Kate Welch is WotC's New D&D Designer

WotC has a brand new D&D designer, and it's Kate Welch! She plays Rosie Beestinger, the Lightfoot Halfing Monk in Acquisitions Inc's "C Team". She starts work on February 2nd. That's all I know for the moment, but more info if I hear it!

[video=youtube;fRsURJf4SjQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRsURJf4SjQ[/video]
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[TheCosmicKid]

My problem isn't so much with folks who want D&D to be a dungeon-crawler video game, though, as those who want it to be Dark Souls.

Huh? What is Dark Souls if not a dungeon crawler?

 

[Queer Venger]

Hope she gets paid as much as a man would in that position; congrats Kate!!

 

[Cergorach]

What's with the people questioning her qualifications? Dude, really, I think that if WotC hired her that they feel that she met their qualifications. And I think they have better clue about that than any one on these boards. Go find some other thing to complain about.

It's not that strange when the 'article' Morrus posted only talks about a new D&D Designer at WotC. I didn't know this person, so I went looking at what her pnp RPG publishing credentials were, there are none. I think that very strange that someone who has no pnp rpg publishing experience should be designing D&D products. Now, people have to start somewhere, but that usually isn't on D&D (the last two decades). Getting started with a 'lower ranked' publisher, sure, no big deal. But D&D is pretty much top dog in pnp RPG land.

Hiring a beautiful woman steeped in Geek culture does seem suspect with such little information. Especially with all the crap from both sides of the isle on the women in gaming issue over the last decade. That suspicion doesn't come to me naturally, ENworld.org and similar sites/blogs have 'educated' me on the matter. An education I would have liked to have skipped mind you!

Someone posted the job listing and I can totally see why miss Welch would qualify, when you look at her graphic design experience and work on GW2, that absolutely qualifies with what WotC is asking for. I'm not sure I agree with WotC also accepting work on video games as relevant experience (with no pnp experience along side it), I'm still not happy how much 4E felt like a video game with little soul. On one hand I can see why WotC would want to hire someone who worked on such a big property as GW2, D&D can benefit from that (financially), on the other hand I don't know if I like D&D going toward the mainstream route (I like that it's more accepted, but mainstream often feels dumbed down).

 

[seebs]

It is only true.... I am advocating inclusiveness to ALL types of players... you are advocating only to include players you deem fit to play the game you seem to want.

At least you got the analogy.... kudos

Except that's not true at all. You're assuming that hiring one designer who is a "heavy roleplayer", to work with several other designers, is "excluding" people who aren't heavy roleplayers. That's nonsense! The number-crunchy side of things is not lacking for support. Adding a heavy roleplayer to the mix is not excluding anyone, and is not advocating "only including" non-powergamers. It's improving support for heavy roleplayers.

 

[Mistwell]

While I think any new D&D hire is newsworthy, I don't understand why this one is in particular newsworthy or why this conversation has gone on this long or why anyone would be concerned. It's just a design hire. She seems fine for that job. Why is this hire different from other hires such that it's getting this much attention?

 

[seebs]

While I think any new D&D hire is newsworthy, I don't understand why this one is in particular newsworthy or why this conversation has gone on this long or why anyone would be concerned. It's just a design hire. She seems fine for that job. Why is this hire different from other hires such that it's getting this much attention?

Please identify some of these "other hires". So far as I can tell, this is the first actual designer-level hire for D&D since 5e came out, unless I forgot someone?

 

[seebs]

What's with the people questioning her qualifications? Dude, really, I think that if WotC hired her that they feel that she met their qualifications. And I think they have better clue about that than any one on these boards. Go find some other thing to complain about.

Past entry-level jobs, "qualifications" are nearly always optional. Source: I'm a professional programmer on the high end of "senior" and I've never taken a CS class.

 

[Cergorach]

While I think any new D&D hire is newsworthy, I don't understand why this one is in particular newsworthy or why this conversation has gone on this long or why anyone would be concerned. It's just a design hire. She seems fine for that job. Why is this hire different from other hires such that it's getting this much attention?

That's because it's a follow up on this article:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?4647-WotC-Is-Hiring-A-New-D-D-Game-Designer
And that one also went quite long and at the time no one was specifically mentioned for it (either male or female).

And this one went on quite long as well:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?2580-Sean-K-Reynolds-just-rehired-by-WotC

And this one:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/conten...-Arrives-From-Microsoft-As-Greg-Leeds-Resigns

So a long discussion isn't strange on a new or a rehire.

 

[Mistwell]

Please identify some of these "other hires". So far as I can tell, this is the first actual designer-level hire for D&D since 5e came out, unless I forgot someone?

Naw Morrus just doesn't report on most of their hires and departures (because I assume others are not letting him know and he can't be trolling LinkedIn every day for this sort of stuff). I've said before my glance at linkedin hires shows they've basically doubled their staff since the launch of D&D but for some reason that gets ignored and people continue to make the claim that D&D is working on a "skeleton crew".

Now maybe my count is wrong. I am not being precise with it, drilling down on each person and title. But, it's looked that way to me for a while. This is not a "senior" position we're talking about with Kate Welch. It's just another lower level position - one of over a dozen (of various tasks and titles) I think that WOTC has either assigned over or borrowed over from the Magic side of things, the Hasbro side of things. or new hired.

 

[seebs]

Naw Morrus just doesn't report on most of their hires and departures (because I assume others are not letting him know and he can't be trolling LinkedIn every day for this sort of stuff). I've said before my glance at linkedin hires shows they've basically doubled their staff since the launch of D&D but for some reason that gets ignored and people continue to make the claim that D&D is working on a "skeleton crew".

Now maybe my count is wrong. I am not being precise with it, drilling down on each person and title. But, it's looked that way to me for a while. This is not a "senior" position we're talking about with Kate Welch. It's just another lower level position - one of over a dozen (of various tasks and titles) I think that WOTC has either assigned over or borrowed over from the Magic side of things, the Hasbro side of things. or new hired.

So, in that case: Part of the issue is that since we don't hear about the others, this looks like a bigger deal. But we also have the usual thing where hiring a person with boobs for anything related to video games or tabletop games invokes a long-running feud. Thus, 9+ page thread about a thing that is apparently not all that unusual.