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.

 

[mortwatcher]

Well, in grid-combat flanking provides bonuses or advantage depending on the system, enough so to make characters take non-realistic routes to enter combat and assist their allies who have already engaged in the combat. It becomes very gamist (i.e. not necessarily natural) because of mechanics.

And that is just one example, there are so many more where natural character tendencies are stamped out by mechanics. And this is understandable given that it is a game, where natural choices have a tendency to become increasingly less the more game-y the rpg becomes.

EDIT: I first notice this strong gamist tendency with 4e, it certainly existed in the previous editions, but the grid combat was forced during 4e play and that is where it became all too obvious for me how the roleplaying (at least in combat) had taken on a much more gamist avenue.

See, for me flanking not giving a combat advantage feels unnatural, since defending against 2 opponents from opposite sides would be really hard and should be accounted for somehow.

 

[Sadras]

See, for me flanking not giving a combat advantage feels unnatural, since defending against 2 opponents from opposite sides would be really hard and should be accounted for somehow.

I believe you're misunderstanding me. I have no issue with advantage being offered as a reward for flanking. That is natural.

My issue is instead of characters running straight to the target to help out their buddy as fast as they can - which is the natural course of action, they take the scenic route whether to avoid AoO or otherwise (depending on the system) to gain the advantage. Mechanics trump natural course of action.

And it happens all the time.

 

[robus]

Yes, we do. Here's an example of such usage from the Wikipedia article about the board game Hare and Tortoise. Notice that it uses the word opponent when speaking about characters in a German fable, not about opponents in the game itself:

In Germany, there is another fable by a similar name, Hase und Igel (Hare and hedgehog), made popular by the Brothers Grimm, in which the hedgehog wins because his wife is at the finish line, and the hare mistakes her for his race opponent.​

"Hare's race opponent" has also been seen as a crossword clue, for which the answer of course is tortoise.

Here's a quote from an article titled "10 Racing Strategies to Run Your Best" from active.com:

If there is a specific opponent you want to beat, learn his racing strengths and weaknesses.​

Someone asked the question on quora.com, "How can I beat my opponent mentally in a running race?"

Clearly, it's common usage to identify contestants in a race as opponents.

That seems a bit of a stretch and I can also find online sources to support my position too

In fact I found a very useful definition of the difference between opponent and competitor: An opponent is someone you are trying to defeat, a competitor is someone you are trying to best. The latter description much better describes the initiative roll situation. You are not only rolling against enemies, but also allies.

Are you suggesting that the Rogue in the party is trying to defeat (oppose) the Ranger in the party?

This seemed particularly relevant: https://engineeredathletes.wordpress.com/2010/05/21/competitor-or-opponent/

But I'm not going to push it more than that. I'm just not seeing the opposition inherent in the initiative roll.

 

[billd91]

See, for me flanking not giving a combat advantage feels unnatural, since defending against 2 opponents from opposite sides would be really hard and should be accounted for somehow.

Why limit it to being on opposite sides? Why not account for the actual sides a shield could cover like in 1e? Why not have the level advantage vary by the degrees of separation between the multiple opponents a combatant may be defending against?

And the answer is - the game's fairly abstract and there's a limited degree of simulation that can exist before the game becomes bogged down in minutiae too difficult to deal with. But every abstraction still has the potential to derange the simulation. How many characters took really weird approaches to combats in 3e/PF to avoid the Attacks of Opportunity for moving through an opponent's reach? How many made strange shifts just to avoid being in an exactly flanking position when, realistically speaking, a pretty wide separation probably should still have hampered their defense?

Part of the art of game design is choosing the balance point between the need to be abstract to promote playability and keep an eye to simulation so that the action is believable from a realism perspective, or reality filtered through a genre-appropriate lens as the situation warrants.

 

[TwoSix]

Do you honestly think that WotC is going to spend 3-4 years developing a book for D&D that only a minority of gamers actually claim to want? Seriously?

Look, I get wanting new options. But, given how WotC approaches books now, it's just not going to happen.

I know it probably isn't going to happen. That's OK. I don't need new official material to enjoy my games, they're all going just fine.

But what does it benefit me to not voice my opinion on the matter? Especially in a thread specifically about WotC's design goals? Voicing my opinion here does absolutely nothing except give me a little feeling of solidarity with some of my fellow posters, and honestly, that's enough.

 

[Oofta]

Sure, if I’m understanding the question correctly, that would be one way to accomplish what I’m talking about.

So similar to powers from 4E?

All I can say is that I would not want that. I like my mundane fighter being a mundane fighter. If I want to keep track of resources (other than second wind) and what my fighter can do then they don't feel very mundane any more. They become just one more variant of a Vancian spell caster with a different label. We already have options for that in the battle master, eldritch knight or other classes.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

I prefer to get that experience by engaging the situation, and having feelings about the outcome that mirror those being felt by the character. So if my PC would be anxious or uncertain, I want to have that same experience; if my PC would feel the pull of loyalty, then I want the mechanics to make me feel the same thing.

I can see that. I've found over the decades that personality mechanics get in the way of the connection. If the mechanics are mirroring a physical action - a die roll = picking a lock - then I'm ok. But when the mechanics start influencing how the character would feel, then it isn't coming from me, but from the system, and that kills immersion for me.

 

[Hriston]

That seems a bit of a stretch and I can also find online sources to support my position too

In fact I found a very useful definition of the difference between opponent and competitor: An opponent is someone you are trying to defeat, a competitor is someone you are trying to best. The latter description much better describes the initiative roll situation. You are not only rolling against enemies, but also allies.

Are you suggesting that the Rogue in the party is trying to defeat (oppose) the Ranger in the party?

This seemed particularly relevant: https://engineeredathletes.wordpress.com/2010/05/21/competitor-or-opponent/

But I'm not going to push it more than that. I'm just not seeing the opposition inherent in the initiative roll.

And I'm not seeing combat as a friendly competition.

To jump off from your preference for the word competitor, however, I thought it would be instructive to look up the definition of contestant.

con·test·ant
/kənˈtestənt/
noun
a person who takes part in a contest or competition.
​

And here's a standard definition of competitor:

com·pet·i·tor​

/kəmˈpedədər/​

noun​

a person who takes part in an athletic contest.​

And here's one for opponent:

op·po·nent​

/əˈpōnənt/​

noun​

noun: opponent; plural noun: opponents​

someone who competes against or fights another in a contest, game, or argument; a rival or adversary.
​

So no matter which word you use for the participants in a combat, they all seem to get involved in contests of one sort or another.

 

[Charlaquin]

So similar to powers from 4E?

All I can say is that I would not want that. I like my mundane fighter being a mundane fighter. If I want to keep track of resources (other than second wind) and what my fighter can do then they don't feel very mundane any more. They become just one more variant of a Vancian spell caster with a different label. We already have options for that in the battle master, eldritch knight or other classes.

That’s fine. Not everyone’s tastes are the same, and I would hope there would be options for both a mundane fighter and a fighter that plays with special techniques.

To clarify though, I’m not a fan of arbitrarily limited resources. I don’t want my fighter to have a special technique that he can only use once per day simply because the rules say he can only use it once per day. I think the Berserker Barbarian’s Frenzy is a good model of how I like my martial techniques. He has a special move only he can do (spending a bonus action to enter a special mode where he gains damage resistance and an extra attack), and it’s limited not by how many times per day the rules say he can use it, but by how many levels of exhaustion he’s willing to take. Another good example is Pathfinder 2nd edition’s shield block mechanic. In PF2, any character who is proficient with a shield and uses one of their actions to raise it can use a reaction to a successful hit against them to reduce the damage, but the shield takes damage instead, potentially breaking it. Fixing the damage takes enough time that it’s not practical to do in combat, but is fast enough you can probably have it ready for the next combat. So, in effect, characters who use shields gain an encounter power, but unlike 4e encounter powers, there is an in-fiction reason for the limit on frequency, instead of an arbitrary limit.

 

[Satyrn]

But...I mean,...isn't that what the free, basic rules really amounts to?

No.

My idea of an advanced players handbook with a lot less mechanical bits would be a reflection of [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION]'s with lots more. It's not really about sheer number of choices of character building option, but the number of choice points.

I'm talking about a version of D&D where I choose my race and class, gain a couple features at 1st level and then never have to make another character building choice again. The Basic rules don't give me that. Even with the champion, I have ASIs to allocate, for example, and all the classes still gain too many features overall.

In a nutshell, I want more classes to choose from than the Basic Rules give, but I want each of those classes to have fewer features than the PH gives them.