Wizards of the Coast Hiring New Lead Designer and Head of Game Ecosystem for D&D

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Wizards of the Coast seems to be hiring replacements for Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford. This week, Wizards of the Coast posted job listings for a new "Head of Game Ecosystem" for Dungeons & Dragons, as well as a new "Principal Game Designer" for the game. Both are high level positions focused on product execution for Dungeons & Dragons, with 8+ years of experience in game design preferred for both roles.

Wizards of the Coast recently lost the two arguable faces of Dungeons & Dragons - Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins. Both left the company after the launch of D&D's revised 5th Edition ruleset. In an interview I did with Jess Lanzillo about the departures, she indicated that others within the D&D design team would be taking on greater responsibilities moving forward.

The job description for the Principal Game Designer role is below:


The Principal Game Designer leads the execution of Dungeons & Dragons’ major product releases. These tentpole projects span analog and digital expressions and may include setting content, rules-adjacent systems, adventures, and platform-native features. This role architects and stewards the design vision of sophisticated product suites, working closely with design leads, editorial, rules leadership, and digital teams to ensure cohesion and quality across every player touchpoint.

What You'll Do:
  • Lead the game design execution of major multi-SKU product suites, collaborating with cross-functional partners to align scope, tone, and player value.
  • Structure content development plans, including product mapping, design outlines, and contributor briefs that account for both analog + digital formats.
  • Guide designers, freelancers, and partners in developing content that reflects D&D’s tone, design ethos, and evolving format needs.
  • Collaborate with rules design leadership to integrate new mechanics or modular systems under development into flagship products.
  • Act as the primary design voice for your product(s), providing vision, review, and iteration through every phase of development.
  • Partner with the Executive Producer and Head of Product to ensure your projects meet the quality bar and are delivered on time and within budget.

The Head of Game Ecosystem job description is below:


The Head of Game Ecosystem is a crucial leadership position responsible for driving the complete design and evolution of the Dungeons & Dragons game system. This role ensures consistency across all game releases, both physical and digital, preserving the integrity of the rules and mechanics while encouraging innovation.

What You'll Do:
  • Define and drive the long-term vision for D&D’s core rules and gameplay systems across all product formats.
  • Own the rules roadmap and ensure mechanical consistency and interoperability between releases.
  • Propose and lead ecosystem-forward product initiatives—system-focused releases that reinforce the health, extensibility, and accessibility of the D&D ruleset across play formats and player types.
  • Lead and mentor a team of game designers and developers to deliver high-quality content at scale.
  • Partner closely with product management, narrative, and digital teams to align game systems with franchise goals and player needs.
  • Develop frameworks and tools to support scalable content creation—internally and externally—without compromising quality.
  • Represent D&D’s systems vision internally and externally, acting as a voice of authority and alignment across all design efforts.
 
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Christian Hoffer
Christian Hoffer

Christian Hoffer

Christian Hoffer is a veteran tabletop journalist and Forever DM. His non-tabletop hobbies include Pokemon, Ohio sports, and building miniatures.
LordEntrails said:
Who said they haven't? It's not uncommon for companies to publicly publish job opening when they already have the candidate they want, either internally or externally. Often they have policies that all job openings have to be open publicly to reduce favoritism/whoyouknow-ism. Plus Washington state has some unusual employment laws that could impact this as well.

The pool of those who are qualified is pretty darned small, and WotC management already know who 99% of those people are. These job openings are done for some other reason than to find qualified candidates.
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Yeah I'm interested to see who gets named for these roles.

My guess though is that they're not going to be internal candidates or rather Head of Game Ecosystem specifically won't be. That's more of a vibe I get than anything else though, don't put too much faith in it lol. Also the industry being small, whilst they might not be current WotC employees, I could easily see ex-WotC people coming back for these.

I suspect that you are right that they absolutely do have a candidate in mind for both roles - particularly for Head of Game Ecosystem - and this spec is probably tailored to the candidate's skillset and desired role. I mean, I've been there myself on both ends of that.
 

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Ruin Explorer said:
So this is kind of interesting.

From the job descriptions, and their listed functions, the "Principal Game Designer" is not really originating the game design, like the real concepts, the real "why we're doing this", but rather merely carrying it out. That's very unusual in TTRPGs. Not unheard-of I'm sure, but it's unusual. It's a little more common in video games.

You can see this because none of the major tasks for the Principal Game Designer are in fact, fundamental game design. Like look at this:


Yeah collaborate with "rules design leadership" - because that ain't you! You are not a "rules design leader", despite being "Principal Game Designer".

But the Head of Game Ecosystem is the real "game designer" in the sense it's normally used here. We can see this immediately:


Not just that but also the bullet points that follow it tell you ultimate, all major/serious rule design decisions re: D&D come down to the Head of Game Ecosystem, all major/serious rules concepts are likely to be originated by, or at least have to pass through and be completely approved by the Head of Game Ecosystems.

What this position effectively is, is what video games tend to call a "Game Director" (or sometimes Lead Game Designer or similar), but it contains some elements from a slightly a level even above that.

I'm not necessarily entirely critical of this. I don't know whether this will work well for WotC or not. But it is notable that this is a very corporate and videogame-company-like division of power that suggests WotC still has big plans for D&D in a way it certainly did not in, say, 2014.

The other point that's interesting here is that, if WotC intended to, say, continue with 5E for another 10 years, having both these roles probably wouldn't be necessary - you could likely combine them. To me that we have this particular setup, together with other information, suggests 5E 2024 doesn't have that long on the clock before we get 6E.
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I think that you are correct in that the "Head of Game Ecosystem" is the real lead designer and I agree that there are big plans I am not convinced that this means 6e.
The "Principal Game Designer" looks to me like managing multiple products in different niches. This could be video game, media projects, re-working D&DBeyond to be more flexible. More than that, that and other stuff I have not thought of.

From what I can tell, one of the remarkable things about 5e was the longevity in sales of the support materials. Curse of Strad, Tyranny of Dragons and so on were still selling up to the release of 2024. If 2024 succeeds in preserving this sales viability, then it has achieved a major design goal that may be more important than the actual sales of the 2024 rule books themselves.
It is probably to early to tell on this. Perhaps next year the picture will be clearer.

I also believe that D&DBeyond would have major issues in supporting a different D&D.
I also believe that D&DBeyond is not of much assistance in helping DMs run homebrewed games. Maps is a pretty good tool but campaign management is very lacking. I believe that there was not much coordination between the rules development side and D&DBeyond. I could see the "Principal Game Designer" helping to fix some of that.
I also believe that if WoTC was to really monetize the brand it will have to come from the digital, toy and collectable spaces. There is only so much that can be squeezed from the pen and paper players. They have other options.
 


UngainlyTitan said:
I also believe that D&DBeyond would have major issues in supporting a different D&D.
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I think you need to consider the timeline.

I'm not suggesting they're going to be switching to 6E tomorrow, but your logic here only works if I am.

I'm suggest they'll be moving that way in 3+ years. That's more than enough time to develop Beyond to support a different D&D - which probably would only be a 2E to 3E-type difference (i.e. smaller than 3E to 4E).

UngainlyTitan said:
From what I can tell, one of the remarkable things about 5e was the longevity in sales of the support materials. Curse of Strad, Tyranny of Dragons and so on were still selling up to the release of 2024. If 2024 succeeds in preserving this sales viability, then it has achieved a major design goal that may be more important than the actual sales of the 2024 rule books themselves.
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Those books all have diminishing returns on sales, as more and more of the potential market owns them. Just continuing to sell small numbers of older books isn't going to satisfy the sort of people who manage WotC, let alone the fiends who manage Hasbro.

And again, consider the timeline. Those books aren't going to be selling better in three years or more, they'll be selling worse and worse every year. WotC have already lost out by having abandon the 3D VTT/Sigil. They clearly think D&D still has money it, much like the banana stand.

UngainlyTitan said:
I also believe that if WoTC was to really monetize the brand it will have to come from the digital, toy and collectable spaces. There is only so much that can be squeezed from the pen and paper players.
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There's no either/or here. They can do both. They will do both. But they clearly found the enthusiasm for a 3D VTT and associated digital tchotckes wasn't what they'd hoped, and they also seem not to have been as successful at moving D&D into the "lifestyle brand" space as they'd hoped, so are looking at new angles. They have tens of millions of people who are potentially buyers of D&D, but it doesn't seem like they went big for 5E 2024 - in fact it seems like the "not a new edition" thing might even have backfired.

I suspect that any new edition will have "great synergies" with the spaces you're describing. This is partly why their real rules designer isn't a game designer, they're a Head of Game Ecosystem. I'll actually slightly surprised if that person is a TTRPG designer (not totally, but slightly). I would expect someone from videogames or boardgames, or possibly even outside games entirely.
 
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Not to disparage anyone here, and I do think that it's possible that we'd see a rules revision by 2030 (sure) but I think that any real "6e" speculation based on this job offering is... premature. In particular based on any premise that 2024 has been unsuccessful.

I don't think Hasbro (and by extension, WotC) is particularly concerned about the TTRPG of D&D, beyond "don't do anything to screw it up". They're going to be far, far more concerned in the near future with how to adapt the system to video games.

Which isn't to say that they won't continue to put out D&D books at the usual rate.
 


Ruin Explorer said:
I think you need to consider the timeline.

I'm not suggesting they're going to be switching to 6E tomorrow, but your logic here only works if I am.

I'm suggest they'll be moving that way in 3+ years. That's more than enough time to develop Beyond to support a different D&D - which probably would only be a 2E to 3E-type difference (i.e. smaller than 3E to 4E).


Those books all have diminishing returns on sales, as more and more of the potential market owns them. Just continuing to sell small numbers of older books isn't going to satisfy the sort of people who manage WotC, let alone the fiends who manage Hasbro.

And again, consider the timeline. Those books aren't going to be selling better in three years or more, they'll be selling worse and worse every year. WotC have already lost out by having abandon the 3D VTT/Sigil. They clearly think D&D still has money it, much like the banana stand.


There's no either/or here. They can do both. They will do both. But they clearly found the enthusiasm for a 3D VTT and associated digital tchotckes wasn't what they'd hoped, and they also seem not to have been as successful at moving D&D into the "lifestyle brand" space as they'd hoped, so are looking at new angles. They have tens of millions of people who are potentially buyers of D&D, but it doesn't seem like they went big for 5E 2024 - in fact it seems like the "not a new edition" thing might even have backfired.

I suspect that any new edition will have "great synergies" with the spaces you're describing. This is partly why their real rules designer isn't a game designer, they're a Head of Game Ecosystem. I'll actually slightly surprised if that person is a TTRPG designer (not totally, but slightly). I would expect someone from videogames or boardgames, or possibly even outside games entirely.
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Agree to differ, I still think it is too early to say (not that you are wrong as such, you could be right) but I think that some one like a "Product Game Designer" as describe is needed. The total lack of ability of different parts of WoTC to coordinate has been noted here many times in the past. Most notably with the release of the movie and BG3.
 

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