Community

This is a bit of an esoteric blog, relating to the Wizards of the Coast Community forums. If you’re a poster or lurker there and have not heard the news out of the, check out this blog post and this forum thread.

Seriously, stop reading this now, check out those links and then come back.

Wrecan

For those of you who never ventured into the WotC Community, Mark “Wrecan” Monack was frequent poster in the community. Prolific really. He seemingly posted daily and contributed numerous blogs. He wrote house rules and speculated on the design of the game, blogged about the past and future of the game, and for fun he penned haikus related to each week’s Rule-of-Three. The bulk of his personal rules can be found under “Unearthed Wrecan”.

Wrecan did not just

4th Edition was sold with the digital tools. Much of the initial hype was predicated on the suite of digital offerings. The initial presentation had demos of the tools. WotC cancelled the printed copies of Dragon and Dungeon so as to tie them into their electronic offerings. The print copies of all of the Core rulebooks advertised the existence of the e-tools & magazines wrapped up in a package known as "Dungeons & Dragons Insider" or DDI. The little red DDI logo is pretty synonymous with 4th Edition, being attached to users and articles.

But DDI had troubles before it even launched. While WotC continued as if nothing was wrong, months before the launch they scrapped everything that had been done and started again. When the tools were released they were good, but two never made it out

It's time again for the contract-mandated Doom 'n' Gloom entry for "Jester" David's blog.

5e is coming closer and closer with the first playtest done and the second due "sometime". Last I heard the second round was the end of summer, so late August or early September, meaning it might be the last playtest before the books have to get finished and out to the printers. So there's still time for WotC to royally F-up D&D Next, producing instead what more cynical people have called "D&D Last".

But just how could WotC turn such a hyped and positive experience built around a framework of crowd sourcing and open playtesting into a poor edition and commercial failure?

I'll tell you.

Not Enough Testing

Despite the mass public playtest, this might happen. While WotC is being silent regarding

Once again I take a crack at evaluating the D&D website. You can read my first two critiques here and here. 

Setting the Bar

What would the perfect D&D website do?

• Hub. It should be the center of the D&D community and the game.
• Information. It should educate players old and new and old.
• News. This includes reporting the latest information, hosting press releases and reports of large events, in addition to offering information on the game and game products.
• Marketing. It should be an advertising tool, a place to hype new products and sell books.
• Multiple-Platforms. The website should be navigable and usable on PCs, Macs, Netbooks, tablets, and smartphones.

When someone first hears of this strange game called "Dungeons & Dragons", which is a game without winners or losers,