Jeremy Crawford Also Leaving D&D Team Later This Month

Jeremy Crawford is leaving Wizards of the Coast later this month. Screen Rant (via me!) had the exclusive announcement. Crawford was the Game Director for Dungeons & Dragons and was one of the guiding forces for D&D over the past decade. In the past year, Crawford has focused on the core rulebooks and leading the team of rules designers. He has also been a face of Dungeons & Dragons for much of 5th Edition, appearing in many promotional videos and DMing Acquisitions Incorporated Actual Play series.

He joins Chris Perkins in leaving the D&D team in recent weeks. Perkins, who was the Creative Director for D&D, announced his retirement last week. Both Perkins and Crawford appear to have left Wizards on their terms, with Lanzillo very effusive with her praise of both men and their contribution in our interview.

On a personal note, I've enjoyed interviewing Jeremy over the years. He was always gracious with his time and answers and is one of the most eloquent people I've ever heard talk about D&D. I'll miss both him and Chris Perkins and look forward to their next steps, wherever that might be.

 

[Umbran]

Netflix!She-Ra is absolutely amazing and perfect. I'll take She-Ra over Conan any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

It was pretty awesome. Masters of the Universe: Revelation was pretty solid too.

 

[Minigiant]

I can definitely see where you're coming from, but I don't know if you can make that broad of a statement. I still play with some young players (sons and daughters of my friends and their friends) and greedy play is very much on the table for them. Getting all the stuff is very exciting. And heroic fantasy? I'm not sure they even know what that is. Heroic characters are classics and I don't see a lot of that in current pop culture.

And older players? Where do you think the audience for PbtA or similar games came from? It's all older players, or younger ones who were introduced by older players.

I'm certainly not saying you're wrong with this by any means, but I think it's not that simple. I know that I, and all of my older player friends, have been running away from greedy grounded games for our whole lives. But then I liked 4E, so there you go.

Yeah there is a full range of styles in each generation.

But I believe each generation skews certain ways due to popular media adjustments.

 

[kayakingpoodle]

Euh? No! I don't like Shadowdark and I'm 60. I like 5.5 just fine. It does what it does well. When I want a simple and lethal system I play Dragonbane.

Same here with 2 caveats I am in my 50's and I prefer 5e over 5.5.

 

[Umbran]

The young audience wants a narrative heroic fantasy game.

The older audience wants a simulationist greedy grounded game.

You are sooooo going to run up against the broad brush here.

There is no one "older audience", and presuming to speak for all of them at once is going to generate pushback. Some of the older audience want that simulationist, greedy grounded game. A lot of older gamers played that way back in the day, but now embrace other styles.

 

[Mournblade94]

Yeah, I get tired of all the people who "moved on" from the game but can't help talking trash at the first opportunity.

So why not just ignore them? Honestly. Why get worked up that people have opposite opinions?

You've been consistent in tone for the last 18 years so you can't just be tired of it now. That's not a dig. You and I have been pretty much dimetrically opposed since then. And I wasn't an old man back then. But I've held quite consistent in my grognard even before I was an old man. I've been this way since the teens.

 

[Mistwell]

The simplest answer is often best.

The simplest answer is he's telling the truth and voluntarily left because he had been there a very long time and had done what he wanted to do with it and wants to go do other things.

But that doesn't feed the conspiracy theory that he's lying and WOTC fired him for nefarious reasons.

 

[Mournblade94]

Note: this is more of a comment on American society than you, specifically, as a father or a person.

It always baffles me how the "age filters" always focus on nudity, sex and swearing, and almost never violence.

I grew up on an animal farm. We bred animals. The first time I had to help with a boirth I was 8 years old. We often had to shower off naked in the yard after cleaning stalls before let back inside. My brothers and I discovered girlie mags in the foreman's trailer of the gravel pit up the road when I was 10.

Sex and nudity is a LOT less damaging to kids than violence.

As an addendum, teaching these younger kids D&D forced me to come up with better conflict resolution. Especially when a group of kids wanted to see if they could make the Lich friendlier.

Of course I also had the 8th grade girls that smashed their cups on the table and chanted "slurp their brains, slurp their brains" when a mindflayer attacked an NPV.

 

[Mistwell]

Yeah I call BS, for one thing, who goes to Screen Rant for something like this? Someone who perhaps prefers to talk to a site that won't ask probing questions or challenge WotCs narrative.

Let's see Ray Winniger, Cynthia Williams, Kyle Brink, Chris Perkins, Chris Cao, Jeremy Crawford, the cast majority of the Sigil Team, Dan Dillion, who knows who else.

I'll also note that Jeremy Crawford & Chris Perkins had both gotten promotions recently had they not?

Look I was skeptical until this as well, but it's piling up to be too much to believe WotCs narrative.

You have to believe Crawford himself is lying. He's not saying "I can't talk about that because I am under NDA" he's giving direct answers that he's leaving of his own choice. You have to assume this is a lie, "It's one of those things where you finished a major keystone creative project and you do ask yourself, 'Okay, do I have the next one in me for right now? Do I want to do something a little bit different?'"

 

[Mournblade94]

That isn't the same thing, especially to people outside D&D fandom.

I would wager MOST BG3 specific fans didn't know what D&D was until they followed the voice actors.

 

[Minigiant]

You are sooooo going to run up against the broad brush here.

There is no one "older audience", and presuming to speak for all of them at once is going to generate pushback. Some of the older audience want that simulationist, greedy grounded game. A lot of older gamers played that way back in the day, but now embrace other styles.

Yes it's a generalization.

But there are multiple styles of D&D which were popular at different times.

And my point was there is a vocal minority who liked styles were popular decades ago who are audibly upset that other styles are more popular today.

Pleasing everyone with one system is impossible so WOTC has to choose.