Jess Lanzillo Departs Wizards of the Coast

The VP of D&D has departed the company.
jess lanzillo.jpeg

Another high profile name is departing Wizards of the Coast. Over the weekend, Jess Lanzillo announced she was departing Wizards of the Coast. Lanzillo was the VP of the Dungeons & Dragons franchise, a position that she held since February 2024. Lanzillo did not provide details about her next role.

During her tenure overseeing the D&D franchise, Lanzillo oversaw the launch of D&D's revised Fifth Edition as well as pushing it into a new direction. Several longtime leaders of the D&D team - Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins - also departed under her tenure. Recently, Wizards of the Coast posted two high-profile development roles seemingly to replace the pair.

Lanzillo's full post can be found below:

After eight years at Wizards of the Coast, I have made the totally reasonable decision to leave a job where I got paid to argue about whether fictional lizard people can have tails. (Of course they can.)

My trajectory at Wizards has been wonderfully unhinged: leading creative during an absolutely wild ride with Magic: The Gathering, doing business things as Chief of Staff, and finally, getting to be the VP of the Dungeons & Dragons franchise — which is either the best job title ever invented or proof that late-stage capitalism has finally achieved absolute absurdity. Take that, liberal arts naysayers!

Wizards turns imaginary worlds into real communities, which sounds fake but is actually the most satisfying work in the world. To everyone who let me champion this mission while constantly asking "can you add more glowies?" — you are perfect and I love you.

I've been ridiculously fortunate for these eight years, and now I'm lucky enough to, yet again, get to choose my own plot twist. The best part about having super specific creative obsessions is that occasionally the universe decides to reward you for them. More soon!
 

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Christian Hoffer

Christian Hoffer


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I also always question why people would want a company that supports a game many other people play would implode. Of course it's always based on the assumption that the TTRPG market would for some unsubstantiated reason flourish without D&D. My assumption? The entire consumer base would shrink and overall there would be less of a market even for non-D&D products. Of course as you said, I don't expect that to happen any time soon and it's anybody's guess what would really happen.

Although it always strikes me as odd that you go on a forum dedicated to a game and your fondest hope is that the game the people enjoy and want to discuss should go down the toilet.
There is a lot more D&D (and its relatives) out there than the thin point of the spear officially supported by WotC in 2025.
 

I, personally, just can't get excited about good, hardworking people losing their jobs.
The problem with that definition (in addition to the moral judgment leveled on your rhetorical opponents) is that it suggests that no business should ever fail for any reason, because business failure nearly always leads to some good, hardworking people losing their jobs.
 


There is a lot more D&D (and its relatives) out there than the thin point of the spear officially supported by WotC in 2025.
We have no idea if that would continue long term if WOTC went belly up. In addition if non-WOTC D&D is bigger than officially supported I've never seen evidence of it. I doubt anyone really knows and there's a lot of stuff that simply supplements the official product.
 


The reception has overall been quite positive...?
I don’t want to get into a game of dueling anecdotes, but that hasn’t been my experience.

Even the people using the new rules I’ve talked to are more in the camp “Oh, there’s some good changes” rather than “this is exciting.”
 

I don’t want to get into a game of dueling anecdotes, but that hasn’t been my experience.

Even the people using the new rules I’ve talked to are more in the camp “Oh, there’s some good changes” rather than “this is exciting.”
Well, sure, anecdotes are anecdotal.

5E was already so good that improving it is fairly incremental, yes, so the excitement is around things like the logical organization of the DMG (massive, massive improvement) which isn't necessarily "sexy".

The real test is commercial success and adoption of the rules, and that...seems pretty widespread.
 

We have no idea if that would continue long term if WOTC went belly up. In addition if non-WOTC D&D is bigger than officially supported I've never seen evidence of it. I doubt anyone really knows and there's a lot of stuff that simply supplements the official product.
I never said it was bigger, but at this point WotC's game simply does not matter to me anymore.
 

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