D&D 5E New WotC Survey! Learn About A New D&D Product!

WotC has launched a new survey about the future of D&D. This survey includes an NDA (which some people have not taken to well!) halfway through, which asks you not to talk about the survey on pain of being tracked down and fined, but it's about an upcoming (unannounced) new D&D product. You can find out what it is by taking the survey (or it's all over social media aready).

 

[Marc_C]

Got to watch the new thing video, then it asked me if a had enough good audio and video to reply to a survey. I clicked yes. It booted me out, without asking me the questions... weird.

 

[Marc Radle]

When they asked me if WotC should purchase Paizo or Chaosium next, I voted Chaosium. I think WotC has had their eye on Call of Cthulhu for quite some time now.

Huh?

 

[Delazar]

no NDA and no video for me... ç_ç

 

[Delazar]

Wow. Crazy that the super-secret video announced that WotC is removing Halflings from D&D, right?

In a non-joking manner, I am actually excited for what the video showed. However, I did not get to give feedback on it, for some reason. I am moving out of state in a few months and won't be able to do in-person D&D for the forseeable future, so an official mix of Roll20 and D&D Beyond would be super handy to me, especially if you can get online redemption codes for the physical books that you've bought, as they did mention "hybrid play".

though, this already exists? it's called Above VTT, it's an addon that makes you use your DnD Beyond subscription as a VTT

 

[ssvegeta555]

I got no NDA or any secret video or whatever. After quizzing me on my knowledge and satisfaction on the races, it asked me about if I'm employed full-time or not, how much I make annually and my marital status. WTF!?

Then I took the survey again 2 more times, (private browser tabs) and no NDA or secret information. The last two didn't even ask my my work and marital status so that's weird. I have no naughty word idea what WotC is trying to achieve with this nonsense survey.

I looked online and read the NDA someone took a screenshot of (lol wtf WotC!?) and found out the secret is for a VTT or something like that. Not interested. All this hype and secrecy for that? If anything this has lowered my opinion of them and their "surveys".

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Got to watch the new thing video, then it asked me if a had enough good audio and video to reply to a survey. I clicked yes. It booted me out, without asking me the questions... weird.

Same for me!

Should have said ''no'', maybe they only wanted answers from people with bad audio unsure about their ability to answer the survey?

 

[TrickyDUK2]

though, this already exists? it's called Above VTT, it's an addon that makes you use your DnD Beyond subscription as a VTT

I wonder if WotC will try and stop others using DnDBeyond in such a way, i.e., no one will be able pull the data into their own product. Unless they offer a vastly superior product, I suspect many would just stick with Above VTT and other products that are free.

 

[Aging Bard]

I'm so old the survey made me prove I know the rules to 5e! It asked if I knew what advantage was!

 

[Marc_C]

I'm so old the survey made me prove I know the rules to 5e! It asked if I knew what advantage was!

Me too.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I wonder if WotC will try and stop others using DnDBeyond in such a way, i.e., no one will be able pull the data into their own product. Unless they offer a vastly superior product, I suspect many would just stick with Above VTT and other products that are free.

WotC don't own DNDBeyond.

They have relatively little control over it, because the contracts are already written, and they clearly don't include blocking secondary data usage, as Beyond20 and so on already do that as well.

So they couldn't do that.

As for sticking with their product, yeah, that is likely, but WotC are playing the long game here. They're not expecting everyone to instantly flip from DNDBeyond to their product. They'll likely offer incentives to us their product, whilst they build it up. It would not be hard to offer a superior product to DNDBeyond, frankly, much as I like it. Building a better core system and investing more in it's development (which would still be cheap) would let you exceed their capabilities in short order. On top of that, WotC stuff could be guaranteed to be fully functional day 1 of release, which isn't the case with DNDBeyond (for example, Supernatural Gifts from Theros and Dark Gifts from Ravenloft still don't work on Beyond).

And if they really are planning a new edition in the next few years, which I think they are, they could even playtest it via their new site - it would give them a level of direct feedback never seen before with playtesting. This would be both helpful for development purposes and in getting people moved to the site. Then when 6E or w/e comes out, you have people already using it, and whilst DNDBeyond etc. will be scrambling to accommodate all of 6E's features well, 6E will likely be designed specifically to work perfectly with WotC's own site. And as people are buying new books anyway, why not switch to WotC's official approach?