Mearls On D&D's Design Premises/Goals

First of all, thanks [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] for collecting this. I generally avoid Twitter because, frankly, it's full of a$$holes.

That aside: this is an interesting way of looking at it, and underscores the difference in design philosophies between the WotC team and the Paizo team. There is a lot of room for both philosophies of design, and I don't think there is any reason for fans of one to be hostile to fans of the other, but those differences do matter. There are ways in which I like the prescriptive elements of 3.x era games (I like set skill difficulty lists, for example) but I tend to run by the seat of my pants and the effects of my beer, so a fast and loose and forgiving version like 5E really enables me running a game the way I like to.

 

[Maxperson]

I used to run encounters that way. As soon as the parties were within encounter distance of one another I’d ask for initiative just in case combat broke out. Then some of the good folks here introduced me to the idea of asking for initiative only once someone declares an action that requires resolution in combat. I find it works very well and think the combat rules were written with the intent that they be used only when combat is happening. In light of this, if at least one party is not attacking the other, I think it's premature for the DM to call for initiative.

I wouldn't resolve that situation like that at all. The two parties are unaware of each other until they meet at the corner, so neither is attacking the other. There's no need at that point to start combat. After they meet, they can decide to parlay, retreat, or commence hostilities, and only in the event of hostilities is there any reason to roll initiative.

Me: The rules allow for simultaneous surprise, so attacks haven't necessarily happened when initiative is rolled.

You: Well, I used to run combat like the rules say, but then I decided to change them and run it differently.

So you run encounters differently than the game says. How is that relevant to a discussion on how to run encounters per RAW?

 

[Harzel]

Thinking about action resolution, I believe there are two main ways to achieve a greater degree of symmetry at the table.

One is to go for relatively hard-coded "subjective" DCs, which then provide a reasonalby "knowable" framework for the players to exert themselves against. I look at 4e in this light; and a non-D&D system that I also think fits this description is Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic - though rather than a table/formula for level appropriate DCs like 4e has, it uses GM-side dice pools to generate the opposition.

Another is to go for "objective" DCs - which therefore give the GM a lot of latitude in establishing the DCs and, thereby, the "feel" of the setting (especially when, unlike 3E, GM discretion is prioritised more highly and there are fewer long lists of DCs-by-circumstance) - but to give the players (i) less reason to want to succeed all the time (eg "fail forward" techniques of resolution) and/or (ii) resources on their side that allow them to adjust upwards from their basic competence if the GM turns out to have set the DCs higher than the players hoped/planned for. Burning Wheel is a system I play and GM that has both (i) (by way of fail forward, and also because its advancement system means sometimes your PC needs to lose) and (ii).)

Could you expand a bit on the "subjective" vs. "objective" DC distinction, or give a pointer to an explanation elsewhere, please? I'm not getting it. Thanks.

 

[Numidius]

I think it's worth trying. It's very heavy rules-wise (heavier than 5e, I would say) and players have to engage the mechanics to make it work - they can't be "carried" by the GM like they can in 5e or even Rolemaster.

And I find it a pretty demanding game, both as player and GM. But it produces some pretty intense FRPGing.

We played some MHRP (here's a session report - a post about a more recent session seems to have been lost in an ENworld crash) but I'm the only in my group who's a big comics person, so that game is currently unresolved (with Wolverine trapped on a power-cancelling slab in Dr Doom's secret sub-level in the Latverian embassy in Washington DC, where there is reason to think Mariko Yashida is being held prisoner). We've also played a Fantasy Hack version (obilgatory link to report of first session) which has proved popular with the gang. Compared to 4e, the system is very free-flowing, and compared to BW it's light in its demands (both cognitive and emotional) on the players.

Our approach hasn't been hex-crawl so much as hijinks. Because PC advancement is about milestones, which often depend on intraparty interactions or player responses to situation, there's less pressure on me as GM to come up with thematically engaging stuff: like a comic, it's more about just presenting opposition and then seeing how the players express their PCs as they engage with it and trigger their milestones and rack up their XP (I've found advancement to be fairly rapid - we've now got quite a few d12 abilities on the table).

Thanks on both counts.

Prince Valiant is a game I've read quite a bit about over the years. And I'm a big fan of LotR/Arthurian-style romantic anti-modernist fantasy. So when the chance to pick it up via Kickstarter came along I did. We've played 3 sessions so far, and it's fun: light in overall theme, but with moments of drama when the opposed rolls for jousts or other fights are made.

In the lead-up to 4e I was following the development repotts from WotC, and participating in discussion on these boards. My group was just finishing up a long Rolemaster campaign, and with a couple of group members having moved overseas we merged with another group (who had one member overlapping with our group, and whose other members were also long-time friends of mine) and started a 4e game. That game ran steadily for 7 or so years, and is at 30th level, but about a session or two from its resolution - around 2 years ago one of the guys started a serious building/renovation project, and so can't make many sessions, and we have an undertanding that we're not going to play the 4e game unless everyone can be there, given how close it is to its climax.

I had high expectations for 4e based on the previews and pre-release discussion, and from my point of view it more than delivered. For me, it showed how all the Gygaxian "unrealisms" that systems like RM, RQ, Traveller etc repudiate (ever-growing hit points; level-based saving throws; and the like) could be combined with the fiddly PC-build of 3E to create a game of character-driven gonzo fantasy heroics with this really engaging tactical combat subsystem embedded as a coherent vehicle for that and not just an afterthought or a separate mini-game.

I mucked around a bit with this in the early-to-mid 80s but never really worked out what to do with it. I can't remember what prompted me to revisit it a bit over a year ago, but I'm glad that I did: as I've said in the threads I've started about it, it holds up really well and delivers a distinctive play experience: not really character driven like 4e or BW, not as light as Cortex+ Heroic or Prinve Valiant, but interesting setting supporting intriguing situations, and all these robust subsystems for finding out what happens.

Of the systems I've posted about, I reckon both BW and Classic Traveller could support this: in BW using Wises and Circles as the mechanics to support giving effect to the players' declarations about what is going to happen; in Traveller using the robust content generation like patron encounters and the like to let the players drive it with you just reacting and generating the worlds etc to support it as needed.

BW: It's been years in the waiting, maybe we should just sit down, make characters and see what happens. Well, char-gen wouldn'be a problem, I'm afraid the world/initial situation-building phase would be...
I dunno if we're just getting old, or it's a matter of immersion-breaking, but while they say they like to put (initial) creative input in a game, they actually don't.
(Our Dungeon World campaign showed this attitude pretty badly, that's why I started to look around for new players, and since the majority plays 5e... well, here I am
Anyway, Circles&Wises: noted, thanks.

MHRP: As you named Mariko, suddenly a pop up in my mind: a white chrysanthemum offered to a surprised japanese woman thru the car window by a gloven hand (ah, John Byrne...)

PV: Your report made me want to try it, with two of my oldest friends (and ex Pendragon Rpg lovers), while tasting slowly a bottle of good wine, wearing a cape.

4e: That campaign of yours sounds like fun.
Care to elaborate the player driven aspect of 4e?
I had a look at how skill challenges work, also the shorter Obsidian variant: reminds me of how conflicts work in Trollbabe (except that them are usually ple-planned in 4e, but very interesting nonetheless). Someone even proposed to resolve combat as a skill challenge... that would be a cool feature, i must admit it.

CT: The dice driven, charts, old school feeling is appealing. It would also be an excuse to contact the owner of the game, it's been years now... maybe when we retire ;D

 

[pemerton]

Dungeon World

I've played a short campaign of this but never GMed it. It's on my list!

That campaign of yours sounds like fun.
Care to elaborate the player driven aspect of 4e?
I had a look at how skill challenges work, also the shorter Obsidian variant: reminds me of how conflicts work in Trollbabe (except that them are usually ple-planned in 4e, but very interesting nonetheless). Someone even proposed to resolve combat as a skill challenge... that would be a cool feature, i must admit it.

We'e never done combat-as-skill-challenge - the closest we've come is using a skill check in the appropriate context to "minionise" an opponent (ie render the opponent vulnerable to a one-shot kill).

I like the skill challenge system as set out in the DMG and DMG2 - I can't compare it to Trollbabe (I know that game by reptuation but that's all) but can compare it to HeroWars/Quest extended resolution, and to Duel of Wits in BW: unlike those systems there is no active opposition, so the GM really has to work hard on the narration to keep the pressure up to the players, so they have a reason to keep declaring actions; but the flipside is that the fiction is really front-and-centre, because there's no other way to make the process unfold - it can't degenerate into just opposed checks.

Seeing as I'm posting links to actual play, here are three to some of my favourite skill challenges from my 4e game.

When I talk about 4e as player-driven, I'm thinking of both PC build and play. Theme and action permeate the PC-building elements (most of the races, most of the classes, paragon paths, epic destinies); the encounter building is mechanically incredibly robust, so as a referee its easy to build situations that will engage with that theme and action (it's almost the opposite of classic D&D in this respect: instead of caution and preparation and worries about adversarial GMing, as a GM you can just let yourself go with gonzo framing and consequences, and the players have the resources and narrative context to respond and really engage); and the structure of PC resources allows really easy adjudication of all sorts of improvisation - producing play that in some was resembles "free descriptor" games even though it's a list-based system. Rather than reading what is possible off the mechanics (as in a sim game like Traveller or RQ, which is also, I think, how D&D is normally played), what is possible in the fiction is established by reference to the descriptions in the PHB and DMG of the "tiers of play", supplemented by the narrative aspects of class, paragon path and epic destiny, seen through each table's particular lens into what it all means. (Here's an example of improvisation - sealing the Abyss - which is ultra-gonzo in the fiction but easy to frame and adjudicate in mechanical terms.)

Could you expand a bit on the "subjective" vs. "objective" DC distinction, or give a pointer to an explanation elsewhere, please? I'm not getting it. Thanks.

I'll give an abstract explanation first, and then relate it to the discussion of 4e play just above.

By "objective" DCs I mean a method of setting difficulties where the difficulty is read off a prior in-fiction understanding of how hard the situation is. This is how Classic Traveller, Rolemaster, RuneQuest and Burning Wheel work. I suspect it's how most people run 5e, although the actual 5e rules don't come out and say this. AD&D doesn't really have a system for setting DCs - it's just got all its singluar little sub-systems - but some parts of AD&D work like this (eg applying modifications to climbing checks set out in Gygax's DMG).

But other aspects of AD&D exhibit "subjective" DCs: the saving throw rules, for example, where the difficulty is set not by the fiction but by a system stipulation, and we read the fiction off that. 4e works like this - the DCs are set in combat by creature level and out of combat by the DC-by-level chart, and the GM narrates the fiction in a way that conforms to those fiction-set DCs. MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic works the same way, though using a dice pool to set the difficulties rather than a chart or formula like in AD&D and 4e. Dungeon World and HeroQuest revised are two more systems that use "subjective" DCs: in DW, the difficulties are built into the mechanics of each "move"; in HQrev the dfficulties are generated by a formula that factors in PC skill levels and pacing considerations.

In a "subjective" DC game, we don't work out what a PC can do by comparing his/her bonus to the DC that is read off the fiction. We work out what a PC can do by reading that straight off the fiction and the logic of the game's genre - and when a player delcares an action for his/her PC that is consistent with that fiction/genre logic, the difficulty is then established using the relevant mechanical system (chart, table, dice pool, the definitions of the "moves" in DW, etc).

In the 4e example of sealing the Abyss, there is no DC for sealing the Abyss, such that a player knows that when his/her PC's bonus gets to a certain level that feat is within the realm of possible accomplishments. Rather, at my table we know that the PC can attempt sealing the Abyss because he is an epic tier chaos sorcerer and emergent primordial. We know that Arcana is the relevant skill because the skill description says that it can be used to manipulate magical phenomena. And I then set the DC by reference to the DC-by-level chart.

LostSoul described the contrast nicely (using 3E and 4e as his comparitors) in this old post:

How the imagined content in the game changes in 4E as the characters gain levels isn't quite the same as it is in 3E. I am not going to pretend to have a good grasp of how this works in either system, but my gut says: in 4E the group defines the colour of their campaign as they play it; in 3E it's established when the campaign begins.

That's kind of confusing... let me see if I can clarify as I work this idea out for myself.

In 3E, climbing a hewn rock wall is DC 25. That doesn't change as the game is played (that is, as fiction is created, the game world is explored, and characters grow). Just because it's DC 120 to balance on a cloud doesn't mean that characters can't attempt it at 1st level; they'll just always fail. The relationship between colour and the reward system doesn't change over time: you know that, if you can score a DC 120 balance check, you can balance on clouds; a +1 to your Balance check brings you that much closer to success.

In 4E, I think the relationship between colour and the reward system changes: you don't know what it will mean, when you first start playing, to make a Hard Level 30 Acrobatics check. Which means that gaining levels doesn't have a defined relationship with what your PC can do in the fiction - just because your Acrobatics check has increased by 1, it doesn't mean you're that much closer to balancing on a cloud. I think the group needs to define that for themselves; as far as I can tell, this is supposed to arise organically through play, and go through major shifts as Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies enter the game.

What [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] says here is absolutely true to my experience with 4e. And his description of 3E is true to my experience of "objective" DC systems like Rolemaster, BW, etc.

 

[Numidius]

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]
(Excellent long explanatory post, wow)

Quickly on Trollbabe: yes exactly as you say the player facing dice roll without direct opposition of the Skill Ch. in 4e, producing fiction and RP, is the base of TB resolution mechanic:

As conflicts arise ( unlike 4e: emergent; not preplanned) and situation and goal is agreed upon, an arena of conflict is chosen (combat, social, magic ritual), number of successes before failures (1, 2, or 3), PC can reroll failures by spending resources/using relationships, ecc. until exaustion or ...death.

The unusual rule is: the player describes PC failures, the GM PC successes (incorporating bits of the ambience around them, as well as minor NPCs, resources spent and the like).

Of course is at first extremely rules light, concealing the complexity among metagame choices, fiction description, scaling fast across the campaign from 1st level like to planetary influence.

 

[Jester David]

It's a cyclical thing. It'll be back to more rules for everything and empowering players

My first thought is that it'll bring back more character building and options.

But... with so many new players in the game, I'm uncertain if they'll even want that, since they won't miss what they didn't have. And games like Pathfinder 2 have that covered.
It's an odd thought, as D&D is still growing its audience at surprising speeds. Even if it flattens or slows down its growth, there's a LOT of players who may want very different things for a new edition.

It could be cyclical. But so far it hasn't. It might be more of a pendulum swing, that could go to "players" or stay with "DMs" or find a place in the middle.

Heck, it could even surprise everyone and the "Player Empowerment" could be a storyteller type innovation, adding plot points that give players narrative influence.

 

[Jester David]

Maybe but in many cases a home designer isn't constrained the way the pros are. For example, the 2E designers were instructed to maintain as much backwards compatibility with 1E material. Thus there were aspects of the system they wanted to change---such as AC going down rather than up or evening out the stats and getting rid of percentile strength---but weren't allowed to by the business model. 5E clearly had a similar brief, insofar as there are things that weren't done that I suspect they'd have chosen to do but were afraid of provoking a backlash.

I think they were a little afraid of backlash after 4e, but some aspects they wanted to keep because they were identifiably D&D. Ability Scores where 18 is high, Armour Class, longswords, Hit Dice, etc. Some terms that all D&D gamers know regardless of edition, that help distinguish D&D from other generic fantasy RPGs.

Other bits of design were less about backlash, and more about the direct wishes of the playerbase. They did a massive public playtest, and that gave them a good idea of what the players want. They were added explicitly because the players wanted it and that's what the feedback reported.

 

[Kobold Boots]

And, just to add to that, you have Monte Cook, who was pretty instrumental in the design of 3e, who came from designing Rolemaster and Champions. I mean, you can pretty much draw a direct line from 3e to Rolemaster. And those priorities have really influenced how we have proceeded from there.

I agree with this; but here's the rub that affects all rubs thereafter.

Rolemaster and HERO are games frameworks. The first steps of using either of these games successfully are:

1. The GM reads everything.
2. The GM puts together a specific framework for the game he or she is running. This framework basically gives the players the setting that the characters should be built for, (background, kits, etc.) as well as what optional rules are allowed and more importantly, what specifically is not allowed.

This runs directly into the two problems or walls inherent in any D&D community I've ever been a part of.

1. DMs don't read everything.
2. DMs don't create campaign primers.

Then you end up with the back and forth nonsense that Mearls and co don't want to design for anymore and everyone gets surprised by.

No intention to judge here but if you want crunch and you want to avoid bad outcomes, you have to put the work in as a DM. If you don't have that time (because few do unless the hobby is their primary thing they do) - you're better off with 5e.

2c
KB

 

[OB1]

I agree with this; but here's the rub that affects all rubs thereafter.

Rolemaster and HERO are games frameworks. The first steps of using either of these games successfully are:

1. The GM reads everything.
2. The GM puts together a specific framework for the game he or she is running. This framework basically gives the players the setting that the characters should be built for, (background, kits, etc.) as well as what optional rules are allowed and more importantly, what specifically is not allowed.

This runs directly into the two problems or walls inherent in any D&D community I've ever been a part of.

1. DMs don't read everything.
2. DMs don't create campaign primers.

Then you end up with the back and forth nonsense that Mearls and co don't want to design for anymore and everyone gets surprised by.

No intention to judge here but if you want crunch and you want to avoid bad outcomes, you have to put the work in as a DM. If you don't have that time (because few do unless the hobby is their primary thing they do) - you're better off with 5e.

2c
KB

Great insight here I think.

For a great example of a DM working in a crunchy system putting in the work necessary for great outcome, check out the 4e real play podcast Critical Hit. The DM, Rodrigo, does exactly what you are describing and the result has been an 8 year long campaign that I’m sure is as fun to play as to listen to.

I wish I had the kind of time, skill and energy Rodrigo has. Instead I play 5e

 

[Hriston]

Me: The rules allow for simultaneous surprise, so attacks haven't necessarily happened when initiative is rolled.

You: Well, I used to run combat like the rules say, but then I decided to change them and run it differently.

So you run encounters differently than the game says. How is that relevant to a discussion on how to run encounters per RAW?

No, the rules don’t say that. I understand how you might have misinterpreted them as saying that because I’ve made the same mistake myself, but if you recognize that the rules for combat always assume the participants are in combat with each other, you won’t have the problems that result from using the combat rules for encounters in which the parties aren’t fighting with each other, like rolling initiative when they aren’t taking directly opposing actions or having both sides stand around being surprised when no one’s attacking.