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.

 

[Greg Benage]

An utterance is verbal. A thought is telepathic. You cannot make a telepathic utterance.

ut·ter·ance
ˈədərəns/
noun

• a spoken word, statement, or vocal sound.
• the action of saying or expressing something aloud.
• an uninterrupted chain of spoken or written language.

Okay, man.

 

[Maxperson]

Okay, man.

It's not my fault the meanings of words doesn't back you up. The statement in the rule book is contradictory. Part of it says you can communicate however you can, the other limits you and prevents some forms of communication.

Personally, I'd go with the first part, but that wasn't the point. The point is that the combat rules are full of holes, contradictions and vague statements. They are not spelled out as well as some people here think.

 

[pemerton]

Exactly like that, but completely different.
[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], I think you’re nitpicking wording to force a conclusion at this point. DnD doesn’t allow “killing the orc” to be an action, but als doesn’t let “gain an army” be an action. DnD breaks things into single actions, or close enough to best abstracted like it’s a single action. Each action is resolved using the same system.

“Win the fight” is an action in some games, in other games it isn’t. Some fights will be won with one action, most won’t. That doesn’t change that actions are resolved in the same way either way. Some puzzles will be resolved in one action, others won’t.

Its the same shstem of resolution regardless.

I'm not nitpicking. I am trying to engage in serious analysis about how 5e's resolution works. I believe you are also, which means I'm a bit puzzled by your disagreement with me but am going to plough on!

Some context: when it comes to analysing the play of a RPG I'm basically a loyal pupil of Vincent Baker (I've read many but not all of his lumplely/anyway posts) and Ron Edwards (I've read many of his essays and posts but not the whole corpus which is vast!). The games I'm drawing on in making the analysis include a range of "trad" games (Classic Traveller, Runequest and its offshoots, classic D&D), mid-80s through 90s games (AD&D 2nd ed in a Vampire-heavy culture), 4e, and a variety of "indie" games (Burning Wheel, Prince Valiant which is from the late 80s but plays like it was written yesterday, Cortex+ Heroic, HeroWars/Quest, Maelstrom Storytelling, Dungeon World, various Vincent Baker games like In a Wicked Age and DitV).

If we think about the relationship between action declaration (a move made by the player at the table) and the fiction, there is no reason why "I kill the orc" can't be a legitimate action decelaration. (It is in Burning Wheel, for instance.) The fact that D&D treats it as a move in a wargame-like resolution framework - ie a possible trigger for hit point attrition - is not driven by the fiction.

But nor is it simply a case of breaking down the action into smaller steps. Doing 4 hp of damage to an orc isn't a step in the fiction; it's purely a mechanical change of state (although it is possible to narrate some colour around it, but that colour could be whatever the player or GM wants which is consistent with the orce being worn down). This contrasts with, say, Runequest where the granular resolution of combat actually does produce ascertainable changes in the fiction.

A GM who says "To enter the castle you first have to succeed at a STR/Athletics check to swim the moat, then a STR/Athletics check to scale the wall" is setting out some granular resolution stages, but this is different from D&D combat as (i) there is no mechanical subystem here, and (ii) each success correlates to something in the fiction.

A 4 skill challenge is another case intermediate between the previous two: each step correlates to something concrete in the fiction that actually changes the fictional positioning (unlike the mere colour of whatever narration accompanies hit point loss), but it also generates a mechanical change in a subsystem. Cortex+ Heroic is similar to this in its resolution; but unlike 4e it uses the same system for everything (from fighting to talking to gaining an advantage by taking the higher ground).

When people complain about skill challenges being "dice rolling exercises" they're disregarding the step where the fictional positioning changes and treating it all just as colour (or even completely ignoring the colour). When people complain about 4e combat being nothing but a tactical skirmish game, I think they are mostly ignoring that - while hp loss doesn't generate any changes in the fiction other than colour (with "bloodied" and "you're at zero" as exceptions), positioning, terrain and status effects do generate ficitonal positioning, and keywords provide the anchors for exploiting fictional positioning via subsequent power use. 5e seems to use fewer status effects in combat than 4e, and so for fictional positioning in combat seems to rely more heaviy on positioning.

But anyway, it is not the same system of resolution as the check-result-correlates-to-fictional-outcome of an ability/skill check.

(EDIT: Vincent Baker's "clouds-and-boxes" represents the contrast in visual terms.)

 

[Greg Benage]

It's not my fault the meanings of words doesn't back you up.

You're going to be baffled by the Great Old One warlock's Awakened Mind ability. Hope you can eventually work through it.

Awakened Mind
Starting at 1st level, you can communicate telepathically with any creature you can see within 30 feet of you. You don't need to share a language with the creature for it to understand your telepathic utterances, but the creature must be able to understand at least one language. Additionally, the creature does not gain the ability to telepathically reply, despite you being able to speak to it.

 

[Maxperson]

You're going to be baffled by the Great Old One warlock's Awakened Mind ability. Hope you can eventually work through it.

Awakened Mind
Starting at 1st level, you can communicate telepathically with any creature you can see within 30 feet of you. You don't need to share a language with the creature for it to understand your telepathic utterances, but the creature must be able to understand at least one language. Additionally, the creature does not gain the ability to telepathically reply, despite you being able to speak to it.

Won't be the first time the staff hasn't used a word correctly, and it won't be the last. That's what keeps threads going!

 

[pemerton]

One of their points expressed was that this is a role playing game and so it's ok to have non-mechsnical boosting elements you do for impact in the game that are fun - in a role playing game.

But why, then, do we bother counting all the coins? Why can't the GM just describe the PCs coming upon a "great treasure" or a "small cache" or whatever (as fiction writers do) and then the players describe what their PCs spend the money on?

In classic D&D the detail mattered - counting GP was tracking win conditions (ie XP earned). In 3E and 4e it matters, because the gold gets spent on treasure. (Probably all the numbers could be divided through by 5 or 10 or even 100, but that's a secondary point I think.)

But if collecting and spending treasure is just fun colour, why the accountancy? I personally think the answer is that it's a legacy feature and nothing more. Legacy features might be popular, but I don't think they make the case for strong or tight design.

 

[pemerton]

It is calling someone a liar if the implication is that they know they are telling falsehoods.

The implication with calling the rules lazy is that the devs just threw up their hands and said "meh, we haven't really tried that hard or put the effort into thinking of many options so **** it. We'll publish **** and hope people are gullible enough to buy it."

We see this attitude in one response after another. Anyone who likes the current set of rules is implicated as a gullible fool who believes that 5E is perfect. I can't count the number of times people have told me that simply because I think the design decision taken was the correct one. I see the term as a dog whistle, short-hand for "these rules are crap and anyone who believes differently is an idiot for not knowing better."

I'm sure some people don't mean it that way, but after being accused of believing that the rules are perfect for the umpteenth time (with the implied "you're a fool for believing that") I've started to see the pattern.

You seem to have mistaken me for some other poster. I haven't said anything about you, let alone suggested that you're gullible or a fool.

If you think someone engaging in criticism of the writing or design of a book or game you enjoy is an attack on you, I think that's on you. On this thread I've read more than one poster attacking 4e as poorly conceived, poorly designed, unplayable, etc. I don't take those as personal attacks. And just because I think those people are wrong, that doesn't mean I think they're fools.

This thread is discussing the design of a game, not the morals or character of those who designed it or those who play it.

 

[ad_hoc]

Okay, man.

It is a gross omission of that dictionary to neglect the use of telepathy.

 

[OB1]

Finally caught up on this thread and figure this is as good a point as any to dip in..

But why, then, do we bother counting all the coins? Why can't the GM just describe the PCs coming upon a "great treasure" or a "small cache" or whatever (as fiction writers do) and then the players describe what their PCs spend the money on?

In classic D&D the detail mattered - counting GP was tracking win conditions (ie XP earned). In 3E and 4e it matters, because the gold gets spent on treasure. (Probably all the numbers could be divided through by 5 or 10 or even 100, but that's a secondary point I think.)

But if collecting and spending treasure is just fun colour, why the accountancy? I personally think the answer is that it's a legacy feature and nothing more. Legacy features might be popular, but I don't think they make the case for strong or tight design.

Maintaining a wealthy lifestyle requires around 1,500 gp a year, an Aristocratic one 3,600. Assume you want to retire from adventuring at some point means a human would need 45,000+ gold minimum. Want to build your own castle? You'll need 500,000gp just to build and another 140,000 per year to maintain. That's a CR17+ treasure hoard every year.

Of course, all of those things come with their own complications, as does spending money trying to buy magic items, as doing so could draw the attention of other powerful beings.

Spending money is all grounded in the particular story you are involved in.

And to the point of this thread and Mearl's statement, not being as granular about the rules allows DMs to better tell the story that their individual table is interested in. Could this mean that there is a disagreement at the table over how much 100,000 gp should be able to purchase? Yes, it might, but that disagreement carries a much lower consequence to it than one over whether or not the evil Orc hit you with it's sword and killed you.

Combat in D&D takes up so much design space because it is both the primary player agency mechanism and has the highest stakes. As long as the rules of life and death are seen as fair, the players can use that to impact the world with an expectation that the results will not be at DM whim.

For example, if the DM decides that no amount of money can buy a castle because the King must grant the land, the players can use the rules of combat to kill the King and build the castle anyhow. This in turn, leads back to the central conceit of the game as it was designed, for the DM and players to create an exciting story of bold adventurers who confront deadly perils.

And that to me is the whole point of the 5E design philosophy. What are the minimum amount of rules necessary to inspire and tell that exciting story? I'd argue that the extensive combat rules both inspire the imagination in exciting action packed scenes and give players a sense of agency without perfect certainty leading to careful weighing of options on how to engage the world. Extensive travel rules or shopping rules just don't, IMO, have the same rewards for added complexity. There are also diminishing returns on increasing the complexity of combat to these goals as well.

 

[guachi]

I feel that too tightly focusing on the "story" of a subclass makes a subclass too narrow to be appealing. It's why, for example, I find the Battle Master such a fantastic subclass despite Mearls thinking it's one of the weakest.

The Battle Master can be anything. It can be an Arcane Archer (not literally but you can fluff stuff if you want), a Samurai, a Cavalier. It can basically be any subclass you want except the Eldritch Knight. Its "story" isn't the story the designers give you; its story is the one the player gives it. You can "Battle Master" almost any fighter concept you can come up with.