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."

 

[R_Chance]

The information in the players handbook could easily be made much more accessible for new players simply by reorganizing it. 5e really isn’t a hard game to learn, but it does a terrible job of teaching itself.

I'm not saying it couldn't benefit from reorganization. I'm saying that no matter what you do to it, the sheer volume of information people require from the PHB will prevent it from being "easy". If you cut classes, races, spells etc. it will be met with "outrage" from the people whose favorite material has been removed to make it more digestible. An intro version with both new / better organization (and ymmv on what that means) and reduced options is the only way to make it "easier". I don't believe it will ever be all that easy. As many have pointed out, it's not an easy game. So, to sum up my point, you might improve on it (both the PHB and any new intro game) but you will never make it easy enough for casual / new players to just pick up and play. They have to want to play. Really want. The best thing, imho, that streaming games have done is make it desirable / cool. As well as bringing some basic familiarity.

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah, it really seems like a non-issue IMO. I mean I figured out THAC0 by myself before the the time of internet. We literally have the easiest edition of D&D with tons of support now. I dont care how easy or how nicely laid out you make it, if someone doesn't want to put forth the effort to learn it they're just not gonna learn it.

Well, THAC0 was simple subtraction, so not that tough. My friends and I learned 1e on our own, though. We made mistakes, learned from those mistakes, and eventually knew what we were doing.

 

[jayoungr]

That's not even getting into things like "Chapter 8 spells could be much better organized", such as sorting spells by level then alphabetically.

I actually disagree that this would be a better form of organization. You have the spell lists by class and level to tell you which spells your class can have at the level you want, and then a straight alphabetical listing to quickly find any spell you need.

 

[Hatmatter]

I actually disagree that this would be a better form of organization. You have the spell lists by class and level to tell you which spells your class can have at the level you want, and then a straight alphabetical listing to quickly find any spell you need.

I agree. The principle item I miss from the PHB list (which they did do in XGE) is an inclusion of the school of magic in parentheses for each spell in the spell list. But, then again, I run over to the D&D Beyond website (and I am not a paying member) and I get all that info in ten seconds, and it is more updated by including newly published spells than my PHB could be.

Wizard's was facing such an uphill battle with the creation of 5th edition, and I think they pulled off a miracle in bringing the community, which was so divisive, together, I will always have considerable affection for the PHB, DMG, and MM of 2014. I am happy if Wizard's has finally settled on this version and they continue to put creative energy in upcoming years and decades into coming up with alternate means of introducing people to the hobby and the game, using reorganized material in different books and sets, and using different media (What I find confusing is visiting the D&D Youtube channel...If I was wanting to learn D&D I probably would be inclined to go to the D&D website and Youtube channel first and both, I would think, would be disorienting for a new player. But, who knows? I am not ten years old.). I think many of the observations some of the experienced technical writers from our community have made are fascinating...but some people like the PHB as is...and with a forty-two year old publication (in the case of the 1978 PHB) in any field, there is going to an expectation from long-time admirers that some things remain the same simply due to an innate conservative tendency in people. Those wonderful observations from technical writers that have been made can be applied to different books or media.

I am surprised that nobody in this thread has mentioned Jim Zub and Ten Speed Press's collaboration with Wizards of the Coast on their Adventurer's Guides: Warriors & Weapons, Monsters & Creatures, Dungeons & Tombs...I think those are great!

 

[Marandahir]

I actually disagree that this would be a better form of organization. You have the spell lists by class and level to tell you which spells your class can have at the level you want, and then a straight alphabetical listing to quickly find any spell you need.

There's a reason spells have universal levels, though.

Paladin/Ranger/Artificer might get Spell levels 1-5 over the course of 1st-20th level rather than SL 1-9 over that same period, but the fact that they learn their spells slower doesn't change the tremendous benefit from having spells by level tabbed.

If Pages 211-289 are spell descriptions, then say pages 211-215 are cantrips, 216-230 are 1st level, 231-240 are 2nd level, 241-250 are 3rd level, 251-260 are 4th, 261-270 are 5th, 271-275 are 6th, 276-280 are 7th, 281-285 are 8th, and 286-288 are 9th.

As a spell caster, I'd only ever have to look at the pages I have spell levels from. An1st-level spellcaster would only ever need the first 20 pages of the spell lists, rather than having to flip all around the chapter to look up their spells.

WotC shouldn't ASSUME that you're using some sort of support tool to find each of your spells.

There's a reason GaleForce9 has made a killing on spell book cards. It's just too much busy work to keep skipping around the book during a game. People who don't buy the cards almost certainly have copied over their known spells to a word document or something for reference.

It's unwieldy and unnecessarily so. And it's even worse for Divine Casters who know their entire spell list to draw from every day.

 

[jayoungr]

If Pages 211-289 are spell descriptions, then say pages 211-215 are cantrips, 216-230 are 1st level, 231-240 are 2nd level, 241-250 are 3rd level, 251-260 are 4th, 261-270 are 5th, 271-275 are 6th, 276-280 are 7th, 281-285 are 8th, and 286-288 are 9th.

As a spell caster, I'd only ever have to look at the pages I have spell levels from. An1st-level spellcaster would only ever need the first 20 pages of the spell lists, rather than having to flip all around the chapter to look up their spells.

I still don't think that's better in the long run than the current setup. At the very least, it's not an case where one way is obviously and objectively better than the other--it depends more on your reading style.

 

[Marandahir]

I still don't think that's better in the long run than the current setup. At the very least, it's not an case where one way is obviously and objectively better than the other--it depends more on your reading style.

Can you go into a little more detail on why you think the current set-up is superior?

 

[jayoungr]

Can you go into a little more detail on why you think the current set-up is superior?

Because to me, it's more important to find any spell I want quickly. If they're alphabetical, I know exactly where to look. If they're sorted by level first, then I have to know which level section to search. ("Is it level 2? No, it's not in the level 2 section. Must be level 3...")

 

[Eltab]

There's a reason GaleForce9 has made a killing on spell book cards. It's just too much busy work to keep skipping around the book during a game. People who don't buy the cards almost certainly have copied over their known spells to a word document or something for reference.

When I was DM'ing Tiamat, I told my players to hand-type or -write (not xerox) their characters' spells onto a sheet of paper they could keep nearby at table. Our Wizard made an actual spell book out of his. I did this for selfish reasons: I cannot memorize everything, and play was dragging while they worked through what a spell did and how the mechanics worked. By typing each spell up, I knew they would have to read it and therefore would remember some of the highlights.

 

[Eltab]

I liked the 3.5 sourcebook format for organizing spells: listed by class, then by level within each class, was the spell name and a one-line summary of the spell's intended result. (Fireball: Flashy explosive ball of flames 30 feet across.) Spells shared by multiple classes had their description line repeated. The actual full spells followed in one big alphabetical list.