Deathbringer here! Playtesters are my favorite sort of people: victims who are literally asking to be killed. I will take them in, chew them out, and add them all to the mountain of skulls. Their noble sacrifice will build something greater than themselves. I respect no one, but playtesters come close, those brave fools.

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Over here at Roll for Combat, we try to treat our playtesters better than Deathbringer, though he's not wrong that there will likely be a lot of dead characters by the time we are through. Playtesting will happen in waves, with the first wave starting some time in September and the other waves' timing TBD (it will depend on the scope of the playtest changes and might be sooner or later based on that).

If you've participated in a beta or early access of a video game before and think the playtest will be something like that, think again. In this playtest, just about anything can change based on feedback, though it might not change the way you expect. We'll take in feedback to determine symptoms and then make changes to address the root causes. If it's already in great shape, maybe it'll just be tweaks, but in our experience you usually wind up needing a few big changes too. Professor DM has made it clear that he wants the gameplay to be as fast, smooth, and intuitive as possible and that anything can go if necessary to achieve that goal. Nothing is too sacred if it gets in the way of the game.

For the first wave, we are looking for a small and select group to provide focused feedback. Those who are part of the first wave (backers at the higher tiers) will be invited to a private Discord server, where you can discuss things with us and each other. The playtesters and their groups will sign NDAs and receive a playtest packet with the beta rules. We'll be looking to have a shared experience playtesting one or more of the pre-written adventures, as well as plenty of playtesting of the playtest GMs' homebrew adventures to test out the way the system handles various situations and make more use of the various monsters and options. The benefit of the shared experience is that it can show us more about variation; if everyone is running something completely different, then we only have exactly one example of how that specific situation played out. Professor DM will be joining periodically on video calls to chat with you as well.

Once the first wave stabilizes, no matter how long that takes, we will add additional waves of playtesters to help further refine the game. The later waves of the playtest are not as intensive, as we will likely have figured out the biggest changes from the first wave, but they are crucial for finding anything that remains to be found. Even if you don't have time during the playtest waves, Roll for Combat's policy in publishing is to always send you the digital versions when they are completely done; that way, if you notice a mistake or typo even after the playtest, we can still have a chance to fix it for the print version and release an updated PDF. 

That's about it. We promise to stop Deathbringer from adding you and your players to the pile of skulls... but your characters? Maybe not so much.

~Professor DM and the Roll for Combat team