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.

 

[Faolyn]

Everyone wants this.

What’s weird to me is that you treat this as a new thing. You and others regularly act like all 5e books are soulless and only made to sell money. As if all of 5e transitioned away from “art” into “corpo-slop” . . . when do you folks draw the line? Is it still “Tasha’s.”

Heck, half of 2e was put out solely to make money, to the point that D&D was competing with itself. And we all know how that went.

Unfortunately, the only way you're going to get products that are entirely labors of love is if you stick strictly with small press and indie stuff. Larger companies may still care more about the game because they don't have a board of directors breathing down their necks, but they also have more bills to pay because they're larger.

 

[Zardnaar]

Everyone wants this.

What’s weird to me is that you treat this as a new thing. You and others regularly act like all new 5e books are soulless and only made to sell money. As if all of 5e transitioned away from “art” into “corpo-slop” . . . when do you folks draw the line? Is it still “Tasha’s.”

When did D&D 5e “sell out”? Do you think the early 5e books weren’t designed as “products”? In my opinion, some of the early books are the weakest in all of 5e. Princes of the Apocalypse, the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide, Hoard of the Dragon Queen/Rise of Tiamat.

What makes Tasha’s and Xanathar’s so different? Or Volo’s Guide to Monsters and Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons? Ravnica vs. Ravenloft?

In my opinion, 5e didn’t even really find its footing until 2016-2017, with release of the 5e SRD, Curse of Strahd, Volo’s Guide to Monsters, Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, and Tomb of Annihilation. And it wasn’t until Ravnica that they found their main model for releasing setting books to great success.

There have been recent books that have received a lot of praise (Planescape, Book of Many Things, the new core books). There were early books that were clearly underdeveloped and not well received. And vice versa. There are early 5e products I have a lot of praise for and newer ones that I have a lot of criticism of. Most of the newer ones that you folk bemoan as the herald of 5e’s doom (Tasha’s, Van Richten’s, the new core books) . . . have mostly glowing reviews. Clearly there are a lot of people that enjoy the newer direction. Making this grand-standing statement about how you think the game should be treated like art and not a product when you mean “they changed the direction and I don’t like it” is practically accusing people that do like the new direction and books of being corpo shills.

Also, to bring this back around to the topic of the thread, Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins were around for all of that. They were the leads of the D&D 5e design team for the past 10 years. If you were to grab a random 5e book off your shelf, their names are probably credited on its first page.

What do you think their role was in the shift towards “product-ification” you think happened? If the shift in quality was so drastic, where were they?

Peak 5E was 2016-19 the decline was Tashas.

Not an absolute there's better post tashas product than 2016-19 but general trend.

Tashas was the book of powercreep.

WotC 5E adventures have always been hit and miss (more miss) tbh. Strahd, Tomb of Annihilation, Theros, Saltmarsh, Eberron, Ravnica, Xanathars. Very solid run except Waterdeep books. Best post tashas books on a tier list are about a B+. Lots of Cs possibly a D or 2.

Alot is niche, bad, experimental or not to taste or all of the above.

Anthologies are the best post tashas book. Hard to screw up every small adventure and some are also excellent.

WotC efforts or lack of cf adventures are also immediately obvious if you used late 3.5 Paizo ones, Pathfinder or even Kobold Press 5E ones.


Fizbans was decent but niche. I got it for free but full retail idk about that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Everyone wants this.

What’s weird to me is that you treat this as a new thing. You and others regularly act like all new 5e books are soulless and only made to sell money. As if all of 5e transitioned away from “art” into “corpo-slop” . . . when do you folks draw the line? Is it still “Tasha’s.”

When did D&D 5e “sell out”? Do you think the early 5e books weren’t designed as “products”? In my opinion, some of the early books are the weakest in all of 5e. Princes of the Apocalypse, the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide, Hoard of the Dragon Queen/Rise of Tiamat.

What makes Tasha’s and Xanathar’s so different? Or Volo’s Guide to Monsters and Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons? Ravnica vs. Ravenloft?

In my opinion, 5e didn’t even really find its footing until 2016-2017, with release of the 5e SRD, Curse of Strahd, Volo’s Guide to Monsters, Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, and Tomb of Annihilation. And it wasn’t until Ravnica that they found their main model for releasing setting books to great success.

There have been recent books that have received a lot of praise (Planescape, Book of Many Things, the new core books). There were early books that were clearly underdeveloped and not well received. And vice versa. There are early 5e products I have a lot of praise for and newer ones that I have a lot of criticism of. Most of the newer ones that you folk bemoan as the herald of 5e’s doom (Tasha’s, Van Richten’s, the new core books) . . . have mostly glowing reviews. Clearly there are a lot of people that enjoy the newer direction. Making this grand-standing statement about how you think the game should be treated like art and not a product when you mean “they changed the direction and I don’t like it” is practically accusing people that do like the new direction and books of being corpo shills.

Also, to bring this back around to the topic of the thread, Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins were around for all of that. They were the leads of the D&D 5e design team for the past 10 years. If you were to grab a random 5e book off your shelf, their names are probably credited on its first page.

What do you think their role was in the shift towards “product-ification” you think happened? If the shift in quality was so drastic, where were they?

Following the orders of the people who control the money, just like everyone else.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Heck, half of 2e was put out solely to make money, to the point that D&D was competing with itself. And we all know how that went.

Unfortunately, the only way you're going to get products that are entirely labors of love is if you stick strictly with small press and indie stuff. Larger companies may still care more about the game because they don't have a board of directors breathing down their necks, but they also have more bills to pay because they're larger.

A larger company that isn't publicly owned is probably the sweet spot.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Following the orders of the people who control the money, just like everyone else.

And they weren’t at the beginning of 5e, or earlier? The corporatization of WotC only happened when you started not liking their books? Sounds like begging the question.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And they weren’t at the beginning of 5e, or earlier? The corporatization of WotC only happened when you started not liking their books? Sounds like begging the question.

The whole "Tasha's as power creep and turning point" opinion has been around for a while, and as was said above there are exceptions on both sides of the line in both directions. It is a trend that some believe. You certainly don't have to.

And for the record, the 5e base rules were great, and form the base for the IMO better for me rules I use today, but the corporatization started long ago. It just wasn't a problem for me until relatively recently.

 

[Parmandur]

And they weren’t at the beginning of 5e, or earlier? The corporatization of WotC only happened when you started not liking their books? Sounds like begging the question.

Apropos of nothing...

My brother in Gygax...have you heard the Good Word of the ignore feature?

 

[Hussar]

And they weren’t at the beginning of 5e, or earlier? The corporatization of WotC only happened when you started not liking their books? Sounds like begging the question.

This is the standard line since like forever. Everything I like is a labour of love and is all about quality and serving the community. Everything I don't like is corporate sell out and soul less. It's a line of argument that stretches back for decades. Totally without any actual value and 100% done in bad faith.

 

[AlViking]

Heck, half of 2e was put out solely to make money, to the point that D&D was competing with itself. And we all know how that went.

Unfortunately, the only way you're going to get products that are entirely labors of love is if you stick strictly with small press and indie stuff. Larger companies may still care more about the game because they don't have a board of directors breathing down their necks, but they also have more bills to pay because they're larger.

Ah, the old canard about how only small companies that are passionate about their work are any good. Being passionate about something doesn't guarantee a good product, working for a big company does not mean people are not passionate about what they do. I've worked on teams with close to a hundred other developers and for companies where I was the sole techie. You'll find people who are dedicated and passionate or people that are just in it for the paycheck in almost all companies.

As a wise alien once said, size matters not.

 

[Mournblade94]

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 never distinguished it or thought about it really. I just see it as an analogy. I'm not easily offended though, by things like this. For me personally it's not a big deal.