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.

 

[Zardnaar]

Radiant Citadel was kind of a stretch conceptually but its not entirely la la land.

The setup and adventures were fairly mediocre. Weakest of the anthologies overall imho. Golden Vault and Inginite Staircase probably the best.

WotC big weak point is adventures. Theyre not very good. In a way they've raised the floor but lowered the ceiling. They don't tend to follow their own rules so they're often stupidly easy. Early combats the initiative rolls, middle is round one late combat is round 2. To many encounters 1-3 mooks and 1 meh monster that dies or is locked down if it loses initiative.

And the anthologies are better than the big adventures generally. I got a few of the post Tashas ones for free and I want my money back.

If you font like Gothic horror youre kinda SoL on good APs as well (ToA not recommended for beginners).

 

[bedir than]

Radiant Citadel gives several examples of adventures that take place mostly within the Citadel and its environs.
Good groups can have opposing goals and may even choose violence to accomplish those.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It's like objecting to the adventures in Tales from the Yawning Portal because the Yawning Portal Inn serves bad beer.

The Yawning Portal is intensely silly, but that hasn't seemed to sour anyone on Waterdeep.

The objection to the Radiant Citadel typically is that people trying to create a better society is somehow unrealistic. (This same thing was lobbed at Green Ronin's Blue Rose back in the day, by people who got very upset about the setting.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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

We're going through the adventures in order and, so far, they've all had a strong social component to them. One could hack and slash their way through some of them, I guess, but that would be like watching a Star Trek away team just blast everyone in sight with phasers: It's possible, but it feels very contrary to the rest of the vibe.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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).

There are multiple factions in the citadel, including ancient ancestral spirits for each of the Concord Worlds who are speaking for their living descendants, a separate council of living and contemporary beings from multiple civilizations, a dragon who is pro-democracy but also not interested in giving up her control of things to anyone else, a demon lord attempting to cause mischief in at least one Concord World (which I've now expanded in my campaign to having him interfere with most of them) and the citadel's aforementioned dragon leader is pushing the Prime Directive to its limit in how the citadel deals with a powerful angel who is the leader of one of the worlds.

There's no law saying you need to like this, or any book, but that's a lot of conflict. It's entirely likely that a Radiant Citadel campaign ends with both the forces of the Abyss and the Upper Planes deciding to, at a minimum, depose the dragon in charge and the player characters deciding what to do about it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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.

We're treating the citadel as the Enterprise. It's a place where everyone goes back to between missions (they're playing Shieldbearers). It's not a conflict-free zone, but it is generally a place that you can rely on being there.

In practice, I'm not sure settings like Sigil or Waterdeep are any less safe. If the DM starts regularly blowing up player characters' inns or having assassins jump out of the bathroom to stab them, that's going to be pretty disruptive to a campaign. I suspect most home bases are pretty safe, most of the time, except for special adventures that change the status quo temporarily.

 

[doctorhook]

Is Erin Roberts an A5E contributor too, like the other recent hires??

 

[Chaltab]

Luckily, Gene Roddenberry circa 1987 doesn't work at WOTC so interpersonal conflicts are fine.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Hell even Candlekeep is better.

That's a hot take you're going to be hard pressed to find a lot of agreement on!

 

[Parmandur]

That's a hot take you're going to be hard pressed to find a lot of agreement on!

I would argue that the anthologies have all been, on balance, pretty great.

As someone who started with 3E in my teens, and thus no familiarity with the old Adventures in Yawning Portal...I actually quite liked it, though Infinite Staircase had a much better approach to being willing to change the old Modules.