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.

 

[Mournblade94]

because it was called a hackjob

It was only a highly educated person making decisions you don't like, not a hackjob.

I am, I speak and I work with Highly educated people everyday. I don't consider their work infallible. I would call this Calimshan section misplaced.

The Golden Age of Baghdad (also Toledo, Damascus, Mogul India, and other early modern Islamic empires) did have an advanced level of technology compared to its neighbors, which is why Dr. Shahreena Shahrani extrapolated that to what would happen in a world where magic is common, genies are real and the elements exist as semi-anthropomorphic killers.

I called it a hack job because it took the realm of Calimshan and remade it whole cloth. I'd much rather see a progression than somebody else's interpretation. Dr, Shahrani could have made their own campaign world which would have suited her ideas better than the Forgotten Realms.

 

[Mournblade94]

Is someone seriously suggesting that Carnival, something celebrated in several countries for centuries, is somehow a creation or limited only to the American South?

I didn't see anyone suggest anything of the sort. Kind of reminds me of that "you hate waffles meme" everyone talks about.

 

[Artamo]

I didn't see anyone suggest anything of the sort. Kind of reminds me of that "you hate waffles meme" everyone talks about.

Awesome! Because Carnival definitely goes back to the European middle age or Renaissance periods that many folks like to base their D&D games on.

 

[Mournblade94]

Awesome! Because Carnival definitely goes back to the European middle age or Renaissance periods that many folks like to base their D&D games on.

And? That adventure wasn't this case. Especially since the author said the setting is the "American South". The art for the adventure doesn't even suggest pseudo medieval or Renaissance.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Noted. Thanks for letting me know your buying pattern.

Isn't that what you've been doing throughout this thread?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Carnival is a festival dating back literally centuries. In New Orleans, it’s called Mardi Gras, but it’s still Carnival. They are both celebrating before Lent. And it’s celebrated in lot more places than just New Orleans and Rio - masks, colorful costumes, the whole shebang.

It was imported to the Americas by European missionaries. It’s still celebrated in places like Spain. In Northern Europe it was turned into gloomy shrove Tuesday by the puritans, where you might get a pancake if you are lucky.

Definitely a medieval/renaissance Europe thing.

 

[Artamo]

And? That adventure wasn't this case. Especially since the author said the setting is the "American South". The art for the adventure doesn't even suggest pseudo medieval or Renaissance.

And that’s interesting because I read that it was based on Carnevale, which is the name used in other countries. And surely colorful costumes and feathers have been used in Carnival celebrations for ages.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I suspect you guys are talking about different adventures.

There is a carnival-based adventure in Zinda and, separately, an American South analog horror adventure in Godsbreath.

 

[Mournblade94]

Isn't that what you've been doing throughout this thread?

Yes and I thanked them for it after noting it down.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Seeing how one of the new creators of the bullpen rewrote Calimshan to be a magetech hackjob when Eberron is already the house for that gives me very little hope they will stick with the D&D identity. Fortunately Ed Grenwood and co are writing more appropriate spource books for the Forgotten Realms on DMs guild.

The term is magitech, but hey at least you didnt call it steampunk i guess. And it isnt at all a hackjob, it is quite in line with the history and themes and inspiration of Calimshan, just written by someone who knows more than a cursory intro class worth of knowledge about the inspiration, ie Golden Age Baghdad.

And yeah, if magic like dnd has was real IRL in that time, Baghdad would have had "robots", and Europeans at least would have called said "robots" humonculus.

Calimshan is still very much the same place it was in older editions. It has just evolved a bit, like it should in a living world like FR.