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.

 

[Weiley31]

Any one hired who has normal pronouns? It is not particularly representative of the general population if they all identify as They/thems. Wonder how likely they will be to be activists rather than just get on with the job?

Did you know that, historically, "They," as a SINGULAR NOUN, dates back ALL THE WAY to 1375? Shakesphere, Chaucer, and Austen sure do!

Here, educate yourself.

A brief history of singular ‘they’

www.oed.com

 

[Morrus]

Folks, trs31 is not able to respond, so please drop that line of conversation and get back to the actual topic. Thank you.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Looking at their DMs Guild stuff - there seems to be a lot of clever things, with a definite appeal to the younger generation. I think that kind of vision will be healthy for the game, even if it doesn't appeal to some of the old hats. Looking forward to seeing what they cook up as part of the team.

 

[Zardnaar]

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.

TSR let sone people publish realky young.

I think Perkins was 14 or 16 or something when he first got published.

4E dying like it did essentially meant the AD&D experienced writers hung arounf for another edition along with the death of Dragon and Dungeon.

Took tine to train up new writers I suppose.

DMs Guild and various 3pp trained them. Old days you got your foot in tbe door often Dragon/Dungeon or a module.

5E anemic publishing schedule worked out well financially but it limits the numbers of writers getting experience.

3pp has been neating WotC quality wise for a while now. Not in production values. Without those production values I think they would have struggled to mask the mediocre product post Tashas (5.5 has improved the product quality imho).

 

[James Jacobs]

TSR let sone people publish really young.

Can confirm. I had my first adventure published in Dungeon #12 when I was 16 (although I was 14 or 15 when my proposal was accepted and I started writing it). Good times, and thank you to Barbara Young (and Roger Moore before her) for encouraging me! Love seeing new generations get their chance to come in and build more games, in any event, and congrats to all the new hires!

 

[Zardnaar]

Can confirm. I had my first adventure published in Dungeon #12 when I was 16 (although I was 14 or 15 when my proposal was accepted and I started writing it). Good times, and thank you to Barbara Young (and Roger Moore before her) for encouraging me! Love seeing new generations get their chance to come in and build more games, in any event, and congrats to all the new hires!

Theres a name I recognize.

Its also name recognition. Perkins joined 97 but he was in the magazines before that.

Wolfgang Bauer Kobold Press.

Yourself and Lisa WotC and Paizo iirc.

DMguild is good but not so much for name recognition. Lots of players dont buy or interact with 3pp as well.

If Dragon and Dungeon were still around maybe things would be different as they were "official".

If youre good at what you do you'll keep getting the work.

 

[doctorhook]

Can confirm. I had my first adventure published in Dungeon #12 when I was 16 (although I was 14 or 15 when my proposal was accepted and I started writing it). Good times, and thank you to Barbara Young (and Roger Moore before her) for encouraging me! Love seeing new generations get their chance to come in and build more games

This kinda disappoints me, because it’s not likely to happen again this way. Today if some kid wants to break into the industry, they’ve gotta throw their stuff into the ocean of content on DMsGuild or DriveThruRPG and then self-promote on social media and hope it gets traction somewhere (not to mention compete against the flood of AI slop). Far more kids are able to get their stuff “published”, but getting “published” is now trivially easy and doesn’t indicate even the slightest editorial oversight anymore. And there’s no guarantee anyone will even look at it. At least in the magazine days, if you got published that was a guaranteed stream of eyeballs on your work.

Idk, I’m just wistful for aspects of pre-digital life. I never submitted anything for publication (that I recall; I’d probably remember that, right?) so maybe the way things are today aren’t truly so different