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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9676975" data-attributes="member: 18">So this is kind of interesting.From the job descriptions, and their listed functions, the "Principal Game Designer" is not really originating the game design, like the real concepts, the real "why we're doing this", but rather merely carrying it out. That's very unusual in TTRPGs. Not unheard-of I'm sure, but it's unusual. It's a little more common in video games.You can see this because none of the major tasks for the Principal Game Designer are in fact, fundamental game design. Like look at this:Yeah collaborate with "rules design leadership" - because that ain't you! You are not a "rules design leader", despite being "Principal Game Designer".But the Head of Game Ecosystem is the real "game designer" in the sense it's normally used here. We can see this immediately:Not just that but also the bullet points that follow it tell you ultimate, all major/serious rule design decisions re: D&D come down to the Head of Game Ecosystem, all major/serious rules concepts are likely to be originated by, or at least have to pass through and be completely approved by the Head of Game Ecosystems.What this position effectively is, is what video games tend to call a "Game Director" (or sometimes Lead Game Designer or similar), but it contains some elements from a slightly a level even above that.I'm not necessarily entirely critical of this. I don't know whether this will work well for WotC or not. But it is notable that this is a very corporate and videogame-company-like division of power that suggests WotC still has big plans for D&D in a way it certainly did not in, say,  2014.The other point that's interesting here is that, if WotC intended to, say, continue with 5E for another 10 years, having both these roles probably wouldn't be necessary - you could likely combine them. To me that we have this particular setup, together with other information, suggests 5E 2024 doesn't have that long on the clock before we get 6E.</blockquote>

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