WotC James Wyatt is on the Dungeons & Dragons Team Again

[Zaukrie]

Oh hey James Wyatt was one of the creators of Madness at Gardmore Abbey, an excellent adventure!

TRUTH.

 

[Nikosandros]

If we want to speculate, I'd wager that Wyatt wanted to work in world building...and there was precious little of that in 5E between the DMG and the Ravnica book...written by James Wyatt.

So, to continue the speculation, we might see some new setting down the line...

 

[Greg K]

James Wyatt had been with the D&D department from at least 3.5 (and the Eberron stuff) up through 5E's release..

His name is on 3.0 Defenders of the Faith

 

[DEFCON 1]

His name is on 3.0 Defenders of the Faith

Not surprising. I knew he did at least 3.5 stuff but didn't know if he was employed prior to that in 3.0 so I didn't speak on it.

 

[Dausuul]

Honestly, I think James Wyatt returning to D&D is mainly because I don't think he wanted to leave D&D in the first place... but he saw the tea leaves of what happened to all the designers on a new edition once the book got released.

I mean, we all remember the "Christmas releases" that happened pretty frequently prior to 5E. With the exception of Chris Perkins... anyone who had worked on the D&D team for any length of time (and thus had probably a bigger paycheck due to annual salary increases and such)... were either let go or they decided to move on before the could be let go. Monte Cook, Rodney Thompson, Greg Bilsland, Bill Slavicsek so on and so forth. Then the department would bring in newer and less expensive writers and designers to take their place.

My suspicion is along these general lines, but slightly different emphasis.

According to the Scrolls of Dancey, 4E happened because they were trying to meet Hasbro's "core brand" standard, which required that core brands bring in $50 million per year and have a path to $100 million. Failure to do so would mean a massive scaling-back of investment in D&D, the brand being mothballed, and most of the staff getting laid off.

And that's pretty much what happened. In the runup to 5E, it looked quite possible that it would be the "mothball edition," with a skeleton crew keeping the lights on and doing licensing deals. My guess is that Wizards figured, "Okay, Wyatt's too good to lose, but we can't afford to pay him with the 5E budget. So we'll find him a place on the Magic side and keep him around, and maybe if 5E takes off we can bring him back eventually."

Well, 5E took off like a rocket. And now Wyatt is back.

(Obviously, this is total speculation about WotC's reasoning. It's just as possible that Wyatt simply wanted a break after working on D&D for more than a decade.)

 

[Urriak Uruk]

My suspicion is along these general lines, but slightly different emphasis.

According to the Scrolls of Dancey, 4E happened because they were trying to meet Hasbro's "core brand" standard, which required that core brands bring in $50 million per year and have a path to $100 million. Failure to do so would mean a massive scaling-back of investment in D&D, the brand being mothballed, and most of the staff getting laid off.

And that's pretty much what happened. In the runup to 5E, it looked quite possible that it would be the "mothball edition," with a skeleton crew keeping the lights on and doing licensing deals. My guess is that Wizards figured, "Okay, Wyatt's too good to lose, but we can't afford to pay him with the 5E budget. So we'll find him a place on the Magic side and keep him around, and maybe if 5E takes off we can bring him back eventually."

Well, 5E took off like a rocket. And now Wyatt is back.

(Obviously, this is total speculation about WotC's reasoning. It's just as possible that Wyatt simply wanted a break after working on D&D for more than a decade.)

See, this actually makes sense!

Very glad he's back, plus they've been working harder to bring in more people (either full or part-time), instead of having Chris Perkins using his vacation time writing books solo (though I'm happy he did, I love Curse of Strahd).

 

[Azzy]

To be fair about 4e lore and cosmoogy, I did like the Feywild and removing the Great Wheel. However, I have also always ignored the Great Wheel and have included a Faerie realm in many of my campaigns since late 1e or early 2e

Another to be fair about the 4e lore and cosmology... If it had just been presented as its own (even if the default) setting, like Eberron, rather than having it hamfistedly (in some cases) retrofitted into other settings and rewriting a bunch of default monster lore then I would have been much more amenable to it. If 4e had at least presented the Great Wheel cosmology as an option in the DMG and kept it for the Forgotten Realms (and implicitly to the other older settings that didn't get published) and did not blow up the settings just to cram in new lore, it probably would have rubbed some people the wrong way much less. I do like the addition of the Feywild and the Shadowfell to the GW in 5e, so it's not like they couldn't have made any retcon changes, I just believe it was a bridge too far with what they did. That said, I fully support Nentir Vale and its cosmology being released as an independent setting for 5e.

 

[Azzy]

I'm guessing that, idependent of this, that Dragonlance is one of the two older settings coming back. And I think that Wyatt would be a perfect fit to work on it, given his religious nature.

 

[Parmandur]

So, to continue the speculation, we might see some new setting down the line...

Not too far out, since he's already written three campaign Setting books, and I wouldn't be surprised if he has another this year.

 

[cbwjm]

Honestly, I think James Wyatt returning to D&D is mainly because I don't think he wanted to leave D&D in the first place... but he saw the tea leaves of what happened to all the designers on a new edition once the book got released.

I mean, we all remember the "Christmas releases" that happened pretty frequently prior to 5E. With the exception of Chris Perkins... anyone who had worked on the D&D team for any length of time (and thus had probably a bigger paycheck due to annual salary increases and such)... were either let go or they decided to move on before the could be let go. Monte Cook, Rodney Thompson, Greg Bilsland, Bill Slavicsek so on and so forth. Then the department would bring in newer and less expensive writers and designers to take their place.

James Wyatt had been with the D&D department from at least 3.5 (and the Eberron stuff) up through 5E's release... so knowing what usually would happen around that time for an employee like him, he got ahead of things and was able to facilitate a transfer over in Magic: The Gathering, which at least allowed him to stay employed with Wizards of the Coast. But he NEVER lost his desire to work on D&D, which is why he had been writing and releasing all those Plane Shift articles in his spare time over the years in and around his Magic work.

So perhaps with this new Wizards & Digital re-org there was a growth of salary availability within the D&D department that gave him the opportunity to now come back over at whatever pay scale he's currently at.

Could be it. I think also that sometimes people just want a change, and considering the work he did on MtG I wouldn't be surprised if he just wanted a chance to exercise his creativity a bit more. Doesn't mean he doesn't love working on DnD and perhaps with DnD being expanded (didn't someone say they will be releasing a bunch of settings?) he's going to be able to come back and still have creative input.