Public Playtests Should Be Fully Playable

[SteveC]

Completely agree here. What I've seen so far is something that I could look at and eyeball for compatibility or usefulness, but that's about it. It's possible to have a playable ruleset in very few pages (look at the Beginner's products out there) and if you want to just give out pregen characters, hey, go for it.

I'd really wonder how many playtests actually have happened with snippets of rules, and also how useful they would be.

 

[Reynard]

very strongly disagree.

Especially in the case of a playtest that is iterating on an existing game, rather than building a wholly new game with a major goal of compatibility. Why would I need to see the changes to classes to give a preliminary “feel check” on the races? If the races don’t work with the SRD classes, then they aren’t meeting the stated goals of the new system, obviously.

What’s more, you can just tune out for 6 months and check it out when the feel checks are done and we have a complete system to check out in more detail.

I'll reiterate because it is important: you cannot test a complex system with only a few disjointed parts.

Gamers "eyeballing" rules is worse than useless. Most gamers are terrible at design. You need to test stuff in its full context.

Otherwise you end up with the 5E CR system.

 

[TheSword]

I'll reiterate because it is important: you cannot test a complex system with only a few disjointed parts.

Gamers "eyeballing" rules is worse than useless. Most gamers are terrible at design. You need to test stuff in its full context.

Otherwise you end up with the 5E CR system.

We already have a system. Look at each change in the context of that system. This isn’t D&D Next.

The new exhaustion system either works or it doesn’t in the context of 5e
Getting to attack offhand without a bonus action is either a good change or not
You either like Banishment having a save every round or you don’t.

I don’t believe you need to have the full details of every subclass, class, and spel to be able to make informed decisions about these because they are all in the context of the current rules.

If something later comes up that changes your mind then give the feedback at that point.

 

[Reynard]

The new exhaustion system either works or it doesn’t in the context of 5e

Not if you change how often rests are expected based on changes to the classes or the encounter building rules. Not if spells or class abilities you don't have yet can easily relieve exhaustion. Not if DCs change or monster ACs get tweaked.

It's lazy and incomplete and designed to keep eyeballs on more than actually improve design. Just be honest and call it "previews" like year of Dragon prior to the 3E launch, because that is what it really is.

 

[Zaukrie]

Nah. Just call it feedback on rules so far. Not even a little in line with this demand. We can give effective feedback on stuff that's not complete.

 

[soviet]

Duplicate post

 

[Bill Zebub]

And while we're at it, plane tickets should be changeable without fees.

 

[soviet]

I'll reiterate because it is important: you cannot test a complex system with only a few disjointed parts.

Gamers "eyeballing" rules is worse than useless. Most gamers are terrible at design. You need to test stuff in its full context.

Otherwise you end up with the 5E CR system.

Or 3e casters.

'Low level casters weren't good enough in 2e, let's change this, and this, and this, and this. Oh wait, whoops.'

 

[Reynard]

I'd like to see a truly iterative public playtest. I wasn't involved in either of the Pathfinder ones or the D&D Next one. As far as I can tell from public responses, it seems WotC actively did not listen to the community response. I don't know how true that might be of the PF playtests, although it appears for new classes and stuff Paizo seems to listen.

 

[Teo Twawki]

They are already getting the full rules early? What do you have in mind?

Playtesters are only getting the full rules early if those rules are written so well that nothing needs to be edited after playtesting.
And what game was written so perfectly that nothing needed fixing after being tested?