The Playtest Agreement

[UngainlyTitan]

Two general points:

First, what exactly is the adverse consequence if someone shares the rules with a person who is not signed up, or modifies them for homebrew purposes, or plays a game online? How is their business harmed?

Second, how are they realistically planning on enforcing this nonsense?

Hopefully, the license for the actual game will be better conceived.

I do not think that they are going to do much to enforce aside perhaps from blacklisting violators that come to their attention from getting further material.
As for harm, beats me, Not sure if the restrictions gain them anything more than copyright law already gives them.

 

[Hussar]

I gotta admit, the "no online play " thing seems a bit weird all things considered. Granted, it completely takes me out of the running for any playtesting, since I play online.

But, I imagine it's more to do with PBP than VTT. In a PBP, it's pretty easy to make it visible to everyone. Granted, it's also easy to make it invisible to all but the participants, but, this way stops people from simply whacking up the pdf's on their post board and not worrying about it.

Not really thrilled by this though. I had hoped to give it a whirl. I think I read somewhere that they're trying to come up with an agreement for online play. Would make sense since there's currently about 40 THOUSAND people signed up for the WOTC VTT Beta.

 

[eamon]

I agree - asinine would describe the level of ill will WoTC's been receiving over playtest agreements that don't affect the way anyone in the thread would...
[...]
Play or don't, participate or don't, but the amount of slightest offense people take to any attempt by wotc to change the corporate culture pisses me off about the whole gamer community in general and makes me ashamed of it sometimes.

The only asinine thing is a company largely dependent on word-of-mouth for its success in forcing an unattractive and in particular unnecessary agreement down the throats of their supporters.

You're advocating violating the agreement, and suggesting that's what they intended all along. That's probably true (as in that is their intent), but it's rather a shameful intent and a little nasty too. These kind of stunts undermine the rule of law and create and atmosphere whereby it's likely that in the event of a disagreement between parties, one of them (i.e. the larger company) can often find some extraneous infraction to pile on the pressure at their convenience. Though morally reprehensible, I haven't hammered on about it in this thread until your post since its so common, and since this agreement isn't a particularly nasty example.

 

[Hussar]

Hang on a tick though. "Forcing an unattractive and in particular unnecessary agreement down the throats of their supporters" is a bit harsh though as well.

Look, it's not like this is particularly onerous. Everyone in the playtest group is to sign the agreement. Is that a really unreasonable requirement? Sure, it's annoying, and, as I said above, the "no online play" thing is going to count me out, but, is this really something to get worked up about?

I mean, if you don't want/can't for whatever reason, get your group to sign up for the playtest, then WHY are you expecting WOTC to consider you a valid playtest group? Is it unreasonable that they would want to know and be able to contact playtesters?

No one is being forced to do anything. Good grief, all you have to do is download the pdf's and you're signed up as a playtester. We're not talking huge hoops, gathering tons of data about you or some massive invasion of privacy or your rights. They, WOTC, want to have contact information for every playtester and they want playtest groups to respond as a group - not simply take one player's word for it.

There are many things to get worked up over, but, this? Really?

 

[enrious]

Speaking solely for myself as a lapsed D&D player turned Pathfinder player...

I sort of think part of it is a matter of faith - let me explain.

I didn't really care for 4e (but I hasten to add that I know that people do enjoy it and they are fully intelligent, rational people who are not under the sway of the Egg Council) and so after some testing, we play Pathfinder because for us, it was more enjoyable.

And y'know, that's just a matter of game-rule preference, the same reason why I prefer ICONS to Mutants and Masterminds, even though they were created by the same guy.

But here's the thing, Wizards of the Coast lost me as a customer utterly with the approach they took during the 4e transition (which have been long documented elsewhere), so I basically lost faith in Wizards as a company.

So they announced this playtest and from the indications given by the interviews, buzz from early playtests, announcement of the open playtest, my impression was that Wizards was changing - becoming focused on the game and casting off the distractions (such as the 4e transitional advertising campaign), in short it was a smarter, more competent, more mature company.

But then you get to to the OPTL and you see the inanity of it. Sure, game designers aren't lawyers and vice-versa, but this is an ominous sign (to me) because it harkens back to the bad old days of T$R or more recently, the GSL in 4e. In other words, lawyers running the asylum.

And to make a long story short, that makes me wonder if I should bother. After all, I'm already happy to throw my money at Wizards' competition. I won't go through the 4e thing again.

So [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], you are absolutely correct that people aren't being forced to do anything and excepting online players, this should have a minimal impact. But human nature being what it is, seeing a company possibly poised to go down the road already travelled is annoying to some who see the pattern clouds start to form.

 

[eamon]

Forcing my friends read a wall of legalese in a non-native language written with reference to terms that means something specific in some far-away jurisdiction isn't nice. Or what, are you suggesting that people agree to a contract with granting things like power of attorney and whatever without even reading it? Yay for that. I'm definitely not going to suggest signing this contract to any friends of mine.

Then there's the point that they didn't need it. They didn't even need copyright, since plain momentum would have kept out competitors, given the products in such a limited state any derivative is unlikely to be like the full D&D. And of course, even with copyright and this agreement a competitor that wants to make a clone trivially can, since the documents predictably leaked and are thus viewable without signing any NDA and furthermore, copyright applies to the text, not the concepts. As to the feedback bits (the assignment of copyright so they can use your suggestions without question etc.), these could easily have been placed.... on the feedback form, where it's again likely unnecessary but much more reasonable and not annoying the silent majority of tag-along playtesters that exist in all those other party members that join in but do not drive the playtest.

So, it's useless, it's annoying, it's a waste of time. And yes, as I previously said and Hussar also points out, it's probably not particularly nasty (but IANAL). So yay, it's merely harassment of those that actually follow their rules, which leads me to believe that Henry is entirely right in thinking that they never intended people to actually follow them.

 

[Hussar]

I look at it like this.

Within weeks of 4e's release, you had a website in Italy ((IIRC - Ema's somethingorother)) providing an online character generator, for pay, that was basically cut and pasting WOTC's IP. When WOTC send out a C&D, the Internets erupted on how big bad WOTC was screwing gamers yet again. Didn't matter that WOTC, in this case, was 100% justified. They said no, and a bunch of self-entitled internet people decided that this was a bad thing and WOTC is Teh Evil.

It's not really a shock that WOTC is a bit gunshy when it comes to to dealing with the general public.

They're being 100% up front and honest about this. There's not a single thing underhanded going on. You want to participate in the playtest, then everyone needs to sign the agreement. You want to fiddle with the game at home and with your friends? Fair enough. You simply cannot participate in the playtest.

Setting baselines for a playtest is not unreasonable. If there are language barriers to the point where someone can't read a plain English agreement, then how much use is their feedback for playtesting? Can they read the survey questions and answer the questions asked?

Look, this is not a promotional thing. They are looking for people to test the system. That means that not everyone is eligible to do that.

 

[nnms]

It's simply not the same company that made the OGL and their need to control is just too great.

 

[Lwaxy]

Setting baselines for a playtest is not unreasonable. If there are language barriers to the point where someone can't read a plain English agreement, then how much use is their feedback for playtesting? Can they read the survey questions and answer the questions asked?

And why would they need to if the GM is the one playtesting? Half the players aren't fluent in English, although they tend to get better thanks to the game. Why does this mean they wouldn't be able to see problems with the game ideas, or can't play the pregens so the GM may see possible issues?

 

[IronWolf]

Look, it's not like this is particularly onerous. Everyone in the playtest group is to sign the agreement. Is that a really unreasonable requirement? Sure, it's annoying, and, as I said above, the "no online play" thing is going to count me out, but, is this really something to get worked up about?

I just wish they had covered this in the actual agreement instead of via the FAQ. I know it is a small detail, but be up front about it in the initial agreement you are getting people to agree to and download.