D&D 5E WotC Dungeons & Dragons 2020 Product Survey

[Parmandur]

Thing I find weird is why people are saying theyre getting different amounts of questions based on their responses. Why, are they looking for a specific answer?

WotC usually does that with these surveys, it's like a choose your own adventure. Not every question is going to be relevant for every person, so they gate them based on other answers that come earlier. Never DMed? They won't ask you as many detailed questions on what you do when you DM, but might ask what would help you feel comfortable trying out DMing, or whatnot.

 

[Azzy]

Thing I find weird is why people are saying theyre getting different amounts of questions based on their responses. Why, are they looking for a specific answer?

No, it's asking for more detail based on your answers. If you don't DM, it won't ask you DM-specific questions, for instance.

 

[ccs]

Thing I find weird is why people are saying theyre getting different amounts of questions based on their responses. Why, are they looking for a specific answer?

It looks like the first 25-30some questions are the same & are concerned with you as a player.

If you say that you DM you get around 30 more questions concerning how you prep for games, what you use & what digitools you use.
No matter what extrme I listed (honest/scattershot/rarely-never/always) I didn't see any differences in the digi-tools questions - though twice it scrabbled the order of the items.
On 1 of the 5 times though (the only one where I'd listed just 5e as the edition I'd played) it asked me what year I'd begun DMing.

 

[Stormonu]

Put in my two cents for Mystara, Greyhawk and Dragonlance. I have Curse so I don't want the rest of the dread realms and as much as I love Birthright, I'd rather have one with more pronounceable names.

Looking back at the questions, it's interesting there weren't any direct product questions ("You stated you use pre-published adventures - which ones did you use?" ; "Do you use any officially published campaign guides?" ; "What rulebooks do you own?") and were, at best generic ("How much do you homebrew vs. use pre-built?" : "Crunch or Fluff?" ; "Some math or Trig (i.e., 5E or 3E/PF2)?"

As for digital, I bought an iPad so I wouldn't have to lug around a backpack full of books anymore. It took some time to get used to it, but I really prefer it in play - can have 5 or 6 (electronic) books open, bookmarked and only takes up the space of one book.

And some of the digital questions threw me. What do they mean by using cardboard standees, miniatures and white board when playing virtually? Not like you can exactly use that stuff over roll20.

 

[Todd Roybark]

A WotC D&D VTT is essentially guaranteed at this point, based off this survey.
This seems like a customer survey designed, (in part), to evaluate what features will get prioritized, and assigned to PMs.

It very well might contain DM tools. Adios DND Beyond in the future?

The other questions were more curious. It seems likely WotC is looking to mine some D&D IP for a future product. I just don't know if this is to be a stand alone product or bundled with the presumptive D&D Brand VTT.

WotC might be trying to ascertain strategies to get people to adopt the D&D Brand VTT.
If a D&D Brand VTT was released with a reboot of the classic Dragonlance modules included,
(Just one possible example, feel free to insert the dream preference of your choice),
I could see that bundle impacting adoption.

Part of me also was hoping we might see some conversion of Arneson adventures like City of the Gods and Temple of the Frog. Sprinkle in a little Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and we can get a Sci/Fantasy Anthology Module set.

 

[pogre]

And some of the digital questions threw me. What do they mean by using cardboard standees, miniatures and white board when playing virtually? Not like you can exactly use that stuff over roll20.

I think it was for folks like me that use miniatures and terrain over Zoom. We set-up a separate camera for it.

 

[Demetrios1453]

The last time they did this survey, about a year ago, they did include Ravnica and Exandria for the same question. Which was weird at the time, since Exandria was not an official Setting yet (they asked a bunch about Mercer's Blood Hunter Class, which is still weird).

I'd wager the "one and done" Evergreen hardcover per Setting is the current policy.

Given that they seem to have struck a nice content balance with setting books recently, I'd be perfectly fine with that. I'd love to see 5e Greyhawk and Planescape done in such a manner (although giving more than a small paragraph for some planar layers might be hard unless there's an expanded page count). I really hope that SCAG and hardcover adventure placement doesn't preclude the Forgotten Realms from getting the same treatment though. Maybe they'll just lightly cover the Sword Coast and cover the rest of the setting in greater detail, which will allow the rest of the setting to get the "evergreen" treatment while letting the Sword Coast be more changeable...

 

[Wishbone]

Never occured to me last night when I was filling it out but after I thought about it today, that it probably likely theyll pander to a newer younger gamers. Just a guess.

Finally, being exposed to D&D through watching the episode of Dexter's Laboratory where Dexter was a nightmare DM and then reading the 3rd Edition DMG in middle school/hanging out in the scifi/fantasy section of Barnes & Noble and stumbling on new 3.5E books are paying off! The period between the 3E to 3.5E transition was truly a strange time to first try to pick up the game. Explains why I have fonder memories of 4E.

I kind of wish they had poll questions asking how people first were exposed to D&D or decided to get back into the hobby, but I understand that may be better as part of another survey. It would seem useful if they want more D&D tie in material now and are deciding between priorities.

A WotC D&D VTT is essentially guaranteed at this point, based off this survey.
This seems like a customer survey designed, (in part), to evaluate what features will get prioritized, and assigned to PMs.

It very well might contain DM tools. Adios DND Beyond in the future?

I wonder if they'd bother buying DND Beyond outright for the infrastructure and then building on VTT components on top of it. It's not totally out of the realm of possibility, though I see the argument for why they'd rather start fresh.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The cookies will prevent it, but it's pretty easy to clear your cache.

At the scale WotC is operating at, they probably have a model to account for some level of noise, and the repetitive questions help with that weeding a bit.

Also, at that scale, the tiny number of people who take it multiple times just don’t matter. Even if a thousand people do that, it isn’t going to overwhelm the data when respondents are in the 100s of thousands, much less in the millions.

Wonder if any submission after your first isnt filtered out, but then again if they did that they lose results from households with multiple players but one computer.

And multi player households are much more important than weeding out the multi-respondents.

A WotC D&D VTT is essentially guaranteed at this point, based off this survey.
This seems like a customer survey designed, (in part), to evaluate what features will get prioritized, and assigned to PMs.

It very well might contain DM tools. Adios DND Beyond in the future?

The other questions were more curious. It seems likely WotC is looking to mine some D&D IP for a future product. I just don't know if this is to be a stand alone product or bundled with the presumptive D&D Brand VTT.

WotC might be trying to ascertain strategies to get people to adopt the D&D Brand VTT.
If a D&D Brand VTT was released with a reboot of the classic Dragonlance modules included,
(Just one possible example, feel free to insert the dream preference of your choice),
I could see that bundle impacting adoption.

Part of me also was hoping we might see some conversion of Arneson adventures like City of the Gods and Temple of the Frog. Sprinkle in a little Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and we can get a Sci/Fantasy Anthology Module set.

I think more official VTT assets From wotc is vastly more likely.

 

[Khelon Testudo]

And some of the digital questions threw me. What do they mean by using cardboard standees, miniatures and white board when playing virtually? Not like you can exactly use that stuff over roll20.

Yeah, we had a laptop pointed at the map, and used the figures we normally use. We also used our own dice, and just told the DM over Zoom what the results were. Long-time group, we trust each other on d20 rolls.