WotC Jeremy Crawford Interview: Playtests from experimental to focused. By Christian Hoffer at GenCon.

[darjr]

Noted again that the first few UAs were experiments but big parts of it will be in the 2024 revisions, like the change to species.

Also noted that they wanted to swing for the bleachers because they also wanted 2024 to be more than just an errata update.

Also noted, interestingly, that there are changes coming we won’t see, specifically noted were to some spells.

Leomunds Tiny Straw Hut perhaps?

Dungeons & Dragons' Designer Explains How Playtests Have Moved From Experimental to Focused

Dungeons & Dragons designer Jeremy Crawford explains the Unearthed Arcana process for the upcoming [...]

comicbook.com

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

As I feel it is necessary to point out-

This once again shows that the Monk got shafted because they didn't even bother having it in one of the early playtests. It's great to talk about the experimentation with other classes (and what was accepted and dropped), but it just shows that they still have no good ideas for the Monk.

Anyway, it's unfortunate that when it was first announced, so many people complained that this was just a cash grab to get people to buy new books by changing up the rules.

Unfortunately, WoTC listened, and now we are getting a new release that is less exotic than Tasha's. Seriously, if they released all the changes in a single Options book (Rary's Guide to Enhancers), people would complain about how boring it was.

 

[mamba]

“Interestingly, many of the bigger changes reached the threshold that Wizards considers to be a success – a 70% success rate. "The thing is, the scores are not the full story," Crawford said. "We also look at what are people saying in the written feedback and what they are saying in online discussion forums. And while people were often excited by a number of these experiments, there was also a lot of concern about what would this do to the existing game."”

so they should have iterated, and instead threw them out because there were some loud naysayers, great. I positively hate this process.

 

[Maxperson]

“Interestingly, many of the bigger changes reached the threshold that Wizards considers to be a success – a 70% success rate. "The thing is, the scores are not the full story," Crawford said. "We also look at what are people saying in the written feedback and what they are saying in online discussion forums. And while people were often excited by a number of these experiments, there was also a lot of concern about what would this do to the existing game."”

so they should have iterated, and instead threw them out because there were some loud naysayers, great. I positively hate this process.

I wouldn't put this entirely on the backs of the naysayers. A good portion of it was probably WotC realizing that if they changed it as much as they initially wanted, they couldn't keep to their promise of backwards compatibility. They should just have come out at the beginning with, "This is 5.5e" and then they could have gone hog wild.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I would love to see some of them as optional rules. I would encourage them to be more inclined to create optional systems and to add subsystems to the game out side the 2014 base.

 

[DEFCON 1]

so they should have iterated, and instead threw them out because there were some loud naysayers, great. I positively hate this process.

Was it "some loud naysayers", or 4 out of every 10 completely normal-voiced naysayers? If 2 out of every 5 players just say simply "I don't think this is good"... when is WotC obligated to give it another go to try and convince them otherwise?

 

[Vaalingrade]

Also noted, interestingly, that there are changes coming we won’t see

Aaaaand there it is.

 

[mamba]

I wouldn't put this entirely on the backs of the naysayers. A good portion of it was probably WotC realizing that if they changed it as much as they initially wanted, they couldn't keep to their promise of backwards compatibility.

they knew they wanted compatibility, they offered the change, and Crawford insists that if it had been received more positively, we would have gotten that change

“”There was a hundred percent chance that if any of those options were enthusiastically embraced by the community, they would end up in the new version of the rules," Crawford said.”

So what else am I to make of this….

 

[darjr]

Aaaaand there it is.

What do you mean?

 

[mamba]

Was it "some loud naysayers", or 4 out of every 10 completely normal-voiced naysayers? If 2 out of every 5 players just say simply "I don't think this is good"... when is WotC obligated to give it another go to try and convince them otherwise?

doesn’t even matter, it reached the threshold, it should have been iterated on, instead it was thrown out, undermining the whole process. It cannot be 2 out of 5 if it reached 70%.

Yes, 70% means they give it another try, just like 80% means it is in. Why else have these thresholds

If anyone wonders next time how something that made it through the process can have an approval rating of <50%, this is why.