D&D 4E Are the 4E previews like turning it up to 11?

[broghammerj]

Huh?

I was mocking those people who support WOTC by saying they don't want to release 4E info so that competitors get a jump on them or release a competing edition before 4E goes to press. I was sarcastically comparing that idea to the Creature Collection from Sword and Sorcery Studios. Well it may have made history as the first non-WOTC 3e product, but it certainly had a lot of errors and likely had little impact on sales of the real MM.

 

[grimslade]

I figure we are getting jack for info because Race and Class and World and Monsters will be published with the info. WotC has a pretty workable set of rules right now released to Playtesters. They will try and grab a little more money off the preview books. How many people bought SWSE just to get preview info on 4E? Same amount will grab the 4E preview books.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I wholeheartedly agree with you. If you look at PlaneSailings link and see what Jim Bishop had to say regarding playtesting:

On playtesting 3E: "In the early days of the 3E project they decided to throw as many beta testers at it as they could find, and over the past months there have been literally hundreds of testers and thousands of pages of comments, as well as a brutal discussion/development board. While new beta testers are no longer being accepted, the existing groups are still plowing away at the latest revision. If nothing else, 3E will be the most-tested RPG ever produced."

That was a whole year before 3E was released! Do you think 4E is seriously in a similar position?

And yet we still got 3.5 three years later. Possible theories for the difference this time:

• Things are not as far along as they should be. The final release of 4e will be more shooting from the hip.
• Things are much further along than they claim. Beta playtesters have been employed for some time now, but have been under strict NDA and have kept quiet. If they release this information, the conspiracy theorists will get even louder about the misstatements back in February.
• Despite them reminding people that things can still change, they fear that if they release some details and change them before the actual release, they will have to listen to even more complaining and accusations of "lying."

 

[KarinsDad]

And yet we still got 3.5 three years later.

This is, however, understandable.

There are nearly 1000 densely written pages in the 3E core books on a game system that quite frankly, had practically every element of it rewritten and redesigned. The only thing they really kept from 2E to 3E was using a D20 for rolls and the names (and some other continuity) of some classes / spells / items. 3E and 2E mostly only have DND-like flavor in common.


I suspect that 4E will have fewer redesigns than 3E did. A lot more than between 3E and 3.5 (which although extensive, were not heavily mechanical in nature), but probably a lot fewer than between 2E and 3E (which were both extensive and nearly all mechanics were changed).

3E was, quite frankly, ground breaking and monumental.

I do not think 4E will be that ground breaking. Sure, it might have talents like SWSE and new maneuvers and per encounter abilities, but it will probably feel and play a lot closer to 3.5 than 3E did to 2E. The warts will be removed, but the game will feel like DND.

So, I am not as concerned with the playtesting aspects of 4E as many people appear to be. I played SWSE and said "Damn. They got right a lot of things that they changed."

I do not think SWSE had years of playtesting before it came out and it appears on the surface to be a real solid game system.

I suspect the same will be true of 4E. It will be based on solid game systems (3.5 and SWSE), but with many of the problem areas addressed and modified.

 

[broghammerj]

And yet we still got 3.5 three years later. Possible theories for the difference this time:

• Things are not as far along as they should be. The final release of 4e will be more shooting from the hip.
• Things are much further along than they claim. Beta playtesters have been employed for some time now, but have been under strict NDA and have kept quiet. If they release this information, the conspiracy theorists will get even louder about the misstatements back in February.
• Despite them reminding people that things can still change, they fear that if they release some details and change them before the actual release, they will have to listen to even more complaining and accusations of "lying."

Option #1 Does not bode well for the development of DND

Option #2 Why not just tell us it is in extensive playtesting if it really is? The conspiracty theorists will be silenced in May when the books come out and no one cares. Now you have generated conspiracy theorists (or I will say critics) who are concerned about the quality of the product with what appears to be a lack of real playtesting or concrete rules development. You tell me which is worse.

Option#3 Well the accusations of lying seem somewhat based on the current actions of the company. Again if details may change so dramatically then I have reservations about the game quality. How can it be so wonderful and fix all of 3.5 if it hasn't been fully developed. All the hype reminds me of the curative powers of snakeoil.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

I think statements to the effect that no data released means people can't proclaim doom are, essentially, bunk. Naysayers are going to proclaim regardless of how much they do or do not know about the system. However, the only way people who are positive about the change can really say: "No, look, they did address this." is if they have some idea of how it has been addressed.

I don't remember people tipping over stuff and setting lots of fires because the Assassin got nixed late-game and turned into a PrC. We had some previews of the Assassin and then he didn't appear. Nobody sued WotC, thousands of gamers did not revolt, there was no PHB bonfire on the White House lawn. What about "this isn't final" is so hard to understand or causes such deep and lasting conflict or legal horrors that we should, instead, know 0 about the system until the day it is released?

Right now we have no idea. Most of what we know is conjecture from veiled statements and sidelong passes in combination with looking at past products and "what we'd do to homebrew something similar". We don't KNOW that Saves are now Defenses, we just conjecture from some off-hand comments that mesh with rules we see in SWSE.

All of the playtest reports seem to have been purposefully created to be as useless as possible. People go over them with a fine-tooth comb to pull out, again, conjecture based on past products. Nobody has said: "Wizards now get a Wizard Strike ability that causes damage and creates pushback." There's conjecture to this, but really all we've got is somebody's non-rules story fluff that alludes to something like this.

If anything, I think ENWorld is more valuable this edition change than it was last time. Now, since 90% of the data we seem to be getting from Wizards is non-data and non-informative, I have to check here to see if anybody has figured something out from the doublespeak. And THAT I take with a grain of salt since it's really just semi-informed guesswork half the time.

--fje

 

[Scribble]

Ok first... nice Spinal Tap refference.

This marketing ploy may work, if as a consumer I got the sense that 4E was backed up by a solid system. How would I know it's a solid system? There would be substantial playtesting well in advance of the release. The previews would be full of concrete information.

Not really... I mean we're getting info on what they're doing. We know the wizard will have a whizbang, and the warrior will have a kerplow...

Why tell us more? Telling us less lets us know something will be done, but not what, therefore, we're hungry for more info. We're waiting chomping at the bit hoping for just a little more info...

It's in effect doing what a good preview should do. Making us want the final version. Like watching a good movie trailer, and thinking: "I so totally have to see this movie..." They don't show you the entire movie or even the entire plot... Just random out of sequence snippets of total awesome.

I could go on and on. Critics to my post will say that they can't release information or their competitors steal their ideas.

Not really... I doubt critics will be able to "steal" D&D from D&D...

What just like S&S released a pathetic error filled monster manual for 3E? That bold sales plan nearly crippled WOTC and caused us to all play games by WW. Or how about he fact that some people will steal the rules from the previews and just use it for their homebrew without buying core books? Those are the same people who will just do that with the SRD when it's released and I would argue a very small faction.

I don't think WW decision to release the SS stuff was based ona plan to crush WOTC... It was just a plan to get a jump on the market and sell more of their d20 stuff then other people... I'm sure WOTC was very happy they did it too... I meant the plan was working...

If I were looking a previews for a car I would want to know it comes with a 2.5L V-6, not that it drives "ultrafast".

Sure... but check out a car commercial sometimes... You'll see cars whipping around curves and pictures of sexy leather interiors...

Sorry for the rant but I am tired of being sold the "Wonder" in Wonder Bread when all I want to do is make a sandwich.

Then what they're doing is working... You already want the game before it's even been published...

 

[Fobok]

Option #2 Why not just tell us it is in extensive playtesting if it really is? The conspiracty theorists will be silenced in May when the books come out and no one cares. Now you have generated conspiracy theorists (or I will say critics) who are concerned about the quality of the product with what appears to be a lack of real playtesting or concrete rules development. You tell me which is worse.

They have, actually, said the game has been in extensive playtesting. It's just been internal playtesting, rather than external, which most people appear unconvinced about. Personally, I have no idea whether internal playtests are enough. But, most RPG releases seem to go by just fine without a public call for playtesters.

 

[Imaro]

I figure we are getting jack for info because Race and Class and World and Monsters will be published with the info. WotC has a pretty workable set of rules right now released to Playtesters. They will try and grab a little more money off the preview books. How many people bought SWSE just to get preview info on 4E? Same amount will grab the 4E preview books.

Even though I was hoping it didn't go down like this...it does seem WotC wants to make money off the info. In other words QFT

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

And less-hailed products still get external playtesting. I know folks that have playtested things in the past, from big releases from middle-road companies to small PDF releases from PDF-publishing companies.

Internal testing often runs the risk of groupthink. If the designers are designing, then sitting down and playing, they're more inclined to view the rules like the other designers do.

Say, if, David Designer and Carl Crafter and Betty Brewer are working on the system. David has worked there longer and makes a rule suggestion. Carl and Betty are more inclined to agree with David, since he has seniority and experience. If Betty has reservations, she will feel somewhat less inclined to bring them up. Betty and Carl might not even consciously REALIZE they're disinclined to disagree or, at the very least, they would deny that feeling later because they don't want to admit they fell victim to groupthink. Same if Alice Accounting is brought in to play with them and Carl Crafter explains the rule. Alice will be disinclined to bring fault on the rule by dint of she's a coworker, but not a designer, and so even if they're asking for her feedback specifically on parts that she doesn't understand, it will be an uphill battle to get her to admit she doesn't understand it (she won't want to seem less-quick than others) or that she doesn't like it (she's not a Developer, what does she know? Maybe she knows too much or too little about the system?).

These risks extend to external playtesting, too, but you remove many hurdles the farther you get from the involved parties. Taking it outside of work will remove some of the Seniority/Superior/Department issues, but then you run into familial or friendship or relationship issues coloring the playtest. The farther out you get, the more issues drop away, but new issues are introduced and, at the end of the day, you'll always be influencing the playtesting response by the very fact that you're attempting to study the playtest and get a response.

So you do more playtesting. So you can aggregate and compare different groups with different likely issues and, hopefully, pull enough data overall to give a good picture.

--fje