz Schuh, Chris Lindsay, Shelly Mazzanoble, Hilary Ross, Laura Tommervik, Kim Lundstrom, and Trevor Kidd—all members of the D&D brand team. They collaborate with R&D on shaping product plans, creating future stories, gathering playtest data, working with freelancers and outside game studios, planning convention events, and dealing with innumerable other parts of the D&D business.

The list should mention Chris Tulach, who oversees the Adventurer's League and who has participated in many design meetings for the RPG over the years.

I could keep going and going. The core books wouldn't have made it out of the building without the D&D project managers—John Hay and Neil Shinkle—making sure all our departments were working in sync with each other. Our books would never see print without people like Jefferson Dunlap and Cynda Callaway working with our printers. Our gathering of playtest data and potential errata is always helped by Sam Simpson and the rest of our enthusiastic customer service team. We also get feedback and occasional loans of personnel from Magic R&D. For instance, James Wyatt did his final work on the Dungeon Master's Guide while on the Magic team.

And everything we do is in consultation with Bill Rose, the vice president of R&D, and with the rest of the company's executive team.

None of this begins to scratch the surface when it comes to our contractors. People like Michele Carter, Anita Williams, and Robert Schwalb aren't on our staff, but each of them played a key part in creating the fifth edition books. And currently, Dan Helmick is a full-time contractor working for us in-house.

Oh boy, I said was going to keep this short. It's easy for me to get enthusiastic when acknowledging the contributions of the diverse group of people who make D&D what it is today!

​

 

[I'm A Banana]

What is frustrating is the perception that if a group fails to represent selected given subgroups despite no active exclusionary efforts, that group is somehow wrong/bad and should be forced to include representation of a subgroup regardless of qualifications or needs of the group, aka, artificial diversity.

I think the nuance you might be missing here is that exclusion happens regardless of the level of effort or activity devoted to it. It's a natural consequence of human cognitive mistakes. Stuff like implicit association. That's why it requires active effort to stop it from happening. All diversity is, to at least some degree, artificial, and has been since the earliest days of civilization. But a lot of good things are artificial constructs that take effort and investment to get (the internet for one!).

It's not like WotC is chock full of evil mysogynist stereotypes because they don't have women on their design team (pretty clearly not, the rest of the D&D team has plenty of women!). They just probably haven't done the work required to avoid that outcome. And it's hard work. The world isn't set up to be equitable, it only gets that way if we want it to be, and we put forth the effort required to make it that way.

 

[Gecko85]

Except they said designers which means they are absolutely correct. There are no women designers listed in the credits and if Mearls wants to argue otherwise he's going to open up a whole another can of worms that he's all ready been slammed for from other people in the industry.

The Tweets that started this firestorm said "There are now no women working on Dungeons and Dragons...", and one directly to Mearls that asked "Can you name some women working on D&D...?" Neither one mentioned designers.

 

[technoextreme]

The Tweets that started this firestorm said "There are now no women working on Dungeons and Dragons...", and one directly to Mearls that asked "Can you name some women working on D&D...?" Neither one mentioned designers.

Actually it did mention designers. Mearls did the same stupid thing that you did and not actually be bothered to read what threw him into a tizzy.

 

[jimmifett]

Feeling that gender does not matter is a privilege.

Glad I'm raising my kid to be a privileged hispanic girl who doesn't believe that bovine feces and can typically out-do any gender on anything she sets her mind towards and not to feel entitled or victimized based on her birth. That she doesn't need to 'play a card' to get ahead in the world.

 

[Patrick McGill]

Glad I'm raising my kid to be a privileged hispanic girl who doesn't believe that bovine feces and can typically out-do any gender on anything she sets her mind towards and not to feel entitled or victimized based on her birth. That she doesn't need to 'play a card' to get ahead in the world.

Let's summarize the whole of a group's marginalization as playing the victim card. That's the correct and ethical thing to do. Those women need to just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I mean, one almost became president recently! /s

 

[rjfTrebor]

the team behind the 'look' of 5e did a crap job. i feel like we got a trio of fisher price books with art for 12 year olds who aren't allowed to watch TV

 

[Psikerlord#]

All I want to say is - more sketches from Richard the concept artist please - his stuff is the best part of PHB!

 

[jimmifett]

That's why it requires active effort to stop it from happening.

This is where I disagree. Giving any additional weighting to a decision to hire or retain based upon gender/ethnicity/not being a Sexual Tyrannosaur/etc is active discrimination in and of itself to correct a non existent perception problem. (or "socially correct optics" if you will)

Does a group need to be diverse to create a product regardless of any other factor? No.
Does a group lacking diversity create an inferior product regardless of any other factor? No.
Does a diverse group create a better product than a non diverse group regardless of any other factor? Impossible to tell.

When deciding whom to retain and whom to hire, improving the "socially correct optics" of a group should not be a deciding factor. Experience, quality of work, and negotiated pay vs budget for position should be the considerations.

 

[Gecko85]

Actually it did mention designers. Mearls did the same stupid thing that you did and not actually be bothered to read what threw him into a tizzy.

I read what was going around on Twitter all morning...and did not see anything mentioning designers. So, that may or may not have been included at the beginning, but the critical mass of noise was re-tweeting posts that did not. Not the ones that were all over my Twitter feed. So, apparently you did a stupid thing by not actually being bothered to read the same things I was reading...or something. (Sorry, I'm bad at tossing out ridiculous insults...)

 

[jimmifett]

Let's summarize the whole of a group's marginalization as playing the victim card.

Using historical marginalization as justification for preference regardless of other factors over equally or more qualified individuals, is indeed playing a card.