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."

 

[Pawndream]

I know a lot of the discussion in this thread has revolved around making the physical books more accessible, to presumably make it easier for people to learn how to play on their own, but one New User Experience I haven't seen discussed much is the accessibility of organized play options.

Let's say I am brand new to D&D and want to learn how to play D&D. Maybe I haven't even purchased any product, and have no interest in doing so until I have played the game and decided I liked it. How do I go about finding how to play the game on a trial run?

As a veteran gamer, I know about Adventurers League, but if I go to the D&D website, that information is not readily visible. Since AL relies on volunteers, it's also not guaranteed a new player will be able to find a game in their local area (I am factoring out COVID, as a limitation for sake of discussion).

Okay, so let's go online to find a game, by using the Discord D&D server as an example (which was only created within the last few months). It's tremendously difficult for new players to find newbie games there too. You don't think so? Hang out on that server for any length of time and you will see a steady stream of new players looking to try D&D for the first time.

On the AL front, volunteer DMs get little to no official support for running games to bring new players into the hobby. In fact, AL DMs usually buy the modules themselves, though I guess some may receive modules from FLGS. I know I never did. I ran the hardcovers I had purchased.

All this to say, unless you know people who already play, D&D is not exactly easy to jump right in and start playing. There are a bunch of hurdles, not even factoring in learning the rules.

Just another take, from the standpoint of organized play options and their accessibility to new players.

 

[Li Shenron]

I mean, literally all of the Adventure books are really a series of bite sized smaller adventure modules.

Is it feasible for a DM to read one of those at a time, then run it, ignoring the following chapers until the previous is completed?

Do the adventure books tell the DM it is possible to do so, or do they suggest to read everything first?

Because I've heard many of my players expressing interest in trying DMing, and never doing, and I am not so sure the main reason is the feeling they don't know/remember the rules, instead of the fact that they feel they can't know/remember all the necessary details of an adventure.

 

[ART!]

Is it feasible for a DM to read one of those at a time, then run it, ignoring the following chapers until the previous is completed?

Do the adventure books tell the DM it is possible to do so, or do they suggest to read everything first?

Because I've heard many of my players expressing interest in trying DMing, and never doing, and I am not so sure the main reason is the feeling they don't know/remember the rules, instead of the fact that they feel they can't know/remember all the necessary details of an adventure.

I just gave up running Tomb of Annihilation, because there's no way to run that thing without reading the whole dang thing and taking a lot of notes, even with the help of "How to run ToA" articles online. And I've been running games on and off for a few decades now. That thing needs a re-writing real bad.

Tyranny of Dragons was more linear, but I didn't run the whole thing (we had 3 DMs on that one), so I'm not 100% sure about that.

 

[billd91]

Likewise 4e, there really is no 'uber strategy' WRT ability scores. Clearly your wizard wants a lot of INT in all these games, but beyond that its pretty open-ended.

You had choices, sure, but it was pretty easy to dump 2 (3 if you picked the right classes) of your stats with minimal cost. That's not exactly making all stats matter - it's really just an uber strategy on a per-class basis, which is all it was in 3e as well. 5e is a big step in a better direction as far as that's concerned, if you ask me.

I am not sure why 6 saves was needed in order to do that, or why saves as opposed to defenses were needed.

Inspiration. What are you going to do to boost your defenses with inspiration if they're static? The mechanics is smoother and more consistent if you can use inspiration to get advantage on attacks, stat checks, and saves.
This is ultimately why the Force dice were so much better in d20 Star Wars revised than in SWSE. I like SWSE a lot - but losing the ability to spend a Force point to boost your saves because of the shift to static defenses was a bad change considering the Jedi ethos of using the Force for defense.

 

[OblivionDrive]

Without dredging up specific examples, STR vs CON can often be a bit arbitrary, as they both tend to represent 'toughness' to a degree. DEX vs CON is an oddity in the sense that one might resist things in different ways based on character archetype, but each spell assumes only one possibility (IE resisting a fireball could easily be DEX to dodge, or CON to withstand). INT vs WIS is a frequent one. Even INT vs CHA is a bit arbitrary at times.

It almost seems like PCs should have saves categorized by 'defensive approach' (IE do I dodge or do I grit it out) and then pick a stat for one of several 'save types'. That would be pretty close to the 4e/3e versions, but you could introduce a bit of flexibility. So maybe you would have a 'Physical Save', a 'Mental Save', a 'Wits Save', etc. This would be a bit of fun characterization. Still, the previous approach was at least simpler and at least as easily justified as the 5e one. I don't see what the reasoning was for the change.

Ahhh I see where you're coming from on this. Yeah while I don't necessarily agree with the logic on this (without some kind of magical assistance, no non-fire resistant humanoid is gonna "tough out" getting "dracarys-d" by a fireball in my mind - this is strictly a "get behind cover or out of the way" scenario to me) I guess I can see where a different perspective on how you see your character reacting could make the saves fuzzy to you. To me they (for the most part) seem pretty cut and dried.

Fair enough, I suppose. To each their own.

 

[Haffrung]

But what if most of 2 fits under 3, as well?

I'm having trouble thinking of a situation where you need to look up a mechanic at the table,, but you want to read it explained in a pleasing, conversational, text-heavy format.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You had choices, sure, but it was pretty easy to dump 2 (3 if you picked the right classes) of your stats with minimal cost. That's not exactly making all stats matter - it's really just an uber strategy on a per-class basis, which is all it was in 3e as well. 5e is a big step in a better direction as far as that's concerned, if you ask me.

Actually, it is pretty hard to do that, because there are a lot of places where there are either ability score requirements, or at least dependencies, on things you WILL want. PCs generally have scores very similar in 4e to 5e, with one score that is an 8 perhaps, and then a couple that are in the 10-12 range, and then your primary, secondary, and tertiary stat. With a few classes it was a pretty good idea to hang a starting 20 on a primary and suffer with the lower secondary, or no tertiary, but you were always giving up access to a bunch of feats, maybe an armor, etc. and relegating your skill selection to a narrow range (and 4e skills are pretty core things). It is probably equally common to take a 16 in a primary as a 20 in order to do the opposite. You can compensate with a slightly greater focus on some of the more beneficial feats starting off (IE be sure to start with Weapon Expertise for example).

Now, again, 3.x/PF, I don't know, my understanding is dump stats were a pretty big thing, but since 3/4 of the classes were drastically weaker, it hardly matters...

Inspiration. What are you going to do to boost your defenses with inspiration if they're static? The mechanics is smoother and more consistent if you can use inspiration to get advantage on attacks, stat checks, and saves.
This is ultimately why the Force dice were so much better in d20 Star Wars revised than in SWSE. I like SWSE a lot - but losing the ability to spend a Force point to boost your saves because of the shift to static defenses was a bad change considering the Jedi ethos of using the Force for defense.

Inspiration would work fine either way. In fact, as it is now, it has to 'work in reverse' if you want to improve the potency of a save granting spell with it. In 4e it would just work the same, you would grant disadvantage to someone attacking you. The situation is different, but the need is the same. The only way to make it ALWAYS work the same is a "Player always rolls" type of system, but 5e doesn't have that...

 

[billd91]

Inspiration would work fine either way. In fact, as it is now, it has to 'work in reverse' if you want to improve the potency of a save granting spell with it. In 4e it would just work the same, you would grant disadvantage to someone attacking you.

Right now, inspiration always gives advantage to the PCs on their rolls - imposing disadvantage on the creature attacking them (or on a target's saves) would be "working in reverse". While that may work for a lot of players who like the higher complexity of a feature like that - keeping it just to giving the PCs advantage is a better mechanic for casual players.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Ahhh I see where you're coming from on this. Yeah while I don't necessarily agree with the logic on this (without some kind of magical assistance, no non-fire resistant humanoid is gonna "tough out" getting "dracarys-d" by a fireball in my mind - this is strictly a "get behind cover or out of the way" scenario to me) I guess I can see where a different perspective on how you see your character reacting could make the saves fuzzy to you. To me they (for the most part) seem pretty cut and dried.

Fair enough, I suppose. To each their own.

Well, now you are getting me to think more about alternative defenses ideas. I'm thinking maybe a NARRATIVE sort of defense where you describe, somehow, how you avoid getting hit, and it ties into the sort of 'save' you get. This would be a 'player always rolls' kind of a system. So Bad Guy takes a whack at you, and you describe some sort of defensive action, make a 'save' and get your result. Now, maybe there needs to be some way to regulate what options are available to an extent mechanically, such that the player can't lean on the same defense EVERY time. In some games narrative might be strong enough to do that, but not in all...

 

[Parmandur]

I'm having trouble thinking of a situation where you need to look up a mechanic at the table,, but you want to read it explained in a pleasing, conversational, text-heavy format.

I meant the user base: if almost every customer who has need 2 prefers option 3, then making option 2 isn't good business.