Jess Lanzillo Departs Wizards of the Coast

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!

 

[Burnside]

I'd add that this position has seen a lot of churn lately - I think there have been three different people in that spot in the past 4 years.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

She took a VP level role less than 18 months ago. Generally speaking, something has gone wrong if a VP leaves their new role in less than 2-3 years.

Some companies give away VP titles like candy, so caveats apply, but if this role was a senior as it sounds ("Head of D&D!"), it is unusual that she would leave that post so quickly.

Not really that unusual. She took the job, something she had not been thinking about career-wise. Didn't like it, so left. There are lots of explanations here that don't involve jamming a tin foil hat on one's head. Consider all options, but Occam's Razor, etc.