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!

 

[TwoSix]

Honestly, Occam's Razo for Perkins and Crawford is that they had maxed out what they could get from retiring at Hasbro and wanted to change things up (Perkins has openly been ralking about retiring almost the entire lifetine of 5E), and for Lanzillo that a killer opportunity came up.

That might be Occam's razor for this specific use case where we know extra details, sure. (Although if we have to start adding a bunch of details, we're kind of ruining the idea of Occam's Razor. )

As a general rule, seeing multiple high-level individuals leave fairly quickly from any company is a red flag.

 

[TwoSix]

Quite frankly, I don't care why any of them left. Cause trying to figure out why does not change anything.

I mean, I care because it's fun to imagine a world where WotC implodes and chaos reigns in the TTRPG market.

 

[AlViking]

That might be Occam's razor for this specific use case where we know extra details, sure. (Although if we have to start adding a bunch of details, we're kind of ruining the idea of Occam's Razor. )

As a general rule, seeing multiple high-level individuals leave fairly quickly from any company is a red flag.

Have you ever worked at a company where you only have a few really big projects to work on over the course of a decade or more and the rest of the time is basically maintenance and small fixes? It's a really look at other opportunities after you got that big project out. Some people are goal oriented, getting that big job done is a goal and then you look at what's coming next and there's no more mountains to climb on the horizon. You can leave, knowing you're in good hands and go look for new mountains to climb. It's not that unusual.

 

[Parmandur]

That might be Occam's razor for this specific use case where we know extra details, sure. (Although if we have to start adding a bunch of details, we're kind of ruining the idea of Occam's Razor. )

As a general rule, seeing multiple high-level individuals leave fairly quickly from any company is a red flag.

Not necessarily: yellow flag, maybe.

Lanzillo's predecessor left because she got a higher job title at Funko Pop, and she took the D&D Executive Producer with her. That was about them pursuing their careers.

None of this is new for WotC.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

That might be Occam's razor for this specific use case where we know extra details, sure. (Although if we have to start adding a bunch of details, we're kind of ruining the idea of Occam's Razor. )

As a general rule, seeing multiple high-level individuals leave fairly quickly from any company is a red flag.

The extra details don't break Occam's Razor; they're just painting a more complete picture of the single situation being examined

As a general rule, I agree. As you say, though, there are specifics to this context which are outside that rule.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I mean, I care because it's fun to imagine a world where WotC implodes and chaos reigns in the TTRPG market.

If I'm going to imagine fun things... there's a much longer list ahead of 'D&D isn't owned by WoTC anymore.'

 

[TwoSix]

If I'm going to imagine fun things... there's a much longer list ahead of 'D&D isn't owned by WoTC anymore.'

Agree to disagree.

 

[Parmandur]

I mean, I care because it's fun to imagine a world where WotC implodes and chaos reigns in the TTRPG market.

Extremely doubtful: if 4E didn't do that, nothing recent will.

 

[AlViking]

Extremely doubtful: if 4E didn't do that, nothing recent will.

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.

 

[TwoSix]

Extremely doubtful: if 4E didn't do that, nothing recent will.

The generally frigid reception to 2024's overall banality allows me to keep hoping.