Interview with Mike Mearls

[Delta]

The question is - why did D&D never try to get "better" at this? Why did it keep mechanics that are so "in-the-face" lacking of verisimilitude like hit points or levels around?

It definitely did. Consider OD&D Supplement II Blackmoor, 1975 -- it's got an entire system for Hit Locations and breaking down hit points/injuries by location on the body. Whole bunch of tables for different body types, attack direction, relative attacker/defender sizes, etc.

Of course, people found that too complicated to play, didn't use it, and it was discarded from the system. My experience of reading Dragon throughout the 80's was that the primary design debate was "realism vs. playability" (pre-"balance") -- people proposed adding pieces to make things more "realistic" until it bumped up against being infeasible at the play table.

Hit points are, all things considered, a pretty easy-to-grok abstraction that's been used over and over in hundreds of RPGs and video games without the mass market complaining too much about it. (Seems like 3.5UA/SW had to learn the lesson over again with the Vitality/Wounds idea that came and went.) What we have with the core of AD&D/3E is a system, battle-tested over time, that's about as complicated as normal people can deal with at a table.

 

[Samuel Leming]

This isn't a GNS terminalogy thread. There have certainly been enough of those so I'm not going to nitpick that garbage terminology here anymore.

Leaving aside the fact that D&D was never an obviously simulationist game until AD&D, there was also Tunnels & Trolls, a self-consciously gamist game.

A fact? Bullcrap!
D&D has ALWAYS been a role playing game!

I started playing back in 1977. All we had were the little booklets and supplements, the AD&D Monster Manual & a bunch of coppies of stuff I really can't remember where it came from. Even back then, D&D was played as a RPG.

I've never played Tunnels & Trolls or even read it, but I've heard it was a RPG too.

Btw, I don't really understand the Forge-hate.

What? Really? You've stated a good reason for the recent bout of it right here:

...the need for metagame intervention/narration of the sort that 4e requires

Add that to GNS/Big Theory being a steaming pile of nonsense and anyone should be able to understand it.

The essays are comprehensible. Whether or not they're mostly true or mostly false is a matter of opinion, like so much else in the cultural sphere. But blatant attacks upon the Forge, or upon theorisation in general in the domain of RPGs, reminds me of attacks upon serious reviewing and theorisation in other domains of culture - a little bit knee-jerk and anti-intellectual.

Don't you mean anti-pseudo-intellectual? I'm sure real honest attempts at theory are better received.

Really, Permerton, I do not object at all to your playstyle and I don't see where you say you object to mine. I do, however, object to this theory and the damage it has now done to our hobby.

That said, I can't see anything more that I can add to this thread that would be worth my effort. I'll leave you guys to it. I'm out.

Sam

 

[pemerton]

This D&D has ALWAYS been a role playing game!

I started playing back in 1977. All we had were the little booklets and supplements, the AD&D Monster Manual & a bunch of coppies of stuff I really can't remember where it came from. Even back then, D&D was played as a RPG.

I've never played Tunnels & Trolls or even read it, but I've heard it was a RPG too.

I didn't deny this.

Really, Permerton, I do not object at all to your playstyle and I don't see where you say you object to mine.

I don't know what your playstyle is. If you've read a lot of my posts you might know a little bit about my playstyle, but I haven't said anything about it in this thread.

I do, however, object to this theory and the damage it has now done to our hobby.

Are you referring here to 4e D&D? Or to something else that I've missed? If the former, I don't agree that 4e is damaging to the hobby.

 

[Greg K]

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, <snip> 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..

You pretty much described my reaction. I loved the first two things that I had seen by Mike- The horribly named Myrmidon class from AEG's Mercenaries (still the best Warrior Mage class I have seen, imo) and Malhavoc's Book of Iron Might. Some of his other early stuff for the third party companies were also decent. So, when he went to WOTC, I thought it was a good thing and he would improve their products (and like others I thought he was brought in to work on 4e DND).

Word of Iron Heroes had me excited. The Book of Iron Might was a starting point and it the design goals had me interested.

My excitement regarding IH was shortlived. I actually saw Iron Heroes and one of Mearls's design journals at montecook.com (or was it a link to one on his journal?) and, suddenly, I had a feeling that I was going to regret his going to WOTC. That has turned out to be the case. Since Iron Heroes, I haven't seen anything from him that I like. Furthermore as you mentioned, he and the design team identified many of the problems of 3e, but their solutions, imo and that of my gaming friends from various groups as with your opinion, is that they almost always went completely in the wrong direction and were "unpalatable". However as you also point out a number of other people disagree, but online I am beginning to see a growing number of people online (not a majority) becoming disenchanted with 4e the more they play it ( I really want to see polls in a year to see where people on these boards stand one way or the other).

 

[Greg K]

What we have with the core of AD&D/3E is a system, battle-tested over time, that's about as complicated as normal people can deal with at a table.

Speak for yourself. The only thing that you can be sure of is that it's as complicated as you and your friends want to get. The gamers I have met generally prefer Wound levels, Damage/Toughness Saves (Mutants and masterminds/ True20) or other conditions tracks once they have some experience with it. Who are either of us to actually say which group comprises normal people.

 

[Fenes]

Speak for yourself. The only thing that you can be sure of is that it's as complicated as you and your friends want to get. The gamers I have met generally prefer Wound levels, Damage/Toughness Saves (Mutants and masterminds/ True20) or other conditions tracks once they have some experience with it. Who are either of us to actually say which group comprises normal people.

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.

 

[Greg K]

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.

Correct, and if the person I had responded to had said that it was more common I would have had no objections. My objection was to the claim that hit points are as complicated as normal people can deal with at the table.

 

[Fenes]

Correct, and if the person I had responded to had said that it was more common I would have had no objections. My objection was to the claim that hit points are as complicated as normal people can deal with at the table.

I think it's more about what normal people want to deal with at the table. hit points are common, well known, and very easy to understand, and people generally tend to favor the familiar over the unfamiliar.

That doesn't mean that normal people actually want hit points instead of wound levels because wound levels are too complicated. But it explains why punlishers and developpers would think so.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

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.

"Ablative Hit Points" as in D&D, or just a measure to determine damage taken? I was more talking about this ablative concept. IIRC, Warhammer uses the term "hit points", too, but in Warhammer, at every level a single hit can easily kill or drop you.

---

I am not sure I like the whole GNS system. I think it provides some interesting hints, but sometimes I fear it's also locking down alternatives views.
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.

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 - wounds and shock points seem to model something more or less "realistic", but possibilities are a gamist resource (but also a narrative concept, since it basically allows you to describe your "stake" in any situation - though the "plot" cards from the drama deck are more so) that allow you to negate it, circumventing the normal "physics" of the world.

 

[Delta]

Speak for yourself. The only thing that you can be sure of is that it's as complicated as you and your friends want to get.

This isn't about what I want. It's about looking at the history of what games have been most successful, and retained their core injury model over the greatest amount of time (in the face of experimentation).