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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 5751184" data-attributes="member: 1210">Okay, I am not trying to be a jerk, but I pretty much disagree on nearly every particular here.I think that it  is completely unworkable.First of all, "Insiders" aren't going to want to pay for a new system sight-unseen, much less if they are effectively beta testers. I certainly wouldn't.Second, there's a substantial lost profit potential in hardcopy sales on release of a new edition.Finally, it is quite possible that once they did a public release, the rules would be stressed tested on a level that the 'playtesting' insiders did wouldn't really prove to finalize much of anything.Except, as is pretty much demonstrated in every thread that discusses this, they aren't incompatible at all. They're more akin to Arcane Power than a version 4.5. I remember at least one 20+ page thread where it turned out that not a single person who played with PH characters side-by-side with Essentials characters had any problems with it in game. All the griping came from naysayers who hadn't done the research, iykwimaityd.The 3.0/3.5 shift, on the other hand, did legitimately piss off a bunch of people. It was a real game replacement. In the end, I think it was for the best and that the improvements to the game were worth it, but I understand how burnt a lot of people felt over it.The problem, I think, will always be one of scale. Get 100 playtesters, and when you give the game to 1000 people they will find exploits and rules holes that the hundred missed. Speaking of game-replacers...I think going back to two separate game lines would be ruinous as long as any significant portion of the game's revenue comes from physical product. Oh dear.Following your proposal wouldn't encourage me to buy an Insider account. It would encourage me to wait however many years for the damn books to come out. Instead of suggesting a commitment to quality and community, I would perceive the approach as suggesting lazy design by committee for those willing to pay to get involved, which would make me quite afraid of what the eventual outcome would look like. I have no idea what you mean about criticism about an iconic, public brand.I do agree that working on a new edition offers deep freedom to change systems or address problem areas of the rules (skill challenges, feat taxes) but I don't think the process being marketed as online-only makes this any more true than releasing an actual book does. Unless you mean the potential to keep changing the rules to fiddle with them over time- which is exactly what exasperates so many people about the frequent errata train. Again, this does not sound like a positive to me. Purchasing a physical copy via nonstandard models, like you suggest, leads me to visualize a black and white 3-ring binder full of 256 printed pages that cost me nearly as much to produce as buying a $40 full color high-quality glossy hardcover would. Economy of scale means that WotC's hardcovers are going to per-dollar be a much better value than self-printing.I don't see how using the AD&D brand helps anything; if anything, it creates a subset of an already small customer base who are no longer buying the 'other' line's products. Nor do I see this making D&D "look progressive"; instead I think it would make D&D "look invisible," where only those willing to pay to beta-test would even be aware of the new system.Finally, I don't see how it would enhance the quality of public releases; with shrinking revenue would come shrinking quality and an implosion. And I wouldn't care about a publicly-released Complete Fighter for a game that had no publicly-released Players Handbook or equivalent. I can buy all of these, especially- sadly- given WotC's, hrmm, erratic record with online material. Again, not trying to be a jerk- I just can't see your proposal doing anything other than scoring a critical hit on D&D's commercial viability.</blockquote>

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