Taylor Navarro Joins Wizards of the Coast as D&D Designer

Wizards of the Coast has hired yet another D&D game designer - this time UK-based designer Taylor Navarro. Navarro announced that she was joining the D&D team this week on BlueSky. Navarro notably was a winner of the Diana Jones Emerging Designer Award back in 2024 and has worked for Ghostfire Gaming and Evil Hat in addition to working on several DMs Guild projects. Some of her most notable works was contributing to the DMs Guild publication Journeys Beyond the Radiant Citadel and publishing Not Yet: A Romantic Duet TTRPG.

Navarro is the fourth D&D game designer to join Wizards of the Coast in recent weeks, with James Haeck, Leon Barillaro, and Erin Roberts also announcing that they've joined D&D in a similar game designer capacity. Additionally, Justice Ramin Arman was promoted to Game Design Director of the group.

 

[HatWearingFool]

I think that we can look at 4E as being an example of a change too far - at least for many fans.

5) They should get away from precise measurements and use narrative terms for distance and time. If they are going to suggest theatre of the mind, they should make tools to facilitate that.

Wild stuff throughout....
What makes you think people want theatre of the mind? All the popular media (Stranger Things, Critical Role, etc) don't have theatre of the mind.

As it is, 5E is a system on life support.

I mean.... what?

D&D tries to be a panacea for the entirety of gaming and ends up doing nothing well. It should pick a lane and try to improve its delivery. Like, let Pathfinder handle the crunch, and give more tools to make a better narrative game where players can explore character arcs, build immersive campaigns, create unique character-defining abilities so they could envision their characters in a show like the Mighty Nein, skip past the "rats in the cellars" levels 1-3, assume shorter campaigns that match your research.

D&D knows how people play and doesn't give their players the tools to actually do anything about it. They're too hamstrung by tradition and corporate interests to create a game that doesn't feel like it belongs in 1999.

Being the lowest common denominator works very well for many companies in many industries. Lowen Common Denominator options are often derided by connoisseurs (pfft.... McDonald's, pfft Nintendo Switch, D&D) but there is a lot of success to be had in appealing to the masses.

 

[Retreater]

Wild stuff throughout....
What makes you think people want theatre of the mind? All the popular media (Stranger Things, Critical Role, etc) don't have theatre of the mind.

I mean, that's what the designers of 5E said "on the record." And that they gave away their battlemaps and miniatures used for their office game. Then you can see how their Campaign and Creature cases products (maps and tokens) were dropped into Ollies for pennies on the dollar when those products failed.
They have surveys that show this stuff. It's there if you want to search for it.

I mean.... what?

Yeah. I'm going to double down on my position.
Slight changes to try to keep 2014 relevant is like putting lipstick on a pig - to use an expression from my area. Instead of getting something exciting to reinvigorate the community, we got a boring retread of what we already owned for 10 years. And that is showing in the sales, the decline of D&DTube, the lack of any notable products in the past year.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I am afraid we have forgotten certain point: If they are still hiring new employeers then we can't know yet the roadmap for 2026.

D&D is mainly crunch. The players don't need to spend the money for soourcebooks of a TTRPG more focused into storytelling. Why should I buy again the new book of certain vampire clan when it tells the same story and it is only some pages for crunch?

 

[Imaro]

Yeah. I'm going to double down on my position.
Slight changes to try to keep 2014 relevant is like putting lipstick on a pig - to use an expression from my area. Instead of getting something exciting to reinvigorate the community, we got a boring retread of what we already owned for 10 years. And that is showing in the sales, the decline of D&DTube, the lack of any notable products in the past year.

What new sales data do you have?

Decline of D&DTube?? Please explain...

Notable Products in past year??? New Corebooks, 2 boxed starter sets that keep selling out?

 

[Afroconan]

I am afraid we have forgotten certain point: If they are still hiring new employeers then we can't know yet the roadmap for 2026.

Those new hires would certainly be on the road map for 2027.

There was already a robust enough design team without this new hires. Although it is weird we don't have news about the 2026 road map.

 

[bedir than]

And that is showing in the sales, the decline of D&DTube, the lack of any notable products in the past year.

This is disconnected from reality.
The sales were strong, according to the limited reality-based data available. With the Q3, no book released, data indicating more sales than the entirety of 2019 (see Mastering Dungeons, Ben Riggs, Hasbro earnings).

Who cares about D&D YouTube? The fact that fewer people are exploiting an algorithm to spout the nonsense like "D&D has declining sales" is good.

Eberron, Forgotten Realms, Dungeon Delves, and two extraordinary box sets that they struggle to keep in stock.

Reality exists.

 

[HatWearingFool]

I think it's reconcilable by the fact that Stranger Things played pretty fast and loose with the D&D rules they actually presented to the audience... at one point Sorcerer is mentioned as a class in the game which didn't even exist in D&D during the 80's. In fact I'd argue that Stranger Things... outside from rolling a d20 and moving miniatures didn't get into the minutiae of gameplay at all. Their playstyle was very sit around the table roll a d20, move some miniatures and fight iconic monsters... all of which can be done in 5e. What we didn't see was a meatgrinder, life is cheap, PC's dying left and right, gotcha traps game which is what old school is kind of known for.

Yes, I agree the game presented in Stranger Things was pretty loosey goosey....

 

[Afroconan]

Decline of D&DTube?? Please explain...

If they are talking about D&D youtubers and influencers branching out of D&D into other games that's mainly a result of the OGL crisis and a not insignificant part of them "dropping" D&D.

That has been corrected. Most are talking about D&D again with a sprinkle of other games (mostly Daggerheart or Shadowdark).

If they are talking about D&D youtuber reporting lower view counts, it is mostly because of changes in the YouTube algorithm.

Also I've heard that D&D TikTok is way bigger than D&D YouTube and it seems it's also a trend of people changing their video platform of choice. But don't quote on this last one.

 

[Scribe]

Slight changes to try to keep 2014 relevant is like putting lipstick on a pig - to use an expression from my area. Instead of getting something exciting to reinvigorate the community, we got a boring retread of what we already owned for 10 years. And that is showing in the sales, the decline of D&DTube, the lack of any notable products in the past year.

I think this dramatically misses the scale of 5e (not 5.5) in relation to any other system. ANY other system.

I say this as a fan of Shadowdark first, Daggerheart in a distant second, PF1 third, and 5e over the horizon as a 4th option. They only slightly changed 5e, because it was working at a scale/rate of success that was unheard of for Wizards, you do not kill the goose laying the golden egg (ignoring Magic for the moment...as the actual goose) so why would they change 5e?

Clean it up, pretty it up, aim it at the demographics they think are actually the majority of their players...boom 5.5.

I would say if its not doing as well, its because they pissed on the creators out there boosting 5e for free, with the OGL fiasco, which either directly or indirectly lead to the formation of games like SD, DH, and so on which...frankly people should be playing.

Now, if these new devs drag D&D further in the direction post Tashas 5e and 5.5 took it? Forget about nails in the coffin, at that point the dirt has been shoveled and the landscaping redone on any interest I have in the game of 'official' D&D.

But I have Shadowdark, so they can go nuts at this point.

 

[Charlaquin]

It seems like the primary driver of new players was Stranger Things. And weirdly it presented a very old school play style, but that didn’t seem to be a problem for people who got 5e when they bought books….

I don’t know how reconcile that but it is interesting.

There is very little D&D actually played on-screen in Stranger Things, so I doubt it really set up much in the way of expectations for people who it brought to the hobby.

Definitely, all the kids that signed up for D&D club at my kid’s school did so because of Stranger Things not Critical Role.

Personally I think Critical Role has had its cultural moment. It’ll keep going for a long time but I don’t think it’s drawing lot of new people into the hobby. And I don’t know if it’s portrayal of how ttrpg’s run at the table is doing the hobby many favours.

I know a lot of people who got into D&D because of Critical Role, but all of them are adults, and all of them have been playing for years at this point. Critical Role was very good at making the game more approachable for people who were already curious about it, but wanted to see an example of it being played before they were willing to try it themselves. Stranger Things seems to have done a better job of getting people interested who weren’t before, so it was arguably more effective at growing the hobby. I think both are past their cultural prime. Critical Role needed a major shakeup in the newest campaign to hold the interest of their audience, while Stranger Things has just ended in Game of Thrones Season 8 fashion. That is to say, with a finale fans were so disappointed with that it caused them to re-evaluate previous seasons in a less positive light. I don’t think we’ll be seeing nearly as many newcomers to the game who became interested because of Stranger Things from here on in. There will be some, just as there are still some getting interested because of Critical Role, but that firehose is probably going to slow down to a tiny trickle. I expect Hazbro has been anticipating that, with the series coming to an end, and that’s probably part of the push to create new original D&D media. They’re likely hoping brand awareness is high enough now that they can start getting people interested through tie-in TV series, movie, video games, etc (all of which are at least presumed to be more profitable than the tabletop game anyway).