Mearls is the new manager of D&D

[Grimstaff]

Congrats, Mike!

I'm looking forward to seeing where your delightfully old-school-influenced direction takes the game.



As an aside, I notice these three terms being thrown around a lot on ENWorld lately: "robust", "elegant", "the fold". What gives?

 

[Erik Mona]

As long as Mike keeps running our semi-monthly AD&D game and stays away from killing my character's beloved linkboys, he can do whatever he wants to 4e and official Dungeons & Dragons!

--Erik

 

[Riley]

Yay Mike!

I've been rooting for you for a while, but especially since you wrote:

I think the British D&D adventures are almost all forgotten classics. They had an inventive bent, combined with good stories, that you don't often see in American designs. I'm not sure why that is. Maybe it was just the talent they gathered, but their work was consistently a cut above.

Stuff like Drums on Fire Mountain or Blade of Vengeance are forgotten classics, IMO.

My advice: run with that thought, and figure out how to make WOTC 4e adventures every bit as good as the old UK adventures. Oh, and be sure to talk to Rodney about all the good advice he's gotten over here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...-me-make-wizards-coast-adventures-better.html

I know you can do it.

 

[JoeGKushner]

You could also just... congrat the person or not posts at all. Many options.

I think you missed the gist of these posts - or at the very least, of some of those posts.

Sammael and Shemeska, to mention but two, explicitly said that they were convinced Mearls would do his best in his new role and wished him best of luck for it regardless of this happening in the context of 4E (a context they aren't super excited about).

Suppose Mearls was dem... ahem.. promoted to Pokemon brand manager - I think it perfectly polite to say, "congrats on the new job Mike, though I must say, I'm not too overly fond of Pokemon". You can congratulate a person without having to congratulate the product he's working on or even the company he's working for.

Heck, there was a time before Mearls worked on 4E, before he went to WotC, and he gathered a lot of respect from people in the 3.0 era. If these people feel it's great that he got the new position it's perfectly ok to clarify that they're paying their respects for reasons that transcend 4E.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I've never bought that arguement that our hobby isn't a cheap buy in. I had an Atari 2600. That wasn't a cheap buy in. And buddy, you could only play with that one button joystick so long before it broke. And it was a lot higher than $45 even back in the day.

Many of us didn't allow Tome of Battle or Book of Nine Swords in our games. Also being as they were near the end of the life cycle of the edition, I would wager a guess their sales were more of the completionist and the I want to know all of it players vice your introductory players.

My comparission was more Core to Core, which brings in another thing for the new edition. Core is everything now. (Least IMHO)

You have to remember our hobby isn't a cheap buy in.
Even the 1E days wasn't a cheap buy in. Around $45 during those days for PHB/DMG/MM1, what is it nowadays about $100 for all 3? (I'm looking only at a store price not Amazon for this.)
Yes I know production cost and all that, but not withstanding, a C-note is still a C-note to a newb seeking to join our hobby.

 

[Scribble]

As long as Mike keeps running our semi-monthly AD&D game and stays away from killing my character's beloved linkboys, he can do whatever he wants to 4e and official Dungeons & Dragons!

--Erik

Fraternizing with the enemy?!?!?!

 

[I'm A Banana]

Mike's a name I definitely trust at the head of the game. I pretty much always agree with the logic behind his ideas, even if I think his ideas need to be implemented in different ways sometimes (e.g.: rust monster's rust goes away!).

And this is a pretty interesting sentiment:

Then, something happened. TSR dropped Gary. Greyhawk was pushed aside. When 2e came out, I was torn. There were plenty of things to like about the game, but the attitude around it was off. It almost seemed like the people behind D&D didn't particularly care for the way I loved D&D. Maybe I was completely irrational, but the game felt changed in some insidious way.

As time went on, that feeling only increased. There were bright spots, most notably Dungeon magazine, but a lot of the stuff TSR put out didn't really speak to why I fell in love with D&D in the first place. I wanted to love D&D, but it wasn't really clear that the company behind D&D wanted to return that love.

I actually stopped playing D&D for a few years. I ran a grand total of one (terrible) campaign in college. I wasn't really sure that D&D was something I'd be involved with anymore. I bought a PS 1 and started playing lots of console games. I ended up sticking with RPGs, but I kept to games like Deadlands and Unknown Armies.

He gets it. He knows how people who aren't fans of 4e feel. Because he felt that way for most of 2e. There's gotta be a part of him that's sympathetic, a part that knows what it's like to see the game you love not returning that love, to ignore what made you love the game in the first place, to stop playing and go onto other stuff because something about the game had changed.

Mike Mearls knows what it's like to not like an edition. Mike Mearls was a hater. A grognard.

Drawing on that experience, and with his goal to be making D&D broadly loved, I've got every confidence in his ability to heal some of the Edition Wars wounds.

I'm looking forward to what the remaining years of 4e and, especially, the first years of 5e, will bring. Mearls is a fitting leader, a President of DM's. I'll be sure to let him know what I think by voting with my wallet.

 

[firesnakearies]

I don't know Mike Mearls personally, I've never spoken with him or anything, but I have kept an eye on what he's had to say over the last couple of years. I've listened to him on podcasts, watched interviews with him, read his blog and forum posts, and so on. He's given me a good impression always, and has seemed to me to be the official WotC guy who most "knew what he was talking about" when it came to anything D&D in the 4E era.

One thing I will say about him, from my observations at least, is that this guy really seems to be very much "in touch" with the players of D&D, both old and new. I do believe that he "gets" us, and understands what different kinds of players want, and enjoy, and how we think.

So that's a very good thing, and seems like an excellent qualifying factor for his new job.

 

[Nightson]

Mike,

Make the Feywild book next or I drop the bag of holding into the portable hole!

 

[darjr]

That nentir vale gazetteer on amazon? Crazryred is the illustrator, right?