Mearls On D&D's Design Premises/Goals

lewpuls · Sep 22, 2018

Mearls' discussion might be posed even more simply. 3e encouraged the one-man-army, and power creep, and discouraged cooperation. 5e has returned to co-operation rather than individual "showing off", to adventure rather than power creep. Bravo.

DM Howard · Sep 22, 2018

lewpuls said:
Mearls' discussion might be posed even more simply. 3e encouraged the one-man-army, and power creep, and discouraged cooperation. 5e has returned to co-operation rather than individual "showing off", to adventure rather than power creep. Bravo.

Yet 4E had tons of options AND emphasized cooperation. You can, in fact, have your
, uh, bagel and eat it too.

lowkey13 · Sep 22, 2018

*Deleted by user*

Greg K · Sep 22, 2018

Jester David said:
The problem is that when you design a game around lots of different mechanical options and choices, you need to produce content to fill those gaps. That means books. And books have a set page count, so you need to have a certain amount of new content. Some of that will be requested and desired content, some of that amazing... and some will just be there. Feats and class features and spells that are just there to hit the page count. .

I disagree. This is the digital age. They can create small pdfs and put them up on RPGNow. I'd personally pay for a dollar or so individually, for one or two of the subclasses in Xanathar's, but I would never buy the book itself, because the remaining subclasses as well as much of the remaining content in the book are of no interest to me.

DM Howard · Sep 22, 2018

lowkey13 said:
And yet, without getting to various normative views about editions*, 4e was (from a sales perspective) a disappointment that allowed PF to bloom, encouraged the growth of the OSR and retroclone market, and otherwise was not considered a rousing success.

So, perhaps you can't have that bagel and eat it?

*Again, preferences are a tricky thing, and I express no view as to what is, or isn't, good. But "the powers that be" felt there was a need for a course correction after the Fourth Edition.

Oh, I'm not arguing that 4E was a failure as far as the RPG market is concerned. I'm just pointing out that lots of options doesn't inherently create an environment that is counterproductive to cooperative gameplay.

Jester David · Sep 22, 2018

DM Howard said:
Reread my post. I did not attack every single document on the DMs Guild. There are certainly gems in there, but the majority is not worth the storage it takes up.

And?
The fact that 90% of carbon is boring coal doesn't make diamonds any less shiny. (Don't forget Sturgeon's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law )

There is some AMAZING stuff on the DMsGuild. And stuff that is just outright better than the weaker/ low quality options found in official books. I'm super happy with a lot of my purchases. And finding names that I trust helps.

DM Howard said:
I don't see DMs Guild products as competing with my FLGS dollars, because I make the choice to buy in-store because I want my store to stay around and because most of the DMs Guild content isn't worth it to me.

Then why did you say:

DM Howard said:
I would like to support my store, so if it comes down to going for a Sms Guild product or buying yet another adventure from WOTC in-store then it will be the WOTC adventure.

?
That sure implies like there's competition for you.

DM Howard said:
What I contend is that DMs Guild provides a replacement for real 3rd party support. WOTC really burned their bridges in 4E and now it is coming to bite them in the butt.

Wha....?!

Okay, right now there are several big name 3rd Party Publishers doing stuff for 5e. Green Ronin, Kobold Press, Frog God Games. And many newcomers as well, like Nord Games or MCDM Productions or Sasquatch Games. Plus, if the bridges were "burned" why did so many other RPG studios step up to write and produce the first few storyline adventures for 5e?

There's NO shortage of amazing 3PP support for 5e, and the 3PP seem to have a great relationship with WotC. Heck, I've heard the owners of Green Ronin and Kobold Press on the official D&D podcast where they've been given an opportunity to pimp forthcoming kickstarters.

DM Howard said:
Their supposed "support" for retail stores is becoming all the more hilarious with their PDF treatment of Eberron not to mention their "organized" play program. I've been an AL DM for every season of AL up until ToA and I would say that it is barely a step up from "do what you want".

I'm not sure how the PDF treatment of Eberron factors in... They chose to release that as a PDF likely because releasing it as a physical book wouldn't have been viable for them, and likely not sold enough copies to justify the product. The Eberron book is really just a larger version of the Tortle Package or other digital exclusives, like The Lost Kenku or One Grung Above: a fun digital exclusive that is a bonus for hardcore fans.

WotC supports stores the only way they can: releasing the books early so excited fans have to turn to stores. And retailer incentive collector covers. What else can they do?

Focusing on AL doesn't really help stores. Only a tiny minority of gamers play AL. And not every game store has the space to run AL. And there's no guarantee people playing AL in a store will support the store in any way. In my time running and playing Organised Play, I saw a whole lot of people show up and not buy a thing from the store. Even if they walked in with a Tupperware tote of books. The most the bought was a Coke.
Honestly, "do what you want" sounds amazing for this former Living Greyhawk/ Pathfinder Society GM, where you couldn't deviate at all from the adventures and had to run things as close as possible. The freedom to get creative sounds great and much more like actually playing D&D.

Guest 6801328 · Sep 22, 2018

Morrus said:
Guys, I'd like to make it clear that it's perfectly fine for people to express their wishes for the direction of D&D, even if those wishes are unlikely to be fulfilled. Let's not tell people it's wrong to do that, eh?

I'm guessing (hoping?) that just happened to come right after my post, and was not directed at my post. But in case my intent was misunderstood, I was only responding to the "not welcome at the table" comment, and not trying to delegitimize the desires themselves.

I find the discussion/debate around this topic interesting. It's when it veers into "WotC obviously hates us" territory that I roll my eyes.

For the record, I also get my buttons pushed by tons of options and character complexity. I think all of us who are somewhere on the "spectrum" get a high from it. It's fun to just make characters. However, I find I tend to make more characters for the option-rich games, but I actually play the option-light games.

Guest 6801328 · Sep 22, 2018

Jester David said:
Okay, right now there are several big name 3rd Party Publishers doing stuff for 5e. Green Ronin, Kobold Press, Frog God Games. And many newcomers as well, like Nord Games or MCDM Productions or Sasquatch Games.

Don't forget Cubicle 7!

Greg K · Sep 22, 2018

lewpuls said:
Mearls' discussion might be posed even more simply. 3e encouraged the one-man-army, and power creep, and discouraged cooperation. 5e has returned to co-operation rather than individual "showing off", to adventure rather than power creep. Bravo.

No, the one-man-army and discouraging cooperation was an issue with DM's not wanting to control their game by telling players, "No" and/or issues with certain players. I ran 3e for several groups and the one-man-army, lack of cooperation, and showing off never appeared in my game. The same goes for other DMs whom I know. We would look over various options and decide what to us and what not to use on a case by case basis just as the 3.0 DMG told us that we were in charge of what material is used.

WOTC just neededto make it clear and continually reinforce the idea that new options are included at the DM's discretion. They had rule 0 in the 3.0 PHB, but it was not as explicit as in the DMG (well, it was in the 3.0 DMG) that the DM decides what is and is not used. This was also stressed in some Dragon Magazine articles until midway through 3.5 when the designers suddenly went from a) telling DMs that they should pick and choose options carefully with regard to their campaign to b) finding ways to include any official option (looking at Andy Collin's Sibling Rivalry column in comparison to previous comments from him in Dragon as an example).
As for power creep, a lot of it was poorly thought out options, but as Sean Reynolds posted on his website many of the options are not meant to be used together so the designers didn't worry about how options would fit into with old ones. Then again, I also see power creep in many of the classes and the general feel of the game with each subsequent edition of D&D which is why despite preferring the mechanics of WOTC games over TSR, I will not play any edition of WOTC D&D above levels 10-12 (despite feeling they toned the major spellcasters in way that I like)

Parmandur · Sep 22, 2018

Greg K said:
I disagree. This is the digital age. They can create small pdfs and put them up on RPGNow. I'd personally pay for a dollar or so individually, for one or two of the subclasses in Xanathar's, but I would never buy the book itself, because the remaining subclasses as well as much of the remaining content in the book are of no interest to me.

D&D Beyond, in fact, sells things like Race and Class ala cart.