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."

 

[billd91]

Actually, it is pretty hard to do that, because there are a lot of places where there are either ability score requirements, or at least dependencies, on things you WILL want. PCs generally have scores very similar in 4e to 5e, with one score that is an 8 perhaps, and then a couple that are in the 10-12 range, and then your primary, secondary, and tertiary stat. With a few classes it was a pretty good idea to hang a starting 20 on a primary and suffer with the lower secondary, or no tertiary, but you were always giving up access to a bunch of feats, maybe an armor, etc. and relegating your skill selection to a narrow range (and 4e skills are pretty core things). It is probably equally common to take a 16 in a primary as a 20 in order to do the opposite. You can compensate with a slightly greater focus on some of the more beneficial feats starting off (IE be sure to start with Weapon Expertise for example).

On the contrary, I found it extremely easy to do. I put my 3 highest stats in the primary, secondary, and tertiary stats for the class - and if they lined up with the 2 stat pairings (which many did), I could then match my defenses to them and dump 3 stats. I actually found it fairly irritating that some classes/class specialties could dump 3 while others could only dump 2. I thought that was sloppy and fell short of what 4e should just gone ahead and done since they were already tweaking around with the stat pairs - fix 3 stats to offense (Str, Int, Cha), 3 to defense (Con, Dex, Wis) and be done with it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Right now, inspiration always gives advantage to the PCs on their rolls - imposing disadvantage on the creature attacking them (or on a target's saves) would be "working in reverse". While that may work for a lot of players who like the higher complexity of a feature like that - keeping it just to giving the PCs advantage is a better mechanic for casual players.

Right, but again, that means casters who's spells require saves vs to-hit rolls are out of luck... There are a lot of situations where it is just not that useful, but should be. Anyway, it wasn't an exceptionally well-thought-out part of the game to start with, so...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

On the contrary, I found it extremely easy to do. I put my 3 highest stats in the primary, secondary, and tertiary stats for the class - and if they lined up with the 2 stat pairings (which many did), I could then match my defenses to them and dump 3 stats. I actually found it fairly irritating that some classes/class specialties could dump 3 while others could only dump 2. I thought that was sloppy and fell short of what 4e should just gone ahead and done since they were already tweaking around with the stat pairs - fix 3 stats to offense (Str, Int, Cha), 3 to defense (Con, Dex, Wis) and be done with it.

I don't like that solution. you should be able to use your wits or your social awareness as a defense, or your dexterity as an attack.
Not only that, but you cannot really dump 3 stats and make it an 'easy' choice. You may DO it, but you WILL pay the consequences! You are almost bound to have a really bad defense, one that is terrible enough that you will almost always be hit on it. Often you will end up with a 2nd mediocre defense (because even if you trash 3 stats you won't have 3 really high 'good' stats). You may also be botched on armor, depending on which stats we're talking about. You will certainly give up some riders, access to some highly useful feats, etc.

Not many, if any, classes have things that line up exactly with 3 of the defense stats either. While MwaO or someone who has camped on 4e's CHAROPS may well be able to mention one, it is hard to come up with many. The only one that sort of comes to mind instantly is a bow ranger, but that means utterly trashing any ability in melee at all. Once you get to paragon and pick BA for a PP that may seem less critical, but its hard to go around without any real ability to melee at all! I mean you have to go to elaborate lengths like MCing into Rogue and poaching DEX melee powers or something, and then taking a feat to get half your DEX bonus on OAs, etc. See what I mean? You really can't just trivially do this kind of thing, you pay heavily. It might not be blatantly obvious on day one, but such a character will be much more of a one-trick-pony.
The thing is, 4e will at least let you do that, if you're so inclined, and then work things out. I still don't think the proper response is for the game engine to try to punish you for not building how it wants.

 

[Parmandur]

I don't like that solution. you should be able to use your wits or your social awareness as a defense, or your dexterity as an attack.
Not only that, but you cannot really dump 3 stats and make it an 'easy' choice. You may DO it, but you WILL pay the consequences! You are almost bound to have a really bad defense, one that is terrible enough that you will almost always be hit on it. Often you will end up with a 2nd mediocre defense (because even if you trash 3 stats you won't have 3 really high 'good' stats). You may also be botched on armor, depending on which stats we're talking about. You will certainly give up some riders, access to some highly useful feats, etc.

Not many, if any, classes have things that line up exactly with 3 of the defense stats either. While MwaO or someone who has camped on 4e's CHAROPS may well be able to mention one, it is hard to come up with many. The only one that sort of comes to mind instantly is a bow ranger, but that means utterly trashing any ability in melee at all. Once you get to paragon and pick BA for a PP that may seem less critical, but its hard to go around without any real ability to melee at all! I mean you have to go to elaborate lengths like MCing into Rogue and poaching DEX melee powers or something, and then taking a feat to get half your DEX bonus on OAs, etc. See what I mean? You really can't just trivially do this kind of thing, you pay heavily. It might not be blatantly obvious on day one, but such a character will be much more of a one-trick-pony.
The thing is, 4e will at least let you do that, if you're so inclined, and then work things out. I still don't think the proper response is for the game engine to try to punish you for not building how it wants.

We'll, yes, you are supposed to have two to three Saves that are bad: every PC is assumed to. That's why having a balanced team to cover each other is important. D&D is not a solo game.

 

[Staffan]

I am not sure why 6 saves was needed in order to do that, or why saves as opposed to defenses were needed.

Again, six saves were not a consequence of wanting to avoid dump stats. They are a consequence of wanting everything to be an ability check.

Anyone with a modicum of common sense would not kill off vancian casting.

Traditional fire-and-forget Vancian casting can go die in a fire. I have played D&D since 1990ish, and that's one mechanic I have never liked. 5e "Neo-Vancian" casting is fine, though.

I have a drinking problem; two hands, and only one mouth!

That calls for what we in Sweden call the "Gunde Svan" – keep a number of glasses available, and alternate between taking shots with each hand, mimicking a cross-country skier.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

You say worse.

I say better.

I say make sure you have a second character rolled up when your first level magic-user, who was only able to learn Shield, Nystul's Magic Aura and Read Magic, heads into the dungeon for the first time.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Someone may argue that the Starter Set has a fairly short adventure, but that's it, all other official adventures are long or extremely long. A first-time DM probably needs a single-session adventure to start with, and possibly more, followed by longer adventures but still not 200 pages each.

The goblin ambush through clearing the goblin caves is a single-session adventure for newbies. I know, because I ran that for a bunch of newbies this summer. If you never actually head on to Phandalin, you've already had a concrete adventure with combat, skills use, rewards for scouting and lateral thinking, etc.

And all of this with a level advancement system that takes you way too quickly up to 3rd level! Clearly, the XP chart is built for experienced players who get bored when playing low-level characters.

"Too quickly," why? Because the numbers are too high? Third level is where 5E characters no longer have to fear being instantly killed in a single round of combat against foes balanced for their level. It's also where players get meaningful characters for all of the classes that didn't make major choices at first level.

The first two levels are training wheels levels, where characters are simpler to run, but also more fragile.

Players will play a few adventures, learn to roll the d20 99 percent of the time, learn other basics of the game and then graduate to a more interesting, but still weak, character.

If you want players to put in 30 minutes or more to build a 5E character, they should last at least that long.

Dungeon Crawl Classics expects most level 0 characters to die in one or two hits in combat, but they also want you to show up with four of them, and they each take seconds to make.

If you, as a DM, want a more punishing 5E game (although, if you want that, many OSR games are designed around that and will work better for that purpose), you can just adjust game balance accordingly or go with one of the slower XP options, including milestone advancement, where the milestones are very spread out.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I know a lot of the discussion in this thread has revolved around making the physical books more accessible, to presumably make it easier for people to learn how to play on their own, but one New User Experience I haven't seen discussed much is the accessibility of organized play options.

I really enjoyed playing in GenCon Online games. If there was an infrastructure where I could do more of that regularly -- and I know plenty of companies are gearing up to do that, like Goodman Games' Cyclops Con online conventions -- I would definitely want to do it. I have to imagine that'd be appealing for newbies, too.

 

[MNblockhead]

I really enjoyed playing in GenCon Online games. If there was an infrastructure where I could do more of that regularly -- and I know plenty of companies are gearing up to do that, like Goodman Games' Cyclops Con online conventions -- I would definitely want to do it. I have to imagine that'd be appealing for newbies, too.

I quite enjoyed playing in some GaryCon online games.

I also like how Roll20's Find a Game feature can be used to find one-shot learn-to-play sessions for various games.

It seems like it would make sense for WotC to work some of the major VTTs to better support D&D Encounters and Adventurer's League online. In the past, thay may have been seen as a slap in the face of brick & mortar FLGS, but with COVID-related social distancing changes that calculation, I think.

 

[R_Chance]

I say make sure you have a second character rolled up when your first level magic-user, who was only able to learn Shield, Nystul's Magic Aura and Read Magic, heads into the dungeon for the first time.

No, he has a chance. He just needs to keep Shield ready, and more importantly hide behind the meat shields in the party A first level magic user was good for a one shot spell (hopefully Sleep) and being a pack mule; no armor = ability to carry a lot of stuff. This assumes they were a smart magic user... I still remember one who pulled out his dagger and went for it. It was painful, but short...

edit Thieves were not much tougher and leather armor wasn't much protection. Come to think of it, no one was safe No maximum on hit dice. My house rule was half or better or re-roll at 1st level. I was a compassionate DM