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."

 

[Parmandur]

I mean, I always hear about the greatness of neo-Vancian casting.

And then I look back at "true Vancian" casting in 1e.

Clerics (and druids) can cast any spells they want to (that are level-appropriate). Choose each day. Rinse, repeat.

Magic users (and illusionists) must prepare (memorize) their spells from a larger list of spells known. Choose each day.* Rinse, repeat.

Other than putting in an addition (you can choose to cast whatever spell you want, from a smaller list), I've never seen the big deal. It's basically a fancy Rary's Mnemonic Enhancer!



*If you are following the rules regarding time for memorization, then you might take a little longer.

It's a lot less paperwork, and forces a specific fiction much less strongly.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

It's a lot less paperwork, and forces a specific fiction much less strongly.

I mean, that's all fine and good but how are we going to use D&D to train new actuaries if we stay on this terrible path?

 

[Von Ether]

Then the new player has to read all the booklets in order to decide what class to play?

I see no benefit.

Give the new player a pregenerated character sheet and throw them in.

Remember these are people new to the hobby overall, not D&D.

They'd look at cool cover art, the thickness of the book and chose what felt cool to them.

One could even say the idea that a newbie should read every option first before chosing is already an ingrained habit from years of being in the hobby.

Or even if one is naturally inclined to be so thorough, they may need to understand that many more go on impulse as they learn.

In my war gaming hobby, an old gamer told me that new players need to know only two things:
1. How to blow stuff up.
2. Which faction comes in their favorite color.

Everything else can come later.

 

[ChaosOS]

As someone who's played lots of non-D&D TTRPGs, specifically PbtA systems that put everything into the playbooks, people usually don't read through all the playbooks before picking. Rather, there's usually a paragraph summary of each, pick two or three playbooks from that, skim those, then pick one to play. It's the second or third games in a system where people will sit down and read all the playbooks (Or not! Sometimes people just repeat the "skim two or three that look interesting and pick from there"). Even with 5e I've played every class but I haven't read past level 11 for most of them - it's just not realistic to the level range I'm expecting to play. I certainly haven't read every spell, although I'm familiar with enough of them at this point.

 

[Staffan]

I would love to see a D&D starter adventure written to teach the rules as you progress through the encounters in the module. Legend of the Five Rings Beginner Game does a fantastic job of this.

That does not surprise me at all. I haven't seen L5R's beginner game, but the best intro to RPGs I've seen is Fantasy Flight Games' Age of Rebellion Beginner Game.

AORBG comes with four pregens, and there are two more you can download off their web site. The focus is on an introductory adventure where a crew of Rebel soldiers are infiltrating and taking over an off-the-books Imperial spy base (which is off the books because a Moff is using it to tap into secure Imperial communications for his own purposes). The adventure progresses along multiple encounters, each of which introduce new rule concepts or expand on ones you've already seen (for example, in the first fight initiative is fixed based on the outcome of the previous encounter, while in later encounters initiative is rolled normally). Mid-adventure, you get some XP and get to turn to the next page in your character sheet booklet, which offers you choices on how to spend that XP.

This adventure probably takes one or two evenings to play. It's a well designed introductory adventure, albeit somewhat marred by the climax being a chase scene and one of the bigger flaws of FFG's Star Wars rules is the rules for vehicle combat (they're designed to be played at scales from Super Star Destroyers to speeder bikes, which means there's precious little difference between a speeder and an AT-ST). But the real killer here is that after the adventure is done and the heroes have taken over the base, you can download an expansion from the FFG web site. Because now you have a base, but the base doesn't manage itself. You need to acquire resources, make friends with the locals (both natives and colonists), keep the base hidden, and so on. This is series of adventure seeds that are well developed enough that a newbie should be able to expand them on their own, and playing through this was one of the more enjoyable experiences I've had with RPGs.

As to how useful the beginner game is once you're done with it... it costs $30, and comes with a set of Star Wars dice that normally cost $15 (FFG's Star Wars game uses a set of odd dice with symbols on them). It also has a sheet of counters in it to represent PCs and their adversaries and possibly allies, as well as force points. This plus the adventure itself makes it well worth the money.

 

[Staffan]

The thing with on-boarding is that what you want from a teaching manual is very different from what you want from a reference manual. When I'm playing D&D or Pathfinder, what I want the rules to do is to quickly tell me "what does X do?". How much damage does a fireball do? What does the Backstabber trait on a dogslicer mean? What does it mean if I'm grappled? But I've been playing for a while, so I already know the basics of the game. A book that's useful for me at the table is probably horrible for someone learning to play, and a book that's good for on-boarding new players would be a horrible reference manual.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

Without dredging up specific examples, STR vs CON can often be a bit arbitrary, as they both tend to represent 'toughness' to a degree. DEX vs CON is an oddity in the sense that one might resist things in different ways based on character archetype, but each spell assumes only one possibility (IE resisting a fireball could easily be DEX to dodge, or CON to withstand). INT vs WIS is a frequent one. Even INT vs CHA is a bit arbitrary at times.

It almost seems like PCs should have saves categorized by 'defensive approach' (IE do I dodge or do I grit it out) and then pick a stat for one of several 'save types'. That would be pretty close to the 4e/3e versions, but you could introduce a bit of flexibility. So maybe you would have a 'Physical Save', a 'Mental Save', a 'Wits Save', etc. This would be a bit of fun characterization. Still, the previous approach was at least simpler and at least as easily justified as the 5e one. I don't see what the reasoning was for the change.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The semi-Vancian casting of 5E pulled off quite a trick. It mostly seems to retain what many liked in classic Vancian casting, but feels much closer to simulating a broader array of general Fantasy fiction, where a caster getting too tired to continue is pretty normal. Indeed, semi-Vancian casting actually first reared it's head in the Wheel of Time RPG from WotC, which adjusted d20 spellcasting to better reflect the Channeling from the books...

Though, again, it means you have to learn a bunch of very subtly different rules for which spells you can cast depending on what class you are. I won't even get into what happens if you multi-class because its easy enough to just ignore those rules if you have rules-challenged players or just don't like a lot of futzing. Still, it gets kinda complicated and that can be off-putting to people who play casually.

I think the IDEA behind the A/E/D/U was kind of interesting. That is, have a fairly restricted number of 'cards' that your PC could lay down on the table, and then each one has a different rule for when you can pick it up again. Unfortunately there were difficulties in practical realization. Because each class got its own 'cards' the numbers grew inordinately (I also blame insisting on a 30 level game for this, 20 would have been better). Fewer classes, more subclasses, more powers granted by non-class things (which means classes have smaller lists and there are less powers overall, and less duplications). This all COULD have made the concept work. I mean, it did work, it just wasn't as much simpler as one would have hoped, particularly when feats were factored in (again, the idea wasn't bad, a set of 'power modifiers' that each character gets, but the numbers were way too large).

Anyway, 5e sailed that ship, so its stuck with spells, and multiple variants of casting.

 

[ChaosOS]

I always wondered if there would be a good way to design a power-oriented set up that used the Tome of Battle Crusader set up, where you basically have a tiny deck/hand. I'd even keep the Divine Magic theme, because I like the idea that it's specifically divine magic that's a bit unpredictable.

 

[Parmandur]

Though, again, it means you have to learn a bunch of very subtly different rules for which spells you can cast depending on what class you are. I won't even get into what happens if you multi-class because its easy enough to just ignore those rules if you have rules-challenged players or just don't like a lot of futzing. Still, it gets kinda complicated and that can be off-putting to people who play casually.

I think the IDEA behind the A/E/D/U was kind of interesting. That is, have a fairly restricted number of 'cards' that your PC could lay down on the table, and then each one has a different rule for when you can pick it up again. Unfortunately there were difficulties in practical realization. Because each class got its own 'cards' the numbers grew inordinately (I also blame insisting on a 30 level game for this, 20 would have been better). Fewer classes, more subclasses, more powers granted by non-class things (which means classes have smaller lists and there are less powers overall, and less duplications). This all COULD have made the concept work. I mean, it did work, it just wasn't as much simpler as one would have hoped, particularly when feats were factored in (again, the idea wasn't bad, a set of 'power modifiers' that each character gets, but the numbers were way too large).

Anyway, 5e sailed that ship, so its stuck with spells, and multiple variants of casting.

The symmetry and exceptions based rules are part of the fun.

The base rules are quite short, and a player only needs to know his own exceptions at any given time. Reduce that, and we may as well be playing a boardgame (notably, the Powers worked very well for the boardgame line).