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Message: <blockquote data-quote="smerwin29" data-source="post: 3787427" data-attributes="member: 15050">OK, let's look at it this way.  WotC R&D needs the initial playtesters for 4e (outside of internal playtests).  They have some choices about how to go about it:--They can accept applications from players, and therefore have to weed through hundreds of "gaming resumes" which would mostly say things like "I have a great group, we've been playing since 1976, we would be a great playtest group."or--They could go to the RPGA, which has records of how much play time certain judges and players have had, and they can go to Chris Tulach and Dave Christ, who at every large convention get updates directly from players about which DMs and players are good and which are not so good.  Chris and Dave could find those who they know are good AND who also have a home group that they play with.I know what choice I would make.  And that does not mean that people outside the RPGA aren't great, aren't legitimate choices for playtesters, and don't deserve the chance to playtest.The very question in the OP itself is biased and based on a faulty knowledge of the RPGA: "Really?? Is RPGA really the best place to test 4e?"  The RPGA is not a place; it is an organization that contains a widely varied group of games and gamers.  The assumption that the RPGA is doing the testing is just plain wrong.  The assumption that the RPGA members somehow have a bias toward some kind of play style is just plain wrong.  As Dave says, you can sit down with a group at one RPGA event and get a totally different play experience than at the very next group.  RPGA judges have to be ready and capable to shift gears and handle these different play styles successfully.  Not only that, they have to be ready to go between the various RPGA offerings, which, while they all use the D&D3.5 core rules, may have different ways to handling the "DM managed" aspects like level progression, access, allowable rules elements, and method of recording critical events.The one argument that may or may not have been addressed is the campaign story question.  First of all, I don't see how it is relevant for a playtest, or at least an initial playtest.  Secondly, the questioning of the RPGA players in relation to a long campaign story makes the complete illogical and invalid assumption that RPGA players don't play long-running home campaigns, which many do.  Thirdly, it makes the assumption that RPGA players are somehow disconnected from the over-arching stories of the various campaigns.  Some of them may feel disconnected, but that is as much a limitation of their imaginations as it is the campaigns.  Certainly when you have a campaign with 10,000+ players, the campaign cannot be personalized like an intimate home campaign can.  But that doesn't mean the campaign ignores player involvement, nor does it mean that RPGA players are somehow incapable of engaging themselves in a playtest with an eye toward long-term storytelling.Right now the RPGA has three active campaigns: Living Greyhawk, Xen'drik Expeditions, and Living Kingdoms of Kalamar.  Within the past year, I have written multiple adventures for each one of them, and each of those adventures have been part of a series of adventures in a long-ranging story arc.  I can say without a hint of hyperbole or exaggeration that multiple aspects of each of the adventures I've written in all of the campaigns were dictated by player involvement, both in terms of an aggregate (collecting data to see what MOST tables did) and in terms of personal interactions at tables I have run (when an individual player makes the story of the adventure so cool that I just have to include some details of it in the next adventure).  Heck, some people whose names I don't even remember have contributed more to my adventures than anything else.  So to say that RPGA players are less capable of playtesting because of some sort of deficiency in understanding how a good story-driven campaign is supposed to run is invalid on so many levels.The assumption that a "real homebrew campaign" player/DM is closer to knowing and using the Core 3.5 rules is invalid, not just because it assumes that RPGA players are incapable of understanding the character progression paradigm as described in the DMG, but also because any given homebrew campaign may vary from the Core 3.5 rules as much, or more than, the RPGA.So, to answer the question of the title of the thread: Yes, really.  Tapping experienced and capable RPGA members who have proven themselves is probably a great way to kick off playtesting.  That doesn't mean others can't or shouldn't, but I can't think of a better place to start.</blockquote>

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