Wizards of the Coast has a new D&D survey as part of the 50th anniversary celebration. #dnd#ttrog#wotc
As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of D&D we want to know what you think about the game with a quick survey!
✍️ Click the following link to access the survey! (estimated time: 2-5 minutes): http://spr.ly/6181k8FA9
@dragoncrown@slyflourish@Alphastream@darjr If I were a stockholder, I'd be interested in the results, but I also note that it's not asking whether we like Hasbro.
Seems like they're trying diagnose whether they've developed an infection from all the times they shot themselves in the foot last year.
And that animation can produce motion sickness for some people.
But yeah, I received a similar survey when I was in 8th grade.
@wyrmworksdale@dragoncrown@Alphastream@darjr it’s sad we’ll never know the results. Maybe I’ll try to recreate it on a YouTube poll but I know my results won’t be representative.
While I'm still curious from an academic perspective, "they and their shenanigans have no true value or consequence to our games" is an important perspective to bring into the discussion.
Mostly because when it comes down to it, it's the correct take.
@slyflourish@dragoncrown@wyrmworksdale@darjr It does matter what online discourse is like to those heavily online. But I don't think it matters so much compared to all the ways D&D is played, discussed, etc. Still probably good for WotC to get a feel for the online tenor, assuming they can do anything after seeing the results.
@wyrmworksdale@dragoncrown@slyflourish@Alphastream@darjr I was just thinking that they would probably have gotten more complete results if this included Hasbro. If, for example, someone were upset about the layoffs, and it affects their view on D&D, that doesn't live anywhere in this survey.
@WhatDoIKnowJR@wyrmworksdale@dragoncrown@slyflourish@darjr It’s all so limited, though. This survey won’t reach the nearly many hundreds of people I ran through a first game of D&D last weekend, or the regular players at my local gaming store.
@Alphastream@wyrmworksdale@dragoncrown@slyflourish@darjr maybe, but we don't know why they want the data. They could very easily be trying to take the temperature of what influencers and the very online are saying so they can circumvent trends that they can see. Not saying this survey was good for that either.
@WhatDoIKnowJR@wyrmworksdale@dragoncrown@slyflourish@darjr I’m a fan of surveys. It’s good to see what online folks think. Surveys just need qualifying and WotC has seemed to recently treat the online crowd like the only crowd. (As with playtesting, where the casual player gets ignored)
@slyflourish@Alphastream@darjr - I half expected them to distinguish between Hasbro and Wizards as an aftereffect of the whole "split Wizards off Hasbro" thing.
I would be interested to know how big the "I like your game, and I don't recommend it because your company sucks." contingent (that I'm in) actually is.
@Tim_Eagon@LeviKornelsen@slyflourish@Alphastream@darjr "I loved D&D since 1979, dislike Hasbro/WotC, have happily played Pathfinder instead now for the last 12+ years."... I don't expect to see those options in the survey.
@cynical13@croyle@Tim_Eagon@LeviKornelsen@slyflourish@darjr They have. At the same time, they do all kinds of great stuff too. They really took care of DMs at a recent convention. Their school program and library program have both been awesome. It’s always a mixed bag, going back to the TSR days.
@Alphastream@cynical13@croyle@Tim_Eagon@LeviKornelsen@darjr don’t forget the SRD in four other languages and committing to putting the 2024 books on Foundry. But then there’s the firing 20% of the D&D staff because Transformers underperformed…
@slyflourish@Alphastream@cynical13@croyle@Tim_Eagon@darjr - By my lights, almost (almost) every good thing they've done has been about PR, while the recent spate of badness (OGL revision, Pinkertons, etc) puts them into the class where even if they're treating people nice now, they absolutely can't be trusted...
...And their key program to help 3pp make new material demands total trust. They can cancel, you can't republish.
When someone who's been shady says "trust me", run.
@LeviKornelsen@slyflourish@cynical13@croyle@Tim_Eagon@darjr I don't see it that way, perhaps because I from time to time speak to the people actually doing those initiatives. I know their actual reasoning, and it's a human gamer-focused one. But it's totally valid if that's not how it comes across.
@LeviKornelsen@Alphastream@slyflourish@cynical13@croyle@Tim_Eagon@darjr What the people in the trenches doing the actual work intend means nothing if the C-suite undermines them at every turn, fails to understand what the product is in the least, values control over having a support structure, breaks promises (or makes false ones to begin with), sends goons to attack their customers, and even fires the aforementioned people in the trenches.
@LeviKornelsen@slyflourish@cynical13@croyle@Tim_Eagon@darjr As an example, a lot of the school program work they do on the volunteer side started with Shelly's kid and his friends wanting to take the game from their home to their school and grow it. Past programs have been influenced by Ethan's school program, etc.
It's hard to know. There was a recent article on Kickstarter's blockchain plans, saying it was basically a ploy to get $100M from an investor and turn that into stock purchases so they could make $ without selling the company. Horrid, even if they didn't actually want to pursue crypto. Companies are weird.
Hasbro has also made it clear that they intend to maximize profits on players too, so finding a way to get cheaper art for the products that are the biggest moneymakers for them does seem on brand.
@croyle@cynical13@Tim_Eagon@LeviKornelsen@Alphastream@slyflourish@darjr even with putting the SRD 5.0 in the CC, it feels like they did that just because of pressure. I never felt they did it out of goodness or because they support creators. So, there's no trust in them outside of, I trust they'll try to make the most profits... and that I trust they'll try to be deceptive.
Buuuuut... I know the wonderful ttrpg community that exists would not exist, at least in some large part, without them. It's def not ALL bad. I enjoy many WOTC products over the years. And they have responded to feedback at times. However, anything they do or products they release, I approach with skepticism at first.
@JunkyardTornado@croyle@cynical13@Tim_Eagon@LeviKornelsen@Alphastream@darjr If I had to guess, someone inside the company knew it would be a fantastic idea for the whole TTRPG industry to release the 5.1 SRD in the CC and managed to wrap it up in wet blankets and throw it out the window while everything was on fire. Bless whoever that was.
@LeviKornelsen@slyflourish@JunkyardTornado@croyle@cynical13@Tim_Eagon@Alphastream@darjr As I remember things playing out, it can't have been that. They were originally going to only release as CC-BY the parts of the 5.1 SRD that probably couldn't have been defended in court. There would have been no species, no classes, no monsters (not even animals!), no planes, no public domain pantheons, no traps or hazards...
@LeviKornelsen@slyflourish@darjr I still suspect the picture is complicated. Speaking to around 1k convention attendees, 2 mentioned they disliked D&D or the company. I think online discourse is a strange/different thing.
@slyflourish@Alphastream@darjr do I have to fold this into a little triangle and pass it first to a buddy of mine, who passes it to a buddy of yours, and then on to you? Hopefully without the teacher spotting us?