Nominations for an advanced copy of the D&D 5e starter pack! Nominations have expired

Question

Based on community approval of: How should we determine which users receive advance D&D 5e materials when RPG.SE gets them?

We have three advanced copies of the starter set to give away. Nominations will be accepted until we have to make a decision (likely in a few days from the 17th of June). The moderators and community coordinators will decide upon the three based on upvotes and our assessed probability of the recipient asking good questions.

Also, please add where in the world you are. We may have some shipping problems.

Don't worry about other people having more votes than you, we will take time of nomination into account when deciding.

We're almost done deciding, so the nomination process is now closed.

Answer 1

I'd like to nominate.

I've been following D&D Next since it was but a rumor and playtested it with my normal RPG group during the early editions of the play test materials. Since the playtest released I've been active in the asking and answering of questions on the subject and would love to be able to continue to do so when the final editions are released.

There are two things I think are important to commit to when we distribute materials like this to our users. The first is a commitment to run games either IRL or online so that we can familiarize ourselves with the materials and how they actually play in games. The second is that the people who we give these two will contribute to our community by asking and answering questions on this site.

I can commit to both of these things. While I'm unsure of whether or not I will have an IRL playgroup available, I will host a weekly game with an open invitation to whoever is interested in playing on the Stack. Time will be mid evening EDT and the day of the week will be flexible.

I'm already very active answering and asking questions in the 4th edition tag and D&D next and I intend to continue to be as active. If provided with materials I can do it more quickly and more efficiently than I would otherwise be able to.

I live in NW Georgia (US EDT)/GMT -5.

Answer 2

I nominate myself.

Why I think I'm a valid candidate

1. Playtest Experience - I've been playing the D&D Next Playtest for pretty much the whole way through. I've seen the various iterations on what will become D&D 5e at each stage, partaking in the feedback surveys as well as critically following the news and discussions occurring surrounding the development of the new edition.

2. Active on dnd-next, one of the top users for both asking and answering (5 and 6 respectively).

3. High level of RPG.SE activity - I'm logged in just about every weekday on both my PC and my phone. I am active in both asking and answering questions on a variety of tags/systems and am logged into RPG.SE chat to discuss and help other users about 8 hours a day if not more.

What I plan to do with the materials

1. Exhaustively read through them and ask questions as they occur to me while and discuss these questions with other members in the community to find the best possible answer.

2. Run a campaign in real life for my friends. My long-term college friends are interested (we currently play 4e and played the playtest) and I would be running a campaign for them in the system.

3. Offer to run an RPG.SE promotional campaign on Roll20.net for other RPG.SE users (and anyone else interested) that could be used to promote our site and help spread the knowledge about the new system to users who don't end up with a copy of the books.

I live in Philadelphia, PA so I'm currently in EST or GMT -5.

Answer 3

Why Should You Vote for Me?

1. I'm a regular on the site. I check the site several times a day, and I've been around long enough to know all the ins & outs of how the site is supposed to work.
2. I like answering questions. As of this post I have 200 answers and 8 questions.
3. I like reading rule books. In high school I participated in a mock Congress. While I didn't win any important elected positions (elections are somewhat silly in a group of teenagers who just met 4 hours before), I was apparently the only one who read the trimmed-down Robert's Rules of Order describing the process we would be using, and therefore the only one to inform certain persons about privileges the fine print offered them. For my sins I was made House Parliamentarian: "You can't play the game if you don't know the rules." I've also read quite a few rule books for RPG systems I've never actually played, merely because I was interested in learning about the mechanics.
4. I can put a lot of eyes on the rulebooks. I'm in a regular group and a semi-regular group, and some friends & friends-of-friends have another regular group they wouldn't mind me joining for a bit to try something new. I and my circle constitute 11 people, including 3 aggressive optimizers, 3 serious roleplayers, and 5 regular or rotating GMs.
5. I haven't played or even seriously read the playtests. That's actually a good thing, because it means I don't have any earlier variations of the rules in my head. When I see a question, the only thing that will come to mind is the official rulebook. This may seem to contradict #3 above, but see #1 below.

Why Shouldn't You Vote for Me?

In the interests of full disclosure, here are some reasons why I may not be the community's first choice.

1. I don't know that I'll stick with this edition for the long haul. I thought 4e was a huge improvement over 3.5 in most ways, and from what I've seen of the design discussions WotC is posted, 5e sounds like it's doing some serious backtracking. Don't get me wrong, I've got a lot of nostalgia for the 2e through 3.5 games I played, but I think a fair amount of that fun was despite the system, not because of it. Maybe I'll be wrong about it, but while I like learning new systems (see #3 above), I don't currently expect to like 5e enough to be playing it a year and a half from now.
2. I have limited daily availability. We have some regulars on this site who, in addition to being amazing human beings, also apparently spend 6+ hours a day refreshing the site looking for questions to answer. I am not one of these people. I can mainly only answer questions from 7pm to 10pm (US Central) on weekdays, plus for brief interludes at lunch & before work, though I should be on considerably more on the weekend. If sheer availability is one of our criteria (and frankly it should be), then there are definitely other people who have me beat.

I live in Houston, Texas.

Answer 4

I would like to throw my hat in the ring, but I don't feel comfortable marketing myself at the expense of others. Its for that reason that I prefer a more objective criteria than who can write the better election post.

I play in a weekly group in person, and am currently playing in 5 online games.

I feel I could contribute a lot to this site and be able to pull more people to the website if I had early access to the books. There is a gaming conference in Israel in October where I could likely run a game and advertise RPG.se if I was able to get the official books.

My activity on the site speaks for itself.

In addition to playing in my own group, and online for quite a while, I am also aware of many of the commonly asked questions on various forums, and will be able to restate those questions here along with accurate answers. I will likely be doing that anyways, though without early access, my answers will be given weeks later rather than the same day. I live in Israel, however I have received items from SE in Israel before, such as a t-shirt.

Answer 5

I nominate myself.

As the owner of The Bronze Coin, a physical location for groups to meet and roleplay, I'm in a unique position to share the physical materials with several groups DMed by various people. I would make it clear to players and DMs when they start their games just exactly where the materials came from and encourage them to ask their own questions.

I would also, of course, be running a game myself. I would follow the next tag and answer any question I have the knowledge to cover, and ask any questions that came up in my own game.

I have a long-standing record of supporting SE sites, having been a Pro Tem Moderator of the Science Fiction and Fantasy SE and been a regular user of RPG.se and others even as my life has filled up with more and more responsibilities. However, as those responsibilities grow in regards to The Bronze Coin, the more eyes the materials will be placed in front of. So if my own engagement would wane, the engagement of many others will wax.