Wizards of the Coast Is Hiring a D&D Worldbuilder

Wizards of the Coast is looking to hire someone to build new worlds for Dungeons & Dragons. Over the weekend, Wizards of the Coast posted a new job listing for a "Senior Narrative Worldbuilding Designer for Dungeons & Dragons." The new position will help Wizards of the Coast "create exciting and inspirational new settings" alongside developing existing settings. Notably, this isn't a position limited to the D&D RPG design team - the position will also work with "ensuring narrative consistency" across video games, entertainment and the D&D RPG.

At a press event earlier this year, D&D franchise head Jess Lanzillo mentioned that new campaign settings were potentially on the way. "With Jeremy Crawford taking on the game director role and then Chris Perkins taking on the creative director role is that we were able to really reestablish a world building environment," Lanzillo said. "What does that mean? We can really establish our worlds and settings like the Forgotten Realms and also look to creating new ones again. That's something that we are working on and we don't have anything to really discuss today other than to tell you like we are re-establishing everything that we have and we are going to make some new stuff too."

The full job listing is below:

We are hiring a Senior Narrative Worldbuilding Designer for Dungeons & Dragons. In this role, you will create exciting and inspirational new settings and develop existing ones. The settings you create will become part of our ever-expanding multiverse. Working closely with others in our creative team, you will give life to legendary characters, intertwine the narratives of D&D stories across various platforms, and provide new content for internal and external partners to play with across all expressions of D&D. We need a world builder with strong writing skills, a collaborative spirit, and a focused imagination.

What You'll Do:

• Build and develop comprehensive narrative worldbuilding materials for the D&D franchise
• Design and flesh out new worlds, locations, and settings within the D&D multiverse
• Evolve and expand existing D&D settings through compelling narrative development
• Build and develop franchise-level characters, factions, and storylines
• Ensure narrative consistency across the franchise portfolio including video games, entertainment, and the RPG
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to align worldbuilding elements across different media
• Develop detailed lore documentation and creative briefs for our fans, partners, and team members.
• Lead narrative development for our world bibles and style guides

 

[Chuck Kiley]

They might some of the time, if they were any good!

Anyone old enough to remember the Time of Troubles/Avatar project...it was not good.

 

[Von Ether]

The silly answer: So the position lets you do all the fun GM prep all day without having to juggle CRs and PC levels.

The less silly answer: Some of this will be the dream job for a lot of people, worldbuilding and fun outlining without the extra load of filling that outline by writing a whole a ttrpg. Or like hanging in a writer's room without having to kick out a story or story/episode on a deadline.

The serious answer: The two silly answers will be the main temptations to apply. There will be a lot of other things that will suck the fun right out of it.

 

[MGibster]

EDIT - The other big problem with metaplot stuff is, based on the 1990s, most of it gets bought and read by DMs, but not actually used, so you're essentially selling merchandised fiction, as it were. And if you focus on that aggressively as people sometimes did in the 1990s, you can kind of increasingly fail to provide for the bulk of people actually playing your game, even if a smaller number of "whales" are buying every single product for precious slivers of metaplot to consume, which I think is not a good long-term strategy.

Bingo! I don't think I'm opposed to the idea of a metaplot in general, only in how it was handled in the 1990s. There were several some companies, White Wolf and R. Talsorian Games I'm looking at you, where the PCs would go through the adventures only to sit back and watch the favored NPCs do all the cool stuff. Alderac Entertainment has the big problem of their Legend of the Five Rings metaplot being determined by the collectible card game.

But then I guess there's a problem when it comes to adventures. Aren't DMs going to be the one buying them? If I'm a player, what need do I have to purchase Curse of Strahd?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Bingo! I don't think I'm opposed to the idea of a metaplot in general, only in how it was handled in the 1990s. There were several some companies, White Wolf and R. Talsorian Games I'm looking at you, where the PCs would go through the adventures only to sit back and watch the favored NPCs do all the cool stuff.

TSR got there first! I dunno about earlier stuff like Dragonlance, I think you play the heroes there, but with Dark Sun, literally the first adventure is a "sit back and watch whilst the REAL heroes deal with the REAL badguy" deal (and then the REAL heroes get an entire staggeringly badly written five-novel series about them - which a friend once snuck on to my bookshelves as a prank!), and I there's other TSR stuff like that. FASA also engaged in an awful lot of this with Shadowrun.

And that's just one of many potential issues.

But then I guess there's a problem when it comes to adventures. Aren't DMs going to be the one buying them? If I'm a player, what need do I have to purchase Curse of Strahd?

Yes. By leaning on the metaplot or narrative or whatever you want to call it, you're essentially relying on DMs to keep buying most of your stuff, and you put at least small bits of metaplot into player books or the like to ensure the DMs (particularly including "DMs" in name only, who aren't actually running the game) hopefully keep buying all the available books to "keep up" with the metaplot. Eventually this can lead to stuff like even the player-oriented books getting warped out of shape to fit the themes and ideas of the "meta-narrative".

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I'd love to do a job like this, but I'd have to take a paycut AND move to the USA, for the only job that I can imagine that actually has less job security than owning a Comic and Game Store!

 

[Von Ether]

I hear TORG topped this by implying the "real" hero being watched by the PCs was either the line developer or main adventure writer.

I'd love to do a job like this, but I'd have to take a paycut AND move to the USA, for the only job that I can imagine that actually has less job security than owning a Comic and Game Store!

Same. I feel like if you don't get into this industry young and make it through the very lean years and avoid burnout along the way, then the chances of braking in where you are older are very small.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

My memory was that he had retweeted support for the brigades that objected to the foreword in the history book. Now, after logging into Twitter for the first time in months I'm not seeing that. Nor am I seeing the tweets from Weis that sided with the brigade.

I am seeing his claim that he was hired for a DragonLance treatment.

I have the book you linked too and read his forward, it's usually in that it's grand tale in it's own right.

And disliking the forward of the so called History book doesn't mean your anti inclusive, it means you simply don't agree with Tondo. Joe has never said anything racist, or homophobic, or transphobic and neither have Weiss or Hickman.

Please don't smear innocent people like that.

Anyways moving on.

Other then Jeff Grubbs, I'm not sure who has experience at this kind of job. Maybe someone at Onyx Path?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I hear TORG topped this by implying the "real" hero being watched by the PCs was either the line developer or main adventure writer.

I dunno about TORG but the original SLA Industries did something like imply the entire game took place in the mind of a serial killer or something truly ridiculous

And disliking the forward of the so called History book doesn't mean your anti inclusive

It 100% does if the reason you dislike it is that it's truthful about sexism in D&D. And what's really funny is, it wasn't even - it actually downplayed it!

But even downplaying it was too much for some people...

Also "so called History book", are you joking? If not then what a terrible and purely hypocritical thing to say in this context! It doesn't further your argument, it's just a massive of admission of extreme bias if you mean that.

it means you simply don't agree with Tondo

No.

If you're against saying early D&D and particularly Gygax himself expressed pretty extremely sexist views, arguably significantly misogynist, you're absolutely doing a lot more than "simply not agreeing". You're becoming a historical revisionist in the service of protecting sexism/misogyny.

Joe has never said anything racist, or homophobic, or transphobic and neither have Weiss or Hickman.

Curious.

You left out sexism and misogyny entirely.

Despite them being the main issue here. I have no idea if any of those people said anything against the book mildly pointing out the undeniable and in-writing sexism of early D&D and particularly Gygax, but if they did, they are absolutely anti-inclusive. Sorry, that's just how it it is. You don't get to defend sexism and misogyny and say "I LOVE INCLUSIVITY" because you're already saying "It's okay to look down on 51% of the world's population!".

Please don't smear innocent people like that.

If they said something against that section in the foreword, they're not "innocent people" in this context, are they? But I don't know if they did.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I dunno about TORG but the original SLA Industries did something like imply the entire game took place in the mind of a serial killer or something truly ridiculous


It 100% does if the reason you dislike it is that it's truthful about sexism in D&D. And what's really funny is, it wasn't even - it actually downplayed it!

But even downplaying it was too much for some people...

No.

If you're against saying early D&D and particularly Gygax himself expressed pretty extremely sexist views, arguably significantly misogynist, you're absolutely doing a lot more than "simply not agreeing". You're becoming a historical revisionist in the service of protecting sexism/misogyny.


Curious.

You left out sexism and misogyny entirely. Despite them being the main issue here.

I'm not getting dragged into this. I stand by my statement, and that is all I have to say about it, I'm moving on back to the actual topic of the thread.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Brian Sanderson would be great at this, but they can't afford him.