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]

That is definitely a benefit of 5e’s design. For me personally, high-level barbarians being fast and easy to make is not a worthwhile tradeoff for barbarians of all levels being boring to play. But that’s just my personal taste, and I’ll grant that thee are definite benefits and drawbacks of less mechanically complex design.


I understand that they have to pick a set of design goals and run with them, I just don’t care for all of the goals they picked in this case. I agree with some of them and disagree with others.

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No, it’s not. It’s clearly explained why they decided to move away from trying to “fix” poor DM and player behavior with rules and design for flexibility over consistency of play. It’s also explained that the design for consistency of play was at odds with designing for a heavy emphasis on mechanical options. But you only have to change one of those two design goals to resolve that conflict. They instead changed both, and I would have preferred they only change one.

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6e is exactly what I want, so...


His words, not mine. Kindly leave the pedantry aside and engage with my point, which is that mechanical options can be designed to support narrative identiy.


First of all, I don’t consider power gaming an inherently bad thing. It’s certainly not at odds with roleplaying. Players can do one, the other, both, or neither, there is no conflict between them. More importantly, the ability to break the power curve stops being a problem when the design philosophy is to empower the DM to make decisions based on the needs of their table, rather than designing to make the rules as consistent as possible. My point is, Mearls clearly illuminated a conflict between two parts of their previous design philosophy. They changed both parts instead of just one, and I would have preferred they just change the one.


I think I may have miscommunicated to you what I meant by mechanical options. I don’t want more races, classes, and subclasses. There are plenty of those available between official products, 3rd party, and fan-made content. What I want is more than one choice of race, one choice of class, one choice of subclass, and four ability score increases/feats to differentiate one character from another. For all the flack 4e got for “every class feeling the same,” I see that issue much more with 5e.

But Barbarians, and the other very distinct Classes, are very fun to play, at all levels, for most people. They spent a lot of time working out what is mechanically fun and interesting in play, and supportive of narrative.

Power gaming, as such, is neither good nor bad. But, tabletop gaming will never be able to compete with video games in that territory, straight up. WoW is a better power game experience than any TTRPG ever made, or conceivable.

6E is both going to be a long wait, and backwards compatible with 5E when it does come. Soooo, good luck with that.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Why not? If my local bakery, that produces and sells my favorite bagels, decides to only sell donuts from now on, why can't I say "Hey, you guys stopped making my favorite bagels, what's up with that?" They are certainly within their rights to say "Well, donuts sell better, and we don't really like making bagels, so I guess you're out of luck." And I'm certainly within my rights to respond "Well, I only really liked your bagels, so if you start making them, I'll come back, but otherwise I'll just have to skip bagels."

And my response as the baker would be, "That's great. Why don't you do that instead of coming in here every day and complaining how we don't have bagels."

 

[Parmandur]

No it's not. This isn't akin to buying the wrong type of thing and not getting what you anticipated, it's saying that a vendor used to sell you something you liked (3e and 4e style rules) but doesn't anymore. Playing an RPG isn't like buying a single item, it's more like subscribing to a service.

It kind of is, though: if it has been six years since new management turned a failing bagel shop into a thriving donut bistro, coming to complain that you like bagels is just missing the point.

 

[TwoSix]

And my response as the baker would be, "That's great. Why don't you do that instead of coming in here every day and complaining how we don't have bagels."

Of course. And if I was whiny about it, that's absolutely the right course to take. But dropping a note in the suggestion box every once a while saying "Hey, remember those bagels you used to make?" is hardly intrusive.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[TwoSix]

It kind of is, though: if it has been six years since new management turned a failing bagel shop into a thriving donut bistro, coming to complain that you like bagels is just missing the point.

I feel like you're missing the broader point; neither Parmandur (I assume), myself, or anyone else has any real expectation of somehow changing WotC's approach. It's more like saying, "Man, I still can't believe they cancelled Firefly after 13 episodes" and getting the response of "It doesn't matter, it was Fox's decision to make, and if 12 seasons of Bones was the more popular choice, you just have to accept it." Sometimes you just want to express a desire for what you used to have.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[TwoSix]

Also? Firefly kinda sucked.

Oh man, things just got REAL!

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[iserith]

Uh huh. And then you become that guy who is talking about how the only good D&D is when you walked 5 miles, in a sonwstorm, uphill, just so you could cast your single magic missile as a first level magic user before the kobold killed you dead, and those whipper snappers should get off your lawn, already.

It was a carrion crawler in my case. *shakes fist*