WotC WotC Winter 2026 D&D Community Survey

[jerryrice4949]

I wonder how helpful these surveys really are. I suspect they overly represent people who are angry or have negative feelings and under represent those who are more satisfied.

 

[sevenbastard]

Expressed that 5.5e was a downgrade from 5e. I suggested more playtesting in the future. For example the stealth rules. Clearly the community could have helped make something usable. D&D has tons of fans who will work for free to make your game more playable why not embrace it?

 

[mamba]

I wonder how helpful these surveys really are. I suspect they overly represent people who are angry or have negative feelings and under represent those who are more satisfied.

which is fine, if you want to make changes you will need those who have criticisms more than those that do not - and if WotC cannot draw conclusions from feedback, then they should stop doing UAs

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Ah, I forgot to say "Put the 3.5 SRD into CC as is!"

I don't personally particularly care one way or the other about that, but I wrote it in to make up for you missing it.

 

[Lanefan]

Did anyone else only get 5 or 6 questions? Very short survey.

Completely assumes we're all playing the current edition, too. I honestly answered that I'd played D&D within the last week but it sure wasn't 5e!

 

[zottel]

Like that it was quick and to the point, the free form entry let me take care of my most important points.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

I used 200 words to tell WotC I will trust them if they:

• tell Hasbro CEO to shut up about AI
• stop trying to sand off all the troubled parts of the settings - if they want to remove something, have it happen in-universe or better let players do it, not just pretend it never existed and leave nothing to fill that void.
• stop making everything be both Forgotten Realms and as generic as possible.
• stop with DM-hostile design like Bastions
• stop playing favorites and making new ways for casters to clown on martials, like how College of Dance lets Bard be superior Monk to Monk in every single way.

I forgot to mention they should stop trying to delete roleplaying from the game like they did with Warlock's patron.

 

[Sulicius]

I used 200 words to tell WotC I will trust them if they:

• tell Hasbro CEO to shut up about AI
• stop trying to sand off all the troubled parts of the settings - if they want to remove something, have it happen in-universe or better let players do it, not just pretend it never existed and leave nothing to fill that void.
• stop making everything be both Forgotten Realms and as generic as possible.
• stop with DM-hostile design like Bastions
• stop playing favorites and making new ways for casters to clown on martials, like how College of Dance lets Bard be superior Monk to Monk in every single way.

I forgot to mention they should stop trying to delete roleplaying from the game like they did with Warlock's patron.

Some solid points! I'd even go so far as ask them to just leave the old settings to the people who already have the books. Those people are impossible to please anyway. Make something new!

But what about Bastions is DM hostile? The crafting rules, sure, but Bastions?

And Dance Bards really don't get close to monks, or have you experienced them at the table yet?

 

[Not a Decepticon]

But what about Bastions is DM hostile? The crafting rules, sure, but Bastions?

DM is not allowed to interact with the Bastion or its inhabitants in any way, except rolling a restrictive random table if a player hasn't been there for a week and didn't send a message with orders. It means it doesn't exist in the world and is just a video game feature that breaks immersion. It spits in the face of the idea of player actions having consequences.

Let's say a player wants to hire noble LG Paladins to be his Bastion's army - he does, it's his thing.
Then that player proceeds to slaughter Village of Women and Children, Edmonton, pee on the king and kidnapps his daughter, then runs off to hide in the bastion.
Here is what happens now. I, the DM, am explicit forbidden by the RAW to say noble knights are disgusted and appaled by his actions - they are part of the Bastion, DM is not allowed to interact with the Bastion. I am also forbidden by RAW from having king lay siege to the bastion to free his daughter - DM is not allowed to interact with the Bastion. In fact, since she is now held prisoner at the Bastion, I no longer am allowed to roleplay the kidnapped princess and the player decides how she acts - she is now part of the Bastion, DM is not allowed to interact with the Bastion. Any work to roleplay setting where consequences matter and characters have consistent personalities flew out of the window into the trash can in favor of making the game more like Skyrim, where consequences never matter, NPCs' core personality is "fold over to the player", and Universe bends over backwards to let player do whatever it wants.

And Dance Bards really don't get close to monks, or have you experienced them at the table yet?

Bard is alongside Wizard, Sorcerer, Cleric and Druid among most powerful classes in the game. College of Dance gives it very few things Monk could do but Bard had no easy way of doing. As such without any multiclassing, Bard can now easily use its magic to become superior to Monk in every way. It's a subclass that exists to give Bard players excuse to bully Monk players - your master of martial arts who trained whole life to be good at one thing is now and always will be outdone at it by a jerk who took dance classes. On my table they are mutually exclusive - if any player takes one, the other is automatically banned.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Expressed that 5.5e was a downgrade from 5e. I suggested more playtesting in the future. For example the stealth rules. Clearly the community could have helped make something usable. D&D has tons of fans who will work for free to make your game more playable why not embrace it?

Are you kidding? The "community" can't agree on a gosh-darned thing. There would be zero things the "community" could assist with that would improve anything the designers make.

After all... you got all kinds of players who only see D&D as a miniatures combat game and want every ability balanced down to the quarter-point of DPR... you have people still stuck in wanting current D&D to be replicas of editions past... you have people who want a new edition that "takes chances" by stripping it of everything that one might consider D&D and turn it into some new RPG because they're bored with the game as is... and most importantly every single player thinks every single ability is either incredible or horrible and there's not a single thing that anyone would agree on that either should be fixed, or how best to fix it.

I mean just speaking personally... if you were to put myself and @Lanefan together in a room to help the team "fix" D&D... we'd absolutely kill each other. We wouldn't agree on a gosh-darned thing and they'd throw us out of the room for arguing continuously and wasting everyone's time, LOL!