Leon Barillaro Joins Wizards of the Coast as D&D Designer

Leon Barillaro has also joined Wizards of the Coast as part of the D&D design team. As announced on their social media page, Barillaro is an experienced RPG designer with numerous third-party supplements on DMs Guild. They have design credits with MCDM, Renegade Games Studios, and EN Publishing as well. Per their Linkedin, Barillaro is working as a game designer for the D&D team.

Barillaro joins James Haeck as a new employee at Wizards of the Coast, with Justice Arman also receiving a recent promotion within the company as well. All three have similar resumes, having built up their resumes on DMs Guild material and third-party work before hopping over to join Wizards of the Coast in an official capacity.

 

[Cergorach]

My concern is that the sort of people that want to make a big deal of this sort of thing normally do so at the expense of the projects they work on.

Your work must be really suffering due to your activism....

Basically the new Dungeon magazine.

No, not really. The editors made the decission what was published and what was not, and they published only very limited content for a (bi)monthly magazine. DMsguild everyone can publish and everyone does. So having credits there only means that they published something, not that anyone else thought it was good enough to publish. DMsguild does have other mechanics in place to evaluate if others thought the product valuable. Reviews+sales.

 

[Zardnaar]

Your work must be really suffering due to your activism....

No, not really. The editors made the decission what was published and what was not, and they published only very limited content for a (bi)monthly magazine. DMsguild everyone can publish and everyone does. So having credits there only means that they published something, not that anyone else thought it was good enough to publish. DMsguild does have other mechanics in place to evaluate if others thought the product valuable. Reviews+sales.

Its a rough equivalent to get your foot in the door. Cream rises to the top. That and 3pp.

Theyre not picking nobodies off the street. Haven't heard of any of them but eh.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Congratulations to them; as @darjr said, I much prefer Christmas hiring to Christmas firing.

That said...am I the only one thinking these are a lot of high-profile hirings? That is, WotC hasn't exactly filled the calendar with a bazillion new releases. We've had a whole thread just to say "Nothing To See Here: Unstated Release Schedules Are Totally Normal".

Anyone else getting the idea that this might be the absolute very first step, or maybe zeroth step, as in "forget the planning stages, we're preparing to plan for the planning stages" levels of we-are-just-warming-up, toward 6e?

Maybe I'm just not used to hearing so many hirings and promotions in a short period of time. Maybe I'm just huffing the hopium that we might finally get a new edition. Maybe I just have pareidolia. But this looks suspiciously like preparation, especially since 5e itself was developed by an admitted skeleton crew with many delays (remember when conversion docs got delayed for literal years because ONE guy got jury duty?)

 

[bedir than]

Congratulations to them; as @darjr said, I much prefer Christmas hiring to Christmas firing.

That said...am I the only one thinking these are a lot of high-profile hirings? That is, WotC hasn't exactly filled the calendar with a bazillion new releases. We've had a whole thread just to say "Nothing To See Here: Unstated Release Schedules Are Totally Normal".

Anyone else getting the idea that this might be the absolute very first step, or maybe zeroth step, as in "forget the planning stages, we're preparing to plan for the planning stages" levels of we-are-just-warming-up, toward 6e?

Maybe I'm just not used to hearing so many hirings and promotions in a short period of time. Maybe I'm just huffing the hopium that we might finally get a new edition. Maybe I just have pareidolia. But this looks suspiciously like preparation, especially since 5e itself was developed by an admitted skeleton crew with many delays (remember when conversion docs got delayed for literal years because ONE guy got jury duty?)

two designers left
two designers (that we know of) joined

this isn't a hiring wave. it's status quo

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Congratulations to them; as @darjr said, I much prefer Christmas hiring to Christmas firing.

That said...am I the only one thinking these are a lot of high-profile hirings? That is, WotC hasn't exactly filled the calendar with a bazillion new releases. We've had a whole thread just to say "Nothing To See Here: Unstated Release Schedules Are Totally Normal".

Anyone else getting the idea that this might be the absolute very first step, or maybe zeroth step, as in "forget the planning stages, we're preparing to plan for the planning stages" levels of we-are-just-warming-up, toward 6e?

Maybe I'm just not used to hearing so many hirings and promotions in a short period of time. Maybe I'm just huffing the hopium that we might finally get a new edition. Maybe I just have pareidolia. But this looks suspiciously like preparation, especially since 5e itself was developed by an admitted skeleton crew with many delays (remember when conversion docs got delayed for literal years because ONE guy got jury duty?)

With all indicators indicating that 5e is currently selling very well, and the "focus on the brand for making profit and keep the game itself stable" mindset having been annouced very recently but also seemimg to be working before then....i cannot imagine they have a mew edition on their minds.

Maybe a new tasha's style book, but even that i doubt in favor of a xanathar's. (Diff being Tasha challenfed how the game worked while xanathar just expanded)

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

two designers left
two designers (that we know of) joined

this isn't a hiring wave. it's status quo

I think the more interesting thing to me is how clustered the new hires and promotions have been in age.

It's kind of poetic to me that Gen X's reign as the driving force of D&D is ending around the same time as Stranger Things.

 

[Morrus]

I think the more interesting thing to me is how clustered the new hires and promotions have been in age.

It's kind of poetic to me that Gen X's reign as the driving force of D&D is ending around the same time as Stranger Things.

Yeah, I think that's pretty normal. The cohort at WotC in 1999 for 3E was all that age (they're all 50 now!) So were a lot of the people at TSR in the 1970s (who are in their 70s/80s now!)

The people who created D&D are the age of my dad, the ones who made 3E are my age, and the ones hired now are the right age to be my kids. Three generations right there!

 

[Mark Craddock]

I know the release schedule is open right now but I'm assuming some of what the new hires are working on might not be seen until 2027 or later. I think most of us feel comfortable that we are getting Dark Sun this year.

 

[Parmandur]

I know the release schedule is open right now but I'm assuming some of what the new hires are working on might not be seen until 2027 or later. I think most of us feel comfortable that we are getting Dark Sun this year.

Yeah, same as how Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins are still going to be in book credits for a bit.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

Yeah, I think that's pretty normal. The cohort at WotC in 1999 for 3E was all that age (they're all 50 now!) So were a lot of the people at TSR in the 1970s (who are in their 70s/80s now!)

The people who created D&D are the age of my dad, the ones who made 3E are my age, and the ones hired now are the right age to be my kids. Three generations right there!

It's normal and it's abnormal, in the sense that it should be happening but because of a variety of cultural and economic factors older American generations tend to stay employed in their positions longer, and there are less (but not zero) high level positions for millennials in "legacy brands."

I think the interesting thing about D&D being helmed by 90s kids is that many of us were first introduced to RPGs via video and computer games and tabletop was something we graduated to as we got older. It's not wrong, it's not "bad D&D", but I think the cultural context and base assumptions for what makes an RPG is a little different for people who remember the Lewinsky scandal vs. the challenger explosion.