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<blockquote data-quote="RyanD" data-source="post: 2393239" data-attributes="member: 3312"><p>I don't think it would be much help to "name names" at this late date. That was work I was involved in pre-3e, and I could not give you a complete list of games we tested as the memories are now hazy. I will say that we did test most of the games on the sales charts at the time.</p><p></p><p>With regard to the product testing: I spent many long hours watching those play groups, who were derived from many different sources with many different levels of skill and experience. And I came away from the experience very frustrated with the feeling that people did in fact want a "more fun" game experience that they were not getting from D&D at the time - thus the interest in "rules lite" RPG systems. The real eye-opener was the difference between how much time people thought the rules lite games were saving them, vs. how much time those games actually did save vs. a 1E/2E baseline. (As with many things in the RPG field, when we actually quantified the "conventional wisdom" then tested it, it turned out to be wrong - and sometimes 180 degrees opposite of the truth). And when we surveyed many of those players who did express a preference for a rules lite game, we found a high degree of supressed frustration with the rules lite formats that were available - frustration at what they perceived as the arbitrary nature of the experience and the "limits" imposed by the lack of clear rules for various in-game activities they wanted to simulate. </p><p></p><p>A lot of people complained that 1E/2E systems didn't work or weren't clear, or weren't well enough organized to be found "in the heat of the moment" - and we got a lot of feedback from people saying "if D&D were fixed, I'd prefer it to [Game X]" (where Game X was any number of competitive RPG systems they were currently playing instead of D&D). So rather than trying to take that stuff out of 3E, we decided to try and make it actually work as intended. Maybe there's too much in 3E that is unnecessarily complex (the attack of opportunity system wins my vote), but at least the rules as written do actually work, and are reasonably well organized.</p><p></p><p>As with much of the market research undertaken in that era, we certainly weren't pefect in our methods, as we were inventing the whole concept of applied RPG market research as we moved forward. On the other hand, I believe that in general it was very useful, and did get to many of the underlying issues facing the genre. And I know it was much more rigorous and carefully performed than most people give it credit for - especially those who see only the "tip of the iceberg" in comments on blogs, and haven't read the whole 500+ page report produced by the effort.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="RyanD, post: 2393239, member: 3312"] I don't think it would be much help to "name names" at this late date. That was work I was involved in pre-3e, and I could not give you a complete list of games we tested as the memories are now hazy. I will say that we did test most of the games on the sales charts at the time. With regard to the product testing: I spent many long hours watching those play groups, who were derived from many different sources with many different levels of skill and experience. And I came away from the experience very frustrated with the feeling that people did in fact want a "more fun" game experience that they were not getting from D&D at the time - thus the interest in "rules lite" RPG systems. The real eye-opener was the difference between how much time people thought the rules lite games were saving them, vs. how much time those games actually did save vs. a 1E/2E baseline. (As with many things in the RPG field, when we actually quantified the "conventional wisdom" then tested it, it turned out to be wrong - and sometimes 180 degrees opposite of the truth). And when we surveyed many of those players who did express a preference for a rules lite game, we found a high degree of supressed frustration with the rules lite formats that were available - frustration at what they perceived as the arbitrary nature of the experience and the "limits" imposed by the lack of clear rules for various in-game activities they wanted to simulate. A lot of people complained that 1E/2E systems didn't work or weren't clear, or weren't well enough organized to be found "in the heat of the moment" - and we got a lot of feedback from people saying "if D&D were fixed, I'd prefer it to [Game X]" (where Game X was any number of competitive RPG systems they were currently playing instead of D&D). So rather than trying to take that stuff out of 3E, we decided to try and make it actually work as intended. Maybe there's too much in 3E that is unnecessarily complex (the attack of opportunity system wins my vote), but at least the rules as written do actually work, and are reasonably well organized. As with much of the market research undertaken in that era, we certainly weren't pefect in our methods, as we were inventing the whole concept of applied RPG market research as we moved forward. On the other hand, I believe that in general it was very useful, and did get to many of the underlying issues facing the genre. And I know it was much more rigorous and carefully performed than most people give it credit for - especially those who see only the "tip of the iceberg" in comments on blogs, and haven't read the whole 500+ page report produced by the effort. [/QUOTE]
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