D&D 5E Kate Welch's adventure anthology. What happened to it?

[Parmandur]

We were supposed to get details about the book in first issue of Dragon+ of 2020, and then we didn't. Something happened after they published Dragon+ 29 that made them pull the plug on that article and frankly I haven't heard anything about it from WotC since that issue. Maybe someone could tweet them?

In December, she changed job positions, and was no longer "Game Designer" on the TTRPG, but a "User Experience Specialist" which never really was clear to me in what context. And then recently, yes, she resigned, though the context remains obscure.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Yeah, the arc of her career inside WotC looks pretty worrisome from the outside. I am one of those people wondering if this project will ever see the light of day.

 

[dave2008]

Yeah, the arc of her career inside WotC looks pretty worrisome from the outside. I am one of those people wondering if this project will ever see the light of day.

Me too.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I know she left (no longer with WotC), but did she resign? I hadn't heard that.

Yeah, on her twitch last week or so. Said that while she understands why the company makes the decisions it does, they don't jive with her priorities. And to paraphrase, "When I don't agree with the direction the company goes, I bounce."

At the very least she deserves credit for sticking to her principals.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah, on her twitch last week or so. Said that while she understands why the company makes the decisions it does, they don't jive with her priorities. And to paraphrase, "When I don't agree with the direction the company goes, I bounce."

At the very least she deserves credit for sticking to her principals.

Makes me wonder what principles were involved: probably we'll never know, but there is definite conflict in Seattle these days.

 

[SuperTD]

If people are interested, she talks about leaving a little at the start of this video around 4:30. She specifically calls out the new user experience for D&D as being "piss poor", which was something she wanted to make better while she was there. Interestingly to me (though perhaps not surprisingly) is that people at WotC aren't allowed to stream any RPG other than D&D, and she's looking forward to streaming other TTRPGs.

 

[Morrus]

What's meant by the new user experience?

 

[Nikosandros]

What's meant by the new user experience?

I was wondering the same thing. Especially since, by all accounts, 5e has managed to acquire a huge number of new players.

 

[Morrus]

Here's the quote from that video:

"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."

.....


"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."

 

[SuperTD]

My wild guess is that she's referring to the unintuitive parts of the game's design that make sense to old timers only because they learnt about it years ago - things like character level and spell level being separate but given the same keyword, something that apparently trips up a lot of new players based on the amount of questions it gets in reddit threads. Maybe also things like all the rules for stealth and hiding being split up across three different chapters, or the ever confusing difference between a Melee Weapon Attack and an Attack with a Melee Weapon.

While the game has grown massively, I wonder how much of that is due to the rules being easy to read and learn, as opposed to people absorbing some of the rules from watching Critical Role, or just being taught by someone who already knows?