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."

 

[ChaosOS]

I'm not saying confusion over getting second level spells at third level is some impossible barrier, but it's simply one more hoop newer players have to jump through to access the content.

 

[Parmandur]

I can't imagine being confused by level for those things. Even as a 13 year old kid teaching himself 1e, I never had a glimmer of an issue with it. Now, HD/HP, THAT threw me for a loop. Mostly because I misread it.

I wasn't confused overly by that, either, but I can imagine being confused by it.

 

[Haffrung]

I mean, the books are as much pleasure reading as play aids, certainly: I'd say there is an 80/20 rule at play, in terms of what is read versus used at the table. That was one of the big mistakes of 4E, per WotC market research, was making the books technically straight forwards, but not fun to read. That lesson was a big part of the 5E product design philosophy.

Making the books enjoyable to read is not mutually exclusive with presenting the mechanical systems clearly and efficiently. You can put the fluff in introductory paragraphs or sidebars. But burying procedures in walls of conversational text is terrible instructional design, and makes an already complex system needlessly difficult to learn and use. It means you essentially need an uber-nerd who has read and memorized the rules to run and referee every table. That's really bad for new user uptake.

And it's worth keeping in mind that WotC's market research would have been gathered from existing players, people who had already demonstrated a willingness to memorize pages and pages of rules. Their polling could not have captured the barriers to entry for people who weren't even players yet.

 

[Parmandur]

Making the books enjoyable to read is not mutually exclusive with presenting the mechanical systems clearly and efficiently. You can put the fluff in introductory paragraphs or sidebars. But burying procedures in walls of conversational text is terrible instructional design, and makes an already complex system needlessly difficult to learn and use. It means you essentially need an uber-nerd who has read and memorized the rules to run and referee every table. That's really bad for new user uptake.

And it's worth keeping in mind that WotC's market research would have been gathered from existing players, people who had already demonstrated a willingness to memorize pages and pages of rules. Their polling could not have captured to barriers to entry of people who weren't even players yet.

That fair: but still, WotC needs to sell books to people as good reads for their existing audience (as a point of comparison, I have bought and read every 5E book minus 1, whereas with the dull as dishwater 4E books I only bought 1, and sure wasn't reading it for fun 6 years later as I am with 5E books). It's a complex issue, and one that will take a long time to change, if ever.

 

[Monayuris]

The problem with how D&D 5E explains the rules is that it doesn't really start at the beginning.

There is only one rule needed to play D&D:

"Tell the DM what you want your character to do, and the DM will tell you what happens"

It needs to teach that first.

It is this game feedback loop of DM describes the environment, Player describes what they do, DM determines the outcome that is the actual game. If you want to have a successful starter kit (that brand new players can buy and learn the game on their own and without guidance), it needs to explain this and teach how to do this.

Once they learn how this works, they can play D&D without needing an experienced player. All the extra terminology and rules and powers will be picked up over time.

Maybe already mentioned... but the best version to learn D&D has always been the Mentzer Red Box.

The player's book featured a story of an adventurer starting its first dungeon. It goes through the story explaining the character's abilities and what they mean and the first encounter with a goblin. It teaches how to roll to hit and how to inflict damage in the first few pages. It then presents a dungeon as a choose your own adventure book with text to read in place of the DM. It is only AFTER this that the book then details the rules of the game.

It teaches the player responsibility of the game loop first.

The DM's book starts with an annotated dungeon where each room presents a limited set of choices. The new DM is expected to read the descriptions to the players and give them the choices the book provides. The annotations explain everything the DM needs to know about the room. The DM simply reads and presents to the players. Only AFTER this dungeon does the book actually get into the rules of running the game (along with monsters and treasures).

It teaches the DM responsibility of the game loop first.

 

[R_Chance]

I'm pretty sure it was in the 1st edition AD&D DMG, under the heading "Why Level?"

Thank you. I remember reading it and thinking that "rank" etc. sounded better and was certainly more evocative of what was being labeled. And it's stuck in my mind for the last 40 plus years I couldn't remember exactly where I had read it, in The Dragon, an interview, or, as it happens, the DMG.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I wasn't confused overly by that, either, but I can imagine being confused by it.

I had two players confused by it. It's worth noting it's not a convention that video games have used. You have character level, but you don't have a separate set of tiers for spell levels. You just have the spells you get at that level.

 

[Parmandur]

I had two players confused by it. It's worth noting it's not a convention that video games have used. You have character level, but you don't have a separate set of tiers for spell levels. You just have the spells you get at that level.

Depends on the game...

 

[Guy Icognito]

It's hilarious to think that one of the big problems with the new player experience is character level vs. class level vs. spell level. As if anyone touching DnD before hasn't played a video game where their character is a level 10 warrior with two levels in rampage using a third level blood axe
People can get that stuff quickly. It's not a significant barrier

Or simple rules. Dungeon exists. A dozen DnD Devlve games exist. A hundred other games that are "DnD but simpler exist." But none are close to as popular

The big hurdle is understanding the game. The idea of there being this referee that tells the stories and builds the game. That's this big logical leap. Once you get over that it becomes smoother

Experienced players are a bigger wall. The grognards and edition warriors and factious internet communities. Everyone arguing that the ranger sux and fighters are boring or we need Dragonlance back or how 3e/4e was the bomb or OSR is the right way to play. The people arguing that orcs need to have intelligence penalties and drow have to be evil

 

[OblivionDrive]

I listen to the Dragon Talk podcast each week. The hosts treat the job of 'game mastering' as if it is some sacred cow. When Shelly Mazzanoble (sp?) does her "Learning to GM portion, she openly says how intimidated she is in being a Game Master.....and this is from a WOTC employee. Even with the incredible popularity of D&D right now, perhaps Kate has a point regarding WOTC doing a bad job with new user experience.

For what little it's worth though, some context is needed for Shelly's situation.

She was a player first and the very first time she attempted to DM for a small group of folks, she grossly underprepared and wasn't ready for it. The situation, as she tells it frequently on the show, is that she presented the players with a situation where they could go left or right, somehow not expecting that they would ever go left, rather than right, where the thing she had prepared was. When they picked left, she basically vapor locked and had kind of a breakdown and the game ended. That incident seriously shook her up so hard that she's never attempted to DM since then.

Recent episodes have had a variety of guests trying to offer her tips on a regular segment and her co-host Greg pushing at her for months to finally run a game again. Now, honestly, this has more to do with her being generally kind of an anxious person, her own lack of planning and her admission that she's afraid to run for experienced players because she thinks they're going to be judging her for "doing it wrong" rather than a new player onboarding issue.

Not saying that new player onboarding isn't an issue. Just that Shelly's situation isn't necessarily that and I wanted to offer some context to those who don't know the podcast. Some people who have played for years and years are terrified at the idea of ever DMing - some of that can be onboarding but I tend to find more often that it's because they assume some obscene level of knowledge and mastery is needed to even consider running a game rather than realizing how much of what we do is seat-of-our-pants flying.