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."

 

[Li Shenron]

Character level
Monster level
Spell degree or power
Dungeon floor

It's funny that the only 2 things that should share the same name are character and monster level, and instead we use CR for monsters.

 

[Guy Icognito]

Wonder if Welch leaving has to do with the corporate culture of Wizbro. Orion Black leaving, Mearls still working there, and stuff like that


The New User Experience of DnD is a mess. Big books and super complicated rules with a mess of legacy terms and rules

4th Ed showed really effectively that if you try to dump too may of those legacy terms then it stops being DnD and isn't well accepted. That its hard to make a DnD that is just focused on bringin in new players rather than also keeping the old

And ya can't make D&D much more simple and easy for new players. DnD is the big, giant complicated game with giant three hundred page rulebooks. But as complicated as 5th Ed is there's a buncha players salivating for even more complexity and fiddly bits
So we have Level Up

People have been trying to find new ways of effectively bringing in lots of new players to DnD for forty years now. It hasn't worked. I doubt Welch is going to come along and just cut that knot. If it were easy, some smaller and simpler game would have done it twenty or thirty years ago and lapped DnD. Or so smaller game would have taken over the industry when DnD was DOA between 2010 and 2014
The best way of improving the New User Experience has been streaming and Critical Role. But DnD can't do anything to match that. Everyone wants to match CR in popularity and views but it ain't happenin. Better to work with them and let them do their thing

 

[Sunsword]

And this is to me a huge issue of D&D. I've taught D&D and numerous other RPGs to multiple new players, and 5e is simply not that easy to teach by the standards of many other games. There are a lot of mechanics, a lot of numbers, and quite a few things that we only accept as D&D players because we've been playing it so long.

I agree with you but every version of D&D has a lexicon that is dense. While I can make an OSR character in minutes there was a point where an AD&D 2E character would take me much longer. Some of that was rules bloat, but not all of it.

Its a circular argument because RPGs, generally, have rules that are at least rooted in wargames while at the table we are basically playing Make Believe with dice.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

And? You shouldn't need to look in a 40+ year old oop book for a previous edition so an explanation to a current day question....

"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.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

What? It was one of the named levels for Cleric in D&D 1e. It can be Matriarch too. But the "arch" title seems legit for a cleric, no?

I'm not sure "Patriarch" is something you can toss into a game in 2020 and not have at least a large portion of your players go "what now?" It's just got too much other stuff attached to it now.

"High Priest/Priestess" might get some giggles -- "what are they high off of?" -- but it also doesn't suggest your Cleric of Light is also going around upholding sexist social structures.

 

[Haffrung]

D&D is a complex game. Far, far more complicated than even the most complicated popular boardgames. Like the boardgaming hobby, D&D is growing dramatically, and that growth is almost all coming from the more casual end of the market. So there's a tension between the system and the capabilities and expectations of newcomers.

Even keeping the system as-is, WotC does a terrible job presenting those rules. You shouldn't have to memorize hundreds or even dozens of pages of rules to play the game. But someone at the table (typically the DM) does, because of how the rules are presented, in walls and walls of text. So even I, a grognard who has been playing for 40 years, has to carefully parse paragraphs of text to find out how many spells my Wizard knows at level 1.

I'm a technical writer. My job is to present complex technical information to a non-expert audience in the most clear and concise manner possible. Rule one of technical writing is you do not present complex procedures (and most of the actions you take in D&D are procedures) in walls of narrative text. You present them in numbered lists. In steps. Using the most concise and clear language possible. And you do not present lists of options in walls of narrative text either. You present them in bulleted lists. Or in tables. This is all basic, basic stuff.

WotC could condense the core mechanics of D&D down to 8 or 10 pages of procedures and lists. So why don't they? I suspect it's because:

A) WotC fear that a concise summary of the rules would eat into sales of their core product - the PHB. They don't want a 10 page rules summary to be available (even a nicely formatted one they sell) because they want people spending $50 on the PHB instead.

B) They know that half the audience for their products doesn't actively play. These customers buy D&D books as reading material, not rules references. And WotC probably feels these customers prefer discursive walls of text over numbered lists and summaries. And their dread of anything that smacks of 4E (which was the first edition of D&D that looked like professional instructional designers or technical communicators were involved*) means the WotC braintrust have swung dramatically in the opposition direction.

There are entrenched interests and norms at WotC that work against making the game easily accessible and digestible as a game system to new players. I could see how that would be very frustrating for someone tasked with new player onramping.

* The 4E Essentials Rules Compendium might be the most practical and effective book ever published by a D&D license-holder. Not only is it a marvel of concision and clarity, but the fonts, the layout, and the soft-cover digest format make it incredibly easy and pleasant to use at the table. Whatever else the D&D community feels about D&D 4E vs 5E, there's no question that 5E was a huge step back in document design and usability.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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.

On the other hand, if they'd ripped that Band-Aid off in the late 1970s, that's 40 years of new customers who would be less confused.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The know that half the audience for their products doesn't actively play. These customers buy D&D books as reading material, not rules references.

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.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

On the other hand, if they'd ripped that Band-Aid off in the late 1970s, that's 40 years of new customers who would be less confused.

Maybe they had more faith in the inherent ability of people to cope 40 years ago?

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

-Nietzsche

The sales of D&D are rising, so maybe not treating people like idiots works?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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