D&D General The longer I play Baldur's Gate 3 ...

[Burnside]

That's the point I'm getting at! The editing of adventures in response to playtesting is not what I think creates the best products.

...except if it's Baldur's Gate 3

 

[Shardstone]

...except if it's Baldur's Gate 3

? BG3 was not made by WotC and certainly isn't a book. I'm talking about how WotC treats the books they produce.

 

[Burnside]

? BG3 was not made by WotC and certainly isn't a book. I'm talking about how WotC treats the books they produce.

And I argue that if WotC valued playtesting more, their adventure books would be better quality.

I recognize that the market doesn't push them to do that, though.

I guess what I'm saying is that I look at these two facts:

1. Turn of Fortune's Wheel had hundreds of playtesters

2. Turn of Fortune's Wheel is an embarrassingly poor adventure

...and my conclusion is that something is really wrong with their playtesting process, not that playtesting doesn't help.

 

[Shardstone]

And I argue that if WotC valued playtesting more, their adventure books would be better quality.

I recognize that the market doesn't push them to do that, though.

I guess what I'm saying is that I look at these two facts:

1. Turn of Fortune's Wheel had hundreds of playtesters

2. Turn of Fortune's Wheel is an embarrassingly poor adventure

...and my conclusion is that something is really wrong with their playtesting process, not that playtesting doesn't help.

??? We are agreeing brother, to the word.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

They are definitely playtesting, but something is wrong with their process. I suspect (but don't know) one or both of these things is happening:

- Playtesting is modular, not comprehensive. Groups are playing encounters, or chapters, or locations, but not the whole campaign - and then only giving feedback on their "segments" in isolation.

- Playtesting feedback is being undervalued during the editing process

i think that @Shardstone's reply

I think a lot of people here are ignoring the self-imposed limitations on production. There are deadlines for books, there is a hard limitation to how many pages there can be, etc etc. This isn't like the third parties where we can do whatever we want and make a book of whatever page count due to KS; even though WotC has the funds to make 400-page god-like bangers with top-tier art, playtested content, and professional prose, they won't because that's not the cheapest way to create a book that'll sell.

First-party is essentially an exercise in minimalism and fluff. I'm personally ok with this, even though it might sound like I'm not. Now, could the content inside the books still be better? Yes. Look at the OSR, Free League, etc etc, just so many. But with competing internal visions of the game, a minimal playtest process, a tight turnaround, and Unearthed Arcana being a requirement for anything mechanically significant, it's unlikely WotC will ever produce truly 10/10 RPG books.

Is along the lines I was thinking but expressed much better than I could. Looking at some ramdom adventure credits, there a lot of fingers in the pie. Mutiple writers, rules people and so on.

 

[Rystefn]

Here's the thing about WotC doing extensive playtesting and editing for adventures: It's a waste of money. People don't like to talk about it, or talk about it as a thing from the past, but the simple fact is that those official adventure books are written to be read, not played. The overwhelming majority of adventure modules sold in this hobby never see an actual table. Heck, this is true of most ttRPG systems, even. To clarify, I'm not saying that literally zero people ever played Strahd or whatever. I'm saying that for every hundred copies of Strahd that were sold, maybe twenty were ever used to actually play a D&D game. (Yes, that's an ass-pull number, but I'd stake real money that I'm not off by more than ten percent.)

WotC absolutely knows this. It's not kosher to say it out loud when you're writing/selling the adventures, but it's true. The bulk of their market aren't playing the game, so it really doesn't matter how it plays. Sure, if it's literally unplayable, that's going to get out on the internet in short order have a negative sales impact. But anything less than that? Not that big of a deal. There's no reason to do more playtesting than you need to get it more or less functional-ish. All that does is raise the overhead without meaningfully increasing sales.

 

[Burnside]

Here's the thing about WotC doing extensive playtesting and editing for adventures: It's a waste of money. People don't like to talk about it, or talk about it as a thing from the past, but the simple fact is that those official adventure books are written to be read, not played. The overwhelming majority of adventure modules sold in this hobby never see an actual table. Heck, this is true of most ttRPG systems, even. To clarify, I'm not saying that literally zero people ever played Strahd or whatever. I'm saying that for every hundred copies of Strahd that were sold, maybe twenty were ever used to actually play a D&D game. (Yes, that's an ass-pull number, but I'd stake real money that I'm not off by more than ten percent.)

WotC absolutely knows this. It's not kosher to say it out loud when you're writing/selling the adventures, but it's true. The bulk of their market aren't playing the game, so it really doesn't matter how it plays. Sure, if it's literally unplayable, that's going to get out on the internet in short order have a negative sales impact. But anything less than that? Not that big of a deal. There's no reason to do more playtesting than you need to get it more or less functional-ish. All that does is raise the overhead without meaningfully increasing sales.

I don't necessarily disagree with any of that, but my point is I want to complain about it.

 

[Meech17]

Plus, they apparently had absolutely very little faith in Larian - which is bizarre because the game had been in Early Access for like, three years? More? A long time. And it was obviously something special. Indeed for about a year it was obviously going to be something REALLY special. What's really weird is that MtG's D&D line actually had quite a lot of BG3 stuff going on, whereas D&D's own line had virtually none.

This is why I wish they had shelved the Baldur's Gate MTG for a year. It's got cards for all the main characters in BG3. The two products are perfect companions for each other. But instead you had myself and a lot of other MTG players just wondering

"Who the hell is Lae'Zel?"

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Here's the thing about WotC doing extensive playtesting and editing for adventures: It's a waste of money. People don't like to talk about it, or talk about it as a thing from the past, but the simple fact is that those official adventure books are written to be read, not played. The overwhelming majority of adventure modules sold in this hobby never see an actual table. Heck, this is true of most ttRPG systems, even. To clarify, I'm not saying that literally zero people ever played Strahd or whatever. I'm saying that for every hundred copies of Strahd that were sold, maybe twenty were ever used to actually play a D&D game. (Yes, that's an ass-pull number, but I'd stake real money that I'm not off by more than ten percent.)

WotC absolutely knows this. It's not kosher to say it out loud when you're writing/selling the adventures, but it's true. The bulk of their market aren't playing the game, so it really doesn't matter how it plays. Sure, if it's literally unplayable, that's going to get out on the internet in short order have a negative sales impact. But anything less than that? Not that big of a deal. There's no reason to do more playtesting than you need to get it more or less functional-ish. All that does is raise the overhead without meaningfully increasing sales.

It would certainly explain a lot of the products and attitude of a lot of the RPG community, some of whom get positively offended when it's suggested making a RPG product more useful for the table is a good idea -- whether that's playtesting, layout or how it's written.

I remember this very fight being extremely fiery back on the White Wolf Usenet back in the day. They definitely ended up siding with the readers over the players and, I'd say, oWoD quality really fell off a cliff in the late 1990s as a result, although with flashes of brilliance, like Time of Thin Blood.

 

[jgsugden]

None of these reasons are good for justifying why no magic arrows, new conditions, or other consumables, or advice for using terrain in the game.
...

Magic arrows - accounting. New conditions - keeping track of too many different types of effects is too much account (which is cited as a reason for the change to exhaustion rules in the new edition ... people could not remember what each level of exhaustion did). New consumables - the rules cover the idea of making your own consumables and other magic items ... so it does equate to existing options. Terrain the in the game is discussed in a lot of places - from falling rules, to climbing rules, to object destruction rules ....

I disagree. Theres more to these items then numbers.

What makes these items unlike other existing items other than their mechanical structure and the numbers (and other complexities) underlying them?