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."

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

But is she a better business person than her managers who may have decided to go in a different direction from Welch?

There's one thing history has shown us: RPG folks are phenomenal business people whose judgement should never be challenged.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

But I dont want to.

Me neither and it’s ok!!

 

[Dire Bare]

Agreed. I mean, hell, I'm not going to put in that much work to learn a new game. D&D is grandfathered in because I learned it 30 years ago and I can draw on that framework of knowledge for each new edition.

This is one of the reasons many groups are D&D all-the-time, as the work required to learn and master a new game system is too much for them. D&D isn't the only RPG with a high learning curve!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

But I dont want to.

Cool. Then don't say "well, there's no way anyone could make it easier to on-board new players," when most RPGs do a substantially better job of it.

 

[Dragonhelm]

Please keep in mind that there are two sides to every story. As a corporate entity, WotC will NOT be discussing any personnel changes with the public. Nor should they for legal reasons.

 

[Shardstone]

I'm currently running two campaigns for groups of new players. Both groups have one player with experience.

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.

The terms are confusing to new players. Saving throw? DC? AC? Even after explaining it for 3-4 sessions people are still confused. D&D takes a lot of buy in and is in no way intuitive for the new player. They have to struggle against what they can and cannot do (which is nothing, they can do anything, that's what you have to convince them!) and the book does a bad job of doing this.

All you people saying the new user experience is great are living in a completely different world from a significant subset of the world.

 

[Charlaquin]

Im not sure Im following you here. I dont really see the difference between to two other than the surveys seem to back up what I said?

The difference is that “easier than ever to get started” is relative to how easy it has been in the past, and may still be a long way from “easy for complete newcomers to get started in the game without someone helping them,” if the game has always been hard to get into.

 

[R_J_K75]

Cool. Then don't say "well, there's no way anyone could make it easier to on-board new players," when most RPGs do a substantially better job of it.

I didn't say that. I dont know where that came from?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

During the pandemic, I've been DMing over Zoom and Google Meet for four different campaigns, all of which contain multiple newcomers to D&D.

It's been incredibly instructive for me. New players get stumped all the time on elements of the game.

 

[Shardstone]

But is she a better business person than her managers who may have decided to go in a different direction from Welch?

Why did you say this?