Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana March 2016 Review

[MechaPilot]

Speaking of more hours in a day from my last post... That segues nicely into this bit here. Do you think I have that kind of time to peruse all of DMGuild looking for good material? Getting a nod from the devs got me to look their way. Wouldn't have otherwise.

And if you think for one second that you can invalidate my opinion, by claiming I didn't somehow get more out of this article than any previous, good luck.

You're injecting antagonism here where there is none (at least not on my part). Is it not the truth that the blood magic material was created not by WotC, but by a DM's Guild creator? Is it not the truth that all WotC did was bring it to your attention? Is it not true that if you really were interested in seeing if there was DM's guild content for blood magic that you could have easily done a search for "blood magic" on the DM's guild site? It took me less than 2 minutes to find that product on the DM's Guild site. It's the first one that comes up when you search "blood magic" on that site.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

You make the faulty assumption that I knew I was looking for "blood magic" before I was shown it.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

Is it not the truth that all WotC did was bring it to your attention?

Is that all WotC did? Are you sure? All they did was spend 10 minutes writing three quick blurbs and providing links.

 

[MechaPilot]

Is that all WotC did? Are you sure?

Yes. All WotC did was call attention to the products mentioned in the article.

All they did was spend 10 minutes writing three quick blurbs and providing links.

If you're talking about just the time needed to type the article, yes, that sounds about right. I'm sure that there were probably a couple hours of looking at various highly-rated DM's Guild products that preceded the typing of the article: how else would they know which of the highly rated products to call attention to? How much of that time was actually spent on the products that were spoken of in the article and how much was wasted? Who can say?

 

[TerraDave]

I think it was a good idea implemented in a limited effort kind of way.

Given the very large number of products on the site, I am guessing they could have found a few more to highlight. But I do like the general idea.

 

[Morrus]

Speaking of more hours in a day from my last post... That segues nicely into this bit here. Do you think I have that kind of time to peruse all of DMGuild looking for good material? Getting a nod from the devs got me to look their way. Wouldn't have otherwise.

And if you think for one second that you can invalidate my opinion, by claiming I didn't somehow get more out of this article than any previous, good luck.

Calm down, please.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

Yes. All WotC did was call attention to the products mentioned in the article.

This would seem to run counter to your next paragraph.

If you're talking about just the time needed to type the article, yes, that sounds about right. I'm sure that there were probably a couple hours of looking at various highly-rated DM's Guild products that preceded the typing of the article: how else would they know which of the highly rated products to call attention to? How much of that time was actually spent on the products that were spoken of in the article and how much was wasted? Who can say?

How many hours do you think they spend writing up the average UA article?

 

[ZeshinX]

I'll quote Ralphie from A Christmas Story after receiving his Little Orphan Annie decoder pin.....

"A crummy commercial? Son of a...."

Disappointed. Though that's been my thought for 5e since the core books.

 

[MechaPilot]

How many hours do you think they spend writing up the average UA article?

Just writing the article? Or also including creating the mechanical content?

The former is probably about the same. The latter probably takes longer when they have to make their own content, which might be one reason they feel okay about abdicating new UA content to the DM's Guild instead of continuing to do it themselves (that is, if this type of UA article becomes the norm).

 

[doctorhook]

To be honest, I'm not terribly surprised by this development. I won't speculate on what the WotC guys actually do during the bulk of their workdays (because I have no information about that), but based on the past content in UA, I suspect few (if any) of these articles have constituted more than an afternoon's work. Many of them are short and questionably designed, IMO. Frankly I've been a bit flabbergasted at how well received UA has been overall; personally, I've found it to be mostly half-cooked playtests that are woefully inadequate substitutes for actual new content.

In short, I think UA mostly sucks. Therefore, we might as well lean on the community (via DMs Guild) for new D&D content, because I surely don't believe WotC has been delivering much.