Justice Ramin Arman Promoted to Game Design Director of Dungeons & Dragons

Game designer Justice Ramin Arman has been internally promoted to the position of Game Design Director for Dungeons & Dragons. Arman announced the news yesterday over on Linkedin, and later specified what the role entails over on Discord. As Game Design Director, Arman will be responsible for directing the game design department as a whole. Previously, Arman was a Managing Game Director, which was a leadership position but not one placed in charge of the entire D&D department.

Arman has worked for Wizards of the Coast since 2022 and has led several projects, including the most recent Starter Set and Quests From the Infinite Staircase. Prior to that, he worked as a game designer for Beadle and Grimm's.

Several months ago, Wizards of the Coast announced that they were hiring a principal game designer for Dungeons & Dragons, seemingly to replace Jeremy Crawford (who left Wizards earlier this year), so it appears that Arman is stepping into that role at least in some fashion.

In a statement provided to EN World, a Wizards representative noted that they are thrilled to see Justice continue his great work with D&D.

 

[Dr. Bull]

Greetings!

In spite of what I've read recently, I think that WOTC is headed in a more positive direction. I've been following Justice Arman for a while and I admire his work and his intelligence. He seems like a worthy and compassionate heir to the throne.

I understand many peoples' negativity towards Hasbro and WOTC (especially after the OGL crisis). However, I can would argue that the new starter sets, the new Eberron book, the two new Forgotten Realms books, and the new D&D 2024 Core Rulebooks are about as good as good can get!

I'm always trying to reduce the size of my massive rpg library. Lately, it seems that most of the books that remain in my library have been produced by Wizards of the Coast.

I have only one complaint about WOTC: Their new standpoint on Orcs. For the past 50 years, Orcs have been chaotic evil. From J.R.R. Tolkien to R. A. Salvatore, they have been chaotic evil. How can they justify this change? Are Dwarves and Orcs now allies in the Forgotten Realms? How about Elves and Orcs... Are they now friends too? I guess it's time to re-write ALL of the lore, folks...

Just my humble opinion,
- Dr. Bull

 

[sevenbastard]

I’ve never been able to keep the title and levels in my head for a while

We need a table

 

[heptat]

@sevenbastard I love how that table has to have a "Spells" column, where every entry is "none". Maybe a 15th Level Lord gets ONE spell???

 

[Starmaster]

Quests From the Infinite Staircase is my favourite WotC adventure book in the last few years, so I hope it's a good sign!

As much as I like seeing completely new adventures, I also like it when they revise the best classic adventure modules for 5e, as was done with "Quests from the Infinite Staircase", "Tales from the Yawning Portal", and "Ghosts of Saltmarsh" (which also included some nice modules from "Dungeon" magazine). It would be great to see the remainder of GDQ1-7 (since G1-3 was already done) revised for 5e. There are many, many other great classic adventures that could be revised for 5e. I just hope they don't start issuing books that are just 5.5e upgrades of 5.0e material, even for popular titles such as "Curse of Strahd." The game systems are too similar and the material too recent to waste a valuable product slot with something like that.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Greetings!

In spite of what I've read recently, I think that WOTC is headed in a more positive direction. I've been following Justice Arman for a while and I admire his work and his intelligence. He seems like a worthy and compassionate heir to the throne.

I understand many peoples' negativity towards Hasbro and WOTC (especially after the OGL crisis). However, I can would argue that the new starter sets, the new Eberron book, the two new Forgotten Realms books, and the new D&D 2024 Core Rulebooks are about as good as good can get!

I'm always trying to reduce the size of my massive rpg library. Lately, it seems that most of the books that remain in my library have been produced by Wizards of the Coast.

I have only one complaint about WOTC: Their new standpoint on Orcs. For the past 50 years, Orcs have been chaotic evil. From J.R.R. Tolkien to R. A. Salvatore, they have been chaotic evil. How can they justify this change? Are Dwarves and Orcs now allies in the Forgotten Realms? How about Elves and Orcs... Are they now friends too? I guess it's time to re-write ALL of the lore, folks...

Just my humble opinion,
- Dr. Bull

I don't entirely disagree with you, but there's no need to rewrite lore - as far as I can tell, Orcs have done everything that they have ever done. It's just that by 1501dr in Faerun, many of the various "tribes" have made peace with much of their neighbours. Some still cling to the old ways, or have joined other humanoids in bandit brigades, or worship evil deities, but a lot of orcs are now relatively "civilized". In addition, it seems that the traditional racism (dwarves hate elves, elves hate everyone who isn't an elf, etc.) has also fallen out of modern fashion.

There's really no lore changes, just adjustments due to an advanced timeline.

Other settings probably have other, similar (or possibly dissimilar) stories.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

As much as I like seeing completely new adventures, I also like it when they revise the best classic adventure modules for 5e, as was done with "Quests from the Infinite Staircase", "Tales from the Yawning Portal", and "Ghosts of Saltmarsh" (which also included some nice modules from "Dungeon" magazine). It would be great to see the remainder of GDQ1-7 (since G1-3 was already done) revised for 5e. There are many, many other great classic adventures that could be revised for 5e. I just hope they don't start issuing books that are just 5.5e upgrades of 5.0e material, even for popular titles such as "Curse of Strahd." The game systems are too similar and the material too recent to waste a valuable product slot with something like that.

AFAICT, the whole reason for "backwards compatibility" was to keep the Adventures in print without needing to revise them. It's part of the whole point.

 

[Obsidian Man of Urik]

I wrote to him via his website and never got an answer

 

[Sulicius]

I wrote to him via his website and never got an answer

I wrote him here and got an answer within a couple hours.