ex-Wotc, the list

So, all the looking back of my previous post made me curious about how things were going at GenCon and especially how to debut of the new edition of D&D was doing. I found a review on EN World, but after skimming it decided that, having waited so long, it made more sense to wait a while longer and judge for myself when I get ahold of my own copy (which I expect will be within a few days now). However, while poking about I found a sub-site listing "Ex-WotC Employees" (by which they mean people who worked on the rpgs, not Pokemon or Magic: The Gathering folks). I'm glad to discover that such a list exists, and EN World seems like a good place to host it; here's the link.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showwiki.php?title=Ex-WotC-Employees

I was disappointed, but not surprised, to find I'm not on the list -- editors usually fall below the radar. Reading through it, though, I was surprised to find how many folks got left off. In fact, I'd say this lists represents about half the people who worked at WotC on rpgs (i.e., D&D and a few other one-offs or less prominent games), maybe a little less. So in the interests of adding a little to the historical record, here are some names I can think of off the top of my head, without even pulling products off the shelf to check credits, of some of my co-workers from WotC between 1997 and the end of 2006 who somehow failed to make it onto the extant list. For those who are interested in such things, I've marked those who were also at TSR before coming to WotC that with an asterisk.

*Jon Pickens

*Stephen Schend

*Dale Donovan

Gwendolyn Kestrel

*Cindi Rice

*Miranda Horner

Kij Johnson

Rich Redman

*Ed Stark

*Thomas Reid

*Keith Strohm

*Dave Wise

Brian Campbell

Jason Carl


Another thing I was glad to find (oddly enough, under the same heading of "Ex-WotC Employees") is a list of CURRENT WotC employees in rpg-r&d. I tried to keep up with the comings and goings after I left but quickly lost track of who was in, who was out, who was temping (and thus temporarily in), and who was freelancing (and thus might be either in or out). It's been true of TSR (and later WotC) for most of its history that people outside the company found it almost impossible to keep track of who was on the inside (i.e., who was currently working there and doing what). So it's good to see this listing -- though a little disconcerting to see that out of fourteen names, only five (about a third) seem to be designers or editors, the rest being management of some kind. However, I may have misunderstood the job titles.  It's also interesting to note that the department is now completely post-TSR: there's not a single person dating back to the TSR days still working in WotC rpg-r&d; I think Bruce Cordell and Kim Mohan must have been the last (although both Steve Winter and Steve 'Stan' Brown have temped there recently enough that they might be able to put in a claim for that title).

So, here's hoping the addition of some of the missing names might help provide a fuller picture of the people who oversaw the twilight years of second edition, the launch of third edition (and later reconsolidation as 3.5), and all that followed.

--John R.
just finished: VIRTUAL UNREALITY by Ch. Seife [2014].