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."

 

[Hatmatter]

5E rules do not need to be dumbed down, hell, they can even be more complicated.

But, they need to be better explained, PHB needs 5 categories better indexing, and lot's of thing should be more fixed in the rules.
I.E. skills/tools:
while it is nice general rule "leave everything for DM to work out" it is horrible for new DM and players.
Take acrobatics. It lists what you can do, but at what terms, what actions? What is the DC for various new things that you can do?
Is proficiency enough or you need to "fish" for expertise somehow? Will 12 dex be enough or should I not bother until I have 16 at least?

And yes, some DCs are written later on in PHB and DMG, but they NEED to be in skill description because that is the place where you decide will you pick this skill or that skill.
Better to double up on some rules than to place it in bad location for character creation.

what are perception penalties for distance? Is it some fixed -X penalty per fixed distance or you just get disadvantage at certain distance, and what distance that is?

Those are fascinating examples, Horwath. I agree with you that the D&D game need not be changed (again)...I imagine then you would run into many people frustrated that the game they enjoy has been changed (again) and then, for those of us who enjoy looking forward to the new books, we are consigned to the next few years being a succession of "when are they going to update X to the Xth edition." I really like the game how it is.

Now, about the examples you provide. I would think getting granular in terms of perception penalties for distance is going to be the kind of detail that will lead to an attempt to provide rules for everything. Speaking for myself, I like the "the DM ballparks a DC number"...for me, it makes the game simpler. It sounds like it does not for you, but for me that is one of the elements so refreshing about 5th edition. I prefer books that give story and world-building ideas to an attempt to provide rules for (usually increasingly) specific situations. But, I do know that not everyone would agree with this.

 

[EpicureanDM]

When Welch was hired, she reported directly to Stewart. Her change of job title corresponds with when that stopped, it seems, and when they stopped doing Spoilers & Swag together.

If you can show me the org. chart from the time she was hired, I'd love to see it.

 

[Parmandur]

If you can show me the org. chart from the time she was hired, I'd love to see it.

Source: Welch & Stewart discussion of their job roles during several dozen Spoilers & Swag episodes.

 

[Von Ether]

It just dawned on me, remembering my own frustrations in parsing 5e for the first few times, why did capitalizing a rules term rule go out of fashion and why?

In just trying to scan the book, I had skipped the introduction, the spot where they tell you what dice are and who DMs are, and went straight to character creation. Stuff I knew as long timer.

And then it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that Advantage was a game term. Why? It was mentioned in the middle of that four page intro and then only again 172 pages later. I was confused why no bonus was listed next to this advantage or that disadvantage.

If it had been capitalized like a lot of gaming books used to do, I would have been tipped off that this was a game term and head the index (lets not go into that tangent)

 

[MNblockhead]

The new player experience is god awful. Its terrible. Its trash. The books are laid out poorly, and since we play over zoom cuz some of us are scattered, they have to navigate DnD Beyond, and that doesn't make things any easier, even with a subscription and content sharing.

Agree with your post for the most part, despite the hyperbole, but I disagree with your comments on DnD Beyond. If find DDB to be a huge advantage. Having the rules hyperlinked and easily searchable makes them much easier to reference during play. It could do with some settings for customizing default search behavior and more filtering options, but overall it is a big leap past the print books or PDFs.

 

[Monayuris]

A hobby.

To me, Dungeons & Dragons is a game.

There are many people who have made the act and enjoyment of playing the game of Dungeons & Dragons into a hobby (I consider myself among them), but it is still just a game.

Yes. D&D is not a boardgame. It has more in common with improv theatre and creative writing.

And I'm pretty sure that if they thought dumbing down would help they would have done it by now.

You can act out your characters if you want but that is not needed to play the game. I don’t have any improv theatrical skills and I play the game just fine.

You are talking about a very specific way of playing the game that is fun for some people but not for everyone.

D&D is not a Boardgame, but I have every expectation that one should be able to buy Dungeons & Dragons and learn to play it on one’s own, without outside help. If this is possible with Settlers of Catan or Monopoly, it should be possible with D&D.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

5E rules do not need to be dumbed down, hell, they can even be more complicated.

But, they need to be better explained, PHB needs 5 categories better indexing, and lot's of thing should be more fixed in the rules.
I.E. skills/tools:
while it is nice general rule "leave everything for DM to work out" it is horrible for new DM and players.
Take acrobatics. It lists what you can do, but at what terms, what actions? What is the DC for various new things that you can do?
Is proficiency enough or you need to "fish" for expertise somehow? Will 12 dex be enough or should I not bother until I have 16 at least?

And yes, some DCs are written later on in PHB and DMG, but they NEED to be in skill description because that is the place where you decide will you pick this skill or that skill.
Better to double up on some rules than to place it in bad location for character creation.

what are perception penalties for distance? Is it some fixed -X penalty per fixed distance or you just get disadvantage at certain distance, and what distance that is?

I found 5e's rules a little to vague. They really assume a lot of understanding of WHY to make specific rulings from the DM, and there is a lot of needless lack of clarity. If the idea is to provide 'options', then why not actually do that? I also found the rules to be organized in a way which makes it hard to get all the information on a topic in one place, assuming it exists at all... I wouldn't say it is worse than some other editions, all of them have had organizational missteps, but it seems like after 5 editions...

Some subsystems are also just needlessly complex. Why are there SIX saves? This seems like at least 3 too many! It is pretty much arbitrary which one is used in any given case, and several of them seem to almost never come up at all. I don't even understand the choice to have saves and attacks both, it is very confusing and means players have to really memorize a lot of trivial details about each spell, or else constantly look stuff up in combat. I wasn't impressed with that!

Overall, I think 5e did make PC builds simpler than 4e, and I feel like that is a good thing. Cutting out most of the mass of Feats is clearly a win. OTOH making all the different classes work by different rules doesn't make things easier. Some people seem to think fighters are simpler, but I don't really agree. When you start actually getting into all the action economy involved in using weapons, fighting styles, interactions with maneuvers, feats, subclass mechanics, and all the questions of 'bonus actions' and exactly what you can do in terms of drawing/sheathing/loading, etc. it actually gets pretty complicated! My dwarf transmuter is not really harder to run than my level 2 fighter (and once he hits level 3 he'll definitely have a lot to remember). I mean, deciding between spells is more decisions to make with the casters, but the actual mechanics of each are about equal. I don't see how this really improved over the 'powers' concept that 4e had. I think there was a middle ground there that could have made a more playable game.

 

[MNblockhead]

I spent an hour trying to find a good intro video to share with my son's friends and their parents. They might be out there... but I didn't stumble on any that I felt did a nice job. Maybe I googled the wrong terms, or maybe they were buried under a lot of badly made too high level things.

Chris Perkins did a great series for 4e with members of Robot Chicken (apparently they make an animated TV series) that I found helpful, even though it was created for 4th edition. The main issue with a lot of these videos, however, is how long they are. Telling someone intimidated by the PHB that, no problem, just watch this 3 hour video, isn't likely to be appreciated. With all the videos WOTC is involved with for D&D Beyond, Twitch Streams, and the like, why can't they put out a series of shorter videos that walk you through different aspects of playing and running the game?

 

[MNblockhead]

I think D&D, at least the spirit of it, began tanking when it kept pushing more and more to a "pick up and play experience." Sure it's popular now, but at what cost? It lost a ton of what made it grand. It only kept enough nostalgia to make people be more acceptable, but let's be real, the Golden Age and Silver Ages of D&D were 2e and 3e. Now we're in the Tincup Casual Age of D&D.

I have no experience with 3rd or 4th edition, but my feelings about 2nd edition were not much better than the feelings expressed in posts I've read about 4th edition.

If the edition is not featured being being played and interrupted by aliens or inter-planar creatures in a major Hollywood movie (1e, ET) or smash-hit TV series (5e, Stranger Things), it's not part of a golden age.

2e, 3e, and 4e are all in the valley between the peaks for 1e and 5e.

 

[MNblockhead]

I can't even...

...make a coherent, fully formed statement that adds to the discussion?