Jeremy Crawford & Chris Perkins Are Leaving D&D At The Smartest Time

UPDATE: 2025/04/16 16:06 EST BY BEN BROSOFSKY

SRD 5.2 Will Release On April 22

After the writing of this article, D&D announced that an updated System Reference Document based on the 2024 ruleset will release on April 22 under Creative Commons license, as reported by Forbes.

The recently announced departure of Dungeons & Dragonsleads Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins isn't exactly exciting news, but despite my apprehension, I can't say I blame them. While a wide variety of people have been involved in guiding D&D 5e and its 2024 rules revision, Crawford and Perkins are undeniably among the most significant. 5e's principal architect Mike Mearls already left Wizards of the Coast in 2019, but Crawford and Perkins have led, respectively, the rules and story of the game in recent years.

Opinions on D&D 5e and its recent changes vary, and plenty of criticism has been leveled at Crawford and Perkins over time. For the most part, however, the two have a better relationship with the community at large than you might expect, at least considering the hostility that can frequently define modern fandoms. Even so, nothing lasts forever, and Crawford and Perkins choosing to depart when they are is exactly what I would do in their place.

Crawford & Perkins Already Set Up D&D's Future

D&D 2024 Is Completely In Place

In a Screen Rant interview announcing Crawford's departure, Wizards of the Coast VP of Franchise and Product Jess Lanzillo described the departure as a planned move following the completion and successful launch of the 2024 rulebooks. It's far from the most dramatic reason for designers to leave the company, even if the announcement has come as something of a surprise.

"They wanted to make sure that the core rulebooks were really successful, that they were setting up all of the future leads for success. That has happened, and they feel really reassured that the folks in place will be able to carry on with the wonderful legacy that they've given us, and then bring their own stuff to the table, which they've already been doing."— Jess Lanzillo

Reassuringly, it also doesn't sound like the two mentally checked out after that big hurdle had been cleared. Lanzillo also confirmed that Crawford and Perkins "were both in very high-level roadmapping roles and capacities for the last year." While they might not be seeing the books planned for 2025 and beyond to completion, they were involved in setting the concepts in place and assigning project leads, so their influence isn't going to immediately evaporate.

D&D's 2024 Rulebooks Are A Strong Note To Leave On

An Unusually Clean Career Bookend

Say what you will about D&D's 2024 rules revision, I think most players would concede that they're better than initially expected. While some decisions in the books range from mildly frustrating to baffling, the overall direction of the project turned out to be much more coherent and effective than the unconvincing experiments of the earliest One D&D playtests suggested. The new books iron out some of 5e's oddest quirks and significantly improve the onboarding process for newcomers, making them a better avenue for the average person to get into D&D.

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Taking their leave now, Crawford and Perkins can wear the 2024 rulebooks as a feather in their cap, marking the ultimate conclusion of years spent dealing with 5e's problems and listening to feedback. If they chose to stick around, finding another appropriate moment to depart with some closure could be difficult. D&D will doubtless continue to go through ups, downs, and endless tinkering in the coming years, and any triumphs of the 2024 rulebooks will fade into the background as commonplace underpinnings of the game.

After Major Projects, Creative Burnout Is Inevitable

Passion Rarely Lasts Forever

Baldur's Gate 3 Party members including Wyll, Karlach, Lae'zel, and Shadowheart

Within the world of D&D, the development of Baldur's Gate 3 offers a particularly salient comparison. After a six-year development cycle, Baldur's Gate 3's 2023 release might be the most celebrated moment in modern D&D history. While the game featured an extensive array of bugs, it was compelling enough for people to happily accept those deficits, and developer Larian Studios immediately getting started on fixes reassured the community that problems wouldn't last forever.

Baldur's Gate 3 has just debuted its final major update, but it's not slated to receive any DLC, and the reason is entirely based on the team's morale. As Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke explained to IGN in 2024, the company actually started work on DLC before coming back from Christmas break and scrapping it. The work simply "wasn't coming from the heart," as the team was ready to move on from the all-consuming project and explore new creative avenues.

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However much Crawford and Perkins may love D&D, I imagine they must be feeling at least some strain of the same fatigue. Designing a game that's meant to go on forever is a task with no end in sight, and they just reached an actual milestone along the Sisyphean journey. Taking their leave now could hand over the future of the game to designers with more energy for the project, which might not be a bad thing.

Crawford & Perkins Can Avoid Future D&D Problems

No Need To Take The Blame

Several D&D party members standing around as a protective spell is cast against a frosty attack.

I'm not unilaterally optimistic about the future of D&D, and my biggest concerns are also reasons why Crawford and Perkins might be smart to stop away now. Recent years have been filled with scares like the once-planned removal of the open-game license, and D&D is a more significant part of Hasbro's portfolio than ever. Future decisions that prioritize short-term profit over the long-term health of the game are always a risk, and even if they weren't responsible for the changes, Crawford and Perkins would have to deal with the community blowback.

An updated version of the open-game license is one remaining piece of unfinished business for the 2024 ruleset, but it should still be coming in the near future. The 3D VTT Sigil, on the other hand, is facing a less auspicious fate.

Without Crawford and Perkins at the helm, it's entirely possible that D&D won't weather future storms as well. Lanzillo's explanation of the company structure going forward doesn't imply that any specific figures will quite replace them as brand ambassadors, and other designers taking on elevated roles may struggle to match Crawford's PR wizardry and unflappable professionalism. The lack of clearly-defined figures behind the brand could also make top-down decisions from Hasbro easier to execute, although it's too early to get a meaningful read on that possibility.

If D&D does struggle in the future, Crawford and Perkins will likely be remembered as the shepherds of a better era. If its future ends up being bright, they'll still have a claim to laying the foundation for that continued success. Either way, stepping away now allows them to depart on a relatively high note, and when attempting to steer a ship as unwieldy as Dungeons & Dragons, that's about as much as you can ask for.

Source: IGN, Forbes