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.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not sure if this makes sense. Is D&D just a brand? You want the institutional knowledge to keep the identity, even though so much of it has been lost already.

At this point I feel D&D is exactly that: a brand, regardless of how much you like or dislike any particular product or game ever produced under it. That's what they celebrated last year: 50 years of the brand.

 

[Micah Sweet]

WotC isn't a company who can or will do that, so that's pretty much just fantasy. It's fine to have that view, but it'd be totally unrealistic to expect that to actually happen with WotC in charge.


Sure, but it's a niche game that's basically appealing to a very small market and owned by a company who cares about it in large part as a game and a piece of art, not as a "PRODUCT" making "REVENUE". WotC has a lot of people at it who care about D&D a great deal, but it's a corporation which is part of a larger, even greedier and more heartless corporation (Hasbro), and to WotC's actual final decision-makers, D&D is just an IP and a PRODUCT which makes REVENUE, or fails to.

That doesn't necessarily mean D&D will change.

What it does mean is WotC will do whatever they think is going to make money. And Hasbro will probably want them to look at the shorter-term there.

That means, at some point in the next 3-6 years, we're almost certainly looking at a new edition, I'd suggest, because that's the only way WotC is going to make a big chunk of change, and there's a huge market out there of people who are willing to buy something which promises "New and improved" in a more serious way. And a "mostly the same" version like 2024 won't do that. So rather than 5E 2029 or something, we'll probably see a full on 6E (of course not called that, WotC are allergic lol).

I wish more companies cares about their games as GAMES and not just PRODUCTS from which to squeeze REVENUE. I honestly think we get better games that way.

 

[Worrgrendel]

Have you read Magical Kitties Save The Day?

I backed that for my boy/girl twins when it was an Kickstarter and even had one of our cats that passed away featured in one of the books as a surprise homage for them! Love that game! I really need to get back to the campaign design idea I had for that where the setting was essentially Phineas and Ferb and the magical kitties were all secret agents for OWCA like Perry the Platypus (an NPC in the setting) and the magical kitties were essentially the one’s stopping Dr. Doofenshmirtz!

 

[Minigiant]

I wish more companies cares about their games as GAMES and not just PRODUCTS from which to squeeze REVENUE. I honestly think we get better games that way.

Companies only do that if they don't plan to grow or weather the ebbs of the market.

The issues is fans say this then want "extras"

You can't get extra without extra revenue to fund the creation of extra.

 

[mamba]

That means, at some point in the next 3-6 years, we're almost certainly looking at a new edition, I'd suggest, because that's the only way WotC is going to make a big chunk of change, and there's a huge market out there of people who are willing to buy something which promises "New and improved" in a more serious way. And a "mostly the same" version like 2024 won't do that. So rather than 5E 2029 or something, we'll probably see a full on 6E (of course not called that, WotC are allergic lol).

on the one hand I am curious about what that would look like, on the other I did not like the 2024 direction, so...

 

[kayakingpoodle]

At this point I feel D&D is exactly that: a brand, regardless of how much you like or dislike any particular product or game ever produced under it. That's what they celebrated last year: 50 years of the brand.

From what me and my groups have seen, the 50th was a money grab nothing more. Such a missed opportunity from the owners of the IP when pretty much anything that was a throwback to the last 50 years would have been essentialy printing money, and we get some warmed over house rules to the current ruleset and they double down by making the premier digital tool almost unusable for anyone that doesn't blindly accept the new "rules" and even if they do parts still don't work! SMH. If this was a company that had physical assets they would be/have sold them off to show profits to secure loans they had no intentions of repaying just to pay themselves as consultants while stiffing the vendors they owe. Such a shame to see this happen to a great game. Glad I bought books along with the digital.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Companies only do that if they don't plan to grow or weather the ebbs of the market.

The issues is fans say this then want "extras"

You can't get extra without extra revenue to fund the creation of extra.

Disagree. Plenty of smaller companies want their games to be successful and their companies to be profitable, not to get every possible dollar and keep their shareholders numbers going up. And of course, even a bigger company can I believe find a happy medium.

And what "extras" are you talking about that demand companies push so hard on profit?

 

[Reynard]

I don’t know, since BG1 it has always been very clear to me that this is a D&D game, regardless of how big the font is for ‘Baldurs Gate’ vs ‘Dungeons & Dragons’. You must live under a rock to not know the two are associated imo

We're not talking about how you feel about it. We are talking about how it was marketed.

 

[mamba]

We're not talking about how you feel about it. We are talking about how it was marketed.

yeah, I never heard it mentioned without a relation to D&D. As I said, you need to have lived under a rock to not be aware of it being a D&D game

and Playstation and X-Box for good measure too

 

[Reynard]

Yes, and with Ravenloft most of the flavour and leveraging of mechanics has been removed making it the most vanilla Ravenloft ever released.

This kind of complaint is such nonsense. I get it. Revenloft isn't the same as it was in 1993. But this narrative that it is somehow castrated is such naughty word.

But, hey, there’s a simple solution: use the old books. There. Dome. Now you can stop whining.