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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9190312" data-attributes="member: 18">Ah apologies I will remember this!They've never given any real details, but they have claimed to playtest internally and do closed playtests previously. I they used to list some playtesters in the original three books but after The Incident* I think they've taken the names out on the digital editions and probably later printings. We don't know much about how much or what they actually do, and I don't think internal playtests can have had much influence on this, because it's been consistent since the beginning of the edition.* =[SPOILER=&quot;Details of The Incident&quot;]One of the playtesters was an edgelord RPG developer called Zak S, he got #MeToo'd, and inexplicably Mike Mearls, then head of D&amp;D, decided to immediately, like with blazing speed, step in and, totally unasked for, act as judge and jury, contacting the accusers, trying to convince to give him the details of the accusations. They gave him this on the condition of promises of confidentiality, and then, whilst this is disputed, it really looked like Mearls accidentally or intentionally passed them on to Zak S, which was the exact opposite of what he promised. The whole thing was completely and utterly insane. No professional, reasonable person with even an ounce of common sense would ever have done what Mearls did. And WotC's lawyers and PR team would definitely not have let him had he run it by them. As a result he stopped posting on social media entirely (seemingly at WotC's request), and was silently replaced as head of D&amp;D by Ray Winninger, a fact that wasn't made public until nearly two years later. Mearls was, in classic &quot;failing upwards&quot; fashion secretly promoted to a more senior WotC position but one with zero contact with the public. WotC then removed all references to Zak S from the PHB and any other books, and I suspect removed all the other names as a precautionary measure, because certainly now it just says &quot;tested by 175,000 D&amp;D fans!&quot; or something to that effect.[/SPOILER]</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 9190312, member: 18"] Ah apologies I will remember this! They've never given any real details, but they have claimed to playtest internally and do closed playtests previously. I they used to list some playtesters in the original three books but after The Incident* I think they've taken the names out on the digital editions and probably later printings. We don't know much about how much or what they actually do, and I don't think internal playtests can have had much influence on this, because it's been consistent since the beginning of the edition. * = [SPOILER="Details of The Incident"] One of the playtesters was an edgelord RPG developer called Zak S, he got #MeToo'd, and inexplicably Mike Mearls, then head of D&D, decided to [I]immediately[/I], like with blazing speed, step in and, totally unasked for, act as judge and jury, contacting the accusers, trying to convince to give him the details of the accusations. They gave him this on the condition of promises of confidentiality, and then, whilst this is disputed, it really looked like Mearls accidentally or intentionally passed them on to Zak S, which was the exact opposite of what he promised. The whole thing was completely and utterly insane. No professional, reasonable person with even an ounce of common sense would ever have done what Mearls did. And WotC's lawyers and PR team would definitely not have let him had he run it by them. As a result he stopped posting on social media entirely (seemingly at WotC's request), and was silently replaced as head of D&D by Ray Winninger, a fact that wasn't made public until nearly two years later. Mearls was, in classic "failing upwards" fashion secretly promoted to a more senior WotC position but one with zero contact with the public. WotC then removed all references to Zak S from the PHB and any other books, and I suspect removed all the other names as a precautionary measure, because certainly now it just says "tested by 175,000 D&D fans!" or something to that effect. [/SPOILER] [/QUOTE]

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