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."

 

[Zardnaar]

Based on what I have seen of older stuff from a variety of sources, both WotC and the industry at large are killing it like never before. No end of options out there.

WotC has a historic brand to cater to, but Welch herself is a good example of working callbacks to older material into something new and exciting in the products which she developed.

Not disputing that. If I was in charge of WotC I wouldn't be doing much different.

There's less variety in rules for D&D from WotC, less variety in adventures etc.

Other game rules system may as well not exist for casuals and probably something similar to DMGuild.

 

[Mistwell]

that's all fine a well, but what happened with the 2nd circle, 4th circle, etc..?

Secrets the uninitiated were not meant to know.

 

[Dire Bare]

Used to work for an outboard motor company. They'd stack the crates of 200 lbs plus motors six high. Insta-death for anyone if they every collapsed. I suggested to my foreman that they put in a shelving system, and then stack them two high apiece on the shelf.

"We've been doing that way for 25 years," he said.

Before I could control my lips, I spouted, "That doesn't mean you've been doing right for 25 years."

I was gone soon after that.

Could be worse. Your story could end with, "And then he was crushed by a 200+ lb motor. The End."

 

[Myrdin Potter]

I run AL games at the local store. I can teach new players how to play in one 4 hour session. Step 1 is handing them a pre-generates character based on what they want to play. Step 2 is showing a little patience.

If you have never even played a complicated board game that you learned from scratch by reading the rules, then, yes, D&D is complicated to learn. It is not hard if you are playing with people that already know how to play. Like the board games I play as well.

I am pretty sure that they have done tests with both Magic and D&D and learning from people that already know how to play is what FNM and AL exist.

They really put a lot of effort into AL.

 

[Cadence]

I am pretty sure that they have done tests with both Magic and D&D and learning from people that already know how to play is what FNM and AL exist.

RE: Magic

When did FNM last have something structural for teaching people how to play? It feels like a lot of the efforts were to get tournaments going (at least as far as the promos and things the stores get to give out). And if FNM is packed with players, it doesn't feel like it gives a lot of time for the staff to run through games with new players.

Was WotC kind of flailing around trying to figure out what paper product to use for new players? Free starter decks, planeswalker decks, family game night, spellslinger start packs, arena starter packs. They had some open houses they tried encouraging the week before pre-release, but I'm not sure how those did nationwide. Did they discontinue them? (maybe that was just COVID though).

The big thing for MtG recently seems to be getting interested folks to try the tutorials on Arena first. And the consensus on the MtG reddit seems to be that that's the best way to do it. I wonder if some on-line thing to run people interested in D&D through some things would work (to get them the basics and then encourage them to contact AL).

 

[Zardnaar]

I run AL games at the local store. I can teach new players how to play in one 4 hour session. Step 1 is handing them a pre-generates character based on what they want to play. Step 2 is showing a little patience.

If you have never even played a complicated board game that you learned from scratch by reading the rules, then, yes, D&D is complicated to learn. It is not hard if you are playing with people that already know how to play. Like the board games I play as well.

I am pretty sure that they have done tests with both Magic and D&D and learning from people that already know how to play is what FNM and AL exist.

They really put a lot of effort into AL.

One way of doing it. I can handle one new player more than that gets annoying.

Newbie groups tend to self destruct as well from what I've seen.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'd have to agree that D&D doesn't have a great new user experience.

The older cousin model (literally how I got into it) works, clearly it does, no-one can deny that, but it also means it's very hard for people to start from scratch. I saw this myself a while back - a group of friends of a friend had got the 5E books, not long after they'd come out. They'd heard about D&D and thought it sounded cool.

But they had no idea how to actually run it, from the books. They just didn't get it. I had to help out and explain to them a lot of basic ideas and stuff that's implied by the books, but never explicitly stated.

The lack of any really good explanation of the RP part of RPG, and systematic and clear, is part of the issue. It's not stopping people starting playing, but it does mean that when people do start, especially if they're not playing with someone who has always done a lot of RP, they're not necessarily going to get that part at all.

Back on the "older cousin" angle, because the older cousin in my case (a 22-year-old female 2nd cousin from Canada!) was a serious RPer, and had a lot of opinions on how DMing worked, opinions which are common now, but were rare then (like, you're not in opposition to the players, and thinking the PCs are cool is basically a good thing) meant I was already a better roleplayer, player in general and DM than people I met at school who'd been playing for 2-3 years, who were trapped in adversarial tropes, couldn't RP to save their lives, and played in often antisocial ways. None of that had to be the case, but 2E sure didn't explain otherwise, and whilst 5E definitely tries, it still misses out on a lot of the "connective tissue" of RPGs (4E, I might argue, did a slightly better job).

 

[Guest 6801328]

One way of doing it. I can handle one new player more than that gets annoying.

Newbie groups tend to self destruct as well from what I've seen.

Really? I've run all-newbie groups on more than one occasion and had a blast.

 

[Dausuul]

The Golden Age and Silver Ages of D&D were 2e and 3e. Now we're in the Tincup Casual Age of D&D.

1E was the Plutonium Age of D&D, when the game generated incredible energy but the rules gave you radiation sickness. And sometimes they exploded.

2E was the Aluminum Age. It was shiny but not very sturdy, massive quantities were produced, and at the end TSR crumpled up into a little ball.

3E was the Carbon Age. Depending on how good you were at assembling tiny pieces of the rules, your character could be a diamond, or a lump of coal.

4E was the Thorium Age. Proponents claimed that it offered the same power as previous systems, while being cleaner and more reliable and better in every way. Yet somehow it never caught on.

5E is the Hydrogen Age. It's the simplest to date, it's abundant in streams, it's created a lot of new stars, and people have grandiose visions for it that may or may not ever be realized.

 

[Zardnaar]

Really? I've run all-newbie groups on more than one occasion and had a blast.

I meant mixing newbies. All newbies probably easier.