D&D Design Team Hires Kobold Press Veteran Celeste Conowitch
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Article Summary
- The internal Dungeons & Dragons team has hired veteran RPG creator Celeste Conowitch as a Senior Game Developer.
- Conowitch has spent the past five years at Kobold Press, but has also contributed to MCDM, Onyx Path and 2CGaming.
- She has also worked with Wizards of the Coast before, contributing to Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden.
- Conowitch is part of a surge in recent hiring for the internal D&D design team over the past year.
The official Dungeons & Dragons design team at Wizards of the Coast continues to grow, having now added best-selling RPG creator and actual play star Celeste Conowitch to the roster as a Senior Game Developer.
Conowitch has spent the past five years working at Kobold Press as a Senior Game Designer working primarily on Tales of the Valiant, but has also contributed content to MCDM, 2CGaming, Onyx Path, in addition to producing a number of self-published products on DMsGuild. She is also one of the stars of the popular Venture Maidens actual play podcast. Notably, Conowitch has also worked with Wizards of the Coast in the past as a contractor, having contributed material for 2020’s Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden.
So just what will Conowitch likely be working on? Below, we take a closer look at all the details.
Who is Celeste Conowitch?
Celeste Conowitch is a Seattle-based game designer, producer and member of the D&D 5E actual play podcast Venture Maidens. Over the past decade she’s contributed to a number of major TTRPG products, including serving as a Lead Designer at Kobold Press on numerous Tales of the Valiant products, including the Player Guide, Game Master’s Guide and Monster Vault.
Prior to Kobold Press, she also worked on MCDM’s Kingdoms & Warfare supplement and contributed to their Arcadia TTRPG magazine. She has also been a key designer on several best-selling DMsGuild products, including Encounters in Theros and Mordenkainen’s Tome of Marvelous Magic II (both of which were part of the DMsGuild Adept program).
Notably, Conowitch’s contributions to Kobold Press earned her a recent blog post announcing her departure and praising her extensive work at the publisher.
What D&D products will Conowitch be working on?
It’s not clear what particular products Conowitch will be working on or if they will one of the upcoming D&D books or an as-yet-unannounced product. Given her extensive background in both adventure design and the creation of complete rulebooks, however, she will likely be working on a major book.
Notably, a number of new designers have been brought on to contribute to the extensive amount of material that is being produced for both D&D Drops and D&D Encounters programs, although Conowitch has not publicly confirmed if this is the case.
Final Thoughts
The past year has seen a massive hiring boom for the official Dungeons & Dragons design team, with Wizards of the Coast hiring on a roster that includes Erin Roberts, Leon Barillaro, James Haeck, Taylor Navarro and Shawn Merwin. Bringing on a veteran designer of the caliber of Celeste Conowitch, however, suggests that we’ll be seeing an even bigger output of new content in the months ahead.
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.
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