And Crawford is an incompetent smartass. I honestly don't know what any TTRPG would have to gain from including him in the team.
If they hope to chase 5e's success by following in its footsteps - piss poor adventure modules, nonexistent DM support, unbalanced player options, and a game designer that contradicts himself on Twitter every other post while attempting to explain why he isn't wrong - then good luck to them, I guess.
I very much doubt that 5e became the juggernaut that it's now because of Crawford. If anything, it's despite of him - mostly because of the free publicity granted by things like Critical Role and Stranger Things, and DnD being the default option for anyone who develops an interest in roleplaying for the first time.
How much do we actually know about what Crawford is like outside of the WotC machine? He might be perfectly competent but held back by executive mismanagement.
People have been complaining about WotC's executive meddling in D&D and MTG for as long as I can remember, since before the 1999 Hasbro purchase. D&D 3e, mostly written after WotC acquired TSR but published shortly after Hasbro acquired WotC, was panned so badly that they dropped 3.5 just a couple years later. And 4e (including the first OGL fiasco) happened when Hasbro didn't care about WotC because they were all-in on the Michael Bay Transformers movie. In fact, up until Stranger Things and Critical Role, Hasbro seems to have considered WotC the "Magic: The Gathering Money Printer" and done most of their meddling on that side of the house.
Everybody who was passionate about games have left and been replaced by money-grabbing opportunists who only want to inflate the stock value, bail out and get their severance pay.
I don’t have links to it at the moment (I’m prepping dinner.. so excuse the laziness 😅) but if you search “D&D controversy” or “OGL” you’ll find plenty of discussions and analysis.
In short: they tried (but are still attempting to) bring micro-transactions and loot box mechanics to tabletop games.
It's rooted in the light/dark side of the force from Star Wars tabletop, and kind of inherent to Star Wars is making out everything in the world to be light or dark as though it's that simple, but hardly anything in life is.
It's interesting and it seems like a good change for people that have done a lot of d&d but it's probably not going to be a complete replacement for 5e. It seems good for short campaigns but it only has one book out for now.
I love Christ Perkin and Jeremy Crawford. Who is even running D&D now? They are literally the only people I knew still on the project. They are both great. Were they forced out of WoTC?
Gross. I was really excited for 5.5 for a while but don't really want to get it anymore. I liked the PHB class upgrades when I read it but don't own anything from it yet
ChatGPT give some pretty generic DnD advice. I can't wait until they make a terrible automated DM. I can't wait to play the most generic DnD of all time.
You know, I'm not surprised about that, and not in a good way. CR is part of RPG culture I'm not good with, and I'm totally unsurprised that people who were part of 5e are joining them.
All I can hope is that seeing Hasbro lose people will draw attention to other systems - or for Hasbro to make a marketing push on the Essence20 system in addition to (or instead of) d20.
The commodification and the desire for mass appeal are the top-level issues I have. I feel uncomfortable when I see the modern D&D branding on stuff in "normal" stores. It takes away the community and puts Hasbro in the central role, rather than the network of GMs who should be the majority influence. If I wanted a hobby with a company in charge, I would play Warhammer.
Now, on the community side, my biggest issue is with things I see as derived from CR. The lack of respect for simple theatre of the mind is a direct issue with the way I've always run and played since I left D&D. The tolerance and even acceptance of paid DMing also pisses me off in ways that make it very hard for me to remain civil.
Those are the big ones. There's also the fact that D&D doesn't seem to have the offramps it had since AD&D1 (and which admittedly went downhill when the Forge went out of the spotlight).