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]

I have checked out alot of the games on Itch. Some are games, but some are just like social exercises I get at annoying Education Development conferences.

OK?

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Still don't care. I judge the product on it's merits nothing else.

Passion is definitely less important than Vision. People can be passionate but not have a clear, important, or skilled vision. Conversely, someone can not particularly care about a project beyond it being their job to do so, but have a good eye for what will make a good product.

It's probably at least a little more common for those two things to come together when both are there, though!

But you're right that the ultimate product speaks for itself.

 

[AlViking]

...

I think you may want to go back to my original post so you know what I was actually talking about.

You mean this one?

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.

I don't care if something is a labor of love. It's not relevant one way or another to the results. Every product has financial limitations no matter what their size, company X may have more bills but they likely also have deeper pockets so that's I don't see how that's relevant either.

The only thing that's relevant to me is the end product.

 

[Micah Sweet]

We disagree. I don't care about "passion" because to me it means nothing. Far too often "passion" is just meaningless PR or someone trying to give their personal opinion more justification.

People can be passionate while producing something I don't like or coldly clinical while producing something I love.

All I care about is whether or not the end product works for me.

Me too. Obviously what those products actually are differs for us.

 

[AlViking]

Me too. Obviously what those products actually are differs for us.

Which is fine, I wouldn't expect everyone to like what I do. If they did life would be boring.

 

[SteveC]

I don't care if something is a labor of love. It's not relevant one way or another to the results. Every product has financial limitations no matter what their size, company X may have more bills but they likely also have deeper pockets so that's I don't see how that's relevant either.

It's been my experience that products that are a labor of love are just better than those that are by rote. That doesn't mean that they will necessarily be good, mind you, but something that's made by love tends to read better than something that's not. I am one of the mods for a game design forum, and I have purchased a lot of RPG stuff made by small, one-person shops. You can see the love in the writing. Now, a lot of the time you can also see it in the art and editing too, but ... you can at least tell a passion product by the author's voice. I don't expect that a lot of people care one bit about this, but it makes all the difference in the world to me. Even if I'm not going to do any more than read something, I'll enjoy the experience more if the author cares.

This is 100% a "your mileage may vary" situation, of course.

 

[soviet]

It's been my experience that products that are a labor of love are just better than those that are by rote. That doesn't mean that they will necessarily be good, mind you, but something that's made by love tends to read better than something that's not. I am one of the mods for a game design forum, and I have purchased a lot of RPG stuff made by small, one-person shops. You can see the love in the writing. Now, a lot of the time you can also see it in the art and editing too, but ... you can at least tell a passion product by the author's voice. I don't expect that a lot of people care one bit about this, but it makes all the difference in the world to me. Even if I'm not going to do any more than read something, I'll enjoy the experience more if the author cares.

This is 100% a "your mileage may vary" situation, of course.

Agreed completely. I want to see unique things that have a vision and don't compromise on delivering it.

 

[Parmandur]

maybe I was not clear enough initially, but since there was a strong undercurrent of ‘WotC is not allowed to innovate because some people will complain if they do’ I wanted to clarify this

But they do innovate, on most of their 5E products...?

But the very innovation often is met with controversy and push-back.

 

[Parmandur]

I still feel that they should make APs smaller in scope (less 12-15 levels of advancement more 4-6 levels of advancement) and flesh them out deeper. More "meat" (described NPCs, art, maps, monsters), and more "bones" (alternate paths to take, sidequests and subplots). Less "earth-shattering" plots and more connectivity for the PCs and their world. More Replay Value, too. (Do it again, but with different characters and choose different paths for a different play experience).

But I suppose I get why they have tried to avoid the old "this Adventure goes from Level 8-12" and stuck with "they all go from 1-12ish" (Yes, I know there are exceptions). They worry that anyone who doesn't have an extant party of 8th level characters won't buy the book without Levels 1-7. I'm not sure that is worth worrying about, though.

They did pretty much exactly that with the Spelljammer abd Planescape campaigns.

 

[AlViking]

It's been my experience that products that are a labor of love are just better than those that are by rote. That doesn't mean that they will necessarily be good, mind you, but something that's made by love tends to read better than something that's not. I am one of the mods for a game design forum, and I have purchased a lot of RPG stuff made by small, one-person shops. You can see the love in the writing. Now, a lot of the time you can also see it in the art and editing too, but ... you can at least tell a passion product by the author's voice. I don't expect that a lot of people care one bit about this, but it makes all the difference in the world to me. Even if I'm not going to do any more than read something, I'll enjoy the experience more if the author cares.

This is 100% a "your mileage may vary" situation, of course.

There's a ton of third party stuff. Some is good, some is bad, some was "made with love" some was made in the hopes of making some side money or getting hired by a company to write supplements or mods.

But we do not know which ones were made with love or passion or magical fairy dust. All we know is whether or not we like the end result. Someone can always claim their product was made out of some virtuous desire, but whether the source is some indie developer or a multinational conglomerate we don't really know.