D&D Virtual Table Top

[Necron 99]

Well, here it is. This is the culmination of all the efforts in what WotC has planned for D&D moving into the 6th edition. For online play, ok, it's a virtual table top and one that is going to have a LOT of bells and whistles. If players, online, want to take advantage of this, with whatever fees or costs are involved, so be it.

But this isn't tabletop D&D. As one person in the comments noted, "...but I die inside looking at a table of people in person looking at their screens talking to each other but not even looking at each other"

Plus, WotC is going to have to convince people that somehow this VTT is good enough to warrant payment above and beyond what folks pay, or have already paid, for VTTs currently on the market. WotC's VTT does one thing...it runs a D&D game. Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, Foundary, etc. they can do D&D and many other RPGs. Personally, I think this is going to be a very hard sell. Maybe if folks were locked down again with only the online world with which to escape, but now, no way. I'd be surprised if this platform lasts more than 3 years after official release.

[Ancalagon]

It will be a harder sell after WotC poisoned the well with the OGL fiasco and pissed off A LOT of players. No interest there.

[Necron 99]

WotC had some sort of D&D Creator Summit in which a folks asked a bunch of questions. Based on some of these, it's easy to see why this game has fallen so far. The amount of talk about "health" and "mental health" leads me to believe these people are the biggest problem in the industry. There's more crap like this posted on another site, but this pretty much says it all.

These people, both WotC and the ones asking the questions, are an embarrassment to the hobby and the game currently using the title, Dungeons and Dragons.

There's a lot lack of confidence and distrust in the community right now. Many of us were attacked for even coming here. What are you going to put in place protections and restore the lack of trust the community feels?
Good question. I think this what we're doing. We're engaging directly. January was horrible. it was no the "welcome to the D&D team" i wanted. I think we lost sight in that moment that in that moment D&D is a dialogue. While I'm not at all happy with the trust we burned but I am happy with where we landed, that the SRD is in Creative Commons and irreversibly so. it's a signal that we want to keep D&D open and inclusive. Rebuilding trust is continuing to build on the dialogue we're all leaning into here. My commitment as the head of D&D is be here and have a dialogue with you and keep it going. it's an ongoing process.

Dixon: We want feedback aimed at us, not the creators working with us. You shouldn't take abuse for things we do.

Follow-up question for Dixon: Wondering what Wizards will do for us after the conclusion of this event but people are still going to yell at us. We've experienced that for a month. It wears down our mental health. It hurts me seeing all the people in this room who took abuse and not seeing Wizards do anything about the harassment we received.
Sometimes we step in and it settles things and sometimes we say something and it inflames things further. We don't want to create the Streisand effect so we need feedback from you as to how we can step in and do it better. We want to be active listeners that create better solutions with you that works for all of us.

A speaker noted that a lack of response can be just as bad as a poor response. It comes across as a lack of communication. Wizards has a PR department. We do not. We're passionate this community. We appreciate you trying to formulate the answer because we're being attacked in the meantime while you're waiting. Dixon agreed that sometimes we need to respond quickly and sometimes we need to step back, reassess and formulate an answer.
Yes, there are issues we need to address and do it better. I'm not going to stand in front you today with a plan that is half baked. Yes, it's going to take some time to make a plan for the future. We really encourage you to talk to us and give us truth that's unvarnished because the only way we'll be able to make that feedback useful. I want people feeling comfortable speaking truth, whether that's in surveys, coming into our Twitter DMs, etc. because that gives us the information needed to make actual changes. We are working toward getting that solved and making a space that's better for all creators.

When creators are constantly taking the hits on behalf of WotC because we're the people people can access. It takes a toll and wears on us. Are you putting together mental health and support resources because we need them.
We're working on this within the company but it's different when it's outside the company. Send us your suggestions for how you can be supported. These are hard questions. I understand the concern about being targeted online. We've had that happen to our own team members. it does stake a toll. I've seen it on their faces. it's a super difficult problem without a straightforward answer.

Employees have access to mental health resources and support. We as freelancers don't. it's become toxic. We're here because we love this game. it feels like you don't have our back and we need you to.
Thank you for sharing that so openly. There have been several missteps in the handling of race in D&D, handling of Hadozee, long standing issues about orcs, changes to the term race, and more. Tasha's addressed a little bit. What is your game plan for addressing this in the future. What is Wotc's high level approach for handling it and how to rebuild trust?

We're doing inclusion reviews. Sharing it to a pro, sharing it to another pro. Make changes. Share it back to the pro and see if it addresses it. We want to make the game as welcoming as possible to as many people as possible but a fact of what happens i that some people will then dislike those changes. Species is one change we're testing. No decision has been made yet.

What is Wizards core value at a high level? With queer, trans, etc. players more visible than possible, which has dangers. What is your core audience? What is your plan for race?
More, not fewer. We're trying to widen the play space. We're always making steps in those direction. I think today's audience is bigger than it has ever been but I also think it's a fraction of what it could be so we need to be more inclusive. We need to look at what content is not welcome in our spaces because it reflects hate. We need to walk our convictions and ideologies of inclusivity to make it clear hate is not welcome. We're going to publsih content guidelines so you'll be able to review it and comment on it. We're making changes on an ongoing basis. For example, "savage" is gone. "Dim-witted" is gone.

It often sounds like changes are made at the end of the process to be inclusive. i think we'd like to hear more about the steps taken in the early stages. Who is in the room from day one making sure not only is it something that can be caught in review but makes sure it's never in the book in the first place?
Diverse teams make stronger and better teams. Having folks in the room who can offer different life perspectives. The inclusion review process came out after Spelljammer so now everything going forward has these checks in place from the beginning and the very formation of the idea. The process we have now, it never could have happened in Spelljammer. It would be caught early.

A creator who felt he was thrown under the bus in an article asked what to do to prevent that in the future. He was told to contact them immediately, not weeks or months later.
If a content creator feels they're being called out by WotC, they need to reach out so WotC can review it and address it. "If you see something, say something. There is a team of people who want to help resolve these situations."

What are the current means and methods do you have in place for monitoring the community, not just on Twitter but other places, and how do you take that into account when you proceed?
All the time. I'm working with our teams to get feedback and get a sense of how things are perceived. We try to be as present in seeing what your thoughts and opinions are. Sometimes we have to look at the overview. It's not just data, it's people we collect feedback and do a lot of listening. Twitter doesn't reward mild takes so if we only look at Twitter, we'll get a skewed view. We want to have these conversations. That might be in a public forum or not. if honest feedback requires a private email, that's fine. if it's in an open forum, fine.

Given that 95% of these questions have been addressed by your inclusivity and diversity team, how do you plan to expand and support the team?
They come to me and as they express needs, we address them?

Will you be hiring more because clearly more community support is needed?
Our team works heard to help and serve you. We may not get to everything immediately ubt we will escalate internally.

[Ancalagon]

Goodness knows I'm not defending WotC, but why should WotC provide mental health services to freelancers?

Regarding WotC's diversity and Inclusivity approach... when you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one.

At one time I toyed with the idea of including 5e in the list of systems to convert modules into for sale. After the OGL fiasco and identity politics taking precedence over all else... no longer.

[Necron 99]

Even more news coming out of the WotC summit.

In their latest step forward on their long march to lost profits, Wizards of the Coast has revealed that they will be removing the concept of ‘Half-‘ species from the Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook on the grounds that they are “not comfortable” including an “inherently racist” concept in the game.

Eventually, the post-demo Q&A turned to the topic of WotC’s ongoing efforts to sanitize D&D, beginning with a question about how exactly the publisher makes use of their sensitivity readers.

“We don’t send everything to the same people all the time,” Crawford explained of their content review process (per a summary of the event posted to the EN World forum by user brimmels and a recap provided by content creator Daniel Kwan). “Different reviewers have different areas of expertise and experience. Everything gets sent to at least 2 people, sometimes more. The old inclusion review process had holes in it because they would only send out what they thought would be a problem. Now EVERYTHING is sent out so we aren’t guessing what might be a problem.”

“Our team are game designers and storytellers, we’re not experts in culture and inclusion,” he added. “So we’re focused on what damage should this creature do. That’s why everything goes through inclusion review now so everything in our game brings out delight. Even reprints are going through inclusion review. That’s why some older books are changing, too.”

Further elaborating on WotC’s process, the designer detailed, “We get a full report. We then address the issues identified. We have a conversation. Then it goes back to the reviewers so they can see what we did and comment as to whether it addressed the issue. We also now send the art, even the sketches, through the review process. Jeremy thinks of it as ‘inclusion collaboration’ because it’s a conversation going on.”

To this end, Crawford then confirmed that due to the game now having four elf variants for players to choose from when creating a character – standard Elves, high Elves, Wolf Elves, and the Drow – the Player’s Handbook would soon be revised to do away with ‘half-‘ species.

“Frankly, we are not comfortable, and haven’t been for years with any of the options that start with ‘half’,” he explained of this decision. “The half construction is inherently racist so we simply aren’t going to include it in the new Player’s Handbook.”

However, despite their removal from the Player’s Handbook, Crawford assured players that “If someone wants to play those character options, they’ll still be in D&D Beyond [and] they’ll still be in the 2014 Player’s Handbook”

It should be noted that though players may still be allowed to create Half- characters, thanks to their removal from the core materials, such characters can not be used in an officially-sanctioned event.)

[Ancalagon]

The dumbassery has no end. So now I think I'll be offended cuz my character's parent are a human and an elf who fell in love, married and begat said character. But now, according to WotC, my existence makes them uncomfortable. I think WotC needs to go to some sensitivity training and be more inclusive.

[Necron 99]

I want to purposely play in one of the "official" D&D games at the next convention, sit down at the table with a half-orc, and then when they say, "oh, that's not a legal character", I want to say, "Well, my half-orc identifies as a moon elf, so it's all good, bruh."

And then watch as their head explodes.

[Necron 99]

Dungeon Craft on the Summit and VTT

[Ancalagon]

I want to purposely play in one of the "official" D&D games at the next convention, sit down at the table with a half-orc, and then when they say, "oh, that's not a legal character", I want to say, "Well, my half-orc identifies as a moon elf, so it's all good, bruh."

And then watch as their head explodes.

Duuuuuuude..... You, me, Q, and Jared should all do that at the same table.

[Captain_Blood]

I want in. I've got a 1/2 Orc - 1/2 Hobgoblin fighter who's goal in life is to impregnate every female or every fertile species. I've modeled him on Genghis Khan.