Wizards of the Coast Is Hiring a D&D Worldbuilder

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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
 

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Christian Hoffer

Christian Hoffer


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Thats the thing. There are in every setting with a metaplot, folks complaining about how 'their' characters are meaningless, as its the drivers of the metaplot, which is Corporate controlled, that matter.

Those who enjoy metaplot, imho, are more interested in a living story, than the game itself.
Absolutely. This is how it has played out with previous metaplots. The people who really dig into them tend to be people who aren't actively playing, and who are essentially reading all these materials as fiction rather as game materials.
Do people play D&D for WotC's narratives?
Play? Probably not much.

But's not about play - it's above moving books and merch, and metaplots have proven at least short-term successful at that before.

They're also looking, as the job discusses, at transmedia stuff, multi-media as we used to call it - i.e. videogames, movies, etc. - they want to make D&D more marketable for those purposes.
 







So here’s my concern. I’m not sure WotC is ready to invest the time, effort and product line required to build a world from scratch.

A single campaign book or even an adventure is not enough to give something the critical mass to break through and compete with settings with dozens of products.

If there were novel lines, CRPg, adventures and supplements I can see it getting there. But I think we’re more likely to get Ravnica.
 


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