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."

 

[R_Chance]

If he knew Sleep or Magic Missile or Burning Hands or, well, anything useful. Chance to Know Spell Percentage!

Otherwise, you had a torchbearer who wanted a full share of the treasure or a delusional magic-user who either didn't know how useless they were in a dungeon going anyway, or terminally depressed bad student at Magic-User School who was committing death by kobold.

It was a very silly system and one that subsequent editions of the game rightly dropped.

I'd say Sleep or Magic Missile. Shield was good (for them) and other spells had some utility (Read Magic). Smart players kept them around for when they turned that corner and got 3rd level spells. Magic users went from weaklings to wonders at about 5th level. That was the price of that power you had later; starting out as weak as it gets.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

I'd say Sleep or Magic Missile. Shield was good (for them) and other spells had some utility (Read Magic). Smart players kept them around for when they turned that corner and got 3rd level spells. Magic users went from weaklings to wonders at about 5th level. That was the price of that power you had later; starting out as weak as it gets.

Yeah, except that isn't really the price of power. You were powerless and then later have all the power you want. That's completely different to paying the price for power. If anything, as you got more powerful you should be paying a higher price. Instead it was either, "I'm level 1, i have the wrong spells, I suck." or "I am high level. Nothing can stop me."

 

[ccs]

Instead it was either, "I'm level 1, i have the wrong spells, I suck." or "I am high level. Nothing can stop me."

Nothing can stop you heh?
OK. Challenge accepted - said the DM with an evil grin.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Nothing can stop you heh?
OK. Challenge accepted - said the DM with an evil grin.

That's Tomb of Horrors origin story...

 

[cbwjm]

I always found high level magic-users on the weak side back in ADnD in that all of the enemies that you want to be affected by your spells are also high level and so had really good saves. Plenty of spells to overcome obstacles as long as that obstacle wasn't a target of equal or greater level and didn't have a percentage chance to flat out ignore your spells.

 

[Zardnaar]

I always found high level magic-users on the weak side back in ADnD in that all of the enemies that you want to be affected by your spells are also high level and so had really good saves. Plenty of spells to overcome obstacles as long as that obstacle wasn't a target of equal or greater level and didn't have a percentage chance to flat out ignore your spells.

They are. People project 3E+ back onto AD&D.

High level fighter very useful to have around.

2E T-Rex makes saves about 75% of the time. 5E one fails about 75% of the time.

Throw in squishy, low hp, and yeah.

I lost a level 18 archimage to Troll Shaman using hold person. Clone spell but yeah.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Theyvate. People project 3E+ back onto AD&D.

High level fighter very useful to have around.

2E T-Rex makes saves about 75% of the time. 5E one fails about 75% of the time.

Throw in squishy, low hp, and yeah.

I lost a level 18 archimage to Troll Shaman using hold person. Clone spell but yeah.

I'm pretty sure Gygax intended them to have all those henchmen and hirelings to protect them

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm pretty sure Gygax intended them to have all those henchmen and hirelings to protect them

That's not class specific.

Never really had massive spellcaster problems in AD&D.

Due to various drawbacks they stripped out in 3E.

 

[Micah Sweet]

There are board games that have tutorial modes that gradually introduce more rules on top of what has been covered so as not to overwhelm the new player with everything all at once. There's little reason that a TTRPG couldn't adopt a similar model.

The starter sets are a tutorial. The first one for 5e doesn't even have character generation. It holds your hand as much as possible IMO.

 

[Aaron L]

If he knew Sleep or Magic Missile or Burning Hands or, well, anything useful. Chance to Know Spell Percentage!

Otherwise, you had a torchbearer who wanted a full share of the treasure or a delusional magic-user who either didn't know how useless they were in a dungeon going anyway, or terminally depressed bad student at Magic-User School who was committing death by kobold.

It was a very silly system and one that subsequent editions of the game rightly dropped.

The thing is, 1st Edition AD&D wasn't designed to be just a generic Fantasy game; it was aiming to simulate a specific shade of Weird Fiction.... something which I think it did very well; it was set up to feel mostly like Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith, rather than Tolkien. And this is a stylistic feel which 5th Edition has mostly gone back to emulating quite well (I get a genuine vibe of REH's Conan stories from a lot of 5E's rules conventions.) If only it didn't have those couple of just plain awful 4E holdovers plaguing the rules, like Dragonborn and the mess they made of Tieflings. As monsters, a race of ostentatious Dragon People and a race of uniformly blatant bright red-skinned, ram-horned, and thick-tailed Devil People are fine, but as playable races in a classic Weird Fiction/Fantasy-style setting they are a really poor fit.

Hell, Elves and Dwarves are supposed to be exotic, but it seems that some people seem to feel they have become "boring" and these people need ever-increasing levels of stimulation to maintain continued interest, in the form of ever more and more gaudy, tacky, and outlandish playable races. Which is my entire problem with Dragonborn and the current portrayal of Tieflings; the gaudiness and tacky blatantness of them. They are entirely lacking in subtlety. If Dragonborn simply looked like large Humans with subtle draconian features and small patches of scales here and there, while retaining all of their game-mechanical abilities, I would be absolutely fine with them. Likewise if Tieflings were still portrayed as individuals with unique Fiendish features resulting from the ancestors, while retaining all of their current game-mechanical abilities, I would likewise have absolutely no problem with their inclusion in the game. But as they are presented now, as races of literally dragon-headed humanoids and uniform Devil People, I intensely dislike them. (I only allow those races in my games with the alteration that they just look like normal Humans with subtle draconic/Fiendish features, not as they are described in the rulebooks.)