Do you take advantage of D&D rules support?

[Darrin Drader]

I don't think the people on this forum are generally the people who would benefit from using WoTC customer services to answer rules questions. For new players and GMs starting out and confused by basic issues I can see it's a potentially valuable service (attacks of opportunity and partial actions come to mind - both took me a few months to get my head around).

Agreed! And as a veteran roleplayer, I also am a firm believer in DMs fiat and judgment calls. However, despite the video game mentality (that is having to have rigid limitations set externally with no room for error) questions keep coming in over fairly trivial matters. And it is up to me to offer the solution they aren't able to come up with on their own.

 

[fba827]

To date, I have not contacted Wizard's staff for clarification on rules. I mainly rely on three things:
a) the DM judgement (sometimes this is me)
b) player group discussion/concensus
c) these boards

However, if I ever were to contact Wizards (say via Email) and got a ruling that I disagreed with, my personality is such that I would not write back on that topic trying to discuss/clarify it any further. I would have gotten the opinion then simply used that to add as item "d" (in the above list). And, most likly, if I disagreed with it and I were the DM (and got general player concensus) it would have simply been House Ruled.

End of story... I simply don't like the idea of continuous Email exchanges with a company/organization (or anyone on a non-personal level). After all, you guys are a business. You probably have other things to attend to. I like to presume that you gave whatever information you thought was important in your initial Email and saved yourself the time of a conversation (unless of course the Email specifically had follow-up questions to better answer my questions, etc.)....

but, what can I say, I am really a pretty passive sort of person when it comes to conversations and debates. If I don't agree, I simply thank the person for their opinion and move on with my life..


(err.. this became a ramble.. I'm way too tired. apologies for anyone bored by this unstructured ramble).

mmmm.... Donuts...

 

[Willtell]

No

I've used the the faq for wizards products and the website to ask questions - I did not know you could email wizards (other than the sage) about the answers to questions.

 

[jeffh]

Occasionally I get a ruling from R&D that seems to contradict what's written in one of the rulebooks. In those cases I ask them about the contradiction and they usually say that either the book is wrong, or the rule was fixed in erratta or a later book. This is then backed up with some good solid game design philosophy I had previously known nothing about (and I have the official design guide).

How top-secret is that design guide? Anything that can be shared with people for the purpose of solidifying their house rules, or that might (in significant part) make it into future products?

In a normal day I answer approximately 60 D&D emails, or about 8 per hour. That's one every 13 minutes. Some don't take as long, some take much longer. The average number of questions in a single email is 3.

Which is it? 8 per hour is a lot more than one every 13 minutes (it's one every 7.5). Just curious because I do a similar job (though it's nothing to do with games of any kind, sadly).

 

[Cheiromancer]

In order of preference I prefer:

1. A discussion on the rules boards, where luminaries like Crothian or KReynolds pitch in.

2. A reply by Monte Cook, Andy Collins or Sean K Reynolds.

3. A printed ruling by the Sage, or official errata.

4. An e-mail from the Sage.

5. An IMHO from someone on these boards whose name I recognize (or whose previous posts I can look up)

6. A reply from WotC customer service, or someone I don't know.

 

[Olive]

No, mostly because I've heard bad things, and the boards here seem to be pretty fast. I have used the Sage tho.

 

[Darrin Drader]

How top-secret is that design guide? Anything that can be shared with people for the purpose of solidifying their house rules, or that might (in significant part) make it into future products?

The design guide has *** CONFIDENTIAL *** written all over it, so that's probably about as much of it as I can really reveal.

Which is it? 8 per hour is a lot more than one every 13 minutes (it's one every 7.5). Just curious because I do a similar job (though it's nothing to do with games of any kind, sadly). [/B]

8 per hour. See what happen when I try to do math when I'm really tired?