Rodney Thompson now Tabletop Gaming Manager at Wizards

[Henry]

I respect both Rodney and his work greatly. It's probably the only reason I would even consider looking at any of WotC's Board Game offerings. The less said about my lack of interest in this "Board Game Phase" at WotC, the better - but Rodney would be one strong bonus in their corner.

 

[Maggan]

Great news! I consider the board games to be of utmost importance to establish D&D as a brand that resonates with people outside the RPG demographic, and hope that they act as a starting point for new gamers to pick up the roleplaying game.

/M

 

[TerraDave]

From a May 2010 blog post after the mid-year layoffs, it listed as D&D developers and designers.

- Richard Baker (design manager)
- Jeremy Crawford (developer)
- Mike Mearls (group manager)
- Stephen Schubert (development manager)
- Matt Sernett (designer)
- Rodney Thompson (designer)

No idea what the design and development managers do these days, in addition to handling more bureaucracy and politics.

So if Rodney Thompson is out of design/development, then Sernett and Crawford are left as full-time staff (along with Baker and Schubert as managers).

Five people seems like a very small design/development group, where three of the people are managers.

Maybe they hired some new full-time designers/developers lately?

Are they using more freelancers to take up more of the design/development work? (Besides Ari Marmell and Robert Schwalb).

They seem managment heavy, with the number of managers going up as the stuff they release goes down.

In terms of actually doing the work...this is what I could find on Amazon:

Neverwinter CS: Matt Sernett, Erik Scott De Bie, and Ari Marmell

MV: TttNV: Brian R. James, Matt James, Sterling Hershey, Steve Townshend

Gloomwrought: Andy Clautice, Erik Scott De Bie, and Matt Goetz

Other stuff was just by the "team".

 

[ggroy]

Other stuff was just by the "team".

"Madness of Gardmore Abbey" was allegedly already finish by James Wyatt last August (2010). This was mentioned in the Gencon 2010 new products seminar.

"Heroes of Feywild" had Rodney Thompson as lead designer. This is according to a comment on Rodney Thompson's facebook page.

Rodney Thompson, Game Designer

Looks like we talked about Heroes of the Feywild a bit at D&D XP. I'm very excited about how it's shaping up, since I am lead designer on it.

 

[Shemeska]

They seem managment heavy, with the number of managers going up as the stuff they release goes down.

In terms of actually doing the work...this is what I could find on Amazon:

Neverwinter CS: Matt Sernett, Erik Scott De Bie, and Ari Marmell

MV: TttNV: Brian R. James, Matt James, Sterling Hershey, Steve Townshend

Gloomwrought: Andy Clautice, Erik Scott De Bie, and Matt Goetz

Other stuff was just by the "team".

That's a lot of freelancers there compared to full staff members. Are they doing all the odd not-quite-RPG stuff or...?

For the above products, I don't recognize all the names there, but it's very cool to see De Bie doing more stuff.