WotC WotC President Cynthia Williams Resigns

Cynthia Williams, who has been president of Wizards of the Coast for the last two years, will be leaving the company at the end of the month, according to an SEC filing dated April 15th. Hasbro is already looking for somebody to step into the role.

Williams worked for Microsoft on the Gaming Ecosystem Commercial Team before joining WotC two years ago, stepping into the role that then-president Chris Cocks vacated when he was promoted to CEO of Hasbro in February 2022.

Item 5.02 Departure of Directors or Certain Officers; Election of Directors; Appointment of Certain Officers; Compensatory Arrangements of Certain Officers.
On April 15, 2024, Cynthia Williams, President of Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro Gaming, informed the Company of her resignation from the Company effective April 26, 2024. The Company is conducting a process to identify her successor, looking at both internal and external candidates.

According to Rascal News, WotC responded with a comment: "We’re excited for Cynthia to take the next step in her career and grateful for the contributions she has made in her more than two years at Wizards and Hasbro. We wish her the absolute best in her next endeavor. We have started the search for our next President of Wizards of the Coast and hope to have a successor in place soon."

 

[FrogReaver]

As much as I expect them to be able to publish solid, beautiful books on time. I also expect it will be out of date on day 1 with some DDB hot fixes.

Hmmm. That does seem like a valid concern.

 

[Umbran]

Yea, rough estimate for 250 programmers for a year might be something like 100,000 dollars * 250 = 25 million. Might be a little higher than that or lower depending on specifics. But your right, probably not enough put d&d in red on its own.

Yeah, but then there's all the infrastructure those engineers use. In several IT/Software shops I've been in, people were about half the cost of running the organization.

 

[LesserThan]

I’m pretty sure they’re not going to have the same problem with the core books that they had with the Deck of Manh Things…

This is WotC, so you never know. I mean the largest seller is cards, and the screwed up the cards. D&D is books, and they have had bad books EVERY time a new book comes out since 3e.

 

[Faolyn]

What do you think is going to happen? What do you think the likelihood is of that happening?

I’m no fan of WOTC but I expect them to ship the core books on time and I expect the same level of physical quality I’ve seen from their recent books.

I had problems with the content of Spelljammer and Planescape but the physical quality and art was fantastic.

I imagine the core books will be fine. But with Spelljammer, at least, the paper was thicker than normal, and the font and art slightly larger than normal, which suggests that later books will have less and less content in them.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I imagine the core books will be fine. But with Spelljammer, at least, the paper was thicker than normal, and the font and art slightly larger than normal, which suggests that later books will have less and less content in them.

That's probably true. Their font size went up quite a bit which is something I mentioned in my Planescape review. Compared to the value of Eberron, we're paying 20% more for half the material these days.

WOTC's been coy about the core books saying things like they're going to be larger than any others but then giving page counts that are about the same as the existing core books. They're describing a lot more material but not how they're going to cram it into the same books.

We'll see what we get in the end. Good thing is that there are three other alternative 5es to enjoy if we don't like this one.

 

[Dire Bare]

I imagine the core books will be fine. But with Spelljammer, at least, the paper was thicker than normal, and the font and art slightly larger than normal, which suggests that later books will have less and less content in them.

Increasing font sizes and also increased white space, and other layout changes can certainly be an attempt to mask decreased content.

However, it can also be due to trying to improve the readability and accessibility of a work. Or both.

But thickness of paper? That isn't an indicator of anything other than thicker paper.

 

[SlyFlourish]

Increasing font sizes and also increased white space, and other layout changes can certainly be an attempt to mask decreased content.

However, it can also be due to trying to improve the readability and accessibility of a work. Or both.

But thickness of paper? That isn't an indicator of anything other than thicker paper.

The thicker paper was unique to the boxed sets (which I have big problems with -- so much cardboard!!). They had to use big thick paper or the books would look like Babar. Those thick pages aren't in their other normal hardcover books.

 

[Umbran]

... and they have had bad books EVERY time a new book comes out since 3e.

They will have had faulty books in 1e and 2e as well. We just didn't have the internet to make that visible to us.

 

[Dire Bare]

They will have had faulty books in 1e and 2e as well. We just didn't have the internet to make that visible to us.

IMO, the average quality of D&D releases have been significantly higher since WotC purchased TSR, even before the launch of 3E.

Some of those classic D&D releases were baaaaad . . .

 

[Blue]

Ignore. Found this was already discussed.