Dungeons & Dragons Team Releases Results of Weekly Fan Polls

[JonB]

Dungeons & Dragons Team Releases Results of Weekly Fan Polls

The numbers reveal an intriguing trend in how monsters are viewed by the player base.

Throughout the development of the new edition of Dungeons & Dragons the team at Wizards of the Coast has been polling the public about their monster and game design concepts via James Wyatt's "Wandering Monsters" [https://www.wizards.com/DnD/Archive.aspx?category=all&subcategory=wanderingmonsters] column. Today, in what was the last column, Wyatt released a visual representation of the statistics. It shows a fascinating trend of agreement among D&D players - blue is complete agreement with the D&D team's design decisions, and red is near-complete agreement. From green down are people who mostly or completely disagreed with the D&D team's description of what a monster should be like.

"Any time the green dipped below the 70 percent line, that was a clear signal that something needed more thought and discussion," wrote Wyatt. It's some of the only insight we've had into how the design team has been directly utilizing the feedback from fans. For example, we now know that the design team likely hasn't changed anything about how the Beholder is represented in the game, but almost definitely changed the roll of good-aligned monsters like the Lammasu and Couatl.

You can see a few more results at the Wizards Daily D&D blog. [https://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4wand/20140312] Wyatt also discusses some other kinds of questions about the feedback on various D&D races and classes.

Here's the big chart:

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[Falterfire]

Oh look! A perfect example of how not to do a graph.

Seriously, that thing is damn near unreadable and the totally unorganized list of creatures just makes it worse. I'm sure there's interesting data here, but I can't be bothered with the headache of trying to figure it out.

 

[SilverStuddedSquirre]

What the Fuck am I looking at? This is less helpful than rules wording from Second Edition

 

[JonB]

What the Fuck am I looking at? This is less helpful than rules wording from Second Edition

The more things change...

 

[SilverStuddedSquirre]

What the Fuck am I looking at? This is less helpful than rules wording from Second Edition

The more things change...

LOL good point! Please don't take that as any negativity towards you, just as the First poster pointed out: Graph Fail

 

[fluxy100]

My god that graph is making my head hurt. I'm sure there is some interesting data there, but it's way too hard to comprehend

 

[Captainguy42]

Christ this graph's labeling is atrocious. I mean look at Orc and Goblin there are like 3-5 bars in between those two labels. Which corresponds to those bars? Did Orc have multiple polls so it has multiple bars? Are we measuring a spectrum of monsters from Orc to Kraken with each bar simply being at certain intervals? There is nothing to give me context to how those names relate to those bars. Normally I wouldn't need a note because I could rely on the creator's ability to properly space his chart, but with all those bars squeezed together like commuters on a subway I think I need a fricking GPS, Hal 3000 and a cryptologist to figure out what the hell an bar is suppose to represent. So way to go man, you spend MONTHS compiling this data only to share in a format that's as informative as a lines of cocaine on a bus stop in New Hampton.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

Yes, the graph is atrocious, but if it makes you feel better you should know that the questions were pretty useless too. The questions were often very misleading and poorly phrased, offering a false choice or debating things that no one in the community was bothering to debate (and given D&D players, that's saying something).

I really hope that 5th Edition works out, and I think it probably will, but the "behind the scenes" glimpses that these articles have been offering for the past year were not very encouraging.

 

[BeeGeenie]

Agreed, the graph sucks(especially the labeling which makes it almost useless), but it is explained in the article.
The colors represent how people rated the designs and how much they agreed with it compared to what they'd expect of a monster.
Blue (5) = Complete agreement
Red (4) = Near agreement
Green (3) = Some disagreement (halfpoint)
Purple (2) = Major disagreement
Teal (1) = Complete disagreement.

So as an example, almost half the people had issues with the Golem design.

Whether or not this is based on their stats, visual design, description or all of the above, I have no idea, but judging from the link it's mostly to do with their description and lore.

Back to the golem; How so many disagreed with the design, I have no idea. That's a hard monster to fuck up, so either they added some shitty ideas (like a plastic golem) or they reworked the lore to something über specific. Might be how you make one, since that's always been a sore point.

I looked up golem for "D&D Next" which I assume is what's coming and found "Wicker Golem", which would explain the negative opinions. Who the hell makes a golem out of straw? Wizard victims of the economical crisis? People who are allergic to clay?

Ah, but that's the confusing thing. There are TWO lines for every creature. For the Golem, one looks like about 55%, the other about 65%. So does that mean that the average between those two lines is 60%? Were there two different polls about each monster? Or is the entire chart complete Bull$)(!t?

 

[Kahani]

Ah, but that's the confusing thing. There are TWO lines for every creature.

Actually, it's even more confusing than that. There aren't two lines for every creature, there are however many lines he happened to make polls for. For Golems, there were two [https://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4wand/20121218]. For dragons there were at least [https://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4wand/20130108] five [https://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4wand/20130115], although three aren't agree/disagree questions and probably aren't included here. For many others there's only one [https://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4wand/20130205]. Although in the case of minotaurs included in that last link, that's actually the second poll after their first description didn't get good results.

So basically, the graph on its own is meaningless. It's a vague overview of the results that can really only be understood in conjunction with the actual articles and polls it's based on.

Edit: As for why there was so much disagreement for golems, I'm really not sure. It looks like a pretty standard description of D&D golems to me.