Consistently Critical

As you probably know, Wizards has been in hot water more than a couple times in the past 3 years. They recently put out a call for a specialist, so they’ll be ready the next time the flumph hits the fan, and I applied. I thought I’d share my cover letter. Hi, I’m Parrish. I first played Magic in 1994, and then started playing D&D a year later with the same group of friends, so it’s always felt natural to me that the two brands ended up together at Wizards. I’ve been a Dungeon Master for decades now, and I would love the opportunity to use my storytelling skills to engage the community as the Director of Strategic Response Communications. For the past four years, I’ve been working in communications and public relations for my local county government, and it’s been eye-opening to be outside the gaming industry for a change. I’ve built partnerships across other departments, coordinated with contracts and legal to ensure policy compliance, led rapid strategic response to crisis situations, and advised on press releases, while keeping external communications politically neutral. I’ve also been an active member of our Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee and a champion of that work.  Prior to that, I was representing Nintendo as an agency consultant. I started with them in a Product Specialist role in 2011, but was promoted to a management position within a year, where I trained staff working for Nintendo in public-facing roles to ensure consistent on-brand communications. Nintendo’s client base is very similar to Wizards, and not just demographically; like Nintendo, Magic and D&D fans are loyal to their core. They want to see their favorite brand succeed, but they also take it very hard when it lets them down. My degree in economics and training in data analytics allows me to leverage data-driven insights: tracking fan feedback, updating my team, and adjusting communication strategies to make sure fans know we’re listening. When the big N jumped agencies three and a half years later, they were obviously happy with my work, because they invited me to join them in the transition. I continued representing Nintendo in corporate communications, marketing, and public relations roles at that new agency through 2019. I should probably mention that I’m a game designer. I’ve worked on a number of card games, including Ascension, and I published my own lightweight RPG three years ago. As a publisher, I worked with a small marketing team to coordinate communications across social media platforms and established relationships with a broad range of media partners. I have appeared on podcasts to promote my game, and I’m a regular on a stream for game designers and other professionals. I’ve also worked on a few unrelated teams that produced 5e content and crowdfunded successfully. I am a master of cross-functionality, and would be eager to work with your creative and design teams, collaborate with the folks on product and brand management, advise on marketing, and stay connected to investor relations. I know it has been a rollercoaster these past few years, for both Mtg and D&D, but I’m here for the ride! In the past, I've managed customer expectations and avoided unforced errors through forecasting, so my teams have been ready for what's coming next. Strategic communications response is a bit like a game of Magic. I don’t want to be waiting to top deck an answer to a threat after it hits the board. When an opponent casts their bomb, the best practice is to already have two islands open. When I’m part of your team, I’ll be there to say, “Wait, I have a response.”

1. Game ends when all properties have been bought.  It makes it much faster and much less of a slog. 6 players took under 3 hours. 2. Rents with no houses are rebalanced (and higher). It's much more interesting. Furthermore there’s no houses. Just hotels. But the hotel price has been rebalanced. This just makes things much cleaner. 3. You can sell a property back to the bank for face value, but you can’t morgage it. Again, this is just less crunchy play, and better for a game of this weight. 4. I know we all love Railroads, precisely because they're completely overpowered. Ownling Railroads is removed, and instead, you just advance to the next railroad. This ends up good for balance. Utilities are removed too, because they’re underpowered.  5. Free parking says "Choose a Chance or community chest" which eliminates the debate over putting in a house rule. Luxury Tax and Income Tax have also been removed, so the house rule  is a complete non-issue 6. Community Chest and Chance cards allow you to take hidden or surprise actions.  Often, including outrageous bluffs. This gave the game a social deduction element, that led to truly hilarious moments. (They are very swingy though) 7. Cheating Cards- Since cheating is legal, players are constantly vigilant to stop it. And that vigilance has a HUGE time cost. Without it, we woud've been done in under 90 minutes. There are only 5 actions in the center of the board that determine what cheats are currently allowed. That's good because it limits what elements you have to watch. But it put us in a mindset of constantly checking what was legal and also debating about whether cheats were pulled off successfully, ultimately slowing the game down by at least an hour. It still led to funny moments though, so I felt mixed about it. I would totally play it again. Personally I would prefer to remove the cheating, but every other new element I loved. It is, of course, a roll and move, and the winner is still very much random. But we played more strategic games after, so I think a good time was had by the whole family.

These problems were rampant in 3.5, and DMs like me were tired of it, and Wizards responded by fixing those problems with some very bold Design choices. The result was great, but didn’t feel very much like D&D. So I think the real issue was ultimately just about branding.  Wizards wanted to create a new product line and wanted it to drive the sales of miniatures to both players and dungeon masters, sold via booster packs similar to Magic, and they wanted to retain full rights to the system, instead of racing every other publisher to create new books and new settings. But what they should have done is make it a completely separate line. If that’s what they had done, we still could have gotten 5th edition in the early 2010s then today in 2020, we could be getting D&D Tactics 2nd edition, and they’d have an entire new revenue stream coming in.  (Wizards please hire me for Product Development. I’m still available)

A friend of mine is the lead designer at Glass Shoe Games, and he had created a game similar to munchkin where the object was to get as close to 11 points without going over. The current theme wasn’t testing well and he was trying to think of a new one. I suggested a ‘Loud Rocking’ Music theme about turning your amps up to 11, and he loved it! Here’s the first piece of art for his new game. If you want to follow its progress here’s a link to their facebook: https://www.facebook.com/glassshoegames/