Dungeons & Dragons Has Been Paying Attention to Online Feedback to Playtests

Dungeons & Dragons' top designer sees your Discord comments...or at least a summary of them. At Gen Con, ComicBook.com had the chance to interview D&D lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford about the upcoming 2024 rules revisions. These rules revisions have been publicly playtested over the course of the past year, with players filling out extensive surveys that help determine what features stay and go in the game. During the interview, Crawford mentioned that they pulled from all the feedback they've received about Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition over the years, including old surveys. "[The 2024 rules revisions] really is a culmination of the iterative process we've used for all of Fifth Edition," Crawford said. "And it's going to include not only the feedback that we're getting from the current Unearthed Arcana surveys, but also feedback we've been receiving in other Unearthed Arcana surveys. Because fans, when they fill out surveys, will not only give us their thoughts on the content of the particular Unearthed Arcana they're looking at, but often give us their thoughts on other parts of the game. So, we've actually been receiving direct fan feedback about the entire game for nearly 10 years now, going all the way back to the beginning of the D&D Next process."

Crawford noted that the D&D design team keeps all of the written feedback it has received over the last 10 years and has even tried out new directions for game rules based on recurring feedback that they've received. Crawford also noted that there are three designers on his team that currently parse through the survey results (compared to one during the D&D Next period that preceded the release of 5th Edition) due to the sheer number of feedback they've received. This led ComicBook.com to ask Crawford whether the D&D design team pays attention to the discourse coming from other segments of the D&D community. "So for us, the surveys are the most direct way to speak to our team," Crawford said. "Because again, the words people write, they are delivered right to our team. As important as it is, we do also look at online discussions in places like Reddit and Twitter." 

According to Crawford, the social media team does collect regular feedback from Reddit, Twitter, and even the official D&D discord. "I'm not sure I've ever talked publicly that I receive reports even about discussions on D&D and rules that go on the official D&D Discord," Crawford said. "And we also are looking at usage data on D&D Beyond. Ever since D&D Beyond was created, even before it was officially a part of Wizards of the Coast, our team has had access to the character building data in that tool. And so we've been able to see for years how many people are playing fighters, how many people are playing fighter Champions versus fighter Eldritch Knights and how many people are playing Rangers. We look at all of these data sources as we look for a sort of tapestry of what does the broader community thinks. Because our community is huge and no one data source can adequately convey what this large of a community thinks. Because not only are there many, many people, but they also have many different perspectives on where they would like D&D to go."

Crawford stated that drawing from different sources was important, in part because of the diversity that Dungeons & Dragons encourages. "Part of the power of D&D is that it is this big tent that accommodates so many different play styles, different tastes in terms of genres of fantasy, and different moods about what's appropriate at the table," Crawford said. "D&D has a really vast territory that it covers and that to me is a challenge when we work on it, but it's also one of the beauties of the game. It's part of why it appeals to so many of us. Because one week if you're in a particular mood, you can have a gothic horror D&D game. And the next week if you want, you could have a zany Acquisitions Incorporated-style game. And then the next week you could have a heartbreaking, epic high fantasy, where people are laying their lives on the line and engaging in beautiful romance. All of that is Dungeons & Dragons. So because of how diverse the game itself is and the community, we go to all of these different sources to chart the course ahead for the game."