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.

 

[Mournblade94]

Sure, and if someone refers to someone leaving an organization by saying they are “rats fleeing a sinking ship”, they are implying negative qualities of both the person and the organization.

Being a common phrase doesn’t make it not a crappy way to refer to people.

Frequency of use doesn’t change the nature of the saying from negative to neutral. Especially when someone is saying that it is that rather than a different more neutral/benign dynamic, as in the post I replied to.

There is no reason whatsoever to pretend that the comment in question was anything but a gross dig at both wotc, and Chris and Jeremy.

OK my brother is a federal Firefighter on an army base. All of the guys make a reference to "Rats fleeing the ship," because there is a huge amount of military retirments right now. The NAVY guys are ALL referring to this for obvious reasons.

I'm a teacher. Education sucks right now. At retirment parties we refer to ourselves as Rats fleeing the sinking ship.

Honestly this is stretch.

 

[AlViking]

Lets be honest though. It wasn't 5e that made D&D popular it was Critical Role.

D&D was seeing double digit growth before CR was even a thing and sales continued the same trajectory as people started watching the show. For that matter they had been playing PF in their home game but switched to D&D because it was more streamlined and easier to follow. Perhaps CR was made popular because of D&D.

CR certainly didn't hurt and live streams of all kinds helped show what it really looked like to play the game. But they were just one factor of many.

 

[Zardnaar]

I do it blame the freeloading mentality that much. It has been part of the culture for many years. The DM buys the content and sometimes the group chips in a few bucks.

At the end of the day, this is the culture that arose around the game. A player does not need much mater and only 1 in 5 players become a DM.

It would be nice to see a change; however, I doubt it will happen.

I even keep extra PHs on hand in case players cannot afford one. Even PH sales may be majority DMs.

I own 5 5E phb.

 

[mamba]

I read every quarterly report before D&D got big. D&D wasn't even worth mentioning. In fact if 5e had the reception of 4e I assure you WOTC would be MtG and no D&D besides a board game.

WOTC Magic money kept WOTC in business. D&D was a negligible comparison.

agreed, it was, if you go further back, the only reason we still have D&D is MtG (WotC), basically your

Magic SAVED D&D from TSR bankruptcy. Magic saved D&D from being a shelved brand at Hasbro.

but that is a long shot from 'MtG pays for D&D's ads and VTT because D&D cannot afford to today'

Magic Card sales pay for D&D ads

I mean that MTG makes so much money that WOTC can throw around money and experiment on the D&D willy nilly.

They have two failed VTTs. TWO. D&D book didn't pay for that alone.

While still funding 90%+ of the adds in the fantasy TTRPG industry. If not the whole industry.

 

[Cergorach]

So you are saying Mearls makes less now than he did at WOTC?

Possibly. His reputation got damaged. He got fired in the regular Christmas roundup. He had a couple of different projects that didn't go anywhere (as far as I could tell). He now works at Chaosium. He could of course have a TON of side gigs.

"We have Vanilla."

But I like Vanilla!

D&D written by AI would be the end of D&D as a published product. Why would anyone buy that when they could do exactly the same thing themselves?

Because doing that would take time, effort, and probably would cost money too for a good LLM/image generator. In the same way that you can cook for yourself, but people still eat out or go to fast food for convenience. This is also shown in online games where you can grind out most things, but many people still choose to pay for shortcuts.

So you are telling me that the 800 lb Gorilla, with the biggest name, biggest brand, biggest budget, who could hire the best and brightest, cannot sell a book that BUILDS ON or modularizes 5e to offer a different perspective?

Despite likely hundreds of examples from 3PP? Some of which have made millions of dollars WITHOUT the brand name and marketing?

Really?

You say it right there yourself. "Made millions of dollars..." Which is (part of) the problem, it doesn't make enough money. The reason they PG-13 everything and blend everything smooth is so they can appeal to the largest amount of people. That you're not one of those people is not their problem.

Remember those 'adult' books in 3rd edition? I didn't get the feeling that it sold very well at the time, I could be wrong of course. They sell now very well and for quite a bit as well. But I could totally see those being absolute PITAs to work with from a corporate/marketing point of view. The amount of online cancel culture that would stir up would be not worth it in the first place.

When you see how certain people react to Dark Sun with absolute hate for example, why bother? They probably still have the sales figures from 4e, so that's also probably a reason why it wasn't resurrected. The amount of controversies that the reboots of Spelljammer and Planescape generated also don't bode well for the old stuff.

And why bother? There are third parties that quite successfully are catering to these tastes and demands. I might actually prefer to keep the non-mainstream old settings purely in the fan section. Maybe even get them into DMsguild... There is some great stuff being produced there...

 

[mamba]

I don't think WOTC would throw half a years profit into an unproved VTT system if they don't also have MTG making 10 times that money.

Half a year's profit of D&D or of all of WotC? I don't think it was the latter, and they threw more than that at DDB...

That MtG gives them the security that they can 'gamble' with D&D profits on a 3d VTT is not the same as MtG financing the VTT. You also seem to have dropped the 'D&D cannot even afford ads on its own' bit, which is where this started...

 

[mamba]

That is NOW.

when exactly do you think they started work on Sigil?

If not for VTT speculation D&D would have died at 3rd.

so what, what does this have to do with today? We are not talking about 10 to 20 years ago

 

[Micah Sweet]

Possibly. His reputation got damaged. He got fired in the regular Christmas roundup. He had a couple of different projects that didn't go anywhere (as far as I could tell). He now works at Chaosium. He could of course have a TON of side gigs.


But I like Vanilla!


Because doing that would take time, effort, and probably would cost money too for a good LLM/image generator. In the same way that you can cook for yourself, but people still eat out or go to fast food for convenience. This is also shown in online games where you can grind out most things, but many people still choose to pay for shortcuts.


You say it right there yourself. "Made millions of dollars..." Which is (part of) the problem, it doesn't make enough money. The reason they PG-13 everything and blend everything smooth is so they can appeal to the largest amount of people. That you're not one of those people is not their problem.

Remember those 'adult' books in 3rd edition? I didn't get the feeling that it sold very well at the time, I could be wrong of course. They sell now very well and for quite a bit as well. But I could totally see those being absolute PITAs to work with from a corporate/marketing point of view. The amount of online cancel culture that would stir up would be not worth it in the first place.

When you see how certain people react to Dark Sun with absolute hate for example, why bother? They probably still have the sales figures from 4e, so that's also probably a reason why it wasn't resurrected. The amount of controversies that the reboots of Spelljammer and Planescape generated also don't bode well for the old stuff.

And why bother? There are third parties that quite successfully are catering to these tastes and demands. I might actually prefer to keep the non-mainstream old settings purely in the fan section. Maybe even get them into DMsguild... There is some great stuff being produced there...

All I ever want from WotC is to put their settings on the Guild and let other people produce content for them.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

OK my brother is a federal Firefighter on an army base. All of the guys make a reference to "Rats fleeing the ship," because there is a huge amount of military retirments right now. The NAVY guys are ALL referring to this for obvious reasons.

I'm a teacher. Education sucks right now. At retirment parties we refer to ourselves as Rats fleeing the sinking ship.

Honestly this is stretch.

Are we going to pretend that there isn’t a difference of usage between the use of a phrase toward one’s own in-group vs toward an exterior person or group?

Really?

I find it flabbergasting that anyone would view the idiom as anything less than insulting when directed externally.

I mean, I call men spoiled idiots all the time, but I wouldn’t use those words for a group I don’t belong to. Literally everyone knows that there is a difference.

 

[darjr]

when exactly do you think they started work on Sigil?


so what, what does this have to do with today? We are not talking about 10 to 20 years ago

Looks like it may have been before 2020.

D&D Insider - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

In 2022, Wizards announced that a new virtual tabletop (VTT) for Dungeons & Dragons was in development.

An official D&D virtual tabletop system is being developed in Unreal Engine 5

The "D&D digital play experience" will work alongside D&D Beyond and the next Dungeons & Dragons ruleset.

www.pcgamer.com