D&D General Adam Bradford, Lauren Urban, Todd Kenrick Leave D&D Beyond

They join lead writer James Haeck, who left a couple of weeks ago. Adam Bradford is the D&D Beyond co-founder, and VP of Tabletop Gaming at its owner, Fandom. Lauren Urban is DDB's Community Manager. Todd Kenrick is the company's Creative Manager.

D&D Beyond, launched in 2017, is currently owned by Fandom (previously known as Wikia), after it acquired the company in 2018 from previous owner Curse, a Twitch subsidiary.

According to Cam Banks, creator of DDB owner Fandom's Cortex, all three received offers elsewhere which they could not turn down.

 

[darjr]

Joy Starr from Honest Trailers

 

[Dire Bare]

Joy Starr from Honest Trailers

Typo? Pretty sure it's "Joe", not "Joy". Although, Joe seems like a joy to have on the job . . .

Joe Starr is one of the guys behind "Honest Trailers" for sure. Interested to see what he brings to D&D Beyond.

 

[Dausuul]

Everybody who GMs a rpg is a game designer. If you homebrew you're a designer.

Oh, please. You're deliberately conflating the GM who occasionally tweaks a monster's stats with someone sitting down to build an entire game from scratch.

Most GMs in my experience do little or no "system homebrew." Settings and adventures, sure, they'll homebrew those all day long. But when it comes to anything involving rules text--magic items, monster stats, and so forth--they use the material in the books pretty much as written. Unlike the typical ENWorlder, they aren't crunch enthusiasts, and what they do could not remotely be called game design.

 

[darjr]

Typo? Pretty sure it's "Joe", not "Joy". Although, Joe seems like a joy to have on the job . . .

Joe Starr is one of the guys behind "Honest Trailers" for sure. Interested to see what he brings to D&D Beyond.

Yea

 

[Michael Linke]

Oh, please. You're deliberately conflating the GM who occasionally tweaks a monster's stats with someone sitting down to build an entire game from scratch.

If someone's designing a game from scratch, they don't need Cortex Prime or D&D. They're starting from scratch.

The GM tweaking the monsters stats is far more likely to need the system to be amenable to that kind of tweaking, and far more likely to appreciate working in a game like Cortex than the person that's building a new game from scratch.

 

[Dausuul]

The GM tweaking the monsters stats is far more likely to need the system to be amenable to that kind of tweaking, and far more likely to appreciate working in a game like Cortex than the person that's building a new game from scratch.

Every system is amenable to that kind of tweaking. At least, I've never met one that wasn't. 5E certainly is.

 

[Michael Linke]

And Cortex Prime is just the system that's most amenable to that kind of tweaking. Far more than 5e, at least.

 

[Dausuul]

And Cortex Prime is just the system that's most amenable to that kind of tweaking. Far more than 5e, at least.

I don't know what this even means. "More amenable?" How can a game be "more" or "less" amenable to tweaking monster stats? Does 5E sometimes hit a blue screen of death when you reduce a monster's hit points, and I've just been lucky that it's never happened to me?

Besides, choosing a game on the basis of "it helps me to make small ad hoc changes" is like choosing your car on the basis of how easy it is to put air in the tires.

 

[Michael Linke]

I don't know what this even means. "More amenable?" How can a game be "more" or "less" amenable to tweaking monster stats? Does 5E sometimes hit a blue screen of death when you reduce a monster's hit points, and I've just been lucky that it's never happened to me?

Besides, choosing a game on the basis of "it helps me to make small ad hoc changes" is like choosing your car on the basis of how easy it is to put air in the tires.

Means exactly what it says. "More" "amenable". But, are you honestly telling me you've never seen a fan made spell, class feature, magic item or monster in an RPG that was far too weak, far too powerful, or had rules that didn't interact with other game mechanics, or that attempted to interact with the author's misinterpretations of the game's mechanics?

I feel like you've not actually read Cortex Prime if you think we're talking about small ad hoc changes or tweaking monsters' hit points. It's more akin to the ability to gut D&D's vancian magic spell system and replace it with a blood magic system, while also introducing a mechanically game-able high stakes horse racing sub-game because for some reason 4 of your 5 player characters decided to take back stories that revolved around racing horses for money, and D&D doesn't really have deep systems for running such a thing besides slapping movement rates on mounts.

 

[Michael Linke]

And, fair enough, "tweaking stats" was your example but I ran with it, so that's probably why it seemed like it began and ended with simple stat tweaks.