Interview with Mike Mearls

[AllisterH]

I will point out again, Wound levels do NOT work well with the heroic-nature of D&D.

Pendragon, hell yeah.

D&D where you start off as a peasant and a dog can be a legitiame threat but eventally kick enough butt to slap down a god?

Hell no.

 

[Fenes]

The perfect game for me would probably use a "simulationist" framework - trying to model something we can relate to in the real world, without getting overly complicated, and adds a gamist/narrative layer to establish themes and game balance.

The perfect game for me would be flexible enough to allow a great number of variants to allow players to pick the sort of game they want to play.

 

[Dausuul]

Levels are not that hard to rationalize but the way xp were earned in AD&D, the multiclassing restrictions and skills being tied to your level certainly were.
The subsequent editions tried to alleviate these inconsistencies but 4e brought them back with the rigid classes and the new skill system.

...Oh really? How exactly do you rationalize levels, then? In particular, how do you rationalize PCs gaining ten or twenty levels in a matter of months, with all the attendant benefits?

To me, the level system has always been the single most verisimilitude-breaking element of D&D. One really has to just avoid ever thinking about it, because if one stops to give it even a moment of consideration, it's patently ludicrous.

 

[Dausuul]

Almost every MMORPG uses hit points to track damage, and a lot more people play MMOGs than pen and paper. That doesn't mean those are normal and the others are abnormal, but one can safely say that hit points are far more known and accepted than wound levels.

The irony here is that MMOs could handle wound levels and hit location tracking without a hiccup, since the most complicated PnP system ever devised is child's play for a computer. But MMOs are still very much stuck in the D&D mold - hit points, levels, classes, XP for killing stuff, and so on - and have yet to really break out and explore the options the new medium offers them.

I think I'll go on the Blizzard forums and start grousing about how WoW is just like D&D.

As to high-octane premises and system ideas - obviously the 4e design team think there's something to be learned about system ideas from indie games, because skill challenges (and, to a lesser extent perhaps, other aspects of the 4e mechanics) incorporate some of those ideas. Likewise the idea of an explicit and metagame-heavy endgame (via Epic Destinies).

Have you ever read the BECMI rules (also known as Basic or Classic D&D)? Epic Destinies are a direct rip-off of the "paths to immortality" from that ruleset. It's got nothing to do with indie gaming - it's a throwback to old-school D&D. Unless there was an indie game scene in 1985.

I don't know about skill challenges; those may in fact have been taken from indie games. Or they may have been the result of experiments within WotC.

I see nothing wrong with RPG criticism and theories of gaming per se, but most GNS discussion strikes me as incredibly pretentious and vague, throwing around a lot of big words and trying to avoid giving a clear definition of anything. Add to that the fact that GNS has an extremely high ratio of theory to data, and I can't help but suspect that it's all a lot of hot air.

Contrast this with what Mike Mearls and other WotC designers have said about the craft of game design. It's easy to understand what they're saying, because it's grounded in actual play experience and is concentrated on getting specific and visible results. You may or may not agree with their results, but you can at least understand them.

 

[Dausuul]

Almost every MMORPG uses hit points to track damage, and a lot more people play MMOGs than pen and paper. That doesn't mean those are normal and the others are abnormal, but one can safely say that hit points are far more known and accepted than wound levels.

The irony here is that MMOs could handle wound levels and hit location tracking without a hiccup, since the most complicated PnP system ever devised is child's play for a computer.

 

[pemerton]

What I don't agree with is the idea that games need to be "pure" in any of these regards. I think most good games mix all aspects to some extent.

I don't know that I agree entirely with the second sentence, but I think that much of what makes a game suitable for gamist play (ie player empowerment, either in the character build or action resolution mechanics) also facilitates narrativism - though reward mechanics don't necessarily straddle this divide well.

EDIT: Another cross-over mechanic is RM melee combat resolution. A player may allocate some of his/her PC's combat bonus to defence, using the rest to attack. This is, in effect, a conflict resolution mechanic: the player "sets the stakes" by choosing the degree of defence, and by staking more (ie taking the risks of low defence) can get a bigger payoff (ie by attacking with a bigger offence bonus). Thus the very same mechanic satisfies purist-for-system instincts and facilitates a (very narrowly focused) narrativism.

The perfect game for me would probably use a "simulationist" framework - trying to model something we can relate to in the real world, without getting overly complicated, and adds a gamist/narrative layer to establish themes and game balance.

Torg is pretty close to that

HARP is also like this - simulationist mechanics (resembling RM in many respects, although very streamlined) but with a narrativist Fate Point mechanic and reward system. (Though the design of the game has certain minor incoherences eg it can't decide if character build rules should be understood as simulationist a la RM, or as purely metagame as would make sense for narrativist play).

TRoS is another example, though it doesn't use Fate Points/Possibilities - the Spiritual Attributes are more tightly integrated as both action resolution and reward mechanic.

 

[pemerton]

Have you ever read the BECMI rules (also known as Basic or Classic D&D)? Epic Destinies are a direct rip-off of the "paths to immortality" from that ruleset. It's got nothing to do with indie gaming - it's a throwback to old-school D&D. Unless there was an indie game scene in 1985.

Yes, I've read them. I've never really got an "endgame" vibe from the paths to immortality, but I imagine they could be played that way (as could the stronghold rules from 1st ed AD&D, I guess).

I see nothing wrong with RPG criticism and theories of gaming per se, but most GNS discussion strikes me as incredibly pretentious and vague, throwing around a lot of big words and trying to avoid giving a clear definition of anything.

Fair enough. I find the major essays reasonably clear, myself. As is fairly typical for criticism, the definitions tend to emerge in the course of use rather than in the glossary. The glossary is in my view not all that helpful.

Contrast this with what Mike Mearls and other WotC designers have said about the craft of game design. It's easy to understand what they're saying, because it's grounded in actual play experience and is concentrated on getting specific and visible results. You may or may not agree with their results, but you can at least understand them.

Mearls I find quite clear, especially in the old Monster Makeover columns. Rob Heinsoo I don't find all that clear. W&M I found pretty clear, but I don't know who wrote that.

I guess for me, the bottom line about the Forge essays is that they give me a framework better than any other that I know for understanding my own gaming preferences (mostly "purist for system" simulationism in action resolution, but vanilla narrativism supported by character build rules and a high degree of player participation in shaping the story of the campaign - hence, despite all its flaws, RM has for a long time been my main RPG) and how various sorts of mechanics work for or against those preferences, for understanding new games, and for working out where people are coming from in the 4e design debates. When a framework for analysis pays off, I keep using it.

I know you didn't use the language of "insult", but I'll say something about that as well. I play one of the most hardcore simulationist games out there, namely, Rolemaster, and I've never felt remotely insulted by Ron Edwards' essays on the relationship between mechanics and payoff from gaming. Perhaps its because of the vanilla narrativism my group uses RM for - I don't know. But I find this "insulting" thing strange.

 

[radferth]

What about that dive through Moria? What about that escape from the goblins caves under the mountains?

Dungeon delves by a ragtag, oddball mix of characters.

That is a whole whopping serving of D&D right there. Do Howard, Vance, or Moorcock ever really get THAT close to the game?

Or, in your opinion, is that part of what is wrong with D&D?

I'm a big LotR fan, and have no problem with the Tolkien-characters-have-Vance/Howard/Moorcock-adventures that pervades much of D&D, but I must assert that nothing I have read puts me in mind of a dungeon crawl half as much as Howard's Red Nails. The PCs (Conan and Valeria) stumble across a lost city that is one big building, and discover 2 waring groups who scavenge the lower chambers for magic items to use against each other.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The irony here is that MMOs could handle wound levels and hit location tracking without a hiccup, since the most complicated PnP system ever devised is child's play for a computer. But MMOs are still very much stuck in the D&D mold - hit points, levels, classes, XP for killing stuff, and so on - and have yet to really break out and explore the options the new medium offers them.

I think I'll go on the Blizzard forums and start grousing about how WoW is just like D&D.



Have you ever read the BECMI rules (also known as Basic or Classic D&D)? Epic Destinies are a direct rip-off of the "paths to immortality" from that ruleset. It's got nothing to do with indie gaming - it's a throwback to old-school D&D. Unless there was an indie game scene in 1985.

I don't know about skill challenges; those may in fact have been taken from indie games. Or they may have been the result of experiments within WotC.

I haven't played enough games or long enough, but Torg (release 1990) is the oldest one I played that a skill challenge like mechanic.

[sblock=Torg Skill Challenges]
It is different from D&D 4 or other similar approaches, I suppose, since it relies on the Drama Deck. Basically, you run normal initiative, drawing one initiative card each round as usual. The card also notes one or more of the letters A,B,C,D,E. You must get all letters in order, and roll one skill check for each. If you get a B without an A, you don't get further. If you get an ABC, you can get all 3, assuming you take 3 actions that round (which you can, you take cumulative penalties for each action) and succeed all 3 checks (you don't have to succeed all 3).
Initiative Cards have a few side effects - you can get a setback, which will remove your progress and might even lead to it becoming impossible to finish the challenge.
As far as I know, Torg usually doesn't use multiple skills per dramatic skill resolution, but that could be easily done.

Not too seldom, skill challenges happen as part of a combat encounter. (One of the last example I have in mind was one where we had to stop the deletion process for data we wanted to acquire while being attacked by two heavily armed robot drones, forcing one of the characters (interestingly, the mage, who had no idea about computers but was the only one with some scientific understanding) do deal with the challenge instead of the robots.
[/sblock]

 

[Nom]

If we're talking "Sim", we really should make a distinction between what I term "Concretism" and "World Sim". "Concretism" is when the game rules are in some way defining how the world actually works ("simulating" it). "World Sim" is purity of setting, maintaining an idea of realism regardless of the underlying mechanics. Edwards seems more interested in the latter than the former, though he certainly mentions both.

Mearls refers to this in the interview also, when he talks about pre-4E limiting the spell recharge mechanic (resting) in Sim rather than mechanics. That is, spell recharge is limited by how the gameworld works rather than any rules metric. He also notes that this fails if you're not engaging in some sort of purity of setting (ie Sim-focused) play.

It seems to me that D&D4 takes the view that it's better to build a good game than a clunky world model. Get the game mechanics (and Gamist) play solid, and let players branch off into Sim or Nar play as they like. This makes for a game that is very non-concrete, but I don't think it actually makes D&D4 any worse for "purity of setting" than prior editions. In this I agree with Edwards; using rules to force Sim play on Gamist play ends up with an overblown and clunky ruleset, and creates more loopholes for gamist play to exploit. Increasing the amount of concretist modelling just complexifies your mechanics without actually doing much to achieve "realistic" gameplay.

I see an analogy here to miniatures historical Wargaming. At some point, you need to decide whether your system goal is to model what would have happened historically (Sim) or to make a robust game (Gamist). If primarily making a game, you want simple, robust and predictable mechanics with plenty of room for tactical exploration. If primarily Sim, you be up front that you expect the game to be played with certain "realistic" biases and that powergaming the rules will almost certainly break them.