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.

 

[Nightfly]

Admittedly I only have the quickstart rules for Shadowdark, but most of those spells and monsters were already straight outta D&D.

Off-topic, but...yes, default Shadowdark is pretty much D&D Basic reworked a bit. But the Cursed Scrolls supplements get really weird and unique.

Neither of those are ringing endorsements to me, both were disappointing.

Schneider also wrote Seven Days to the Grave, the second adventure in the much-beloved Curse of the Crimson Throne path for Pathfinder. I've run it and it was wonderful. Mind you, I don't think one good adventure written 18 years ago tells us very much, but FWIW, I can vouch for that one module. Another posted suggested that he also played a big role in developing Golarion (the Pathfinder setting, which is awesome) and since he was EIC around then that's probably true.

 

[Nightfly]

I'm not going to ring any bells of doom about this situation, but my Spidey Sense tells me that it probably isn't good. 5e has been a smashing success, far beyond anyone's most generous projections -- and more importantly, I think it's an excellent ruleset. If every major person involved in developing 5e is departing, that seems like a bad thing.

But we'll see. James Wyatt and Wes Schneider both have long resumes and have put out some good stuff, so it's not like some intern is running the show. Maybe getting some new hands on the wheel will be a great thing.

 

[Minigiant]

My apologies, I wasn't clear.

It wasn't the age demographics that I disagreed with, it was the "The young audience wants a narrative heroic fantasy game. The older audience wants a simulationist greedy grounded game."

I see plenty of both groups liking both or either styles of play.

I keep forgetting that this is the Internet and if you say "X like Y", it is read as "100% of X like Y and only Y. No exceptions." and not as "A high and noticeable plural percentage of X prefer Y".

I mean WOTC did the surveys and counting.

5e skews young according to WOTC. And 2024 5e is more narrative, more heroic, less grounded, and less gritty than 2014 5e.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I keep forgetting that this is the Internet and if you say "X like Y", it is read as "100% of X like Y and only Y. No exceptions." and not as "A high and noticeable plural percentage of X prefer Y".

I mean WOTC did the surveys and counting.

5e skews young according to WOTC. And 2024 5e is more narrative, more heroic, less grounded, and less gritty than 2014 5e.

Thank you for clearly identifying the stylistic differences I have with 5.5. I think that's all of them.

 

[Mistwell]

I'm not one of the new fans, so I won't pretend to speak for them. But what I do know is the older fans apparently want Shadowdark with D&D branding and IP (some exclusions apply).

I think people are getting a bit carried away on Shadowdark. Sure, it got a lot 13,000 sales. That's great for an indie publisher. But, that's not representative of "older fans." That's barely a rounding error in the quantity of older fans.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Bummer. Who are the longest serving D&D teammates now?

 

[Minigiant]

I am still in a camp that believes that Perkins and Crawford wanted to leave years ago but was convinced to stay by giving them the lead on the 50th year anniversary of D&D.

They didn't want to lose that chance and they stayed until the last core book was published and out the door

Then they bounced.

The simplest situation is often the correct one.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

No sudden changes are going to come to D&D. The three new main core books are out now, and they are not going to be replaced anytime soon. Supplements and Adventures are what are going to follow for the foreseeable future.

 

[The Soloist]

The one I am most interested in right now is what Mearls is doing, he appears to check a lot of my boxes and has similar design sensibilities from what I can tell so far

I did not follow that. Is there a place were I can read about his project without having to subscribe to his Patreon?

 

[Staffan]

Bummer. Who are the longest serving D&D teammates now?

James Wyatt has been there since at least the 3e days – he was fairly instrumental in turning Eberron from the 100-page "bible" Keith Baker wrote into an actual product. If Keith is the Ed Greenwood of Eberron, then James is the Jeff Grubb. He did spend a few years over on the cardboard side, though.