Community

As you might have noticed, the conversations on the next iteration of D&D, what people like about previous versions, what people want to change or add and all sorts of other D&D Next related conversations have kind of blown up around here :P Definitely a good thing.

Now we didn't want to create subforums for the conversations and possibly force the conversation in certain directions, but now that things are moving it looks like we need some clear divisions.

I have some ideas that are very basic such as:

• Creating a subforum for official news and moderated forum conversations with the design team
• Creating a subforum that focuses on what you liked from previous editions and want to see in the next itteration
• Creating a subforum for feedback on any official news, announcements, or sneak peaks.

Now those are just some ideas, and they may be too general, or they may be perfect but in need of adding a few more. I didn't want to move too far forward without talking to people here and seeing what you wanted as far as subforums go.

So please, tell me what you want to see. Keep in mind that we probably don't want too many subforums as we don't want to fracture the community or confuse the conversations too much, but I'm open to all suggestions!

I like the idea of subforums, but I don't know how many of them would be too many.

Jan 18, 2012 -- 9:38AM, Qmark wrote:

It seems pretty obvious that Playtesting Feedback would need its own subforum.

This is true, but no good will come from adding that forum until the open playtesting begins.

I know this doesn't address the question directly but I have a suggestion for you regarding the forums:

Employ heavy moderation. Not to remove dissenting/unpopular opinions, but to remove the troll posts and the thread-wrecking nonsense that's kept people away from the forums for some time. I haven't been able to use them at all from the release of the Grand History of the Realms.

I like the ideas you've tossed out so far. A board where playtesters can post but everyone can read would be nice (post-NDAs, of course.)

Perhaps a pair of subforums for both likes & dislikes, so complaints about previous systems can be guided into an area for constructive criticism/house rules solutions? That will give mods a place to put all the hate threads that inevitably pop up.

A "Player suggestions/ideas" subforum might help as well.

I could see creating subforums for the playtesting, especially once it gets to open playtesting.  But a subforum for "what you liked about previous editions" is just going to be too noisy for the designers to get any real feedback from. 

I would like to see the designers survey the gaming population about specific topics, a la Bruce's blog post about radiant and holy damage.  I remember many WotC surveys about which books I would buy during the 3.5e days, why not survey what types of rules I want to play with now?