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That's flat-out false. I don't even know how you could feel that's a claim you could make. What is your support for this? Do you have extensive experience in administering large public playtests? Because I have very, very little experience with playtesting, and even I know that most of the...

I don't believe that it does. I have done it both ways. Extensively. The only difference is that I spend less time thumbing through books trying to find the right page. Not in any way that's important, at all. If you think that the game experience is fundamentally changed by reading Trivial...

I favor the subscription model because it changes the paradigm from an RPG as a product to an RPG as a service - I much prefer the latter, and I think most people would if they understood how a fully realized tabletop RPG-as-a-service would look. A product is static. There is little (some, but...

It is worrisome that you equate the use of a laptop or tablet at the gaming table as a reference tool with D&D becoming a computer game. Why is this? Does this strike you as a reasonable thing for you to have said? What makes something a computer game? Is your definition so broad that a game of...

A playtest and a concept test are not separate things in this case. It was both. The fine-tuning of mechanics will occur in internal testing groups that they have more direct contact with. The structure of a public playtest makes it very difficult to collect actionable information on specific...

I think that probably has something to do with it.

This ignores the significant functional differences between the two models. A leased car and a paid-for car are the same car. A physical book and a set of digital tools are two dramatically different things.

You're right; for the purposes of running a D&D game, it's way better. A nitpick, though - a subscription is about $70 per year. It's only $100 if you go month-to-month, which is a sucker's proposition if you're actually running a D&D campaign. In other words, the cost of two hardcover...

Fair enough. Consider it to apply only to companies sufficiently large (to the point where it becomes very, very difficult for any given individual to reach a position where their desires are being personally catered to by the decisions of the company).

Unless you're going to tell me that every person (or even most of the people) who took to the internet to express how betrayed, insulted, or offended they were by any given WotC decision was a close personal friend of the company's, the point stands. Most of the people who showed up and acted...

You have a personal relationship with the people who work at Savage Worlds. But unless you have a personal relationship with the company itself - which means you have a relationship that allows you a significantly higher amount of input on their business decisions than your average consumer -...

I truly hope you do not believe this. It is one thing to acknowledge that the world is inherently an imperfectly fair place due to factors beyond our control. It is another damned thing entirely to use that as justification or an excuse for behaving poorly, which is what you're doing here. Yes...

You don't have a personal relationship with WotC, or any other game publisher. At least, not one worth talking about. You are a consumer, and they are a business. You can buy their product, or you can choose not to buy their product. That's really about as far as your relationship extends...

As mlund has pointed out, the criticism is aimed at the behavior in question, and that criticism is deserved. And we're already back to the issue of having to address the fact that you consider it okay for people to criticize (oftentimes using radicalized or hostile language) game companies for...

No, I'm pretty sure that the heart of the edition wars is the inability of some people to demonstrate how invested they are in a particular edition (or editions) of the game without taking a dump all over the editions they like less. The rest is just normal debate. If you have an unsupportable...

He was talking about criticism of WotC being edition warring by proxy, not this thread. This is troubling. Do you think that highlighting the behavior of subsets of the gaming community in a thread about highlighting the behavior of subsets of the gaming community qualifies as edition warring...

Can we please put a stop to this? You're not being insulted. 3e fans weren't being insulted when 4e came out. 4e fans aren't being insulted now. I was a 3e fan, and I never once felt insulted by the release of 4e. I am a 4e fan and I definitely haven't felt insulted by 5e's build-up. So they...

Nor mine. But between four and six encounters before resting for the evening? Quite common. The norm, in fact. By the time well-constructed spellcasters hit mid-level, they typically have enough powerful spells at their disposal to use one or two powerful spells at the beginning of an...

I've never encountered any game - or, indeed, anyone who has ever played in any game - where the fighter was given cause to deal 9000 points of damage over the course of an hour by swinging his sword every round. Theoretically, yes, that is his damage output, and there is no mechanical limit on...

Yes, but why haven't lapsed subscribers shown us the real-world politics reference that I shouldn't have made? What are they hiding? Mod edit: No politics folks, sorry. ~Umbran