D&D 5E Kate Welch on Leaving WotC

Kate Welch left Wizards of the Coast a few days ago, on August 16th. Soon after, she talked a little about it in a live-stream.

She started work at WotC as a game designer back in February 2018, and has contributed to various products since then, such as Ghosts of Saltmarsh and Descent into Avernus, as well as being a participant in WotC's livestreams. In December 2019, her job changed to that of 'senior user experience designer'.

"I mentioned yesterday that I have some big news that I wouldn't be able to share until today.

The big news that I have to share with you today is that I ... this is difficult, but ... I quit my job at Wizards of the Coast. I no longer work at Wizards. Today was my last day. I haven't said it out loud yet so it's pretty major. I know... it's a big change. It's been scary, I have been there for almost three years, not that long, you know, as far as jobs go, and for a while there I really was having a good time. It's just not... it wasn't the right fit for me any more.

So, yeah, I don't really know what's next. I got no big plans. It's a big deal, big deal .... and I wanted to talk to you all about it because you're, as I've mentioned before, a source of great joy for me. One of the things that has been tough reckoning with this is that I've defined myself by Dungeons & Dragons for so long and I really wanted to be a part of continuing to make D&D successful and to grow it, to have some focus especially on new user experience, I think that the new user experience for Dungeons & Dragons is piss poor, and I've said that while employed and also after quitting.

But I've always wanted to be a part of getting D&D into the hands of more people and helping them understand what a life-changing game it is, and I hope I still get the chance to do that. But as of today I'm unemployed, and I also wanted to be upfront about it because I have this great fear that because Dungeons & Dragons has been part of my identity, professionally for the last three years almost, I was worried that a lot of you'll would not want to follow me any more because I'm not at Wizards, and there's definitely some glamourous aspects to being at Wizards."

She went on to talk about the future, and her hopes that she'll still be be able to work with WotC.

"I'm excited about continuing to play D&D, and hopefully Wizards will still want me to appear on their shows and stuff, we'll see, I have no idea. But one thing that I'm really excited about is that now I can play other TTRPGs. There's a policy that when you're a Wizards employee you can't stream other tabletop games. So there was a Call of Cthulhu game that we did with the C-team but we had to get very special permission for it, they were like OK but this is only a one time thing. I get it, you know, it's endorsing the competition or whatever, but I'm super excited to be able to have more freedom about the kinds of stuff that I'm getting involved with."

 

[Cadence]

It doesn't help that whenever an interested person on somewhere like reddit makes a post asking what they need to do to learn the game, inevitably there are several people telling them to read the PHB cover to cover, which is ridiculous. I can't imagine that is going to encourage new people to pick up the hobby.

It feels like the MtG Reddit has gotten a lot better with advice to new players since the arrival of Arena, and something we can actually just send them to with some chance of them being successful.

 

[Alzrius]

Those were good, but I don't think anything has yet topped the 1991 Black Box. The SRA Reading Program Style "Dungeon Card Learning Pack" was the most effective tool for teaching new players AND DMs that I've ever seen, and I loved the way it encouraged and taught new DMs to take control of the game and create content (first by stocking a few rooms in the starter dungeon; then by stocking a provided map; and then by being taught how to build their own).

That was my first D&D product, and as you said, it was an elegant introduction to how to play the game. Zanzer Tem's salt mine holds a special place in my heart even today, and I still get shivers remembering the map of "Stonefast," the next dungeon that had a white dragon's lair in it. Great stuff!

I've long heard that the Black Box was Lorraine Williams' project

WHAAAT?!

 

[Burnside]

The PHB should have a simple solo adventure like the Mentzer boxed set, and the DMG should have a simple, hand-holding starter adventure with tutorial on the DM side.

 

[dave2008]

That's exactly the point, though. It shouldn't be "work" to learn the game. Knowing her as I do and the games that we do play, I think she would like the game. But when she sees me doing DM prep, she asks me about my "homework".

There are a lot of non-RPG games that require work to learn. 95% of the time a learn for someone else by: asking what the basics of the game and then play a practice game. Very much like how I taught D&D to my 5 & 7 yr old 12 years ago.

 

[Charlaquin]

I totally agree that WotC could make it easier for new players to learn the rules and the books should be redesigned. My point was that at some point the onus lies on the players to read and attempt to learn the game. I've seen many players show up to play and have no clue what's going on because they haven't read the PHB. IME its almost expected that the DM will walk the new players through the learning process every step of the way. Which is unrealistic and unfair. No matter how well written the core rule books are with examples of play and walk throughs if the players dont take the initiative to learn the game, how can WotC be faulted for that?

You’re not wrong, but currently reading the PHB is a big ask, especially as a prerequisite for play. It’s enormous and organized in a way that is really not conducive to teaching how to play.

I think the stuff you really need to know to get started could be re-organized, and condensed down to maybe a dozen or so pages, and then it would be much more reasonable to expect players to come to the table having read all of it.

 

[Charlaquin]

Why is being picky about who plays at one's table gatekeeping? Should I be expected to invite everyone who wants to try the game to my house?

I think the rulebooks should be as welcome, open, and inclusive as possible. But as far as my own table is concerned, I'm not letting everybody in without first knowing that new player is the right fit*.


*right fit has nothing to do with previous RPG experience.

Who you invite to your table is your own business, I wouldn’t call that gatekeeping at all. Picking on a kid who has come to a public venue to try D&D for the first time is an entirely different ball of wax.

 

[Asgorath]

You’re not wrong, but currently reading the PHB is a big ask, especially as a prerequisite for play. It’s enormous and organized in a way that is really not conducive to teaching how to play.

I think the stuff you really need to know to get started could be re-organized, and condensed down to maybe a dozen or so pages, and then it would be much more reasonable to expect players to come to the table having read all of it.

This is one of the reasons why I really love D&D Beyond. The overwhelming majority of players in my 3 games are all brand new to D&D, but I've been able to create characters on D&D Beyond for them all after discussing what kind of character they'd like to play. All the hard stuff is just taken care of automatically, so they don't need to know which numbers to add together and all that -- the DDB character sheet just figures it all out for them. When they need to pick a spell, it filters the spells down to the ones they can pick from. When they get a new item, it updates all their stats accordingly. Given how easy it all is, I really enjoy bringing new players into the game and have found it quite easy to get them going.

 

[R_J_K75]

I think the stuff you really need to know to get started could be re-organized, and condensed down to maybe a dozen or so pages, and then it would be much more reasonable to expect players to come to the table having read all of it.

Yep, a condensed primer would be great. There are alot of ways they could go about cleaning things up in the core books. The biggest problem is that there is so much information in the PHB that a player needs to weed through to get what they need for the character they want. Someone playing a fighter is interested in only a small portion of the book whereas a person playing a wizard is interested in completely different information. There is some information that every player needs then there is class specific stuff. Separating this out would be helpful, how to go about I'm not too sure though.

 

[Wolfram stout]

There have been some very good suggestions already made, including cleaning up legacy terms like "level," which are used in so many different ways that even veteran players sometimes get confused which is meant.

You are right. I wonder now if most of the tools to make a "Learn D&D on your own." are not really out there but in different products. Some are in the free basic game, some are in the starter sets, some are in the choose you own adventure books and the YA books that have been coming out.

Could they/Would they create another new product that combines all these measures? I would like to think so. I really really hope Adventure Begins is a great bridge product for 5th edition.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

One thing I will note is D&D isn't the only game to have issues with the new player experience. DOTA is fresh on my mind due to TI, and it's got a notoriously horrific new player experience - there's an established community of hardcore gamers who enjoy the complicated nature of the game, but for new players there's so many aspects to the game to learn and many of them aren't explained at all in the game. DOTA has the advantage of being digital, but also the disadvantage of it being a game that sees major, fundamental changes at least once a year, unlike D&D which has had the same core rules for six years now.

DOTA is also held up as an example of a videogame held back by this aspect. And its steep learning curve and rotten community are also why other companies keep attempting to dethrone it, since those are both recognized as serious weaknesses in the longterm.

You can get rich with a game that doesn't care about new user experiences, but you won't get "ever increasing profit margins" rich like Wall Street and corporate overseers want you to.