How much in the way of rules will we get when the public playtest begins?

[Nikosandros]

One thing that I'm unclear about is if this public or open playtest will be restricted to organized play or if "home groups" will be able to participate. The text on WotC site appears to me as somewhat ambiguous.

 

[keterys]

As Saracenus already outlined... the public playtest is open to everyone. Go nuts. I imagine you'll even have tons of people just commenting based on reading (or hearsay) rather than playing.

Think like the Pathfinder playtests.

The friends and family playtest is more limited to people who have signed NDAs and given those to WoTC, so it's not quite so anonymous. They're also going to be dealing with the much less ready for public consumption ruleset hunting down problems.

 

[Saracenus]

As per Mike Mearls in Charting the Course for D&D, bold emphasis mine:

We have begun obtaining feedback from a limited Friends & Family playtest consisting of internal employees and their gaming groups and soon we will be expanding that group to consist of members from our existing body of playtesters. Then at the D&D Experience convention in late January, Wizards of the Coast will conduct a special playtest of ideas currently in development. The D&D Experience will be moving to Gen Con in 2013, so as a convention special this year, we will be offering show attendees a first-look at a draft of the new set of rules. Then beginning sometime in the spring, we will begin open playtesting. Through our web site, we will release a growing set of rules, classes, monsters and other materials for your study and feedback. We seek to reach as many people as possible, from the gamer who just started with D&D last week to the gaming group that has been together since the early-1970s. For this process to work, we want to give a voice to all D&D fans and players of all previous editions of the game.

Ok, there is some confusion here, even for me. The whole D&D XP is being moved to GenCon 2013 is a distraction.

As I read it, open testing will begin in the spring of 2012. You will receive an email with more details (that is what the big shiny red button says when you click it) when this part of the program is ready to launch in say March or April-ish (spring is a vague term).

I think Mudbunny or some other WotC volunteer needs to send this up the ladder for some clarification. I have the following questions:

• Is the Open Playtest what people are signing up for?
• Will there be an NDA for the Open Playtest?
• If there is an NDA for the, does this mean the playtest content will require a wizards.com sign-in to access (not a DDI account, just the login).

If this is truly a public playtest that does not require an NDA, I am sorry for any confusion I might have brought to the issue.

Just a quick reminder to folks, D&D XP is next week and with WotC gearing up for the Con information might be a bit slow in coming until its done.

Thanks,