D&D General If I had the D&D/WotC Worldbuider job, I would... (+ thread)

[Eyes of Nine]

Over here:

Thread 'Wizards of the Coast Is Hiring a D&D Worldbuilder'

Feb 10, 2025

Wizards of the Coast is looking to hire someone to build new worlds for Dungeons & Dragons. Over the weekend, Wizards of the Coast posted a new job listing for a "Senior Narrative Worldbuilding Designer for Dungeons & Dragons." The new position will help Wizards of the Coast "create exciting and inspirational new settings" alongside developing existing settings. Notably, this isn't a position limited to the D&D RPG design team - the position will also work with "ensuring narrative consistency" across video games, entertainment and the D&D RPG.

At a press...

• Christian Hoffer
• Replies: 164
• Forum: *Dungeons & Dragons

• 

They are hiring.
If you were the one hired, what would be the first or maybe the first few things you would do?!?

Let's keep it positive and creative, shall we?

 

[Chaltab]

Instead of focusing on brand new settings, I'd want to start by fleshing out existing ones. Hire people of east Asian and Middle Eastern descent to work on Kara-Tur and al-Quadim, bring on Jeff Grubb to help flesh out Spelljammer, and bring in some sincere Dark Sun fans to make a faithful version of the setting that avoids some of the more problematic elements of the past.

 

[Reynard]

The first thing you would have to do is figure out what "narrative consistency" means in terms of tone. You can't have both BG3 and HAT both be equally valid expressions of D&D if you want any sort of narative consistency. You are going to need to narrow the potential breadth, and that would make it look a lot more like the MCU as an example: there are some movies that are a little more serious than others, but generally they all have the same pallette and feel.

If you do that with D&D, I think you need to go closer to HAT than BG3, just for wide audience appeal. (HAT feels like a MCU movie to me.)

As to the question of whether this means heavy on the metaplot as others suggested in the original thread: i don't think so. Rather, lore is embedded in many, many elements of D&D and I think the job would look a lot more like continuity editing. So the next thing i would do is a major audit for WotC's lore from everything they have published or produced for 5E and slash and burn until I had the definitive lore bible for the multiverse. Where we found multiple versions of a thing, I would settle on one. That bible would then rule everything going forward. When an old elements was reintroduced or new element created, it would get checked against the bible, and then added to it.

 

[Chaltab]

The first thing you would have to do is figure out what "narrative consistency" means in terms of tone. You can't have both BG3 and HAT both be equally valid expressions of D&D if you want any sort of narative consistency.

...what?

Like I'm not saying that the two don't have very different tones, but why on earth would you think different works having different tones in different mediums is a flaw? They both have exactly the tone they need to for what they're trying to accomplish.

 

[Reynard]

...what?

Like I'm not saying that the two don't have very different tones, but why on earth would you think different works having different tones in different mediums is a flaw? They both have exactly the tone they need to for what they're trying to accomplish.

I think that it works against narrative consistency, which is really a term to mean brand consistency. I personally love that different D&D things look and feel different, but that does not appear to be the thing WotC wants.

 

[Scribe]

...what?

Like I'm not saying that the two don't have very different tones, but why on earth would you think different works having different tones in different mediums is a flaw? They both have exactly the tone they need to for what they're trying to accomplish.

Not Reynard obviously, but I think if you are going to have a unified metaplot, that yes having a shared and consistent tone is relevant, especially if they are trying to unify across multiple media types.

BG3 vs Witchlight? lol

 

[Zaukrie]

Nentir Vale.

A new world that is much more fantastic and less realistic than what we have.

Spelljamming

 

[Chaltab]

There's no need for D&D to be homogenous. Witchlight is a deliberately whimsical Feywild adventure. Baldur's Gate 3 is a body horror-fueled meditation on the nature of identity and faith. It would be nonsensical and incoherent for them to share a tone.

 

[Charlaquin]

I suspect this person is going to have a lot of demands and restrictions on their creative freedom. But, setting that aside and assuming WotC gave me carte blanche? First order of business would be removing the assumption that all settings must share the same cosmological setup. Forgotten Realms and Planescape can keep their great wheel, but Eberron gets to go back to its Orrery setup (also speaking of Eberron, I would give Keith Baker de facto creative control over the setting. Everything goes through him for approval, and anything he says goes, at least regarding Eberron worldbuilding), and other settings are free to use whatever cosmology suits them. No more assumed shared cosmos.

Next on the list, we’re bringing back Dark Sun, and we’re doing it right. And by that I mean we don’t shy away from depicting the dark elements of the setting like slavery and eugenics, but we make very clear that these are terrible things done by the villains of the setting, which the player characters are assumed to oppose and try to fight back against.

Another high priority is reviving the 4e setting. Which would get a proper name, instead of being referred to by the name of one small starting region within the setting. I would consider combining it with Iomamdra, since they had a lot of worldbuilding assumptions in common.

 

[Zaukrie]

There's no need for D&D to be homogenous. Witchlight is a deliberately whimsical Feywild adventure. Baldur's Gate 3 is a body horror-fueled meditation on the nature of identity and faith. It would be nonsensical and incoherent for them to share a tone.

Agreed. That's why I'm tired of realistic settings.