D&D: New Faces At Wizards Of The Coast
Two new hires at Wizards of the Coast mark growth for the company in the coming year.
There are two new Wizards who are presumably of the Coast now. Joining the ranks of the D&D team you’ll find Dan Dillon and F. Wesley Schneider, who have joined the Dungeons and Dragons team as designer and editor, respectively. Both new Wizards come from previous RPG backgrounds.
Dillon is a former Kobold Press designer, making great strides for the company’s 5th Edition titles, including a laundry list of titles (as well as one of the driving forces behind the Midgard setting):
- Midgard Worldbook
- Tome of Beasts and Creature Codex
- Midgard Heroes, Midgard Heroes Handbook, and Unlikely Heroes
- Deep Magic (Void, Ley Lines, Angelic Seals, Ring Magic, Elemental Magic)
- Genies Great and Small: 21 New Genies of Zakhara at DM’s Guild
- Midgard Sagas, The Raven’s Call, and Last Gasp adventures
- Articles in Warlock issues 1, 2, and 8
Schneider, on the other hand, comes from Paizo, where he worked as Editor-in-Chief after starting out as assistant editor on Dragon Magazine.
Both hires come on at a time of rapid growth for D&D. It continues, as ever, to be the biggest name in the tabletop roleplaying game world–but even for D&D the last few years have been marked by an intense surge in popularity and a renewed interest in the game. Streamed games and pop culture references have brought the venerable roleplaying game into a new generation of households, which means bigger and better years for D&D. There’s no question that RPGs in general are entering a golden age.
However there is a question of what will come next. Can RPGs ride this current wave of popularity into something sustainable? When Kickstarters like the Critical Role animated series special raise a significant percentage of what the RPG industry takes in per year (and this in just a few short weeks) what does that say for the industry that props up the show?
Questions like these mark the new era in gaming we’re entering in. And like Dillon and Schneider, we’ll all have to find our footing as the game–and the industry–change around us.
Happy Adventuring!
