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

[Starbuck_II]

As you probably know, online play of the D&D Next playtest is currently prohibited. I'm curious; could you please give me a quick (but polite!) shout in this thread if that affects you or your group? It'd be interesting to see how many people are legitimately affected by this.

If you aren't affected because you would have no plans for remote playtesting either way, no need to comment unless you'd like to.

Thanks!

Actually online play outside WotC forums is prohibited only. If WotC only told you where you could on their site, it would help immensely.

Anyhoo back to your main point: It affects me. Was going to play on RPG.Net a playtest group (I was to be Moradin Cleric), now that seems canceled.

 

[JoesephBear]

Going to be upfront and honest here, as kind of a confession (not an endorsement).

No, this will not affect me in the slightest, because I'm doing it anyway.

The genie's out of the bottle, and the packet is available other places that do not require the acceptance of WotC's terms. I must confess that I did not accept them, but downloaded from someplace else and distributed them to my group anyway.

Unethical? Yes, probably. Why do it then? Because I care. I think the feedback I and my Skype group supply is far more beneficial to WotC than strictly doing things the "right way".

Because I'm the hero WotC deserves, not the one it needs right now.

 

[stevelabny]

I'm gonna playtest it IRL but if I had an online gaming group, I would playtest it there...

because I'm smart enough to know that the rules exist so WOTC can legally protect themselves and not because they actually care if people actually play online.

The same way that if I got a new player to suddenly agree to join the playtest, I wouldn't force them to sign up or prove to me that they already had signed up. I would just say "Here's a chair, pick a pre-gen, what do you want on your pizza?"

Its kind of like how they had to legally only make the download available to people who signed up, but then breathed a sigh of relief when the copies of the file hit all the sharing-sites only an hour later and it helped ease their server load.

They want EVERYONE to playtest this. The more people who playtest it, the better it is for them. They just can't say it publically because lawyers.

 

[Fobok]

It affects me, yes. I have nobody to play with locally.

 

[Stalker0]

No issue for me, my people are all local.

 

[Yora]

Let us be honest - as a practical matter, this policy does not stop anyone from playing the playtest. It is right up there with the, "you can't print it out for your players, they must also register," policy in how foolishly unenforceable it is. GMs *will* run games online. GMs *will* print it out for their players. If they keep their mouths shut, WotC will never know.

And that's the problem - this is a playtest. The one thing they don't want is for GMs to keep their mouths shut! GMs will be afraid to reveal what they gleaned from such sessions, for fear of revealing they violated the terms and thus be shut out of future materials, or otherwise acted upon.

Thus, WotC doesn't limit play with the rules, but limits how much feedback they can get on the rules. That's just silly.

As I have read the passage in question, it does not actually prohibit online play. It only prohibits play in public online environments. If you play using a forum, that would be public since at the very least, moderators and admins could peek in. If you have a private skype or IRC channel, you are among yourself, so everything is perfectly fine.
You are allowed to play at a table, but not if that table is in a conventions where an audience can watch you. Same thing.

But yeah, the whole thing is ridiculous. They are not limiting who gets access to the material, they are only limiting who may send feedback to them.

The genie's out of the bottle, and the packet is available other places that do not require the acceptance of WotC's terms. I must confess that I did not accept them, but downloaded from someplace else and distributed them to my group anyway.

I don't even know the terms because the screwed up application proccess never allowed me to get that far.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

So I got my ci#ustomer service reply and, online play is prohibited, in that the virtual table is off limits even if the palyers have all signed up to the playtest.

 

[Andor]

So I got my ci#ustomer service reply and, online play is prohibited, in that the virtual table is off limits even if the palyers have all signed up to the playtest.

I don't suppose you mentioned skype?

 

[Gilladian]

I had intended to start playtesting online with 5 of us via maptools with skype. I guess we won't... we'll just keep playing our non-dnd online game instead.

My face-to-face group isn't interested, but I'm pushing for it with them anyway...

 

[B.T.]

To answer the original question: I have no intention of following the rules of the playtest, so, no, it doesn't.

As Plane Sailing as already said earlier in this thread, this is no a place for rants. Editing the rest of this post. -Eridanis