D&D 5E 6 months without a UA

[Kurotowa]

It's usually not about the specific mechanics with lineage playtests in UA, and more about "is this flavour on target?"

They have internal playtesters to let them know if the mechanics are working right. What they needed to gleam from the larger community is if people were on-board with Goblinoids becoming fey. The answer seemed to be an emphatic yes.

Yeah, many people seem to have gotten the idea that UA is crowdsourced game design. It very much isn't. Other people think it's an open playtest. It isn't that either. What it is, is a popularity poll. It asks, "Do you like this? Are we going in the right direction? Or do these design choices make you unhappy?"

That's why when WotC talks about UA they talk about approval percentages. Lots of positive responses means they know they're hitting the right notes with at least a substantive majority of players. Low marks means an idea will be revised or discarded. They're using the bait of early access to gather customer data, and at an early enough stage to make changes before final release.

 

[Faolyn]

Cool.

But I mean we have ENWorlders have beta things they want tested. Then a poll and thread about them.

So six different versions of psion, witch, and gish classes?

 

[JEB]

What they needed to gleam from the larger community is if people were on-board with Goblinoids becoming fey. The answer seemed to be an emphatic yes.

Except that the UA "Hobgoblin of the Feywild" was presented as a variant, not a new default. Folks being cool with the existence of a fey variant hobgoblin doesn't translate to folks supporting all goblins becoming fey, nor was that the question the UA was implicitly asking.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Except that the UA "Hobgoblin of the Feywild" was presented as a variant, not a new default. Folks being cool with the existence of a fey variant hobgoblin doesn't translate to folks supporting all goblins becoming fey, nor was that the question the UA was implicitly asking.

This. Felt a little bait-and-switchy to be honest. Par for the course.

 

[vecna00]

Except that the UA "Hobgoblin of the Feywild" was presented as a variant, not a new default. Folks being cool with the existence of a fey variant hobgoblin doesn't translate to folks supporting all goblins becoming fey, nor was that the question the UA was implicitly asking.

It may not have been the original intention, but it is certainly where it ended up.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It may not have been the original intention, but it is certainly where it ended up.

By the time they presented goblins as fey, it wasn't up for debate. They went from, "Here's an interesting variant" to, "Nevermind what we said, this is what we're doing". Big surprise there.

 

[Parmandur]

Except that the UA "Hobgoblin of the Feywild" was presented as a variant, not a new default. Folks being cool with the existence of a fey variant hobgoblin doesn't translate to folks supporting all goblins becoming fey, nor was that the question the UA was implicitly asking.

Crawford said the response was overwhelmingly positive: doubt they will receive much pushback on make Goblinoids more distinct from Orcs.

 

[vecna00]

By the time they presented goblins as fey, it wasn't up for debate. They went from, "Here's an interesting variant" to, "Nevermind what we said, this is what we're doing". Big surprise there.

Then don't do that for your game, I suppose.

 

[pnewman]

I think that after Monsters of the Multiverse, the rest of the material for 2022 is likely adventure books and setting books, not a lot of new mechanical crunch.

Most previous setting books have had some new races and/or subclasses. Even if the races have already been tested or were in MotM, I think we should see some new UA subclasses.

 

[JEB]

Crawford said the response was overwhelmingly positive

And that would actually be meaningful if they had been direct about their design intentions. Since they weren't, it suggests their interpretation of the response to "fey hobgoblin" as "make all goblins fey" was either rather creative, or awfully convenient. Unless they very specifically got overwhelming feedback saying "I like this so much that you should make all goblins fey by default", which seems very doubtful (since I don't recall seeing such feedback publicly at the time of the UA).

@Micah Sweet's not wrong about it coming off like a bait-and-switch. It suggests that any "variant" they present in UA from here on should be assumed to be a testbed for a core change. (And that them pretending otherwise would be disingenuous at best.)