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.

 

[Reynard]

The major drivers seem to have been to move away from embarrassing cultural anachoniama still in 2014 (Race, etc), to update the art style to appeal to teens of the 20s instead of teens of the Teens, to account for all the Sage Advice input of a decade (Crawford said as much), and to make a DMG aimed at on boarding new DMs and to improve the books as a reference tool overall. As you say, the people starting in 2026 are a different generation than in 2014...heck, the target audience now include a people not born when the 2014 rules dropped. As such, they don't need anything new, it is all new.

Sure. Now why screwing up half the spells?

 

[Charlaquin]

Sure. Now why screwing up half the spells?

A lot of it is almost certainly a case of trying to trim wordcount to make room for all the new art, and the folks doing the trimming not realizing that some of the words they were cutting had important game rule functions. An easy mistake to make if they weren’t involved in writing the spells the first time around. I think it can be easy to forget as a consumer of these books that they’re being created by teams, and there is room for miscommunication between members of those teams, as well misremembering the specifics of different iterations of the rules revisions.

 

[Parmandur]

Sure. Now why screwing up half the spells?

Wouldn't agree that they did...? They did rebalamce things a bit, but all to the good, IMO...and new players won't know that the Spells were chanfwd when they buy the Starter Set.

 

[Reynard]

Wouldn't agree that they did...? They did rebalamce things a bit, but all to the good, IMO...and new players won't know that the Spells were chanfwd when they buy the Starter Set.

Well, if the new players won't know, no worries...

Look, all I can say is that for me and my players, it is a worse version of the rules and less fun to play.

They spent all that time "playtesting" and the results were sub-par.

 

[Imaro]

Well, if the new players won't know, no worries...

Look, all I can say is that for me and my players, it is a worse version of the rules and less fun to play.

They spent all that time "playtesting" and the results were sub-par.

Well luckily you still have 2014 and the adventures, campaign books, etc for '24 should be widely compatible. I and my players on the other hand are enjoying what we want out of '14 and '24.

 

[Charlaquin]

Wouldn't agree that they did...? They did rebalamce things a bit, but all to the good, IMO...and new players won't know that the Spells were chanfwd when they buy the Starter Set.

There were some r mistakes that occurred in the revisions. Spells that had slight wording changes but no obvious functional changes, except when read very carefully, whereupon it would become clear that the deletion of some seemingly innocuous word or phrase actually had major implications. I’m thinking for example of Polymorph, which IIRC lost some clause about the spell ending when you run out of the temporary hit points or something. I don’t remember exactly what the snafu was, which speaks to the difference between online rules discussion and actual play experience. But it clearly wasn’t an intentional change to the functionality of the spell, just a new corner case introduced by the rewording.

 

[mamba]

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.

we could, it’s not like their turnaround on products is 3 to 6 months, so the new hires will not make a difference to the 26 lineup

 

[Gradine]

There were some r mistakes that occurred in the revisions. Spells that had slight wording changes but no obvious functional changes, except when read very carefully, whereupon it would become clear that the deletion of some seemingly innocuous word or phrase actually had major implications. I’m thinking for example of Polymorph, which IIRC lost some clause about the spell ending when you run out of the temporary hit points or something. I don’t remember exactly what the snafu was, which speaks to the difference between online rules discussion and actual play experience. But it clearly wasn’t an intentional change to the functionality of the spell, just a new corner case introduced by the rewording.

This. I've found that the people who nitpick any possible wording of the way things are written to declare the most outlandish possible interpretation "RAW" are far and away the exception, no matter how much they may think of themselves as the rule.

 

[bedir than]

we could, it’s not like their turnaround on products s 3 to 6 months, so the new hires will not make a difference to the 26 lineup

They won't lead new projects, but there's no indication that they can't contribute some bits and pieces.

Also, there's only four new design types to our knowledge. The staffing is at over a dozen designers. Products will be produced.

 

[mamba]

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.

really? that is not what I am hearing, the low point were seasons two and particularly 3. 5 ended well, except that some people are unhappy that one of the kids turned out to be gay and that got a full five minutes or so on the show