Justice Ramin Arman Promoted to Game Design Director of Dungeons & Dragons

Game designer Justice Ramin Arman has been internally promoted to the position of Game Design Director for Dungeons & Dragons. Arman announced the news yesterday over on Linkedin, and later specified what the role entails over on Discord. As Game Design Director, Arman will be responsible for directing the game design department as a whole. Previously, Arman was a Managing Game Director, which was a leadership position but not one placed in charge of the entire D&D department.

Arman has worked for Wizards of the Coast since 2022 and has led several projects, including the most recent Starter Set and Quests From the Infinite Staircase. Prior to that, he worked as a game designer for Beadle and Grimm's.

Several months ago, Wizards of the Coast announced that they were hiring a principal game designer for Dungeons & Dragons, seemingly to replace Jeremy Crawford (who left Wizards earlier this year), so it appears that Arman is stepping into that role at least in some fashion.

In a statement provided to EN World, a Wizards representative noted that they are thrilled to see Justice continue his great work with D&D.

 

[Uta-napishti]

Congratulations to Justice! I think this is great news for the rest of us too. Good to have some fresh blood mixed in with the veterans.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That internal 'resistance' would 100% be a result of the social media climate at the time.

I don't think so personally, I think it's much more likely it was the result of the particular risk-averse corporate leadership being worried that it wouldn't fit with D&D's ultrasafe image.

I don't think the social media climate is overall more positive re: the particular issues Dark Sun covers - if anything, some of them are riskier topics now than they were 3 years ago. Maybe you'd get slightly less pushback re: slavery, but climate change and authoritarian leaders? I think you're much more likely to get Elon Musk to make a Very Angry (and definitely not all 100% ketamine-induced) post about how mad he is WotC have made Dark Sun all about climate change and toppling dictators (somehow completely ignoring these being major themes of the original) now than then, whilst throwing around the w-word. It'd hardly be out-of-character.

What I think is more likely is WotC have decided D&D playing it ultrasafe is probably not going to be successful longer-term, and that a little bit of controversy is probably a good thing, so long as it's not just the accidental result of dumbassery like the Hadozee stuff.

I could be wrong. The proof will be in the pudding. It's certainly possible for example that the turnaround on Dark Sun had nothing to do with changing risk assessments - it could be they think they've found some genius way to sanitize the hell out of it, and probably in reality make just about everyone mad with them!

 

[Scribe]

I don't think so personally, I think it's much more likely it was the result of the particular risk-averse corporate leadership being worried that it wouldn't fit with D&D's ultrasafe image.

I mean that ultrasafe image, imo of course, is because of the social media climate of the time, so its a reinforcing loop.

Either way, its not a safe path to tread, and I would shocked if Dark Sun checks the boxes for me personally so its all academic.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I mean that ultrasafe image, imo of course, is because of the social media climate of the time, so its a reinforcing loop.

I dunno, I feel like WotC were actually at-odds with the overall RPG-playing (including super-casual) social media climate, not like, violently so, but they weren't in-tune with it. Like, games like Daggerheart or Shadowdark seem much more in-tune with that than WotC. The increasing pure safe-ness of D&D didn't seem to be social-media-driven, to me - by the time it was becoming obvious (say, 3-4 years ago), people had generally started wanting edgier games (just subject-wise, not "by being ineptly racist" or exclusionary), not less edgy, not more child-friendly, which was WotC's apparent direction until more recently.

That said, it doesn't mean you're wrong - it could simply mean WotC leadership had misread the climate, or read too much into certain things. OGL 2.0 certainly demonstrated that, for example, WotC thought everyone was more scared of bad people writing a bad 3PP D&D book (OH NO) and that this would be a way more compelling argument for pushing through OGL 2.0 (indeed, they seemed to think it was a silver bullet) than it actually was. So misreading does seem very plausible.

 

[Scribe]

I dunno, I feel like WotC were actually at-odds with the overall RPG-playing (including super-casual) social media climate, not like, violently so, but they weren't in-tune with it. Like, games like Daggerheart or Shadowdark seem much more in-tune with that than WotC. The increasing pure safe-ness of D&D didn't seem to be social-media-driven, to me - by the time it was becoming obvious (say, 3-4 years ago), people had generally started wanting edgier games (just subject-wise, not "by being ineptly racist" or exclusionary), not less edgy, not more child-friendly, which was WotC's apparent direction until more recently.

That said, it doesn't mean you're wrong - it could simply mean WotC leadership had misread the climate, or read too much into certain things. OGL 2.0 certainly demonstrated that, for example, WotC thought everyone was more scared of bad people writing a bad 3PP D&D book (OH NO) and that this would be a way more compelling argument for pushing through OGL 2.0 (indeed, they seemed to think it was a silver bullet) than it actually was. So misreading does seem very plausible.

I think they definitely misread it, and their own player base, but again I believe firmly they listened to the vocal minority of Twitter, way more than they should have.

Regardless, tis the season, not for this. Merry Chistmas!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Hasbro is an excessively cautious company, that has been producing the same products for many decades (heading for a century), and expecting to continue to be able to do so forever more. Occasionally, several years too late, it tries to play catch up. A successful company should be anticipating and setting trends. In this light it's understandable that they set their reputation as being family friendly very high (and to be fair it hasn't done Nintendo any harm).

Meanwhile, WotC are slowly shuffling out the grandad generation (like most folk on this forum) to replace them with the dad generation, like Justice. But still not in touch with their primary market, and remaining very male.

 

[Parmandur]

Hasbro is an excessively cautious company, that has been producing the same products for many decades (heading for a century), and expecting to continue to be able to do so forever more. Occasionally, several years too late, it tries to play catch up. A successful company should be anticipating and setting trends. In this light it's understandable that they set their reputation as being family friendly very high (and to be fair it hasn't done Nintendo any harm).

Meanwhile, WotC are slowly shuffling out the grandad generation (like most folk on this forum) to replace them with the dad generation, like Justice. But still not in touch with their primary market, and remaining very male.

I mean, employing middle schoolers is somewhat problematic.