WotC Shawn Merwin joins Wizards as contract game designer

[bedir than]

In the latest episode of Mastering Dungeons, Shawn announces that he's leaving leadership role at Ghostfire Gaming to join Wizards of the Coast as a contract (one year) game designer on D&D.


Shawn is the second Ghostfire person to join during this wave of hiring.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

From the Ghostfire site:

Shawn makes games and tells stories. He contributed to Wizards of the Coast products like Acquisitions Incorporated, Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus, Halls of Undermountain, and countless others. When not making games or telling stories, he’s helping other people do those things.

 

[Charlaquin]

Anotha one

 

[TerraDave]

Ok, something is up.

 

[Johnsy]

Great news. Shawn seems like a wise and grounded guy. Glad he’s on the team. I guess it’ll be awhile before the new team actually produces something, perhaps there’s stuff in the pipeline, but I’m assuming it’ll be 12-18months before we see a new adventure path or a creation that is solely of the new team.

 

[jerryrice4949]

Ghostfire has done some pretty great projects. Hopefully this bodes well for some fresh ideas at WoTC.

 

[Waller]

Isn't that the second person in two weeks WOTC has poached from Ghostfire? Haeck and Merwin? That's gotta hurt!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Ok, something is up.

I assume Justice got the green light to hire to fill vacant positions and had a wish list of people whose work he'd really enjoyed over the last few years.

This is the exciting stuff for me, like when Danny Ocean is assembling the team at the beginning of an Ocean's 11 movie.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Isn't that the second person in two weeks WOTC has poached from Ghostfire? Haeck and Merwin? That's gotta hurt!

Yeah, but this also means Ghostfire, and others in a similar position, are going to be calling up some of their regular contributors and seeing if they want to transition to doing game design on a more regular basis.

I remember when @mearls was doing stuff for Malhavoc back in the day, before getting the chance to work for WotC.

 

[Nicholas Reed]

Now THIS is awesome!!!