Interview with Mike Mearls

[Andor]

You can't listen to an mp3?

I don't know about him, but Vista refuses to believe my sound card exists, so, no.

 

[mach1.9pants]

I don't know about him, but Vista refuses to believe my sound card exists, so, no.

There is no cake spoon soundcard!

 

[That One Guy]

The soundcard is a lie?

 

[Mouseferatu]

You can't listen to an mp3?

I can't speak for him, but in my case, it's not that I can't. It's that, under most circumstances, I won't.

Not only do I prefer reading, but it takes a lot less time than listening to a podcast. So if there's a transcript available, yeah, I always prefer that route.

 

[mrswing]

Very good interview which proves 100% that my gut feeling was right:

Mike Mearls is my personal RPG nemesis.

Everything he's designed from Iron Heroes on is just anathema to what I want from an RPG, and certainly from D&D. I shudder when I hear that a party of PCs is like a Magic deck... M:tG is not a RPG and should not be influencing RPG gameplay. The whole interview is laced with explanations and reasoning which makes me yell 'No, No, NO!!!' But that's just me, thousands upon thousands of gamers do really enjoy the new direction.

The ironic thing is that, starting with IH, MM has designed games I WANTED to like. I was totally on board with what he was going for with IH, until I read the book and was completely turned off. Now, with 4e, he again (together with the rest of the development/design team of course) addressed almost all the problems I had with 3.X. But the solutions offered now are on the whole completely unpalatable to me. Everytime the new design goes left, I would have gone right and vice versa... I wish I could get behind the new approaches, but I just can't.

So after almost 30 years, I now have to let D&D go. It's totally irrational to be upset about this, I know - D&D was never the best game around IMHO and all previous editions and materials are still useful, and developing new campaigns and adventures is still perfectly possible (never mind the backlog of hundreds of books and modules I've still got to read, let alone play). But somehow I feel as if a very good friend has changed beyond all recognition, taken on a life style which I cannot agree with, and so a parting of the ways is best for all concerned.

And that makes me really sad.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Everything he's designed from Iron Heroes on is just anathema to what I want from an RPG, and certainly from D&D. I shudder when I hear that a party of PCs is like a Magic deck... M:tG is not a RPG and should not be influencing RPG gameplay. The whole interview is laced with explanations and reasoning which makes me yell 'No, No, NO!!!' But that's just me, thousands upon thousands of gamers do really enjoy the new direction.

I think you are wrong. The gameplay of an RPG can be a lot of things. An RPG is not a dice game, or a card game, or a board game. Yet they can involve the use of all that, and more (after having read the thread on Dread using the Jenga tower, I am intrigued on the possibilities!)
Of course, that's mostly talking about the resolution system.

The M:tG comparison is mearlymerely a metaphor for certain game aspects. When playing the game, you can visualize the use of powers with the use of cards interacting with each other - or whatever, I don't know Jack about M:tG.
(I wonder what metaphor might fit the 3E style party buffing... )
In anyway, it is about how game mechanics interact with each other. On a more basic level, and in some simpler games, you might just use a metaphor of both sides of a conflict starting with a big pile of chips (hit points, and maybe spell slots), and each action of one side costs the other some of its chips. The one that ends up with no chips first loses.

Of course, there are gameplay styles some people just don't enjoy.

---

But I like to ask: What specifically is so wrong about the approach? How do you see does it result in a bad game? So far, I can only see it as a "philosophical dislike", something like "but we shouldn't use ideas from other game types", without anything showing how it's wrong.

 

[Roman]

But I like to ask: What specifically is so wrong about the approach? How do you see does it result in a bad game? So far, I can only see it as a "philosophical dislike".

I think you already know what many of us who don't like 4e dislike about it. Since you asked, though, just a brief summary (not in order of importance):

1) Drastically altered flavor that does not befit D&D as we imagine it in our minds
2) Purging of simulationism from the ruleset (this has several effects for me: reduces my sense of verisimilitude, removes one of my major incentives for DMing and makes DMing a simulationist game more difficult for me, since I have to make up and adjudicate everything)
3) Abandonment of OGL more or less precluding the possibility of correcting the above through third party support

I guess many of us who don't like 4e simply disagree with the WotC's most recent vision regarding what is fun about D&D and what we expect from D&D. As such, it is easier for us to simply stay with 3.Xe or with something similar, such as Pathfinder. Maybe 5e will draw me and my players back to the contemporary edition again, but that is surely a long way away.

Then again, this is not really a productive discussion and I posted only because you asked. In reality, all sides of this argument have been heard before and debating it further is going to lead us nowhere other than leading me to procrastinate on what I should be doing. Oh well, back to my work I go.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I think you already know what many of us who don't like 4e dislike about it. Since you asked, though, just a brief summary (not in order of importance):

1) Drastically altered flavor that does not befit D&D as we imagine it in our minds
2) Purging of simulationism from the ruleset (this has several effects for me: reduces my sense of verisimilitude, removes one of my major incentives for DMing and makes DMing a simulationist game more difficult for me, since I have to make up and adjudicate everything)
3) Abandonment of OGL more or less precluding the possibility of correcting the above through third party support

That was totally not what I was talking about. I did quote mrswings post for a reason!

 

[filthgrinder]

I shudder when I hear that a party of PCs is like a Magic deck... M:tG is not a RPG and should not be influencing RPG gameplay. The whole interview is laced with explanations and reasoning which makes me yell 'No, No, NO!!!' But that's just me, thousands upon thousands of gamers do really enjoy the new direction.

I think you really missed the mark with what they were talking about here and let your preconcieved notions cloud your listening. The INTERVIEWER brings up M:tG, and Mike just doesn't crap on the interviewer, he turns it around and uses to discuss party roles, and teamwork. He basically says, he prefers to use different analogies, but he'll have fun going with making a Magic analogy work.

I think that section of the interview was really good in understanding how a party should work in 4e.

However, I think you should have realized that the interview brought the topic up and Mike just politely used it to get across his current talking points. If you read/listened to Mike's other Gencon interviews, he covers similiar gorund in talking about party roles. He uses a basketball analogy in those, so I assume you want to shake your fist and scream, "D&D isn't basketball!"

 

[Charwoman Gene]

Actually, Mike REALLY likes the basketball metaphor and brought even the discussion here into that milieu, unless Michael Jordan and Dennis Rodman are also professional M:TG players.

D&D is better for more people by abandoning the semi-simulationist trappings. Unfortunately, it sucks to be on the other side of the axe.