SPEAKER_01 0:00

All right, who set up the teleportation circle between Wizards of the Goes and Derry Jebress? That was beautiful. I have never seen you move so fast. Well, if you didn't notice, there's the opening crack. The double crack. The double crack. It's time for another episode of. Well, actually, it's a bonus episode of Bards and Barrels tonight. We're going to bring you up to speed a little bit on the whole um peep the mass exodus. People leaving Wizards of the Coast and heading to various places, but at least two of them that we know of have left to go to Darrington Press.

SPEAKER_02 0:55

Turn the lights out on your way out.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

It's the weirdest damn thing this week. So just initial gut reaction here, boys. What what are your thoughts on Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins going to Darrington? Um, there's been a couple other people left. Todd Kenrick was laid off from Wizards this week. And um uh VP Jess Lanzillo has also left Wizards the Coast. So all kinds of movement happening. I'm not sure we're done. I would agree with that.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

I mean, this is after all of Hasbro had a terrible month, quarter, half a year, yeah, and had to lay off a whole bunch of people on the sigil team.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Yeah, so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

So it's it's not great times at Hasbro right now. And Wizards is under uh Hasbro.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

I yeah, I don't know. I'm just I'm so curious, right? Like, it's a big company, sure they can hire replacements, but if you think of like the years of experience that have walked away, right, and the depth of knowledge that those people are taking with them, and it's not like they're just fading away into the distance, right? No, like they're gonna go be creative somewhere else directly at a competitor, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

The nice thing though is like turnover is a normal business function, like absolutely turnover happens, like people get new jobs, they move, they leave, they get tired of where they're at. Like, that's all very common. And so this might be nothing, but it might be not a good sign.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

It might be something, it could, who knows?

SPEAKER_00 2:32

And it will, but it'll also open up wizards to have new ideas, possibly as well. Like if they bring in new people, mix it up, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Totally. Uh, let's let's go over the facts, kind of what happened this week, and we'll come back. We'll get to we'll get to throw more of our opinion in here in a little bit. But yesterday, or earlier this week, actually, on uh Monday, June 16th, uh Darrington Press, uh their CEO, Travis Willingham, announced that uh Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford, who had previously announced that they were retiring from Wizards of the Coast, were going to become uh Chris is going to become the creative director and Jeremy the gate the rules director for Darrington Press. And that was kind of what kicked all of this off. And then um, if you had a chance, go go watch our YouTube video where Phil and I kind of do our knee-jerk reaction. Uh and then after that, not very long after that, um, Todd Todd Kenrick, who was I I think his official title was like um video host or something. I don't, I don't know exactly what it was. Phil, you can probably check that really quick. Yeah, basically. Like he was the host for their videos and things like that. He had uh, and here's his um ex post that he said, and he said, and I quote, I have been laid off from DD. Thank you to Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford and the entire DD team for being some of the kindest, most talented, and passionate people I've ever known. This was my dream job. The tabletop community has given me everything. He did not say that he was heading anywhere else yet. Um, but the flip side of that is recently, um within the last year, Jess Lanzillo had been promoted to VP of Dungeons and Dragons for Wizards of the Coast. And she announced um three days ago actually, so this would have been on Sunday, that uh on LinkedIn where she said, after eight years at Wizards of the Coast, I made the totally reasonable decision to leave a job where I got paid to argue about whether fictional lizard people have tails. And she talks a little bit about her time there, but at the end she ends her post by saying, I have I've been ridiculously fortunate for these eight years, and now I'm lucky enough to yet again get to choose my own plot twist. The best part about having super secret super geez English Ross. The best part about having super specific creative obsessions is that occasionally the universe decides to reward you for them more soon, which her post leads me to believe that she's going to announce she's going somewhere. Likely, probably Darrington or Cobalt or you name time will tell, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Where she's gonna go. So I did find Todd was officially the senior content marketing strategist, but most people knew him as a longtime video host and content creator. Sure.

unknown 5:14

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 5:14

You know, something that popped into my mind about Todd's um exit post. Um he maybe changed the words a little bit, but he said laid off and not terminated from true. So if it's true, if it's laid off, that means that's it's Wizard's decision to release him as a possibly more of a cost savings measure.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Sure. Potentially. Okay, so I'm gonna I'm gonna do a little disclosure, disclosure disclaimer here, really quick, is that anything you hear in this episode from here on out is not necessarily fact-driven. This is gonna be us speculating some things that are going on here. Um, so just keep that in mind as you listen to the rest of this episode. And it's changing quickly, it's very quickly. Uh, the news cycle is fast and furious, of course.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

I do find it interesting though that Todd specifically like thanks Chris and Jeremy, the two guys that just recently like walked away. Correct. And the entire DD team, but like specifically call them out by name.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

Yep. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

The day after they announced Aaron. Gotta be intentional.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

So so let's talk a little bit about what this means for Wizards of the Coast, because I think I think we need to go back because the laid off part is very interesting. Yeah. The the thing to me that that seems odd though, is like when when we found out that that uh Wizards of the Coast laid off people that were part of Project Sigil, that made sense to me because the project was kind of a flop. It's still there. It hasn't been really expensive. Yeah, it was really expensive. I mean, there's coders, things there that were gonna cost you a lot of money that you probably couldn't keep on board if it wasn't something you were gonna dump a lot of money into anymore, right? But it's like Todd was in a position where like he's the person out there, he's the face of Wizards of the Coast and DD trying to sell these things. Like he was the guy on all the YouTube videos. And the fact that he's laid off, to me, to your point, Brett, means what kind of financial issues are going on that that they think they need to lay off people, especially in that position. Like the Project Sigil thing's a little different. The the piece they were working on was eh in the first place. So if you're cutting cutting loose fat there, that's one thing, but this is like part of your marketing team.

SPEAKER_02 7:17

I mean, it might it it might just be that Wizards got a directive from Hasbro to cut X percent, like X amount of dollars, and they have to make some really hard decisions.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

That's true, yeah. And I mean, who better to cut than someone in a high profile position because you're gonna save the most money, right?

SPEAKER_02 7:33

Well, and and if and it's and he wasn't necessarily developing content.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

True. Right.

SPEAKER_02 7:40

So you're not losing out on the publishing content necessarily. That's true.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

You're not you're not making money off of what he does necessarily. Not directly, correct. I mean, he's helping in theory, of course, but but yeah, I I mean i if if Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins were already, you know, ready to retire, because it certainly sounded like that, Phil, from what you and I were talking about the other day, was that like they had been working on succession plans and and they weren't going to leave until after the 50th anniversary, which was this last year, and then they rolled out basically essentially the next three to four years of books that they've come up with. So it's like if they were leaving already, and to your point, Brett, if they had to cut 10%, well, those two are already out the door, cut somewhere else and you can hit it or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 8:23

And that's the good news for Wizards, is they already have set out the path of where DD is headed. Yeah, the new people are gonna come in and probably make their own footprint or make their own fingerprints on what that looks like, but they've started a lot of those balls rolling down the hill.

unknown 8:41

Right.

SPEAKER_02 8:41

So, like, we're gonna continue to get content, we're still gonna be developing new um campaigns or modules or something that's gonna still be coming from wizards. It's just gonna have some different names and maybe potentially a little bit different flavor to it.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

Well, I think I think you hit it on the head at the beginning of the episode. It's like everybody just needs to take a collective deep breath here because what you're seeing is two people that we already knew were leaving, really, and now business decisions are being made. People are making moves based on this happens all the time. That's the point. So it's like before these guys were around that were very public figures for DD, did anybody pay attention to who any of these guys were 20 years ago or 30 years ago? And then now 40 years ago, we're getting back to Gary Gyaks and and those guys when it originally came out. But you know, you didn't worry about it before, so why are you worrying about it now? And some of that just has to be the fact that it's super popular, a lot of people are in it, and now all of a sudden everybody's worried about it.

SPEAKER_02 9:38

Invisibility, sure, yeah. To them put publishing information that they are leaving, like right. Gary Gyas wouldn't have said that.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Like, well, and how would it be?

SPEAKER_02 9:48

He didn't have a forum to say that exactly that.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

I mean, that's the thing now is you know, short news cycle and social media platforms make it very easy to disseminate information, true or not in some cases, but in this case, obviously true.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

I almost wonder too, though, like if part of it being in the spotlight too is because of those layoffs they had back in December. Like they laid off like 1100 people, yeah, right. Which is a lot of people. I also wonder, too, you know, how much was Jess part of the you know, um like progression or like the long-term plan that they left in place because she'd only been the VP of DD since February of 24. Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

Makes me think that she maybe wasn't as involved in the long-term planning.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

But they also have so many things set up, right? There are releases coming this summer, like Gen Con's coming up, so they must already have a plan. Like Wizards must have a plan of how they're gonna execute all those things.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

There's still a lot of people working there.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And they're just names we're not as familiar with.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

And I think something everybody can take solace in is is DD is a very recognizable brand. So if you if anybody out there is in the marketing world, it's like strong brands survive things like this because people aren't buying it because Jeremy Crawford's the rules director, even though they may know who he is, or because Jess is the VP. They're buying it because they know what DD is and what it means. So at the end of the day, as long as that brand's still there, whether Hasbro keeps it or not, down the road, speculation again, uh, it's still gonna be recognizable enough. It's gonna be around for another 50 years. I'd be surprised if it went away.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

Well, I think eventually this has happened to us, I feel like, right? You eventually just get bit by the TTRPG bug and it doesn't really matter what you're buying, right? Like system, sure, DD, great, love it.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

And that leads us to our next point. Let's talk about what this means for Darrington Press. We'll get to like the the bigger world of TTRPGs here in a second, but you know, let's let's kick it off with Darrington. Darrington has had some products recently that that have maybe felt a little disjointed. So it's like Candela is a very like almost module-driven play system, and Daggerheart is intended to be more of a longer term system, but from the what some of the reviews that we've heard, you know, it's like people saying, Oh, this is amazing. What's in Daggerheart, but DD already had it. So it's like they're seeing it through rose-colored eyes in a little bit, a little rose-colored glasses, not rose-colored eyes, goodness gracious. Uh but but anyway, point being, you know, to fix the issues that Darrington is seeing with some of their modules, how do you fix those? You bring in people with decades of experience to fix that who know how to do it.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Do you think though, if you'd never played DD and you played Dagger Heart, that you would think the same thing? Or would you have it because you wouldn't have anything else to compare back to. So would you not say like, oh well, DD already had this? You'd be like, oh, this is the greatest thing ever. Like, what would that look like?

SPEAKER_01 12:41

That's that's very it's so hard to view it from that perspective now, though.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

Agreed. But like, I mean, we ran a couple uh assignments in Candela, right? And it's a totally different system, right? And plays very differently than DD. And I love that, but I also don't view this through the DD lens because they're so different. Sure. Right? It is not the same thing.

SPEAKER_02 13:05

I will say the one thing is that Candela and Daggerheart are the first book. Like DD has had years and years and years to continually add upon itself. So yeah, they're redoing the player's handbook and the dungeon master's guide for DD, but they've done it before, they're re they're polishing it, they're continuing to add upon itself. Candela's just getting started.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

Oh, yeah. So what we're in uh DD 5.5, right? Technically, edition, right? This is one.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Right? Like, think of how far potentially this game is going to come over years. Sure, yes.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

And I think from a business perspective, what they're doing makes sense. Like, if you want to perfect this and polish it, you hire people to help you do that, and that's what they did.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

That have been doing it for almost 20 years, right? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Now, going back to like talking about like perspective, like I'm gonna when when I read through dagger art, whenever I get it, I'm I'm gonna look at it. Uh, it's it's gonna be from the perspective of the fact that I played DD because it's hard to like disassociate myself with that, right? But like even thinking back to five, six years ago when we all started playing DD, what other systems were there at the time? Call of Cthulhu, DD, and that was about Pathfinder, which is DD 3.5. Yeah. So it's like those three were the main three, and look how far we've come in five to six years and how many are out there.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

So that's we have more than that on our shelves.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

We we do. Let's not talk about how much money we've spent on this game.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

No, let's not.

SPEAKER_02 14:36

The other thing with any sort of these new books is that like if you're coming to into Call of Cthulhu or Candela or Daggerheart or any of these, you're probably already playing DD. Like, so there, I would say it's a very small fraction of people that come in and start with one of those other TTRBs.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Yeah, that's a fair assessment.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

It is hard now. I I I agree, especially older players for sure. Any anybody our age? The problem is is like how many new players are we gaining right now? Because like there's kids playing in high school where the dagger heart may be the one, the first one that they've ever played ever, which like going back to this point, it's like we didn't have that option.

SPEAKER_02 15:21

And if they're watching critical role, potentially they do jump straight in.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

Well, and what kicked all this off? I mean, Stranger Things really started the DD revolution because that's where it became mainstream again, and then from there it showed up with Critical Role and their campaigns, and then the DD movie, DD movie, Vox Machina being on Amazon, and now all this stuff, and it's very mainstream now. So you're absolutely right that there could be new players out there that have never played DD, whereas all the older players are gonna be coming from that background of one of the three original TTRPGs.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

Can't even imagine what it would be like to be like, Oh, I watched critical role play candela and I loved it, so we played Candela, and now I'm gonna start playing DD. Can you like imagine imagine what that would be like?

SPEAKER_01 16:05

Like DD would be so rules heavy, yeah, and so many more diets. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

Wait, I went from this book to like this is just the player's handbook, you know? Like, oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

But also, there's so much to consume.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Right. That's true.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

Absolutely. I mean, just lore-wise, like it's so extensive.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

That's what I'm excited about, I think, for Darrington, though, is because these are first edition, right? Like, what else is coming? Right? Like, what other things are going to be coming in these settings? And that I think is that's what's exciting to see this grow.

SPEAKER_02 16:40

Yeah, the potential between just adding more power to their repertoire of experience, knowledge of how to develop a system, knowledge of how to take a book to market, even is like all that things, all those things. There's a lot of just headaches that you have to go through to develop something for the first time that they don't necessarily have to do now because they have those new resources on their team.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

I think I think I said it really well when we were were talking in the video earlier this week, Phil, was that you know the the upside for for Darrington is the sky's the limit for them. It's no guarantee of of success hiring these guys, no, but it it could go anywhere, sky's limit for them. And really for wizards, because you have such a strong brand, people leaving is not the basement for them. So it's it's it's really like this really strange back and forth and in finding the middle ground and not panicking or not not in the being in the low lows or the high highs, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:42

And I think it's important to remember that like competition drives progress, right? So the fact that there's some turnover at wizards is going to create an opportunity for growth there for a new talent to step into some of those roles and develop things differently or develop new material. And Candela has brought in some experience, right? So they can continue to build on to what they already have in existence, and then those two are just going to continue to push the market forward as they compete with one another.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

So that's a good segue. It's talking about how this affects DN the TTRPG world as a whole, is you know, I think Brett, you made the analogy earlier about the pie, right? So it's like, you know, and and if you're looking at TTRPGs as a pie, most of it is DD. Like they have the market share on a lot of that, but that pie is growing bigger and bigger and bigger all the time because there's these new players coming in, and that market share is getting smaller, but competition makes everybody better, right?

SPEAKER_02 18:41

Yeah, it's like just because DD is maybe losing out on these two really key resources doesn't mean that they're not going to continue to grow. Right. Correct. So they might not grow quite as quickly as they did if they had this experience on their team, but they're gonna still continue to grow, still pump out new content, and they will adapt and change and reshuffle how they're doing things. But on the other side, Darrington Press is getting all this stuff, and so they maybe grow faster than they would have previously and get more of that chunk of the expanding pie.

SPEAKER_00 19:13

What I also kind of think back to with wizards, too, right, is when they acquired DD Beyond. Because that's an entirely other revenue source for them. And since they've done that, right, they've opened the doors on things that you can purchase in DD Beyond. So you can buy more than just Wizards of the Coast material inside of Beyond. And I assume they're getting some sort of kickback from that. So that also allows them to partner with, I mean, shit, they even have a critical role book in there, right?

unknown 19:39

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

So like there's already some crossover there. They're working with Cobalt Press on some things, like they're sharing some of that space already, and I think that for the TTRPG community as a whole is still going to continue to push it forward.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

You just made a really interesting point. So we were talking about um possi the possibility of uh Jess Lanzillo going to Cobold, but Kobold and and Wizards of the Coast had moved a lot closer to each other over the last you know six to eight months, really with more and more of their content being available to the mainstream DD players, which so it would actually kind of surprise me if that's where she landed. Now, now I really lean towards she may end up at Darrington. I mean, it could be one of the smaller ones, but to me, Darrington has the bandwidth to hire somebody at that level.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

But do they do they need her too in addition to the two they just brought on?

SPEAKER_02 20:34

Maybe, maybe not. But also any of these decisions are also personal.

SPEAKER_00 20:39

That's true.

SPEAKER_02 20:40

So where has she lived? Where does her family live? Like all those factors also matter, and so also they might she might be doing something completely different. Yeah, we can't say.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

That's very I mean, you could still find a creative outlet that isn't D D but is still super nerdy.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

Yeah. So speaking of finding a place, so so figuring out where Jess Jess Lanzilla is gonna lead to land and everything in this, but you make a good point of if Darrington has a place for her. So we found it really interesting that uh in the LA Times and and I think from Darrington themselves, uh, Travis Willingham was mentioned as the CEO of Darrington. He's the CEO of Critical Role Productions, like the the the umbrella company. But prior to that point, Ivan uh Van Norman was the CEO and the head of Darrington Press. But now uh Travis Willingham was mentioned a couple times as being the CEO of Darrington Press, too. So if we're if we're looking for a place for her to land, he could go back to being the umbrella CEO and she could take over potentially as the CEO of Darrington Press. Mark that possibilities that could be where that lands. I found it really strange that they mentioned him as CEO of both companies. When that, like, why would you do that when it's a subsidiary company to your umbrella company anyway?

SPEAKER_00 21:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

But if you don't have anybody there, if he left, I I don't know this for a fact, but if he left and you're looking for somebody to take that spot, right, he's basically in the interim, you still have to have a CEO. So he's still the head because he's the overall boss anyway. So and I don't know, but you know, put a put a bookmark on that one. We could come back to that and see if I'm right somewhere down the road.

SPEAKER_02 22:17

We'll give it a week.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

Give it a week in the beginning. I will post about that somewhere.

SPEAKER_02 22:22

We better get this one out right away because by the time we publish this, it might be different.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Yeah, you know, I'm hoping to have this one out in a couple days, and we'll see, we'll see if we're in the hole by then. Uh okay, so I I I I I think end of the day, everybody take a deep breath. Guys, what are your last thoughts on this whole mishmash at this point?

SPEAKER_00 22:42

This is all good news at the end of the day. I mean, it's gonna be growth. Yeah, things are going to change, and change is good.

SPEAKER_02 22:50

Agreed. I would say uh possibly best this is a push for D. Yeah. Uh I don't think this is a huge upside by any means to DD, but I think they have enough people in this stable behind them that people can move up and take over these positions. Yeah, with as much experience necessarily, but but DD will be okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

But those guys didn't have that much experience 17, 18 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 23:16

Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

They had to start somewhere. Yep. Yeah, that's exactly right. I I th I think you nailed it on the head, Brett. I think I think it's a wash for wizards, but who knows? I mean, you have a very strong brand, so you could have somebody with excellent ideas that nobody has ever heard of that comes in and completely revolutionizes the game and sends it to places unknown. For Darrington, the upside is you're gonna have somebody that tweaks an already good game from what I hear. I have not played Daggerheart yet. Um, and it can only get better from there, right? You're you're these are people who know how to tweak things and sell them very well. Right. So I think that's kind of where we're headed. All right, that's gonna do it for this bonus episode of Bards and Barrels. You can listen to the past episodes of the show anywhere podcast can be found. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Social, now on TikTok and YouTube at Bards and Barrels. We'll see you maybe next week. Who knows? We're out of here.