James Haeck Joins Wizards of the Coast as Senior D&D Designer

James Haeck, one of the co-writers of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus, has joined Wizards of the Coast as a senior D&D designer. Haeck announced the news on Eldritch Lorecast, a podcast hosted by Ghostfire Gaming. Haeck is a prolific D&D designer, having worked as a freelancer on multiple Wizards of the Coast titles. They were involved with several Critical Role projects, including acting as the lead designer of Call of the Netherdeep and co-writer for Explorer's Guide to Wildemount. Haeck also worked as the lead writer for D&D Beyond for several years, working on various editorial projects that appeared on the front page before the site was purchased by Wizards of the Coast.

Haeck joins a roster of recent promotions and hires at Wizards of the Coast, which includes Justice Ramin Arman who is now game design director for the D&D studio. Other notable names at Wizards include F. Wesley Schneider, Makenzie De Armas, James Wyatt, and Amanda Hamon.

 

[Johnsy]

It seems like there’s a lot of new faces and I’m really excited to see what they all do, including Haeck. I do worry about Hasbro /Wotc hobbling their creativity. Also, I suspect it’ll take time for new products from this team to reach the market. But let’s wait and see, best of luck to them all.

 

[DEFCON 1]

One other thing I've really noticed with folks like Haeck, Arman, and De Armas having come up through the ranks of the third-party publisher products to now be the "next wave" of folks in charge of D&D... is that James Introcaso would probably be a part of it if he didn't decide to stick with MCDM. Introcaso has been one of the most prolific up-and-coming independent designers for years now and to my mind could have been right there alongside the others in charge of the future of D&D. We will see if Draw Steel! is able to maintain enough of a standing in the game community to keep James adequately content as their Lead Designer... or if he will find a reason to move over to WotC at some point to play in the "big pool".

 

[R_J_K75]

I backed Grim Hollow: The Monster Grimoire by Ghostfire Gaming on Kickstarter and that was a really well-done product. Visually it was stunning and came in a nice slip case. It was one of those KS's I'd forgotten about and a friend of mine came over and it was outside my door and she brought it in. I was pleasantly surprised when I opened it a gave it a once through.

I'm a bit more confident in future D&D products with James there now.

Me too. I'm not trying to take anything away from those that were at TSR/WotC in the past, but I felt things were stagnating at WotC in the 5E era. It seemed like the products were kind of cookie cutter, they found a formula and stuck with it, there were no surprises. I'm hoping that changes with new talent there and I can be excited for new products from them again.

 

[Staffan]

One other thing I've really noticed with folks like Haeck, Arman, and De Armas having come up through the ranks of the third-party publisher products to now be the "next wave" of folks in charge of D&D... is that James Introcaso would probably be a part of it if he didn't decide to stick with MCDM. Introcaso has been one of the most prolific up-and-coming independent designers for years now and to my mind could have been right there alongside the others in charge of the future of D&D. We will see if Draw Steel! is able to maintain enough of a standing in the game community to keep James adequately content as their Lead Designer... or if he will find a reason to move over to WotC at some point to play in the "big pool".

I think Introcaso is working on another RPG for MCDM called Crows, which is meant to be more "hard-bitten mercenaries doing dungeon crawls". I don't know if that's a full-time thing for him or if he's also doing Draw Steel stuff.

Also, my understanding is that MCDM pays well, has good benefits, and allows people to work from various locations (IIRC, the HQ is in California but Introcaso lives in New Jersey). Employment there would also appear to be quite stable as long as the company's doing fine, which it seems to be (Draw Steel is selling well, and they just had a crowdfunder for 2026 products that brought in 2.6 megabucks, minus Backerkit's cut), and that's not really something you can say for Wizards. In short, I don't really see any reason why one would leave MCDM for Wizards.

Edit: Coincidentally, Introcaso just posted the following to Bluesky:

(Also changed references to "James" to "Introcaso" to avoid any confusion with Haeck).

 

[Uta-napishti]

Congratulations James! Your work on Netherdeep and Wildemount was really top notch, and I am looking forward to your next work!

 

[bedir than]

Yikes.

The partial list of people shared have decades upon decades of experience building RPGs, including D&D.
A few are old guard from within WotC, proving the claims of losing history a lie. Others cut their teeth as independents who joined the biggest non-WotC companies.

It's an amazingly strong list to move the game forward and continue growing.

 

[AstroCat]

Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus were really, really bad. lol!

 

[Lalato]

Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus were really, really bad. lol!

I only have experience running Dragon Heist. My group enjoyed it a lot. Some great memorable moments that we still talk about. Did you run it or is this based on a cold read?

 

[AstroCat]

I only have experience running Dragon Heist. My group enjoyed it a lot. Some great memorable moments that we still talk about. Did you run it or is this based on a cold read?

We used bits and pieces of both in 2 separate games... We found them pretty much unusable and bad on their own. They were one of the reasons we have permanently quit wotc 2024 5e all together.

 

[Superchunk77]

The partial list of people shared have decades upon decades of experience building RPGs, including D&D.
A few are old guard from within WotC, proving the claims of losing history a lie. Others cut their teeth as independents who joined the biggest non-WotC companies.

It's an amazingly strong list to move the game forward and continue growing.

James Wyatt has some good credits to his name, the rest, not so much.