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."

 

[MNblockhead]

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.

Maybe, but what they have seemed to have learned after the core three (PHB, DMG, MM) that mixing DM and player crunch, with meaty lore, and some new spells and magic items avoids this issue.

Besides, they already give the basic rules away for free, so I don't see why a more concise summary would hurt them.

 

[EpicureanDM]

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

I never watched Spoilers & Swag, so I'll defer to your experience. If it's your impression that Stewart was Welch's immediate supervisor and/or the person whom she worked for the most, then maybe I don't have an accurate impression of how the D&D team works.

 

[OblivionDrive]

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.

While yes, some of the saves are uncommon vs the rest of the ones you see all the time, I don't see how you think deciding which one is being used is somehow arbitrary. Can you elaborate some on why it is you see it that that way? Because it seems to me like it's pretty evident why a specific save is picked like 90% of the time. I feel like Wis vs Cha in some cases is the only one that could be considered fuzzy at all but the others seem extremely cut and dried to me.

 

[Parmandur]

I never watched Spoilers & Swag, so I'll defer to your experience. If it's your impression that Stewart was Welch's immediate supervisor and/or the person whom she worked for the most, then maybe I don't have an accurate impression of how the D&D team works.

We'll, worked: a year and a half ago, Stewart has the job that Ray Winninger has now, and was the hiring manager at the time Welch came on: they used to joke about the interview process.

 

[MNblockhead]

I think, on the player side, having ''playbooks'' that doubles as character sheets for each class with shortened features description and free space to add the features from archetypes and all the roleplay elements (ideal/bonds/flaws) on the 1st page could be added to the game.

I played in a Pathfinder Society run intro to 2e and they gave pre-gens that included explanations of the basic rules of play printed right on the the character sheets. Sure, the characters were like 4 pages or so long but I could read over and start playing without ever having read any of the main rule books. I don't think I've seen the same with 5e, other than community-created materials on Reddit, etc.

Still, the doesn't really help the DM. I was still learning by the "older cousins" method with my wider game-convention family.

 

[OblivionDrive]

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?

While it's not WOTC, when Critical Role left Geek & Sundry and went off onto their own channel, they ran a series for a while called Handbooker Helper that was basically what you're talking about. Short videos (usually under 5min each, but occasionally up to 10min or so) that each covered one concept or idea.

About half of them focused on quick builds/basics for each of the classes and races one by one, but they also did videos for basic stuff like "Dice 101," "Skills," "Spell Range and Area of Effect," "Combat Actions" and so forth. Small, quick, easily digestible chunks presented with a sense of humor. They haven't added anything new to the series since summer of last year (save for one small extra for the Monsterhearts 2 oneshot they ran) but they're definitely the kind of easy onboarding that people seem to be asking for.

You can find the full playlist of them here.

 

[Parmandur]

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.

It is simpler to have six saves for six attributes, than to have six attributes and somehow that leads to three saves. It might make sense to reduce the attributes to three, but for intellectual property identity reasons that's not possible. Hence, six is more easily understood than three, given that there are six attributes.

 

[Hatmatter]

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!

I think the differentiation between attacks and STs harkens back to the player experience. If the player is attacking, he or she gets to roll a die...it gives the player something to actively do (= roll a die). If the player is attacked by a high damage or important condition-inducing spell attack, the player gets to roll a die, so the defense is not passive. I think this goes way back to the origin of the game. Now, there are more characters casting spells (therefore NPCs make the STs) and some spells have attack rolls, so the distinction is watered down, but I think that is the nucleus of it. In melee combat the player rolls if attacking, not defending. When attacked by a spell, the player rolls to defend. In both instances, the player gets to roll a die; i.e. has some agency in the character's fate.

Again, as many people on here have said, the new player experience could be addressed through new means of introducing players to the game without having to change the game itself. It is a forty-year old game. I think it has been changed enough over the decades. It would be nice if we could stay with a version and have the energy of Wizards of the Coast continue to be directed to adventures, world-building, new options and fun stuff instead of continuing to tinker with the game itself. D&D is quite easy to home-brew and there are many, many other rpgs out there to be explored.

 

[Hatmatter]

It is simpler to have six saves for six attributes, than to have six attributes and somehow that leads to three saves. It might make sense to reduce the attributes to three, but for intellectual property identity reasons that's not possible. Hence, six is more easily understood than three, given that there are six attributes.

I entirely agree with this. I was delighted with the move to six STs with 5th edition. Honestly, 5th edition felt, and continues to feel, so elegant to me. But, then again, I am not predisposed to being critical of things I like. If I like them, I tend to be more appreciative then critical.

 

[Zardnaar]

You can't dumb it down without a new edition really.
The PHB could do with an overhaul. It's laid out worse than 3.5 from 17 years ago.
I've got these cheat sheets at home. Books the rules down to 2 pages. They're decent for new players.