D&D Next Playtest Package Questions Answered! (Mike Mearls, Jeremy Crawford)

[renau1g]

I didn't really get the 5-feet question. Whether he calls a square a 'square' or '5-feet', why is he converting it to anything? Or does he mean dividing by five to make squares presents a difficulty?

Being also European, I simply don't share his difficulty. It's never even occurred to me. Is he converting GP to Euros and speed to km/hr, too?

Colour me confused. Just call it a square it it makes you happier; I prefer 5' myself as it feels more real.

I'm Canadian, and while we have a lot of American influence, I also don't suffer any issue with the units of measurement in the game.

2 yards/meters seems too much for me for some reason. 6.5 feet seems high....

 

[Drowmage]

Yard is better to a more international audience.

 

[Thalionalfirin]

Forgive my ignorance, but was this chat on the Wizards website? I looked for a recap there and didn't see anything being announced.

 

[Kichwas]

2 yards/meters seems too much for me for some reason. 6.5 feet seems high....

EDIT: Read you as suggesting 2 meters, and like an idiot I didn't even finish reading your sentence... I always get annoyed when people do that to me...

So the below is really in agreement with you rather than disagreement...


2 yards / meters is even worse than 5 feet in terms of scale - it makes drawing rooms very hard, and makes it near impossible to hold a fight in a normal sized room without having special rules for 'standing in the same square as somebody else'.

Plus, growing up in the inner city - 3 feet is more like the space you use for a fight, even one armed with machetes / shovels and such. You can fit 2 people in about 2 to 4 feet of space once it hits unarmed (which becomes a great way to take out a "kung-fu kid" -as opposed to a real martial artist that knows how to set up a move- who tries to kick somebody, when you grab their leg...).

Of course in the real world these things get super messy and you'd end up 'sharing the space' of a whole living room or such and you toss, shove, pull, trip, and so on... even when armed... Tracking that on a miniatures grid is almost pointless from being -too clean-.

 

[Kichwas]

I always wonder where people get these myths from. TSR never sold the rights to Microsoft for development or publishing of games based on the D&D properties. The vast majority of D&D games were published by SSI, Interplay, and Atari over the years.

Read and learn -> 1982-2011 DnD licenced games

I could have sworn there was some issue with one of the major game publishers in the 90s selling its rights to online use to Microsoft - and I'd thought it was D&D. But I'm coming up blank on any Google references... so... shrug... not sure where I got that from.

 

[jadrax]

Of course in the real world these things get super messy and you'd end up 'sharing the space' of a whole living room or such and you toss, shove, pull, trip, and so on... even when armed... Tracking that on a miniatures grid is almost pointless from being -too clean-.

When I ran Warhammer, which had a lot of Urban fights, we was always interesting when you could say that the fight was taking place in room with the same dimensions as we were playing in (even if this meant moving location). With the right props suddenly you start realsing that you can only realistically attack with full sword strokes from certain angles and every time you do so your going to be endangering your own side.

And yes, 5 foot steps will often take you out of the room.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Glad to hear they may dial back the full heal with 8 hour rest. I really don't likt the HD mechanic as written now. Too much healing, too fast.

 

[Blackbrrd]

I really like the things I am reading here. It seems like they have pounced on the items that I don't really like about 4e. Less numerical progression and less square combat sounds great.

 

[Dahak]

I could have sworn there was some issue with one of the major game publishers in the 90s selling its rights to online use to Microsoft - and I'd thought it was D&D. But I'm coming up blank on any Google references... so... shrug... not sure where I got that from.

That was Fasa.

 

[Thotas]

Mearls: "Personally, I actually like meters because if you draw a map with one meter per square, the dimensions of rooms are more realistic."

Use 1 yard. also known as three feet. Its very close to 1 meter. And for many people, "close" to the distance from ground to hips (for those needing a visual).

1 meter = 1.0936133 yard. Also known as pretty darn similar. Most of us yanks can also visualize a yard because almost every elementary school in nation has a yard stick in the classroom somewhere...

This has been what I've wanted to see for decades now. For exactly this reason. Call the unit a "yom" (Yard Or Meter) and say it's the unit of measure in Greyhawk/The Forgotten Realms/Golarion (what's that?). The approximate 10% difference between Yank and European is less than the margin error in generalization we're already using.