Are You Still Playtesting?

[Arlough]

I'm just not as excited as I was at first about the playtest. Now that I've seen the playtesting material and I've turned in my survey, I find I have little motivation to continue playtesting. I know it isn't necessarily the case, but I can't shake the feeling that Wizards of the Coast isn't really interested in more feedback now that the surveys are back. And it's hard to be excited about something when you feel like you are being ignored.

But it's not just that. The more time I spend looking at the rules, the more rickety and buggy they seem to me. And therefore, the less I like them. If I were to fill out the survey today, right now, it would be a lot different from the one I filled out a few weeks ago.

And I hate to admit it, but the discussion threads on the Internet have really taken their toll as well. The endless (endless!) banter about the "definition of hit points" was just the tip of the iceberg. All the fights about healing? The lengthy expositions on at-will powers and how awesome/awful they are? People heatedly arguing with each other, to the point of insult, over how many weapons a Ranger fights with? Really?

It was fun while it lasted, and I was happy to give my feedback. But I'm done with D&D NExt, at least until the next playtest begins. My group and I will spend the summer gaming with our favorite (albeit out-of-print) rules

This has been my experience as well. And when you combine that with being burned by DDi, the edition wars, and statements like "D&D is XXXXX and if you disagree you shouldn't be playing!", I have completely lost my desire to play D&D of any edition now .

The next complaint is with class imbalance. Some of the characters are just outright better than the others. When we get together nobody wants to play either cleric. Sure we can provide feedback, but in the here and now no one's interested in those characters.

Finally, the adventure is about as far from my group's preferred style of play as it gets. I understand others may like it, but I hated that modules back when I first started in '86, and I hate it today.

And when you combine those reasons with the problem I mentioned above, the result is that I have been encouraged to try other systems. What I found was that Strands of Fate worked better for my Eberron campaign than 3.X or 4e ever managed to, and fits with the play-style I want to promote. I don't even think I will need to houserule.

But back on topic. I will playtest the next set of rules for D&D in the hopes that it will help them create a better system, even if I don't think I will adopt that system. But until the next playtest is released, I am done.

 

[WSmith]

We have played the hell out of D&D Next... many times. We have kind of run into a wall without character creation rules. Therefore, we are not really running too many Next sessions until we can get some character creation rules.

 

[FATDRAGONGAMES]

We have played the hell out of D&D Next... many times. We have kind of run into a wall without character creation rules. Therefore, we are not really running too many Next sessions until we can get some character creation rules.

Same here, we can't level up anymore, and I have re-run the characters through some Castles & Crusades modules (since C&C is also an attribute based game it converts VERY easily to D&D Next.) Until a new update comes out we're done play testing for now.

 

[Piratecat]

I have access to some slightly more detailed rules, and yesterday ran a playtest with 5th lvl PCs against many many undead. It was tremendous amounts of fun. They fought about 16 skeletons (although not for long with the cleric around...), two hill giants (skinned as undead monstrosities made out of dozens of congealed, conglomerated corpses; instead of a rock, one threw crushed masses of dead bodies at the PCs), shadows (during a "jump on stalagmites to retrieve a magic doohickey" challenge), and a spirit naga. Total play time was 3 hours including rules discussions. Really satisfying.

 

[Evenglare]

I cant give them meaningful information when I dont know the underlying rules of creation in the game. I hate games that just give you the high level rules for play and then tell you to GO ! How can anyone give meaningful feedback when we dont know how the game is made on a low level? What are the thoughts behind the rules? If we see that we can understand the developers insight more than, " this is what we came up with while we were talking, here ya go." I know they have a design and development article every so often but honestly it just seems pandering to the public. Let's see the mathematical models behind this stuff. I ... I hope they have some mathematicians hired and are not doing this by the seat of their pants.

I recently created a zelda RPG which I attached an excel file to see the rate and percentages of successes in the system. I have seen no such document from the D&D game creators on this. I need to see this kind of crap to avoid stuff like the horrendous skill challenge system, and the fact that 4th edition went through no less than 3, THREE, iteration of DCs for skills.

Yeah, the playtest has me irritated.

 

[Tony Vargas]

We had one playtest and it went badly, we gave our feedback so we're done for now. But, I don't see any reason not to give it another go when the next phase starts (end of summer, right?).

 

[Mercule]

I have access to some slightly more detailed rules, and yesterday ran a playtest with 5th lvl PCs against many many undead. It was tremendous amounts of fun. They fought about 16 skeletons (although not for long with the cleric around...), two hill giants (skinned as undead monstrosities made out of dozens of congealed, conglomerated corpses; instead of a rock, one threw crushed masses of dead bodies at the PCs), shadows (during a "jump on stalagmites to retrieve a magic doohickey" challenge), and a spirit naga. Total play time was 3 hours including rules discussions. Really satisfying.

Wow. I'd love to know what you're doing to keep things moving. We've found 5e to be much faster than 3e or 4e, but I don't think I could have fit half that into one of our 3 hour sessions.

 

[El Mahdi]

...I hate games that just give you the high level rules for play and then tell you to GO!

Ummm, the playtest only had 1st level characters and what we needed to take them to 2nd and 3rd level. That is low level.

What "high level" rules are you talking about?

 

[Mercule]

Ummm, the playtest only had 1st level characters and what we needed to take them to 2nd and 3rd level. That is low level.

What "high level" rules are you talking about?

I assume he meant "high level" as in "30,000 foot view" i.e. generalities. YMMV

 

[El Mahdi]

I assume he meant "high level" as in "30,000 foot view" i.e. generalities. YMMV

Okay...this is even more confusing than the other post.

Do you mean "overview"...? And if yes, why not just say that...?