Quick question: does the prohibition on online play affect your playtest?

[Someone]

quick question, short answer: yes, it does.

 

[Baron Von Mandrick]

Kind of. It would be affecting me if our DM wasn't having health issues. My group all live far apart and we turned our one time table group to an online group. But health issues have us sidelined for about another 8 weeks.

 

[hafrogman]

Yes, it's affected me. I have a group willing to test it out with me. But I need to run it for them. I was hoping to get some experience as a player from a PbP game.

 

[billd91]

It doesn't, but if it did, I'd probably play test online anyway. I'd just choose to do so in some kind of restricted forum with players who could all sign up for the materials themselves. I think that satisfies adhering to the spirit rather than the letter of the agreement.

I am not a lawyer. My insight into WotC's legal team's brains is limited. But after pondering why they would declare an open play test and then put on the play test agreement's restrictions, I came up with one main answer - protecting intellectual property. My guess is that they have the agreement and restrictions on the play test to only others who have also agreed to the terms, prohibitions on online games, and prohibitions on playing at non-WotC conventions so that they feel that everyone participating and witnessing (or at least seeking to witness) the play test has signed on to the IP protection elements of the terms.

 

[godfear]

Yes, it does. I'm having to hijack a gaming night from the local Meatspace group's Vampire sessions. Not sure if they'll let me do that more'n once. Mostly, I play D&D online these days.

 

[Agamon]

I don't currently have a group, but if I did, it could be an online one. I'm by no means a rebel, but I'm with Umbran. In a word, no.

 

[Gamer McSmartypants]

...

 

[Nyronus]

Ohhh yes. Particularly since I'm moving away from the college town I was living in. Half my gaming group lives 1 to 2 hours away by car and I'm not going to ask anyone to shell out 20 bucks to play a version of DnD we're not sure on.

I can perhaps wrangle a playtest group out of the friends who DO live in town, but that will be a small group.

 

[Stoat]

I play online using a VTT (d20 Pro).

If I could access and download the playtest material (as of lunchtime today, I could not) and if I thought there was any teeth to the prohibition against online play, it would affect me.

 

[DonAdam]

Yes, it affects us.

The prohibition is simply odd, and more counterproductive than it seems at first. The sort of person who is most likely to respect the agreement and not play online is exactly the sort of person most likely to put effort into giving quality feedback.

So Wizards is filtering out some of its highest quality responses.