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Jess Lanzillo rolls deep with Dungeons & Dragons—and not just with her trusty D20 die.
“I kind of backward engineered my way into D&D,” Lanzillo reveals to ADWEEK in her first interview as the new vp of franchise and product for the iconic strategy game, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.
The Indiana-born gamer recalls how a childhood spent playing King’s Quest and other story-based Sierra Games titles gave way to a tweenage fascination with early ’90s bulletin board systems, followed by a high school career filled with Magic: The Gathering and D&D sessions at her local comics shop.
And she didn’t surrender her D&D character sheets after receiving her diploma. Her love for the game followed her to college and into her early career in advertising at companies like Havas and Publicis Seattle.
“It wasn’t just a way to blow off steam on weekends—it also kept my creative thinking sharp,” she says.
Not for nothing, but it also directly led to her job at tabletop gaming giant Wizards of the Coast, which acquired the D&D brand in 1997 from TSR, Inc., the publisher established by the game’s creators, Gary Gygax and Don Kaye.
After moving to Seattle to work at Publicis, Lanzillo became a regular at a gamer bar in the Capitol Hill neighborhood and matched Magic decks with several Wizards employees, who recruited her for an open role on their team. Joining as an R&D design manager for that collectible card game, she steadily moved up the ladder to reach chief of staff.
This past February, she traded her Magic cards for multi-sided dice and stepped into her current vp role overseeing the sprawling Dungeons & Dragons franchise.
“So here I am,” she says happily. “I get to live the dream. And I’m excited to be here at such a critical time for D&D. It’s a fun challenge and opportunity—I couldn’t be more excited.”
In a lively interview, Lanzillo previews some of D&D’s 50th anniversary releases, reveals how the brand balances multiple generations of fans and shares how D&D is collaborating with Netflix’s Stranger Things—including teasing what she knows about the fifth and final season.
(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
ADWEEK: We’ll get to the mutually beneficial relationship between Dungeons & Dragons and Stranger Things in a bit. But first off, I have to note how incredibly appropriate it is for the game’s new vp to also be a D&D obsessive from Indiana.
Lanzillo: Very much so! I love D&D, and I also come from a very punk rock background—I am Eddie Munson! [Laughs] Those are the two things I always cared about growing up, and they have the same thing in common, right? They’re both about asking: “How can we make cool stuff with our friends?”
You’re stepping back into D&D at an auspicious time, given the 50th anniversary. Was that part of your reason for accepting the new role?
Absolutely. I had just gone through the 30th anniversary of Magic: The Gathering, so to turn the corner and realize that 2024 was 50 years for D&D was amazing. And it’s not just about the game itself, but also how it’s influenced the entire culture around it. You can see it reflected in the book we published this year about the making of the original game—there’s all this correspondence between folks who are co-creating something together and they’re just riffing on a concept. You can see the throughline of that up to now.
When a brand hits the big 5-0, it typically finds itself between several generations of fans—those who have been playing it for years or decades and those who are just getting into it now. How do you balance nostalgia with the need to keep the game fresh?
The Wizard portfolio at large has a multi-generational approach. You can reach back and forth throughout history, so a player like myself who has been playing for 30-plus years can have a conversation with a player who got into it through Stranger Things or Critical Role. We have a foundational language that breaks down generational barriers. We also have a shared play experience where you’re co-creating something together, which helps as you’re looking towards the future.
Also, through D&D Beyond, we have a platform for everyone to participate digitally together, and that changes the landscape of how people experience the game.
Gatekeeping and toxicity are known problems in other fandoms, but D&D seems to have sidestepped those kinds of issues.
I think that’s because the entire foundational premise of the game is that you have to collaborate to create this experience. And if you’re not doing that, at a certain point, you’ll be uninvited from your table!
Walk us through some of the 50th-anniversary products that are already on the market or being released soon—there are new rulebooks, new adventures and updated versions of vintage adventures.
A lot of what we looked at when we were developing the new suite of core rules is how do we make these approachable and organized in a way where you can pick them up and get into the game, and how do we make them implementable in our digital tools. That’s the foundational premise. We want to give people the opportunity to see themselves in the game, while also giving them a better user experience.
With [the updated] Quests from the Infinite Staircase, it was really important for us not to give this sense that we were replacing or erasing what’s come before, just update it for modern play styles. There are digital play tools and options to engage with the adventures in ways that are resonant for you. Everyone wants to have that sense that they’re being brought along for the journey, so accessibility is really important to us.
D&D seems like a fairly AI-proof game, but are you looking at integrating it in any capacity going forward?
What makes D&D unique is the thousands of odd decisions and experiences that a person has when they make their character, generate a piece of artwork or write an adventure. That can’t be summed up in a prompt. AI is always changing, but we’re staying pretty manual and humanized in our creation process right now. [Editor’s Note: You can read D&D’s official FAQ about Generative AI Art here.]
In terms of brand extensions and tie-ins, Stranger Things is always great publicity for D&D. What other things are you exploring in that realm?
We did a Lego set this year—Lego is huge for us. We’ve done Destiny and Dead by Daylight activations, which went swimmingly well and speaks to us being connected to digital games. A sense of community is always huge for us since that’s what D&D is all about. And, of course, Stranger Things is huge for us.
Coming from an advertising background, are you looking for ways to integrate brands into the gameplay?
We’ve done it before with the Rick & Morty set and with Critical Role as well. We talk to folks about it all the time, but it’s about finding the right fit because there’s a very specific way the game is constructed.
The Dungeons & Dragons movie Honor Among Thieves came out last year and met with a mixed reception at the box office. Fans embraced it, though. Do you hope to try another movie or TV series at some point?
The movie ended up being at the top of the streaming chart for weeks, so we know it’s super-beloved. We’re always interested in what we can do in entertainment, so there are lots of things being explored in both live-action and animation. Part of that is also saying to creators: “Hey, we’re here to support you. What do you need?” Like with Stranger Things, they might say, “We need some visual development around Vecna.” We can help them out there, while also giving them the ability to tell their stories in the way they want.
Does that mean you’ve gotten some spoilers for Stranger Things Season 5?
We purposely make sure that we don’t know too much. Well, we do know some things—and I’m not going to tell you. [Laughs] We have a series of Stranger Things adventures and tie-ins that we’re going to be doing, so we know what we need to know for all of that. That’s how we like to work with people: Make your own thing and let us know how we can create cool play experiences for folks around it.
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What’s in store for the rest of this 50th anniversary year and beyond?
The rest of this year is going to be about us rolling out the amazing suite of core rules. We also have these educational and library programs that we’ve rolled out with huge success to bring in a whole new generation. Educators have let us know how foundational this is to improving reading scores and improving social balance in their schools. Looking back at 50 years of D&D, it’s provided this framework through which people can work together across all sorts of differences. It’s brought people together by letting them say, “I’m a weird elf!” [Laughs]
Moving into the next 50 years, our strength is that the brand has been a lot of different things. I’ve said before that it’s the Kleenex of RPGs—you don’t say, “I’m going to go play a role-playing game.” You say, “I’m going to go play Dungeons & Dragons.”
