Wizards Hires Erin Roberts as Game Designer for D&D

Wizards of the Coast has made another D&D game designer - this time tapping Erin Roberts, creator of the Godsbreath setting seen in Journeys from the Radiant Citadel. Roberts announced the hire on social media over the weekend. Similar to the hires of James Haeck and Leon Barillaro, Roberts is an established TTRPG designer. In addition to her credits at Wizards of the Coast, she's also worked for Paizo and Haunted Table. Her Godsbreath campaign setting has appeared in two different D&D anthologies, first appearing in Journeys from the Radiant Citadel.

Wizards has restocked its group of designers over the last year, following the departure of Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins. This is the third designer hired over the past couple of months, alongside the aforementioned Haeck and Barillaro. Additionally, Wizards promoted Justice Ramin Armin as the Director of Game Design.

While the D&D design team has put out a steady stream of Unearthed Arcana releases, no announcements of 2026 D&D products have been made as of yet.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yawning Portal had better adventures.

Very much a matter of taste, that. YP was dependent on nostalgia, I found the adventures in that either very dated, or dull as ditchwater. And none of them did anything other than dungeon bashing.

Radiant Citadel doesn't hold up vs any of the other anthologies. Espicially near contemporaries eg Golden Vault, Infinite Staircase. Hell even Candlekeep is better.

Radiant Citadel has excellent settings, atmosphere, and ideas. The adventures are very into social encounters, so are what the DM makes of them. I would rate it ahead of Golden Vault, well ahead of Candlekeep, and slightly behind Infinite Staircase.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Very much a matter of taste, that. YP was dependent on nostalgia, I found the adventures in that either very dated, or dull as ditchwater. And none of them did anything other than dungeon bashing.

I agree with this, YP adventures require a creative DM to make them anywhere near interesting.

Radiant Citadel has excellent settings, atmosphere, and ideas. The adventures are very into social encounters, so are what the DM makes of them.

Of late I have really been enjoying the social pillar of the game (characters are 16th)
Our current party is split and one of the storylines I'm running has been BG - DiA and we've played through the adventure that deals with Baldur's Gate, Candlekeep and just 1 session in Elturel and it has been phenomenal predominantly because of the PC/NPC interactions along with the breath of lore exploration.
I've been merging ideas from the Alexandrian Remix and the DMsGuild guide as well as an adventure from Candlekeep Mysteries with little prep required (usually 1-2 hours before the game)

Besides the first 2 locations which offer a wealth of NPCs to use nevermind your own as DM, Elturel is just a goldmine, each NPC with differing personalities and quirks as well as challenges which makes the party progress through the doomed city interesting and fun.

I didn't pick up Radiant Citadel but the fact that you highlight the social encounters certainly is a + for me.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I didn't pick up Radiant Citadel but the fact that you highlight the social encounters certainly is a + for me.

I would say it leans heavily into the social, and exploration of exotic locations, but is light on combat and dungeon bashing - which is probably why it doesn't appeal to some.

 

[Muso]

Setting aside the wierd expectation that a magic space station floating in magic hyperspace should be realistic, you do realise that the citadel is just an optional plot device to link a series of unrelated adventures into a campaign?

Yes. I perfectly realised that. In my opinion it's too utopian of a place. Too utopian in the sense of being too peaceful and lacking conflict or competition between factions (and therefore also lacking any interest as far as I am concerned). I would have preferred something more related to the rather peculiar place where it is located, which is also full of rather dangerous monsters.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

In my opinion it's too utopian of a place.

In a universe where we have lawful good populations?!

Too utopian in the sense of being too peaceful and lacking conflict

It's supposed to be a safe haven between adventures - just like the Yawning Portal Inn. Not the place where adventures occur.

 

[Muso]

In a universe where we have lawful good populations?!

Yes. In my opinion, yes. There may be good legal populations, but there are still conflicts of various kinds (more or less political and/or violent). The radiant citadel is a place from good bedtime stories (so totally uninteresting to me in terms of role-playing; while I would easily set an evening in the Yawning Portal Inn, I would never do so here, as I don't find it interesting).

It's supposed to be a safe haven between adventures - just like the Yawning Portal Inn. Not the place where adventures occur.

A safe place in the middle of the Astral Plane is something I don't find realistic in the context of the multiverse as we have always known it. The Astral Plane is a mess, and what's more, it's a dangerous mess. But in the middle of it all, there's a cute little place. I find it hard to find it interesting. But, I repeat, that's just my opinion and I'm not trying to convince anyone.

 

[bedir than]

Ha! I was about to check Beyond for the sections on conflict within the Citadel, but Beyond is down with this image about space eels

 

[Paul Farquhar]

A safe place in the middle of the Astral Plane is something I don't find realistic in the context of the multiverse as we have always known it.

It's not in the Astral, it's in the deep Ethereal.

As my old astrophysics lecturer used to say "space is vuri vuri big." The chance of running into something are infinitesimally small. But the Radiant Citadel protected anyway.

But it doesn't matter, because the adventures don't happen there, it's supposed to be a safe between adventures, if you want to string them together as a campaign - which I wouldn't recommend anyway, the settings are too interesting in there own right.

 

[LaTia J]

Ha! I was about to check Beyond for the sections on conflict within the Citadel, but Beyond is down with this image about space eels

View attachment 427696

The site was down for a lengthy maintenance period while we did some backend optimizations. It's back up now and has been for about two and a half hours

 

[bedir than]

The site was down for a lengthy maintenance period while we did some backend optimizations. It's back up now and has been for about two and a half hours

Yes, I enjoyed the graphic about space eels as we talked about the dangers of the Astral and Ethereal