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.

 

[Parmandur]

I actually found 4E to be the clearest and most comfortable Edition for me, and I always run my game on the fly. However, 4E had the Character Builder, so I could always assume that my players's characters were 1) legal and 2) fully functioning. Since WotC axed the Character Builder, I switched to 5E, because its comparative simplicity means I can quickly check up on any weirdness. That, and because I can get far more players willing to play 5E.

This seems to get at one of the most attractive features of 5E for me: I can build a character in my head.

 

[jamesstreissand]

Yep. That's what I'd love to see, a mechanically focused supplement like 3.5's Unearthed Arcana or Player's Handbook 2 that gives a lot of new options. Some kind of scaling feats with menus of options, alternative multiclass options (maybe 3-5 level classes), alternative class features, etc.

I've actually been working on a few 5 level classes! They originated from my setting primarily, but most could be easily translated to another game. Might share them on here some time!

 

[Morrus]

Since you can't seem to get it through your thick ing skulls;

Watch the language, please.

 

[TwoSix]

I agree. Perhaps an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons would be a good idea.

A stronger mid-level set of options (like a multiclassing 2.0) as an optional system could be really satisfying for us. I don't think they'll go for it though, everything else is easy cash.

I've actually been working on a few 5 level classes! They originated from my setting primarily, but most could be easily translated to another game. Might share them on here some time!

Yea, I'd love to see that.

 

[Reynard]

I think there is certainly room for some complex character building options within the 5E paradigm, but those require a whole lot of design time and playtesting to get right. Every new option has to play well with the existing ones, which means the potential for breaking something compounds with each new option. We saw it repeatedly in the 3.x era and from Paizo, when design teams were much more robust than they are now. Frankly, WotC does not have the staff to do it well, and they have little motivation to spend the resources necessary to make it possible. After all, 5E is massively successful as it is, and those kinds of complex character development supplements are going to have limited appeal. They are right to leave that stuff to the Guild and the 3rd parties, at least from a business standpoint.

Does that mean WotC does not welcome those players to the table? I don't think so. I think it means they expect those players to make a modicum of effort on their own to make the game work for themselves. D&D is a potluck, BYOB backyard barbecue, not a restaurant.

 

[Charlaquin]

I tend to disagree that the game would in fact be improved by having lots of extra mechanical character options.

I’m aware.

1e has relatively few. 3e has boatloads. I've played quite a bit of both, and found that all the character mechanics in 3e far too often tended to do nothing but get in the way of trying to follow the story and stay in character.

3e has a lot of issues, and yes, option bloat is one of them. That doesn’t mean options are an inherently bad thing, it just means 3e managed its options poorly.

My question is why should it ever be a choice at all? I posit it's probably better for the game if playing one's character true to itself leads to neither mechanical advantage or disadvantage, and that the simplest way to achieve this is to cut down on the mechanics.

I was referring to the sort of decisions mentioned above, where a player has to first decide inthe metagame between character and advantage.

Half the time the character in the fiction wouldn't know about the tactically advantageous choice anyway, even though the metagame has informed the player.

Realistically it would be pretty rare for someone to stop and ask himself this question, particularly in the heat of battle.

This is getting too abstract to talk about meaningfully. What kind of choice are you picturing that is created by the character having several options to choose from for their action, causes a conflict between tactical advantage and character motivation, and requires the player to make the decision based on information the character doesn’t have? Cause I can’t think of any actual play scenario like that.

Fair enough - in 0e race and class were the same for non-Humans, so there sometimes two choices got concatenated into one. But a Dwarf is a Dwarf in all other editions and thus comes with a few racial benefits for being a Dwarf, under which I lob optional feats as well.

I don’t really care how 0e did it.

As far as I'm concerned base class + subclass = class. The idea of paragon path and epic destiny implies far too much planning ahead for my liking - I almost never assume my character is going to live much beyond the next combat, and (don't) plan accordingly.

Subclass is another decision point in the character building process, which is exactly what I wish 5e had more of. If you get to make the decision after character creation, so much the better. That’s my issue with character creation in 5e - not enough decision points, and most of the ones you do have are made at character creation. 3e was the other side of the coin, where there were plenty of decision points, but the options were so interreliant and complex that you had to make them all at character creation or risk making a useless character. 4e hit the sweet spot where you had lots of decision points, and you weren’t punished for making those decisions as you went, picking your new power from a few options when you level up.

For 10 years? Try over 15 years. But not always.

Which leads me to ask: when did you get in to the game? Were you around for the 0e-1e-2e era?

Let’s not turn this into “I’ve played longer, therefore I know better than you” debate. Your grognad peen is bigger than mine, I’m not going to bother pretending otherwise because it has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Not that it matters, but I started playing with 3.5, didn’t really like it, got into the game in earnest in 4e.

Problem is, they also needed to player-proof the system so that things like optimization forums and ridiculous game-breaking "builds" could become relics of the past.

Why?

And could the 5e DM side actually coexist with the 4e player side in the same game?

Yes.

I'm fairly sure it'd have a hard time with the 3e player-side.

So don’t make the player side like 3e?

Lan-"while you're busy waving your sword around doing those fancy maneuvers I'll actually stick mine into the opponent a few times - xp for me!"-efan

Cute.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Personally I'd love a new car that was styled like a 30s roadster.

Check out the new Ferrari Monza. 40's/50's, not 30's, but damn is it gorgeous.

Back on topic, I'll admit I'm perplexed by all this talk about "replayability". I still haven't played all the classes, and honestly I could happily re-play some of my favorite classes over and over again, with each one having a new personality. I can play two fighters in a row and have them feel like totally different characters. What I really care about, though, is the adventures. As long as the adventures are new and interesting I don't really care much what class I'm playing. In fact, sometimes I like a character so much that I think about starting the exact same character over at level 1, so that I can have more adventures with him/her.

Then again, I only play one night a week. Maybe some of the people complaining about sparse options are playing multiple nights a week?

I could imagine that there is a tiny minority of people...who play multiple nights a week and are active forum posters...who feel they have already exhausted all the options. I could also imagine that WotC isn't really going to design around that market.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I am ONLY saying I think it's a shame that one of the biggest designers out there doesn't think of us as being welcome at the table. That's all. That's it. Nothing else.

There is a HUGE difference between "not being welcome at the table" and "not getting exactly what you want".

You are more than welcome to play 5e. You are more than welcome to provide your feedback in the surveys. And of course you are ENTIRELY welcome to homebrew your own content, or use all the amazing 3rd party content available here and on DMSGuild. A lot of it is quite good, and it's easy to find, and it's cheap.

They're just not going to change the game that works for 99% of the market to cater to the 1%. (Especially because every single person in that 1% has their own notion of what 5e should be.)

 

[Morrus]

Guys, I'd like to make it clear that it's perfectly fine for people to express their wishes for the direction of D&D, even if those wishes are unlikely to be fulfilled. Let's not tell people it's wrong to do that, eh?

 

[Jester David]

I don't agree with this. Look at our Cthulhu Dark game - a reporter, a secretary in a law firm, and a longshoreman. It could hae easily been a novelist, an accountant and a nurse. Or a diplomat, a playboy and a retired colonel (that's part of the party in my Classic Traveller game). Or anything else the players came up with when asked "What occupation do you want to be?"

In descriptor-based games like Cthulhu Dark or HeroWars/Quest or Maelstrom Storytelling you don't need "content" to make all these things possible, because people can come up with their own descriptors.

But D&D (and Classic Traveller, and most RPGs, especially the more trad ones) are not descriptor based. And so until the content is published, there will be ideas that players can come up with that are not realised in the fiction. In the case of a list-based game like D&D (and Classic Traveller uses lists for its PC-gen too), that means publish more stuff to put on the list.

(There's also the mechanical side of it, but you don't need to get to that to explain the long lists of published stuff - why did 2nd ed D&D produce so many "kits"?)

D&D can be descriptor based on the roleplaying side. The champion fighter can describe themselves as a knight, archer, swashbuckler, and the like. All with largely the same mechanics. And the bold, arrogant Robin Hood archer is a very different charcater from the cautious, sniper archer.
The mechanics of D&D don’t remove the descriptive choice based aspects of characters. They don’t remove that. It adds overtop.
And that doesn’t mean you NEED a special mechanic for every character concept.

That’s not the problem though.
The problem is that when you design a game around lots of different mechanical options and choices, you need to produce content to fill those gaps. That means books. And books have a set page count, so you need to have a certain amount of new content. Some of that will be requested and desired content, some of that amazing... and some will just be there. Feats and class features and spells that are just there to hit the page count.
Content for the sake of content.

It happened in 3e. And 4e. And Pathfinder. Heck, it happened in 2e with kits.