D&D 5E Mearls doing new playtest today

[Warbringer]

I talked to one of the "closed beta playtesters" at GenCon last year. It really sounds like all their real playtests are going out to the smaller, more controlled group. They are getting new packets every 2 weeks or so.

Well if they are still doing that it makes sense, and makes me feel better about no playtest being released for nearly 5 months (beginning April until after GenCon).

 

[Iosue]

Well if they are still doing that it makes sense, and makes me feel better about no playtest being released for nearly 5 months (beginning April until after GenCon).

Twitter's a dicey medium. The original question was:
"Does [the GenCon product] use the current ruleset we have or will there be another playtest released before Gencon?"

Mearls' response was:
"Not a full packet, but I anticipate we will have new material."

It seems to me that was this means is that we'll see a new playtest packet, probably in June, since they seem to release new packets every couple of months. But this won't be a "full packet", i.e., it won't be a complete overhaul of the last packet, like the end of March one was. They'll release some add ons that don't really interfere with the rules as we have them now, e.g, new races, new adventures, maybe the social interaction rules. Then, come GenCon, they'll release a full packet with the overhauled fighter and thief and other major changes.

 

[Warbringer]

@Iosue

Agreed there will be a new release with cosmetic changes.

 

[Li Shenron]

It seems to me that was this means is that we'll see a new playtest packet, probably in June, since they seem to release new packets every couple of months. But this won't be a "full packet", i.e., it won't be a complete overhaul of the last packet, like the end of March one was. They'll release some add ons that don't really interfere with the rules as we have them now, e.g, new races, new adventures, maybe the social interaction rules. Then, come GenCon, they'll release a full packet with the overhauled fighter and thief and other major changes.

But Mearls has talked about overhauling skills and backgrounds, feats and specialties, adding Fighter subclasses, expanding exploration rules and adding interaction rules, and moving classes up to allocate apprentice levels.

Of course some of these may just be "in the making" and not nearly ready, but there's quite a lot of stuff he mentioned already a couple of months ago, how could none of these be ready for playtesting?

That, plus the Rogue and someone else was labelled as "in transition" in the last packet. This was quite odd, considering that we all know everything is possibly in transition, so why labelling those specifically, if not because they had already changed in internal playtest packets? It would feel quite weird to see them again the same 2 months later.