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<blockquote data-quote="Rystefn" data-source="post: 9244897" data-attributes="member: 7043460"><p>Here's the thing about WotC doing extensive playtesting and editing for adventures: It's a waste of money. People don't like to talk about it, or talk about it as a thing from the past, but the simple fact is that those official adventure books are written to be read, not played. The overwhelming majority of adventure modules sold in this hobby never see an actual table. Heck, this is true of most ttRPG systems, even. To clarify, I'm not saying that literally zero people ever played Strahd or whatever. I'm saying that for every hundred copies of Strahd that were sold, maybe twenty were ever used to actually play a D&D game. (Yes, that's an ass-pull number, but I'd stake real money that I'm not off by more than ten percent.)</p><p></p><p>WotC absolutely knows this. It's not kosher to say it out loud when you're writing/selling the adventures, but it's true. The bulk of their market aren't playing the game, so it really doesn't matter how it plays. Sure, if it's literally unplayable, that's going to get out on the internet in short order have a negative sales impact. But anything less than that? Not that big of a deal. There's no reason to do more playtesting than you need to get it more or less functional-ish. All that does is raise the overhead without meaningfully increasing sales.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Rystefn, post: 9244897, member: 7043460"] Here's the thing about WotC doing extensive playtesting and editing for adventures: It's a waste of money. People don't like to talk about it, or talk about it as a thing from the past, but the simple fact is that those official adventure books are written to be read, not played. The overwhelming majority of adventure modules sold in this hobby never see an actual table. Heck, this is true of most ttRPG systems, even. To clarify, I'm not saying that literally zero people ever played Strahd or whatever. I'm saying that for every hundred copies of Strahd that were sold, maybe twenty were ever used to actually play a D&D game. (Yes, that's an ass-pull number, but I'd stake real money that I'm not off by more than ten percent.) WotC absolutely knows this. It's not kosher to say it out loud when you're writing/selling the adventures, but it's true. The bulk of their market aren't playing the game, so it really doesn't matter how it plays. Sure, if it's literally unplayable, that's going to get out on the internet in short order have a negative sales impact. But anything less than that? Not that big of a deal. There's no reason to do more playtesting than you need to get it more or less functional-ish. All that does is raise the overhead without meaningfully increasing sales. [/QUOTE]
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