I know that playtesters can't identify themselves without breaking NDAs. I'm not asking them to.
Have your friends become more furtive? Do they obsessively watch the mail, waiting for a package which they never show you?
Do they say things, minor slips of the tongue, that later show up in a Design & Development column? Do they play a lot more D&D than they used to, but refuse to tell you about their characters?
Are their names PirateCat?
Well, that one might not be as useful. He's only a playtester in the conspiracy-theory version of this post
How many playtest (groups) do you know? That is to say, of your friends who are in D&D groups, how many of those groups do you suspect to be ushering in the newest edition of our favorite pastime?
Don't count people you only know of, as in, "I heard Jimmy's playtesting 4th edition". This is because whoever you heard it from will also vote, and that's confusing. But if you're both close friends with Jimmy, and you both vote, I'm more pleased.
While this isn't a great way of telling how many playtesters are out there, this does tell us how connected EnWorld is to the playtest continuum, in Order-Of-Magnitude terms.
Have your friends become more furtive? Do they obsessively watch the mail, waiting for a package which they never show you?
Do they say things, minor slips of the tongue, that later show up in a Design & Development column? Do they play a lot more D&D than they used to, but refuse to tell you about their characters?
Are their names PirateCat?
Well, that one might not be as useful. He's only a playtester in the conspiracy-theory version of this post
How many playtest (groups) do you know? That is to say, of your friends who are in D&D groups, how many of those groups do you suspect to be ushering in the newest edition of our favorite pastime?
Don't count people you only know of, as in, "I heard Jimmy's playtesting 4th edition". This is because whoever you heard it from will also vote, and that's confusing. But if you're both close friends with Jimmy, and you both vote, I'm more pleased.
While this isn't a great way of telling how many playtesters are out there, this does tell us how connected EnWorld is to the playtest continuum, in Order-Of-Magnitude terms.
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