Award-Winning RPG Designer Leon Barillaro Joins D&D Team

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Wizards of the Coast continues to quietly reshape its internal Dungeons & Dragons design team, bringing on noted tabletop RPG designer Leon Barillaro. The news follows hot on the heels of the recent hiring of James Haeck as a Senior D&D designer and the promotion of Justice Arman as the game’s Creative Director, ushering in some major changes to the team as a whole.

Barillaro is an ENNIE & IGDN-nominated game designer, who brings years of experience from their work on DMsGuild and various third-party publications, marking yet another case of WotC pulling proven talent in-house as it looks ahead to the next phase of D&D product releases.

So who is Leon Barillaro and what does their hiring signal for Dungeons & Dragons going forward? Below, we take a closer look at all the details.

Who Is Leon Barillaro?

Leon Barillaro is an award-winning tabletop RPG designer best known for their work on a variety of independent TTRPGs, including the IGDN nominated O Captain, the Power Rangers: Beneath the Helmet supplement for Renegade Games Studio and the Workshop Watches adventure for MCDM (which was also featured as an actual play at Broadway Con).

Barillaro has also published or contributed to dozens of D&D third-party supplements on DMsGuild, including the Mithral-selling Ultimate Adventurer’s Handbook, the Platinum-selling The Book of House for the Forgotten Realms and the Gold-selling College of Culinary Bard Subclass.

Notably, before working in TTRPGs Barillaro was involved primarily in tech (with a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey), and also has experience working in both video games and mobile app development.

What D&D products will Barillaro be working On?

At this stage, Wizards of the Coast has not announced which upcoming Dungeons & Dragons products Barillaro will be involved with. Instead, as with recent hires, details about specific books or projects remain under wraps.

That uncertainty is especially notable given Wizards’ continued silence around its 2026 D&D release slate. And while speculation continues (often fueled by Unearthed Arcana playtests and industry rumors) the addition of multiple designers suggests that new announcements may not be far off.

Final Thoughts

Leon Barillaro’s hiring reinforces a clear trend at Wizards of the Coast: investing in designers who came up through the DMsGuild and third-party publishing scene, which is also the case with recent hires like James Haeck and the recently promoted Justice Arman. It’s a path that rewards community-tested talent and ensures that the people shaping Dungeons & Dragons have firsthand experience with how players actually engage with the game.

And so while Barillaro’s role in shaping the future of D&D still remains to be seen, for now at least, the game seems to be in good hands.