Losing interest....

[Hussar]

When writing a paper, you don't ask for a peer review of a rough draft. You ask for a peer review of a second or third draft. This is the same way. It's fine for WotC to release a pregen adventure, but they should also have already had semi-functional rules modules in the works. They need to be releasing previews of backgrounds, themes, feats, and so on. Again, they've already been at this for months.

I'd point out that you don't get a peer review until your paper is actually finished. The peer review comes AFTER publication, not before. What you actually mean here is proof reading. Which should be done at every possible stage.

 

[slobo777]

I'd point out that you don't get a peer review until your paper is actually finished. The peer review comes AFTER publication, not before. What you actually mean here is proof reading. Which should be done at every possible stage.

Academic peer review is before publication* AFAIK. That's what a peer reviewed journal is. Stuff that's been reviewed, maybe gone through more than one pass with queries answered and mistakes corrected, and then been considered of sufficient quality to publish in the journal. Edit: Although, agreed peer review for journals is late in the process.

Software peer review of code is also before release, often but not always before QA, too. Although in practice QA and code review can occur in multiple passes due to corrections, meaning that you can always claim one happened before the other. Edit: Software code peer review is often quite early in the overall development process.

* I suppose there could be a discussion of what "publication" is . . . I'm not considering the initial submission to the journal to be "publication".

 

[pemerton]

I'd point out that you don't get a peer review until your paper is actually finished. The peer review comes AFTER publication, not before.

Academic peer review is before publication* AFAIK. That's what a peer reviewed journal is. Stuff that's been reviewed, maybe gone through more than one pass with queries answered and mistakes corrected, and then been considered of sufficient quality to publish in the journal. Edit: Although, agreed peer review for journals is late in the process.

In my fields (law and philosophy), peer review takes place after the paper is written, and before it is published. You submit it to the journal, and the journal editors (if they don't reject the paper outright) then send it out to be read by one or more referees/reviewers.

It is not uncommon to then be called upon to make changes or corrections, often quite extensive.

In my own view, it is also helpful to expose a paper to a lot of criticism before submitting it to a journal - by getting friends and colleagues to read it, by presenting it at seminars/workshops/conferences etc. (You can judge how much of this sort of thing happened by looking at the acknowledgements in the published version - people who read and commented on drafts will be thanked.)

 

[Morrus]

They are a lot more than 5 weeks in. They hired Monte Cook back in September 2011 to work on 5e (by his own admission in a Fear the Boot podcast interview), the Friends and Family playtest was going on back in January 2012, and the first big public preview took place at D&D Experience at the end of January 2012.

Wrong 5 months. I was referring to the public playtest.

I would have bought that they were still in the phase of pitching ideas and concepts back during DDXP, but that was 5 months ago and they should be well past that point in development now, at least as far as the core rules go

Why? To qualify for the Rapid RPG Design Award? There's no "should" about it. They spend as long as they want to on it. 3 weeks, 10 years, whatever.

 

[Umbran]

Folks,

It is one thing to not like a design. That's fine.

It is quite another to use that dislike as a justification for personal insults.

I suggest nobody here do the latter. In general, watch your tempers and your behavior.

Is this somehow unclear, or you have questions? Take them to e-mail or PM with the mod of your choice. Thanks.

 

[chriton227]

Why? To qualify for the Rapid RPG Design Award? There's no "should" about it. They spend as long as they want to on it. 3 weeks, 10 years, whatever.

If this was a case of John Doe writing JDRPG in their spare time I would agree with you 100%, but because this D&D I have to respectfully disagree. As soon as they announced that they were working on a new edition, the clock started ticking. There is going to be a certain portion of the customer base that is going to reduce or stop their 4e purchases due to the impending obsolescence of the edition, and I expect that portion to grow as time passes. I also expect there to be internal pressure to slow down investment in further 4e release due to their percieved shorter shelf life (and resulting lower ROI). These two factors will serve to lower the revenue of the D&D brand.

At the same time, money is being spent on the development of the new edition, and this investment won't generate any revenue until the new edition is released. Hasbro in the past has demonstrated that they focus heavily on brand revenue when determining what brands to keep active and which ones to mothball, so the people heading up D&D Next should be very aware that if revenues drop too far between now and when DDN is released, there might not be a DDN at all, and the longer they take in getting the new DDN in production and that new revenue flowing in, the worse their odds will be. In the 1e/2e switch they helped cover the transition with products that were billed as compatible with both editions, but from what we have seen of DDN so far it diverges from 4e enough that cross compatible products may be difficult to do.

With that said I don't want the design rushed to the detriment of quality, a bad edition could be worse for them than no edition; but I don't think a leisurely pace would be a good idea either. They should be focusing on making progress as quickly as possible without sacrificing quality, and currently they have a resource in the form of a legion of willing and eager playtesters that is increasingly idle. I would like to think that they could make better use of that resource. I would also rather see a good edition of DDN than lament over a perfect edition on DDN that never was because Hasbro killed it before it was ready.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

I'm getting more and more into Pathfinder while less and less into Dungeons and Dragons Next.

 

[PinkRose]

You're allowed.

 

[am181d]

I'm getting more and more into Pathfinder while less and less into Dungeons and Dragons Next.

Given that Pathfinder is out now and D&D Next isn't coming out for another year, I find this to be perfectly reasonable.