WotC_PeterS talks about his "aggresive playtest" (with Le Rouse, SKR, & Noonan)

[Scott_Rouse]

Actually 3e had considerably more playtesting than 4th edition (my group PT'd for about 8 months IIRC) and was still nowhere near as much time I would have liked. In 3e though the game underwent significant changes over the playtest period and was a much more radical departure from the previous edition in general.

While I love nearly all the things they doing in 4e (conceptually), getting in enough playtesting is by far my biggest concern. Even though it is less a change than going from 3e to 4e, it is still clearly a big departure from the previous edition. Regrettably I will be very surprised if 4e isn't full of errata 90 days out of the gate.

This has been play tested in parts for years (Bo9S, SWSE, DMG II, etc) and in whole since early 2007 so I am sure your statement is inaccurate. I played my first 4e game in May 2007 but saw an early build in February 2006.

 

[Rechan]

This has been play tested in parts for years (Bo9S, SWSE, DMG II, etc) and in whole since early 2007 so I am sure your statement is inaccurate. I played my first 4e game in May 2007 but saw an early build in February 2006.

Thanks Scott.

 

[Lackhand]

90 minutes, you mean. As soon as that puppy gets sent to the printers, they'll be assembling a list of issues they would have caught if they had been given one extra day, or two extra days, etc.

Ultimate implication: They should never release 4th edition That'd make some people happy, but it'd eat up enough developer cycles that they'd never eat up anything else, either.

My personal conspiracy theory is that I think they're exaggerating how "crunch-time" they are in, because otherwise, we'd clamor for more updates.

 

[Scott_Rouse]

All playtests should be like this. They're not supposed to be regular games. They're supposed to be tests. If they waste time in character chatting up barmaids, that's two or three rules they didn't put through the paces that day. Over time, I bet that adds up.

There are enough playtests happening that various groups can focus on certain aspects of the game. Motsly it is about tuning and balancing and not about big sweeping changes.

My group is playing through Keep on the Shadowfell. We have been roleplaying, building our charcters by writing back stories out of the game but also looking at crunch, running characters through their paces in the game, sometime facing huge bands of monsters.

We have a large group with up to 8 players at times. Today we had 5. Sometimes we fight large groups of monsters and while today we only fought 5 (kobolds and goblins). A few weeks ago I was chatting up the barmaid trying to get the quest and weeks prior to that managed to do something that lead to Coup de Grace rules changing somewhat.

All in all I get the sense that things are going well.

 

[Orius]

In fact, this should have been the default playtesting method from the start. Playing through campaigns is nice and all, but proper playtesting involves bashing the rules hard, over and over again to see if they break.

I agree. Playtesting should involve a lot of testing of dice rolls; RPing an extensive campaign won't help find the flaws or weaknesses, since RPing doesn't need to depend on the rules. So lots of combat testing to see how all the dice rolls work is important. You probably want to play test other heavy crunch stuff that isn't combat related either.

 

[A'koss]

This has been play tested in parts for years (Bo9S, SWSE, DMG II, etc) and in whole since early 2007 so I am sure your statement is inaccurate. I played my first 4e game in May 2007 but saw an early build in February 2006.

I'm not so sure because I assume you mean just internal playtesting. External playtesting for 4e didn't begin until just recently AFAIK.

3e was being externally tested before I ever joined in and as I mentioned earlier, had Alternity as a 3e "proving ground".

 

[Scott_Rouse]

I'm not so sure because I assume you mean just internal playtesting. External playtesting for 4e didn't begin until just recently AFAIK.

3e was being externally tested before I ever joined in.

OK yes when you say External playtesting 3e likely got more external testing. The jump from 2nd to 3e was massive. This jump is big but not that big.

 

[Voss]

This has been play tested in parts for years (Bo9S, SWSE, DMG II, etc)

I hope you realize that this isn't very useful for playtesting. It will give you a general idea of how things work, and may clue you in on what to expect, but ultimately tells you nothing about what the actual versions of class abilities you have in your current documents do against Monster X in Situation Y.

You have to beat the actual, current rules against the walls hard, to see where the current system breaks down. Otherwise you're going to be doing the 4e version of the Polymorph Dance in a year and a half, with a mob of people claiming that class X sucks and class Y is broken. And being able to pick up such and such Wizard ability will allow a Warlock to win every fight at level Z.

Its a grueling process, but it needs to be done well to create a good product. And if the playtesting indicates that big sweeping changes need to be made, you've got to break down and make them.

And just playing the game like normal *isn't* playtesting. I've been down that road before personally. I'd suggest you ask Troika Games where that type of 'playtesting' leads, but they're out of business. And that came out rather harsh, but I actually meant it in a friendly, useful warning sort of way. Casual play just doesn't catch the problems that systematic playtesting does.

 

[A'koss]

OK yes when you say External playtesting 3e likely got more external testing. The jump from 2nd to 3e was massive. This jump is big but not that big.

Oh, I agree that it's not as big a leap as last time. However you slice it though that's still ~9 classes, 300 monsters and 30 levels of play for external testers to cover in what appears to be a rather short amount of time to my eye. Even breaking groups down to specific segments, that's a lot of ground to cover.

 

[Gundark]

Well I would think (and hope) that Scott knows what he's talking about. I have to say I've been surprised at the "yes buts" directed at Scott from people who have no insider info into how WotC is putting together 4e (and possibly no professional xp with putting a game out).