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.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Maybe the Yawning Portal was equally bad? Tales from the Yawning Portal (2017) only has 5 years on Journeys through the Radiant Citadel (2022). The Candelkeep Mysteries (2021) is only one year older and has significantly more sales.

At some point I noticed that my store's system has some of the release dates wrongly entered (I think it was a sorting error done at some point in history). I'd thought that I'd caught them all, but apparently not. You are correct, the dates I glanced at were wrong, and I probably should have noticed.

Tales from the Yawning Portal is a collection of adventures from previous editions for 5e. This would possibly appeal to folks with nostalgia for those old adventures. Others might see this as cheap recycling, nostalgia exploitation, or just don't have any interest in this anthology. The same could be said about Journeys through the Radiant Citadel, but in this case fans of multicultural settings... On the flipside, there are folks that aren't interested or actively hate such settings.

You're right that there's a whole bunch of different criteria that make up the sales of things. People decide to buy, or not to buy, a thing for a variety of reasons. I would say that for my customers, at least (I can't speak for elsewhere), a bigger reason that they would choose not to buy JTtRC would be, not because of "multicultural settings" but because they were not settings that they knew, and not ones that they were currently playing in. Others might buy it precisely FOR that reason.

There might be a few that are somehow anti-multicultural, but not many, I'm happy to say.

I also wonder if the Candlekeep Mysteries doesn't benefit from being set in the Forgotten Realms, the Sword Coast,

Yes, that's a bigger deal, I think. And I agree that Yawning Portal will suffer in many people's eyes for being a retread, though that is also part of its charm for others.

 

[mamba]

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

they might, but it will be for products that are already well under way, so they are not making a difference to what will be released in 2026

 

[Reynard]

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

Sure there are some people that did not like that aspect, but I don't think they are the majority. Most people realized it just wasn't very good.

I mean, there was a whole movement of people who decided that the final episode must have been a dream and Netflix was going to drop the REAL finale...

 

[mamba]

Sure there are some people that did not like that aspect, but I don't think they are the majority. Most people realized it just wasn't very good.

I don’t know, most feedback I saw was positive. Nowhere near GoT levels of disappointment.

Personally I still like season 1 best and am fine with forgetting season 3 ever happened

 

[Charlaquin]

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

Oh, I’ve seen an absolute ton of critique of 5. The constant exposition, the degradation of the stakes, the poor use of the characters, the lack of consequences for basically anything… there was a sizable enough contingent of folks convinced that the epilogue in the second half of the last episode was so bad it could only have been an illusion created by Vecna to pacify the protagonists and keep them locked in a dream world, and that there was a secret true final episode yet to come out, that Netflix actually crashed on January 6th, the day people had convinced themselves the true finale was going to come out.

Also, RE: Will being gay, that’s been heavily implied since the first season (though, leave it to homophobes to utterly fail to pick up on even the most obvious queer subtext). There were a lot of folks who had convinced themselves that Mike was also gay and in the closet and they would end up together in the end. And to be fair, they weren’t pulling that reading out of nowhere, there’s a lot pointing to Mike and El’s relationship not working because despite his best efforts Mike really isn’t interested in her, and they were definitely playing with tension in Mike and Will’s relationship stemming from Will’s feelings for Mike. But, those of us who have been around the block a few times knew there was no way they were going to end up together in the current media landscape. Less media-savvy queer folks were pretty disappointed with that aspect of the ending, but that’s definitely not where the majority of the critique of the final season was coming from.

Regardless, yeah, homophobes were mad Will got a coming out scene, and some queer folks were mad because his coming out scene kinda sucked. Especially because his earlier self-acceptance scene was so empowering, there was some pretty bad whiplash from that to his coming out, which was terribly disempowering.

 

[TwoSix]

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

This is why I'm so glad I insulate myself from the online echo chamber of media criticism. 3 was easily my favorite season, and I really liked the season 5 ending. It wasn't quite as good as the first half of season 5, which was fantastic, but very enjoyable.

 

[HatWearingFool]

Sure there are some people that did not like that aspect, but I don't think they are the majority. Most people realized it just wasn't very good.

I mean, there was a whole movement of people who decided that the final episode must have been a dream and Netflix was going to drop the REAL finale...

To me that seemed like a pretty vocal minority and a group that realized they could generate some clicks by pumping the theory.

I only have anecdotal evidence but of the people I know only one person actually quasi thought that was a thing and mostly followed it for the same reason people read tabloids.

Everyone else I know was ok to very happy with ending and thought only wackos were into “conformity gate”.

Also the people I know are at least moderately interested into the follow up series coming that is set in the same world but at a different time with a different cast. If they were secretly unhappy with the finale I doubt that would be the case.

On the other hand I only know two people interested in the animated series coming that is set with the same characters that occurs between seasons 2&3. I really wonder about the reasoning behind that project

 

[Reynard]

3 was easily my favorite season

That is... huh.
Glad you liked it, I guess.

 

[TwoSix]

That is... huh.
Glad you liked it, I guess.

It had a mall!

 

[Reynard]

It had a mall!

You don't have to unsell me on it; I already hated it.