WotC James Wyatt is on the Dungeons & Dragons Team Again

[TheSword]

I liked a lot of James Wyatt’s stuff. City of the Spider Queen and the Monsters of Faerun were favourites, along with the Eberron stuff. I give him credit for writing one of the few good substantial 3e adventures.

I’ll never be a fan of his 4e stuff though and I hope his return doesn’t indicate a plan to shake things up too much.

 

[Parmandur]

For @Mistwell , @Mind of tempest , and @FickleKnight : Here is a link to the most recent discussion on EnWorld (that I remember) about Mearls returning to D&D RPG Team. I believe there a links to previous articles with more discussion about Mearls in the thread.

FYI, @Mistwell, from the title it seems like your memory was better than mine! And @darjr and @Parmandur too

Oh, that. That was almost a year ago, and he appeared in a single book's credits since then. I don't expect to see more of Mearls in the RPG space.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

Glad to see the team expanding. Wyatt has done a lot of good work. The 4E DMGs are still the pinnacle of any edition for a practical DM toolkit.

 

[Undrave]

I had mixed feelings about 4E mechanically, but there were a number of things it did well that I wish 5E did a little better. And on the lore front, I consider 4E to be an unqualified success--ironic, given that one of the knocks against 4E was how it disconnected lore from mechanics! They created this amazing evocative world (far better than the Great Wheel IMO), and then they put it into a system that held it at arm's length and treated it as disposable flavor text.

I'd love to see all that 4E lore revived and given a 5E treatment, perhaps as a stand-alone setting book. That probably isn't what Wyatt is working on, but if it is, I'll buy it in a heartbeat.

I love the 4e Cosmology (and Pantheon) and there's so many cool concepts in Plane Above that I'd love to see show up again...

 

[Mistwell]

Absolutely the same!

I've long said the 4e fluff books are some of the best D&D books. I feel like a lot of people focus on the mechanics of 4e, and that's fair. But, if that's all the every focus on, the miss out on some truly superb story elements.

 

[Mind of tempest]

maybe we are getting the 4e setting?

 

[Mistwell]

For @Mistwell , @Mind of tempest , and @FickleKnight : Here is a link to the most recent discussion on EnWorld (that I remember) about Mearls returning to D&D RPG Team. I believe there a links to previous articles with more discussion about Mearls in the thread.

FYI, @Mistwell, from the title it seems like your memory was better than mine! And @darjr and @Parmandur too

Yes, that's it. And like I said, Paramandur was the 5th response to that thread!

May 5, 2020: D&D head Ray Winninger said on the company's Twitch livestream, "Mike Mearls is back full time on the RPG again. He was splitting his time working on some computer game stuff for us, but he’s back."

And no credits since then I believe.

Which means he's working on something for a long time which hasn't come out yet. Hence my speculation he's designing the skeleton rules which eventually will go into playtest as something big.

 

[Mistwell]

Oh, that. That was almost a year ago, and he appeared in a single book's credits since then. I don't expect to see more of Mearls in the RPG space.

LOL "He's here full time" gets an "Oh that" to you denying any knowledge of a thread you participated in 9 months ago about this topic? And you think it means you don't expect to see anything more, though a year isn't that odd a lead time for a major product? OK then. I guess we will see if your expectations will play out. I suspect you will be surprised.

 

[Parmandur]

Yes, that's it. And like I said, Paramandur was the 5th response to that thread!

May 5, 2020: D&D head Ray Winninger said on the company's Twitch livestream, "Mike Mearls is back full time on the RPG again. He was splitting his time working on some computer game stuff for us, but he’s back."

And no credits since then I believe.

Which means he's working on something for a long time which hasn't come out yet. Hence my speculation he's designing the skeleton rules which eventually will go into playtest as something big.

He was credited a couple months later in Theros.

 

[Parmandur]

LOL "He's here full time" gets an "Oh that" to you denying any knowledge of a thread you participated in 9 months ago about this topic? And you think it means you don't expect to see anything more, though a year isn't that odd a lead time for a major product? OK then.

I meant I thought you meant something more recently. That's an old thread. He is part of the "D&D Franchise" studio, which is why he was credited with "IP Development." He's not working in the game.