WotC Chris Perkins announces Retirement from Dungeons and Dragons

Over on Twitter and Bluesky, Chris Perkins has announced his retirement from Dungeons and Dragons.

Chris Perkins started officially working for Wizards of the Coast in 1997 as an Editor for Dungeon Magazine. Since then, he has functioned as the Editor in Chief of D&D Periodicals, A Senior Producer, and eventually landing as the Senior Story Editor over D&D 5e and Game Architect on D&D 5e 2024.

He also is known for acting as one of the Dungeons Masters for Acquisitions, Incorporated.

Personally, I'll miss the guy's work.

https://bsky.app/profile/chrisperkinsdnd.bsky.social%2Fpost%2F3llyvdjkphk2p

 

[EthanSental]

wishing CP all the best, he's another creator I will miss and sad to see him go. I think with the failure that was 5.5 (2024 rulebooks) it's a good reason to leave on a semi-high note.
congratulations on retirement, Im right behind you!

Kind of an odd take given the lack of public facing info and that Chris even said it was selling like gang busters and he was going out on top with it and 50th anniversary.

 

[Reynard]

Can attest that there are companies out there that will try to contest even work done on free time done on personal equipment. There are people that vindictive out there, and their goal is to use nuisance suits and legal threats to discourage people from working in the same industry shortly after leaving the company. This varies state to state of course, and I have no idea whether this applies in Washington or that WotC has ever done this or attempted to do so, but in the IT industry, it absolutely has happened.

My wife went to Savanah College of Art and Design, and many students from there interned for Disney. Everything they did while so employed, at work or on their own time, was owned by The Mouse according to their employment agreements.

 

[Nikosandros]

The thing about Iomandra is that Chris talked a lot about it in his DM blog posts on the old D&D website. I think WotC could argue they own it because of that.

If he’d only ever talked about it in a personal capacity through non-work channels, that would be different.

Same with Valoreign – he posted the details of that one through the offical D&D website as well.

True. It is also possible that he might have negotiated something before retiring.

 

[mamba]

My own guessimation is that because there is no way to really determine what an employee would come up with "off-hours" versus when they were on the clock... creative endeavor companies such as this put that clause in their contracts.

yes, it’s harder when the product is ‘ideas’, esp. if you were to do it while still working at WotC in parallel.

Plenty of former WotC designers have released their own products after leaving however. I don’t think anything is stopping Perkins from releasing his setting as a book now, if he wanted to

 

[Aldarc]

Given it contains things like dragonborn and Io, I strongly suspect they wouldn't let him.

He probably wants to keep "ownership" of his own personal homebrew setting without it becoming WotC's like Forgotten Realms.

 

[Dire Bare]

WotC definitely could claim ownership over Perkin's Iomandra campaign, and anything else he developed while working for WotC . . . but I don't think they would likely exercise that option. What would it gain them? While interesting settings, they did not garner fan support similar to Eberron or other major setting.

Also, I'm assuming that if Perkins is planning on doing independent work in game design . . . he's likely to start fresh on something new, rather than revisit those older settings.

 

[roguish]

My own guessimation is that because there is no way to really determine what an employee would come up with "off-hours" versus when they were on the clock... creative endeavor companies such as this put that clause in their contracts.

Yes, it's an old trick. IIRC Walt Disney started it, or at least enforced it ruthlessly enough to make it A Problem™, and the US comics industry ran with it for some time. I think it's extremely messed up, a gross abuse of labour and indeed human rights (if you owe anything at all to your employer outside company time, your employer kinda owns you), a blatantly monopolistic practice that has no business being legal, and one of the many ways that copyright law, which is ostensibly there to protect creators, does the exact opposite and benefits employers and middlemen at the expense of creators.

It creeps me out to no end.

 

[Azzy]

Yes, it's an old trick. IIRC Walt Disney started it, or at least enforced it ruthlessly enough to make it A Problem™, and the US comics industry ran with it for some time. I think it's extremely messed up, a gross abuse of labour and indeed human rights (if you owe anything at all to your employer outside company time, your employer kinda owns you), a blatantly monopolistic practice that has no business being legal, and one of the many ways that copyright law, which is ostensibly there to protect creators, does the exact opposite and benefits employers and middlemen at the expense of creators.

It creeps me out to no end.

Yeah, it's an absolute trash fire.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yes, it's an old trick. IIRC Walt Disney started it, or at least enforced it ruthlessly enough to make it A Problem™, and the US comics industry ran with it for some time. I think it's extremely messed up, a gross abuse of labour and indeed human rights (if you owe anything at all to your employer outside company time, your employer kinda owns you), a blatantly monopolistic practice that has no business being legal, and one of the many ways that copyright law, which is ostensibly there to protect creators, does the exact opposite and benefits employers and middlemen at the expense of creators.

It creeps me out to no end.

I can kind of see the pint though due to arguments overcwho owns what.
Should probably have sone leeway though as employer has first right of refusal.

Otherwise work on it at home and bury ot until you leave.

There's also horror stories of employees putting work stuff under their own name or critical software pieces so when they leave they essentially take company stuff with them.

Like coding that makes proprietary software run.

 

[Jahydin]

I don't love every decision Perkins has made for the game, but I have never doubted that he was designing out of love rather than any crass motivations.

100%. Perfectly said.