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]

Actually, I think @iserith's take on this - reading it in the context of the "adventuring" section of the Basic rules and the rules for hiding/reamining unnoticed - is pretty sound. I'm not sure if @Hriston agrees fully with iserith, but I'd be surprised if Hrison doesn't also have a pretty solid reading of it.

(Multiple readings isn't per se a sign of poor rules. Any complex rules system is likely to admit of multiple readings at certai points.)

Except none of my examples involved multiple readings. An example of multiple readings for a rule would be the gargoyle power animate stone. It reads "...and can hold themselves so still that they appear inanimate." That can be read as, "It's a possibility than they remain so still that they appear inanimate.", which would require a roll, or it can be read as "They automatically hold themselves so still that they appear inanimate." The word "can" is usable both ways.

In my first example which you quote, there is only one way to read "Any character or monster that doesn’t notice a threat is surprised at the start of the encounter." It's very clear. If you don't notice a threat, you are surprised. What is not clear is what constitutes a threat, and the rule sheds no light on that whatsoever. That's the issue, not multiple ways to read it.

 

[Maxperson]

this is a good reason that essential stuff like a copy of the character sheet should be in the book, I guess, but stuff that isn’t necessary at the table can safely be online.

The vast manority of folks folks who don’t have access to a computer due to being too poor, also can’t afford to buy game books.

Really? Being unable to afford multiple hundreds of dollars is the same as being unable to afford $50? I don't think so. A poor group could also pool money together and buy a copy of a book, where they wouldn't or couldn't do that for a computer.

 

[Maxperson]

But what is the gameplay purpose of that expenditure? It's not unclear in classic D&D (building a stronghold attracts followers and allows an army for engaging in military campaigning, which was an assumed part of the game back in the 70s). It's not unclear in Classic Traveller (buying a starship let's you engage the intersteller travel system, which is a core part of Traveller gameplay). It's not unclear in 3E or 4e (buying magic items expands the list of character attributes and capabilities).

It's up to the player primarily, and to a much lesser extent, the DM to decide that. Presumably, there are roleplaying reasons for whatever expenditure the PC decides to engage in, and the DM will react to that. There are multiple reasons why my PC might decide to build a castle, and it's up to me to state that reason to the DM. It's not the responsibility of the book or DM to let me know.

My own view is that if a game is going to make an in-fiction goal, like acquiring treasure, an assumed focus of play, and is going to treat that in somewhat tedious detail (keeping track of all those gold pieces, having all those detailed price lists, etc), then it might address the question of why?

I find this to be odd in a person who runs a game for very proactive players who decide and set the goals for their PCs. Why expect them to be proactive in one aspect of the game, but fail to be proactive about spending the treasure they find?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I remember a bizarre moral panic, mostly among people who weren't playing 4e, that "everything is core". I remember discussion about what was or wasn't balanced. And I remember discussion about who did or didn't toggle various options on or off in the Character Builder.

I don't rembember discussions about how "everything is core" changed the way anyone played the game.

Ok, well, they happened. Feel free to engage with the rest of my points, though, since he one you’re quoting here is literally the least important point of the entire post you’ve quoted.

So I declare "I draw my sword and cut off the orc's head!" What's the DC? What ability is checked?

Its a check with your Attack stat, usually strength or dex for a weapon attack, against a DC set by a calculation. You add proficiency if you are proficient in the weapon being used.

Seriously, it’s the same mechanic as determining the outcome of declaring “I run up the wall halfway, jump off the window ledge opposite, and then hike up to get my feet on the ledge and jump across again to the edge of the roof, parkour style”.

In fact in 5e that's not a legal action declaration - or, at best, it will get retrofitted into a declaration of an attack roll that is resolved no differently from a declaration that "I draw my sword and try to hamstring the orc!"

unless you kill the orc outright, in which case you may get to cut its head off. But that is also how skills work. Depending on the result of the check, the DM tells you what you actually manage to a compish based on the declaration of hat you are trying to do.

A successful attack roll generates a further mechanical process - applying damage, perhaps applying a status effect, etc. A successful ability/skill check generally doesn't generate any further mechanical process - it just generates a change in the fiction (generally as ascertained by the GM). There are exceptions (eg making an ability check to throw off a condition like grappled) but they are (ipso facto) not the norm.

A successful Stealth check generates a further mechanical process. Many successful and failed acrobatics and athletics checks do, as well. Some resolution checks lead to further mechanical resolution, while others are resolved with a single check. That doesn’t make those a separate system. It just means that sometimes the result of a check is that you have to figure something else out.

5e may or may not be a good system - I'm not debating that - but saying that it has a uniform resolution system simply isn't true, unless you just ignore all the accreted aspects of D&D (damage dice; hit point attrition; special abilities, especially spells, that inflict conditions; etc). These mechanical intricacies are part of what make it not light, compared to systems that have genuinely uniform and rather simple resolution systems.

Im not particularly bothered about whether 5e is a good system. My group and I enjoy it. I like it about as much as 4e or Star Wars Saga, slightly less than The One Ring, and vastly more than any edition of dnd before 4e, or say, any Fantasy Flight game, or Savage Worlds, or Fate. Probably a bit more than AGE games, but I’ve less experience with them. Whether I like it more than GURPS depends on what I’m in the mood for.

How “good” it is isn’t even a legitimate concern to worry about, from my perspective, except when i am considering it’s lessons in the context of designing my own game.

What I am interested in, is taking systems apart and accurately understanding them.

5e has quite varied *secondary mechanics*, tied together by a single resolution system.

Whether that makes it light, heavy, or medium rare is for other people to worry about.

 

[ClaytonCross]

So poeple are talking bad bout 3.5 but honestly I never had any problem with it. I miss alot of the mechanica options. like [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION] said, I don't consider powergaming or min/maxing a bad thing and perhaps more importantly I don't consider them in conflict against good role playing and story telling. It seems like their is a lot of effort to steer away from mechanical flexibility to prevent power gaming but highly limit building characters to fit story narrative. If you doubt this … look at the latest number of players choosing to play warlocks versus previous editions. Warlocks, are a prime choice for players how seek mechanic diversity because the get a class, sub-class, pact, invocations, and spell selections. That's the most mechanical diversity of any class in the game.... and so it popularity is only climbing. Its way easier to build the character to fit your narrative as a warlock so it has appeal to min/maxers, power gamers, and story players that don't want to be forced to take extra features that done fit the image of the character concept the want to play. Its not because they are building the most "optimal" character every time but because is mechanically a better fit to specific goals.

I am currently playing a Warlock, who is the scout for our party. No, its not an "optimal" build, but its an mechanically interesting build and while "interior" as a scout to the Rogue scout sub-class... My Human variant Pact of the Tome, The old one Patrons, warlock street urchin who was "infected" after being kidnapped of a road while trying to get work and experimented on by a cult of vecna, with alert feat, prodigy feat (survival and expertise perception), devil's sight, guidance / shocking grasp / mending from Pact of the tome. Its fun. I could have been a pact of the chain and sent my invisible familiar but I wanted to place myself in danger being involved physically in the search, so I use the of the old one telepathy pass information to my party 30ft behind me.. Far enough to give them some protection but close enough that they "need" to follow me in as I scout. I could have taken Message with pact of the tome but I wanted them 30ft because I wanted the buffer but I didn't want to play scouting by myself. I am not great at my party job but I am better than my other party members so they are happy with it and since I risk myself so even with failure they don't complain. I am not a perfect min/maxer taking less optimal choices because of how I want to interact with my group, I am not a power gamer as I am the "night watch" I help in battles but really our tanky Paladin leader really holds the group together in combat while I typically try and support from a corner when the fight starts, we have a daytime scout monk who can hold his own if we get ambushed. We are primarily a story group but I really enjoy having supporting mechanical structure.

Mechanical complexity and versatile options is not bad for supporting min/maxers or power gamers. Those things are only an issue when groups promote conflicting goals. For example, A controlling story GM gets angry when a power gamer kills a NPC the GM wants to survive because he has a story narrative he wants regardless player actions. ...Or... two power gamers fighting because they are in a unfriendly highest DPR battle,

...Or...​

when a story player wants to hold the game up playing out every stop at store or enemy conflict with 4 hours of role play exhibition where the rest of the party was done talking long ago and want to move along.Conflict can come from story players or GMs disregarding the party and performing story

exhibition negating or ignoring the rest of the parties contributions and choices, powergamers or GMs can cause issues by trivializing combat with autokills by making making other player choices irrelevant (note that I listed GMs here, because unbeatable enemies for the "sake of story" are the exact same thing as players who one shot bosses intended for the whole group...looking at you paladins), or from min/maxers with quadruple expertise in every thing or GMs that use autofail tasks based on player statements instead of characters stats (Player: "Can my character search the room?" GM: "Sure, I am going to need you to describe in perfect detail how you as a person would search the room that only exists in my head, if you "look" where I imagine the item is you will auto succeed, if not you will auto fail. Player: "But I don't know where to look can I just roll my characters stats... I mean that's what they are for right?" GM: "No, your stats are too high. If I do that you never fail at anything because min/maxed to a point that none of your rolls can possibly reasonably fail")​

3 simple rules for happy play.
- Role Play: GMs ensure players have free agency to actually try things you didn't plan and succeed and Player ensure your not running the group without consent or holding them back when the want to move along or blocking the GM from moving along (GMs are players too in this case).
- Mechanically: GMs ensure that encounters are beatable without min/maxing or players will have too, and players leave room for failure or the GM is going to force higher difficulties and auto fail events so that the story doesn't become the boring "tell of how your great at everything" story with no challenge that is actually a challenge and your GM is board as hell.
- Story: GMs make sure your players are part of the story your are making, so your not just dictating a story to them where you mention their characters by name once in a while because rolls don't matter when you have "decided" its not just about characters roleplaying the scene their character backgrounds and other player additions you approve should be part of the story so their characters are part of the world not just witnesses to events and players don't try and rebel against your GM by deliberately trying to derail many hours of hard GM work because your annoyed at how something went or because this part of the story is not about your character. It your going to change directions next session try and give the GM a heads up so they prepare or even let them "guide you" through some prepared material some times because ...seriously spending 2 weeks making a dungeon to have players show up an decide to turn around and walk out ...SUCKS...

But rule number one... If you have a problem, try talking about it outside the game instead of blaming the GM, player, style, or design. Almost, all of the real issues I have seen resolved were fixed way from the table because in the moment everyone wants to just keep going and even if it wipes the group you can usually come up with a new understanding and time jump back or start a new campaign having solved the issue or mitigated it somehow.

 

[Maxperson]

that’s a wild premise. Why would people constantly notice threats? People aren’t going around assuming the baker is a vampire, dude. It’s plain, colloquial, language. If you try to find confusion, you’ll always succeed, but I’d wager that 90% or more of players and DMs aren’t.

I disagree. Why would a PC who has encountered monsters posing as citizens before(or at least heard of it happening) not be on guard?

you just described a set of rules options and then claims there (effectively) isn’t a rule. The rule is that ties on a team are decided by the team, and ties between teams are decided by the referee. That is a rule.

It's a non-rule rule. The exact same thing would have result had the PHB been completely silent on what happens in the case of ties between teams. The lack of anything at all would make it the DM's decision.

Can you explain what the actual complaint is, here? I don’t see what’s wrong with not having every possible action detailed. You’ve got normal actions, “Interact With An Object” covers a lot of ground, and the examples given provides guidance for improvisation. The game has to have room for improvisation. Period. 4e was so details that they had to include a page of guidelines for improv, while 5e doesn’t need that and relies instead on examples and broad skill resolution mechanics.

There is nothing wrong with it. I was responding to someone who claimed that the 5e rules are spelled out to an incredible degree, and they really aren't. They provide basic attack mechanics and some of the more common actions. What it does "spell out" is full of ambiguity and/or holes

None of that makes 5e combat lacking in detail, it just isn’t *as* detailed as 4e.

Or 3e, both of which are true examples of combat systems spelled out to an incredible degree.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Really? Being unable to afford multiple hundreds of dollars is the same as being unable to afford $50? I don't think so. A poor group could also pool money together and buy a copy of a book, where they wouldn't or couldn't do that for a computer.

I literally didn’t say, or imply, that.

Also, you can get a computer for 100$, and a phone that is literally a pocket computer for less..

You can open and store PDFs on an “Obama Phone”, or a chap smart phone from Walmart, or MetroPCS, or any other budget carrier that finances phones and carries really cheap smart phones. I worked at dollar general market, and literal homeless people purchased phones that could download apps and open and store PDFs for 30$.

So, yes, if they literally can’t access a computer bc they’re too poor, they can’t afford to waste 50$ on a game book. I’ve been that poor. I’ve been homeless. I’ve eaten one full meal worth of food a day, and only that bc a guy at the 7-11 would give me some of the food that he was supposed to throw out. Being poor as dirt isn’t a mystery to me.

 

[Maxperson]

So I declare "I draw my sword and cut off the orc's head!" What's the DC? What ability is checked?

DC = AC of the orc. The ability checked is strength, dex, int, wis, etc., depending on the class and attack type. Heck, adding strength or dex to your to hit and damage rolls is even listed under ability checks for those abilities. That one was easy.

In fact in 5e that's not a legal action declaration - or, at best, it will get retrofitted into a declaration of an attack roll that is resolved no differently from a declaration that "I draw my sword and try to hamstring the orc!"

A successful attack roll generates a further mechanical process - applying damage, perhaps applying a status effect, etc. A successful ability/skill check generally doesn't generate any further mechanical process - it just generates a change in the fiction (generally as ascertained by the GM). There are exceptions (eg making an ability check to throw off a condition like grappled) but they are (ipso facto) not the norm.

The mechanical process is identical, though. Roll d20, add modifiers, beat the DC to succeed at the check, have success or failure narrated by the DM afterwards. That an attack ability check often leads to another mechanical roll doesn't make the resolution system for the attack roll any different than a skill check of another sort.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I disagree. Why would a PC who has encountered monsters posing as citizens before(or at least heard of it happening) not be on guard?

That isn’t how people work. The rare folks who can sustainably be on guard at all times are represented by the alert feat and/or very high perception.

But also because it’s incredibly rare, and because knowing things are out there doesn’t stop things taking you by surprise. Since I’ve mentioned it already ITT, I’ve been homeless. I’ve shared space with homeless vets and homeless ex-cons. Very alert people. People, in many cases, who see literally everyone as a threat.

Literally anyone can be taken by surprised, and sucker punched. That’s reality.

It's a non-rule rule. The exact same thing would have result had the PHB been completely silent on what happens in the case of ties between teams. The lack of anything at all would make it the DM's decision.

no, it’s a rule. It is patently, obviously, factually, a rule. It is exactly as much a rule as “When there’s is a tie, higher mod wins, players win ties against NPCs.” It’s just a different rule from that.

There is nothing wrong with it. I was responding to someone who claimed that the 5e rules are spelled out to an incredible degree, and they really aren't. They provide basic attack mechanics and some of the more common actions. What it does "spell out" is full of ambiguity and/or holes
Or 3e, both of which are true examples of combat systems spelled out to an incredible degree.

But it is very spelled out. Just not as much as some other very spelled out systems.

4e is obviously very detailed. GURPS is more detailed. Does that mean that 4e isn’t actually detailed?

 

[ad_hoc]

So poeple are talking bad bout 3.5 but honestly I never had any problem with it. I miss alot of the mechanica options. like @Charlaquin said, I don't consider powergaming or min/maxing a bad thing and perhaps more importantly I don't consider them in conflict against good role playing and story telling.

The designers asked themselves 'are we designing narrative/story first, or strategy game first?' One must drive the design goals.

Then there is limiting design because of powergamers, which is a fool's errand. Some people enjoy finding ways to exploit or abuse rules, and that's fine, they can have their fun...but the game shouldn't be limited because of them. And they don't. This statement of design philosophy spells out why.

It seems like their is a lot of effort to steer away from mechanical flexibility to prevent power gaming but highly limit building characters to fit story narrative. If you doubt this … look at the latest number of players choosing to play warlocks versus previous editions. Warlocks, are a prime choice for players how seek mechanic diversity because the get a class, sub-class, pact, invocations, and spell selections. That's the most mechanical diversity of any class in the game.... and so it popularity is only climbing. Its way easier to build the character to fit your narrative as a warlock so it has appeal to min/maxers, power gamers, and story players that don't want to be forced to take extra features that done fit the image of the character concept the want to play. Its not because they are building the most "optimal" character every time but because is mechanically a better fit to specific goals.

Is the Warlock popular?

While the following is not the most reliable sample, and is a little dated, it is one we have.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-your-dd-character-rare/

Warlock comes in at 8th of 12 classes for popularity. 4th-8th are all very close so it essentially ties in the middle.

There are 12-15 million players in NA alone. Unless you have a source that I'm not familiar with your experience is far too small to make declarations of character popularity.