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."

 

[Conqueror Worm]

I listen to the Dragon Talk podcast each week. The hosts treat the job of 'game mastering' as if it is some sacred cow. When Shelly Mazzanoble (sp?) does her "Learning to GM portion, she openly says how intimidated she is in being a Game Master.....and this is from a WOTC employee. Even with the incredible popularity of D&D right now, perhaps Kate has a point regarding WOTC doing a bad job with new user experience.

 

[Haffrung]

Is that true? I know White Wolf, during the height of their original World of Darkness run, was selling largely to readers, not customers, but I didn't think WotC was in that situation.

If it is, that's not great. They need to produce specific products for the readers -- if Blizzard can produce lore books and even a forthcoming book of fairy tales for World of Warcraft, WotC can do it for D&D -- and maximize table usefulness for their game material.

I know that even at the peak of Pathfinder, the principles at Paizo commented that half their books are sold to people who use them as reading material. I suspect those numbers are similar for D&D today. IMHO, it seems more likely that the incoherence of D&D's core books is down to trying to please two masters (readers and players), rather than ineptness on the part of WotC. They have shown with 4E that they know how to present rules in a user-friendly format if that's their overriding goal.

 

[ChaosOS]

It's a huge fallacy to say "There is net success, so everything that is happening is good". There are lots of things 5e does right, but it's also got a lot of factors completely external to the rules that help it out. Every time people talk about the success of the game they trot out CR and Stranger Things! The confusion around level is overall minor, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing - it's just not enough of a bad thing to outweigh all the other good things.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The RPG books that actually put a little energy into explaining how RPGs work don't treat folks like idiots.

There is no "One True Way" that RPGs work.

If you tried to explain how D&D works for each of the tables represented on this forum you would have a book longer than the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

 

[Nikosandros]

I must have played with a very peculiar subset of people, because in 35 years of playing and teaching D&D I've stumbled and I've seen folks stumble on countless issues and rules but never on the different usages of the word level...

 

[Parmandur]

Is that true? I know White Wolf, during the height of their original World of Darkness run, was selling largely to readers, not customers, but I didn't think WotC was in that situation.

If it is, that's not great. They need to produce specific products for the readers -- if Blizzard can produce lore books and even a forthcoming book of fairy tales for World of Warcraft, WotC can do it for D&D -- and maximize table usefulness for their game material.

I mean, the books are as much pleasure reading as play aids, certainly: I'd say there is an 80/20 rule at play, in terms of what is read versus used at the table. That was one of the big mistakes of 4E, per WotC market research, was making the books technically straight forwards, but not fun to read. That lesson was a big part of the 5E product design philosophy.

 

[Sacrosanct]

There is a whole lot of assumptions here that her reference to new user experience is mechanical/rules in nature. I wouldn't necessarily make that assumption.

 

[Maxperson]

"Explanation" is not the point.

The point is, people knew, 40 years ago, that multiple uses of the word "level" was potentially confusing. But they also knew that traditions mattered, and changing something that had become traditional was bad for business.

I can't imagine being confused by level for those things. Even as a 13 year old kid teaching himself 1e, I never had a glimmer of an issue with it. Now, HD/HP, THAT threw me for a loop. Mostly because I misread it.

 

[Azuresun]

"Explanation" is not the point.

The point is, people knew, 40 years ago, that multiple uses of the word "level" was potentially confusing. But they also knew that traditions mattered, and changing something that had become traditional was bad for business.

I'd think it would be less confusing now, because the concept of "level up" is so ubiquitous in computer games, many of which got the idea from RPG's in the first place.

 

[Parmandur]

I'd think it would be less confusing now, because the concept of "level up" is so ubiquitous in computer games, many of which got the idea from RPG's in the first place.

That's probably a large part of the barrier at this point: too many of the oddities are product identity. Being esoteric is part of the allure, along with being analog.