After having played D&D over the past 33 years it saddens me that all I am going to have left are those fond memories.
My group and I tried this playtest, we got 15 minutes into it and tossed it into the round file.
Please WotC shrivel up and go away, you're only making it worse.
Meh. Had fun running it, but that was a result of the players not the rules. Not a fan of Advantage/Disadvantage. Don't like flat math. Didn't feel I could run an entire campaign (2-3 years) with this rule set. The combination of different play styles included in the playtest was probably the biggest issue. I can run a campaign in any edition of D&D, but this one felt more annoying than anything and that was, I believe, strongly tied to the advantage/disadvantage mechanic. Lose it.
Didn't mind backgrounds and themes, but want feats to return as well.
Magic missile was getting on my nerves as a DM because it was so boring. I'd have rather the wizard have fired a crossbow, at least then it would have been interesting.
Felt I needed to rush through the combats rather than enjoy the nice, natural pace of them. I enjoy 2-3 hour combats as long as they're interesting.
Feeling like I should probably just wait until they come out with the final rules and vote with my wallet. I'd have rather just played BECMI.
I decided to run the risk and vote "loved it"
Because it's so easy to say "this and that should be fixed" (people say that to every single RPG or edition, in its final form) or "there is room for improvement" (is there ever no room for improvement?), but the truth is that for me this is indeed going in the right direction AND it has enough novelty elements AND is more or less in a wholly usable form* already AND it solves my main problem with 3ed, which is my favourite edition but takes me too much effort to run with the little time I have for gaming.
*meaning that if this was already the published game (besides the limitation to few levels, classes, etc.) I would gladly take it as-is
The fighter has regressed to Vanilla Action Hero/useless at high levels