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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alphastream" data-source="post: 5965237" data-attributes="member: 11365">13th Age's timeline is actually pretty typical. It is important to realize that behind the scenes is a very tight writing/development/publishing schedule. An RPG company really needs to get the feedback quickly so they can address major issues. Here's the reality: they don't need a specific person's feedback. They need aggregate feedback. While it is possible that a specific person (you, or me) may make a really insightful comment that leads to a change, in general what really helps is several people highlighting a broader issue (class x was not interesting, thing y was too strong, monsters were too xyz, etc.). These help them identify the major issues and work on them. Because of that, the success of a playtest isn't whether some people had the chance to read it. It is whether enough people provided useful feedback. By all accounts, 13th Age's playtest and D&D Next's playtest have each been runaway successes. Tons of people provided very useful feedback.To put 200 pages in a month in context, Organized Play adventures are usually 30-60 pages and require at least a few hours of read-through and preparation before the DM can run them for 4 hours... and yet often are given out on a Thursday and the playtest report back on Monday. Part of playtesting is being willing to do something that is hard. You have to learn something new, run it well, take notes well, write up the feedback well... this isn't something typically done because it is easy or convenient. Playtesting isn't supposed to be for everyone. Because of that, those of us in organized play treasure the few groups that can respond quickly and provide us with great useful constructive feedback. We don't need 20 groups for good adventures... we need 2-4. Those 2-4 are vital to our campaigns. (And almost everyone who is an admin for organized play has been a member of one of these groups before later becoming an admin).Could it be otherwise? Maybe, but it is hard to really make a great playtesting program for almost everyone without sacrificing your schedule and your progress. When there are enough people willing to work hard at playtesting it doesn't seem worthwhile to make those sacrifices.</blockquote>

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