Hirings and firings at D&D over the last few years: a changing of the guard?

Over the last few years, there's been a major changing of the guard over at Dungeons & Dragons. Wizards of the Coast is looking for its third president in three years, the D&D 5E lead team of Mearls, Crawford, and Perkins, is gone, and a slew of new game design hires have taken place this year. This all followed a massive sweep of layoffs by WotC owner Hasbro back in 2023, where over a thousand employees lost their jobs, including about 100 from WotC itself. Dan Ayoub now heads D&D, and is spearheading a new 'franchise' model, and the brand as a whole is turning its gaze back on the past with announcements of a new ICONS line and a renewed focus on older worlds and legacy creators.

While it's impossible to track every staff change at a company the size of Wizards of the Coast, we have covered some of the main events over the last few years.

• WotC President Chris Cocks is Hasbro's New CEO (Jan 2022)
• WotC Has A New President (Feb 2022)
• Hasbro Laying Off 1100 Employees (December 2023)
• WotC President Cynthia Williams Resigns (April 2024)
• New WotC President Is World of Warcraft's John Hight (July 2024)
• D&D Hiring New Game Designer Months After Firing Many (Aug 2024)
• Hasbro Hit With Layoffs, Wizards of the Coast Impacted (October 2024)
• D&D's Christopher Perkins Promoted to Creative Director (Oct 2024)
• Wizards of the Coast Is Hiring a D&D Worldbuilder (Feb 2025)
• 90% Of D&D's Project Sigil Team Laid Off (March 2025)
• Chris Perkins Announces Retirement from Dungeons & Dragons (April 2025)
• Jeremy Crawford Also Leaving D&D Team Later This Month (April 2025)
• 3% Of Hasbro's Workforce Laid Off (June 2025)
• Todd Kenreck Let Go from WotC (June 2025)
• Jess Lanzillo Departs Wizards of the Coast (June 2025)
• Wizards of the Coast Hiring New Lead Designer and Head of Game Ecosystem for D&D (June 2025)
• Dungeons & Dragons Shifts to Franchise Model, Dan Ayoub Named as Head (July 2025)
• James Ohlen Shifts From Archetype Entertainment Head to Creative Consultant for Tabletop RPGs at Wizards (Dec 2025)
• Justice Ramin Arman Promoted to Game Design Director of Dungeons & Dragons (Dec 2025)
• Taylor Navarro Joins Wizards of the Coast as D&D Designer (Jan 2026)
• Wizards Hires Erin Roberts as Game Designer for D&D (Jan 2026)
• Leon Barillaro Joins Wizards of the Coast as D&D Designer (Jan 2026)
• James Haeck Joins Wizards of the Coast as Senior D&D Designer (Jan 2026)
• Wizards of the Coast hiring TRPG Publishing Lead to coordinate third-party publishing (April 2026)
• Wizards of the Coast is hiring a senior AI engineer for customer-facing features (June 2026)
• John Hight steps down as president of Wizards of the Coast (July 2026)
• LaTia Jacquise let go from Wizards of the Coast (October 2026)
• Celeste Conowitch hired by Wizards of the Coast as Senior Game Developer for Dungeons & Dragons (October 2026)

 

[DEFCON 1]

Some churn is normal. Who's the continuity at this point though?

Greg Bilsland most likely. He was on the D&D team for almost 10 years through 4E and into the beginnings of 5E, left for a little less than a decade, then came back to now be the Executive Producer for D&D.

 

[AlViking]

It's always hard to know what’s behind these changes. Some are people leaving for other opportunities, some could be someone in management wanting to shake things up In my experience shakeups frequently were not a reflection on how the division had been performing. Most of times it seemed like changes for the sake of changing so if things improved (often because of things outside their control) they could claim a win on their resume.

So I don't think changes necessarily mean much of anything other than perhaps a boss throwing their weight around.

 

[aco175]

I work at a college and there is a lot of turnover in some areas, mostly student facing. I think that the payscale does not keep up with general cost of living and inflation over the last several years. Other colleges look to fill a need and an obvious place is other colleges, so people follow a pay bump for about the same job with a new logo. Then in a few more years, the first college needs to hire and needs to raise their offering salary to current climate and the person might look to come back. I hardly get to meet some departments before I get a notice that they are leaving.

 

[CleverNickName]

IIRC, the average tenure at a major publicly held company is something like 4 years, so this isn't too surprising.

I'm above average! Last month marked my 20-year anniversary at one of the largest consulting engineering companies in the world. ^_^

 

[KYRON45]

I'm above average! Last month marked my 20-year anniversary at one of the largest consulting engineering companies in the world. ^_^

Is it LEGO? Do you make LEGO sets? Its LEGO...i knew it!!!

 

[michaeljpastor]

Have any of the names from the Class of 2026 appeared in the credits yet?

 

[Scribe]

I'm above average! Last month marked my 20-year anniversary at one of the largest consulting engineering companies in the world. ^_^

Same, been counting it as a blessing for 10 years now.

 

[plecostomus]

Have any of the names from the Class of 2026 appeared in the credits yet?

It's important to consider the book production time. For example, the recent Dragonlance social media posts indicated the first setting resource book (which they showed a whiteboard of initial ideas for) will be out in 2029.

Here are the credits for Arcana Unleashed: Deadfall:

D&D Studio

Global Play Lead: Dan Ayoub

Art: Chelsea Burgess, Cindy Cacerez Sprague, Matt Cole, Trystan Falcone, Kate Irwin, Sergio Jaramillo, Emi Tanji, Paolo Vacala, Skyler Weissenfluh, Trish Yochum

Editing: Judy Bauer, Janica Carter, Adrian Ng Di Spaltro

Game Design: Justice Ramin Arman, Leon Barillaro, Makenzie De Armas, Joey Haeck, Amanda Hamon, Taylor Navarro, Ben Petrisor, Patrick Renie, Erin Roberts, F. Wesley Schneider, Carl Sibley, Jason Tondro, James Wyatt

Product Strategy: Greg Bilsland, Andy Chilton, Laura Hohman

Production: Will Ansell, Bill Benham, Siera Bruggeman, Emily Gitelman, Vanessa Hoskins, Andy Smith, Dan Tovar, Chris Tulach

Worldbuilding: Josh Herman, Ovidio Cartagena, Noor Rahman

Other Support: Jay Jani, Hayley Schmelzer, Preston Swincher, Bailey Vaughan

Commercial: Kathy Dongo, Ian Messer

Franchise Business Team: Nick Strann, Dan Barrett, Kim Craig, Ann Earp, Paul Morrissey, Aaron Sobel, Angel Villeda

Franchise Creative Team: Kara Kenna, Paul Benjamin, Tori Egbert, AJ Hanneld, Chris Jennerjohn, Sarra Scherb

Marketing: David Silverman, Nick Bartoletti, Regina Buenaobra, Marco Caputo, Avery Freniere, Ariel Hernandez, Blain Howard, LaTia Jacquise, Esther Kao, Aaron Kaufman, Sabrina Kessler, Josh Morris, Ashlee Perkins, Matt Pruitt, David Schlosser, Jessi Sosnovskaya, Joe Starr, Jeffrey Stewart, Ian Tornay, Meg Trahan, Dennis Tran, Heather Zalewski

Print Operations: Catarina Smith, Jefferson Dunlap, Basil Hale, Joe Visconti, Scott West

Supply Chain: Lindsey Glomski, Nick White

The Foundry version of the adventure also thanks the following WOTC staff for providing support with the creation of that version:

• Head of Category Licensing & Business Development: Ann Earp
• Associate Producer: Andy Smith

 

[GMMichael]

Hopefully the new hires will make a push toward adventure paths that are fully fleshed out, as opposed to what we’ve been getting that require nearly as much DM prep time as just starting from scratch.

That's like hoping McDonald's pushes for burgers that are fully made of flesh.

 

[Lanefan]

It's always hard to know what’s behind these changes.

The cynic in me says that, along with the reasons you note below, in some corporations the churn is a direct result of HR people trying to justify their jobs. After all, hiring and firing is what keeps HR staff gainfully employed and so for them, the more churn the better.

Some are people leaving for other opportunities, some could be someone in management wanting to shake things up In my experience shakeups frequently were not a reflection on how the division had been performing. Most of times it seemed like changes for the sake of changing so if things improved (often because of things outside their control) they could claim a win on their resume.

So I don't think changes necessarily mean much of anything other than perhaps a boss throwing their weight around.