D&D Team Adds Designer Erin Roberts to the Roster
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In the past few weeks we’ve seen the Dungeons & Dragons team at Wizards of the Coast expand significantly, with recent hires including game designers Leon Barillaro and James Haeck. Now the team has grown even further, bringing TTRPG veteran Erin Roberts into the fold.
Roberts is an ENNIE award-winning game designer who has worked as a freelancer for a number of major TTRPG publishers (including Wizards of the Coast) and contributed to several official D&D supplements.. The addition of Roberts to the team is yet another indication that big changes are happening within the D&D design team, in the wake of the recent departure of veteran leads Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford and the promotion of senior creative Justice Arman to Creative Director.
So just who is Erin Roberts and what does her hiring mean for the future of D&D? Below, we take a closer look at all the details.
Who Is Erin Roberts?
Erin Roberts is an award-winning writer and game designer who has worked for a variety of publishers in the TTRPG space. In 2023 she won the Diana Jones Award for Emerging Game Designer and also won a Silver ENNIE award and was nominated for the prestigious Nebula Award for her contribution to the Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel D&D adventure anthology. For the book, she developed the Godsbreath setting, based on the Black experience in the US deep south, with the setting later appearing in an adventure which Roberts wrote for the 2025 Dragon Delves anthology. Roberts was also a contributor to Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen and Vecna: Eve of Ruin, and also wrote the children’s audio book D&D: Forge Your Own Quest.
Outside of her extensive work on Dungeons & Dragons, Roberts has been a freelancer for a number of prominent TTRPG publishers, including Paizo, Kobold Press, Renegade Game Studios, Evil Hat Productions, Darrington Press and MCDM. She was also a lead writer on the upcoming Ember digital game for the Foundry VTT.
What D&D products will Roberts be working On?
On Bluesky, Roberts wrote: “Finally got around to updating ye olde profile page with some fun news: I’ve joined Wizards of the Coast as a Game Designer for Dungeons & Dragons. Much love to everyone who has been part of my journey through TTRPG writing and design land so far – excited to see what this new chapter brings!” She has not, however, yet specified which D&D products she’ll be developing.
In fact, Wizards of the Coast has not released any information on upcoming D&D books for 2026. We have, however, seen a number of recent Unearthed Arcana playtests that suggest new supplements will be coming soon (including a possible new Dark Sun book). Given Roberts extensive experience with D&D and Wizards of the Coast, however, it’s likely she’ll need very little time to get up to speed with the team.
Final Thoughts
Erin Roberts hiring is yet another instance of new, young designers stepping up to help shape the next generation of the Dungeons & Dragons brand. And while we don’t yet know what Roberts will be designing, given her extensive experience and the quality of her work, chances are it will be well received.
We’ll be keeping a close eye on this story in the days ahead and will update this page with new information as it’s made available.
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Jason Volk is the Publisher of Dungeons & Dragons Fanatics and lives in the wilds of Western Canada. He has been playing D&D for over 25 years and is a huge fan of Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms. His favorite character of all time was a Necromancer named Neek who spent most of his adventuring career resurrecting the corpses of slain monsters. When he’s not playing TTRPGs, Jason enjoys video games, Magic: The Gathering, Warhammer 40K, watching football and spending time with his wife and adorably nerdy children.
