Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Mike Mearls "Invented The Baked Potato" in Xanathar's Guide With The Cleric Forge Domain
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Morrus" data-source="post: 7725467" data-attributes="member: 1"><p>Making a change from all those lovely pictures of Jeremy Crawford on EN World's front page, this time it's Mike Mearls who speaks to D&D Beyond about the Cleric Forge Domain in <em>Xanathar's Guide, </em>along with some interesting observations about baked potatoes.[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]<p style="text-align: center"></p> <p style="text-align: center"></p> <p style="text-align: center">[video=youtube;nZznOH4-njM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZznOH4-njM[/video]</p><p></p><p></p><p>"... one of those ones where it's like "Why wasn't this in the Player's Handbook?", right like it's the dwarf clerics have become so iconic to the game and it's funny because they weren't technically really like 2nd Edition let you play a dwarf cleric, but I think that people just naturally always, I don't know what it is about dwarves? Dwarves and clerics just goes together and I think part of it is because you have the story of Moradin forging the dwarves, he literally makes them, right, and I think that's mythically very interesting, this idea that you have a craftsman who's a God who basically challenges himself -- "Can I make a folk, , the dwarves, my children. I'm gonna [something] amount of iron and metal and ingots whatever it is , and that to me is really interesting and I think that would have such profound implications of that society where like your God physically made you out of iron, out of metal and breathed life into you, and so then you have that association of dwarves, of crafting things. Of course creation would be hopefully sacred to dwarves because that's what their deity does, that's what their deity did to create them. </p><p style="text-align: center"></p> <p style="text-align: center"></p><p>And again this is what I think is interesting in D&D when you have the divine, the divine is knowable. Like Moradin's day to day desires might be unknowable or cryptic but Morden is a person that is like what happened, like people know, there's there's not a question of faith, it's a question of which team do you pick? And so the idea of the dwarf cleric is essentially to my mind when we were working on it, what I was thinking 100% was the dwarf cleric who decides "I am going to emulate Moradin, I want to be a great Smith, that the deity who created me was a great smith and I will follow those footsteps because creation is sacred to our folk". </p><p></p><p>And then since it's a cleric you have to ask yourself how do you use creation to beat down orcs and goblins? And then it's just like - make magic weapons. That's it, you get to imbue a weapon and make it magical and that just felt very sensible, very obvious; and the great thing is in there our system it's not game breaking; it's powerful but it's not over-the-top.</p><p></p><p>This is one of the subclasses I think really encapsulates when we're doing things really right the initial playtest feedback was through the roof positive. I think we had to tweak a few things here and there but it hit that note I think of ... I was joking when I said this should have been the Players Handbook but really it should've been in the Players Handbook because it's so iconic. As soon as we showed it to people they were just like "Yes this makes sense. This fits, the mechanics make sense, the mechanics are easy, there's nothing in those mechanics that's tricky or strange or clever. It's just obvious. I make things magical, I make my armor better and make my weapons better. I make things, that's it." </p><p></p><p>But it just hits such a resonant tone and that's always what we're shooting for we do these new subclasses - we want to hit that resonant tone. You can go for the thing that's very experimental that people haven't seen before, and that's part of the approach, you need to do some of that. But when you're doing things where people just look out and go "Oh yeah that's D&D", yes do you feel really you feeling good about yourself as a designer because I fill the gap that everyone wanted to play but they couldn't play. Maybe they didn't know the gap was empty until you gave them this, and then suddenly everyones playing it. </p><p></p><p>And I think that's how we are really truly growing the game when we do that, when you could imagine "Oh if you could go back in time and give Xanathar's to the Players Handbook team, this is one of the domains, one of the options, they would just be "Oh, yes, of course let's put this right in the Players Handbook." </p><p></p><p>That always feels good as a designer when you do that. To me it's it's not the exotic new wacky thing it's the thing that's just like, "You've invented baked potatoes. Now that you've invented it everyone will have these with their steak forever", I just feel like, "Wow, that's kind of cool!" </p><p></p><p>Because it fits, and that's when we know as designers, as creators, we're connecting with the audience, we're hitting on things that people want, we're hitting on things that just make sense to people, and I love that feeling as a designer on a game like Dungeons & Dragons, that has a history, that has a big active user base, it means we as designers are in touch with players, that work on the same page. I love that feeling."</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"></p> <p style="text-align: center"></p> <p style="text-align: center">[ATTACH=full]111322[/ATTACH]</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Morrus, post: 7725467, member: 1"] Making a change from all those lovely pictures of Jeremy Crawford on EN World's front page, this time it's Mike Mearls who speaks to D&D Beyond about the Cleric Forge Domain in [I]Xanathar's Guide, [/I]along with some interesting observations about baked potatoes.[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK][CENTER] [video=youtube;nZznOH4-njM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZznOH4-njM[/video][/CENTER] "... one of those ones where it's like "Why wasn't this in the Player's Handbook?", right like it's the dwarf clerics have become so iconic to the game and it's funny because they weren't technically really like 2nd Edition let you play a dwarf cleric, but I think that people just naturally always, I don't know what it is about dwarves? Dwarves and clerics just goes together and I think part of it is because you have the story of Moradin forging the dwarves, he literally makes them, right, and I think that's mythically very interesting, this idea that you have a craftsman who's a God who basically challenges himself -- "Can I make a folk, , the dwarves, my children. I'm gonna [something] amount of iron and metal and ingots whatever it is , and that to me is really interesting and I think that would have such profound implications of that society where like your God physically made you out of iron, out of metal and breathed life into you, and so then you have that association of dwarves, of crafting things. Of course creation would be hopefully sacred to dwarves because that's what their deity does, that's what their deity did to create them. [CENTER] [/CENTER] And again this is what I think is interesting in D&D when you have the divine, the divine is knowable. Like Moradin's day to day desires might be unknowable or cryptic but Morden is a person that is like what happened, like people know, there's there's not a question of faith, it's a question of which team do you pick? And so the idea of the dwarf cleric is essentially to my mind when we were working on it, what I was thinking 100% was the dwarf cleric who decides "I am going to emulate Moradin, I want to be a great Smith, that the deity who created me was a great smith and I will follow those footsteps because creation is sacred to our folk". And then since it's a cleric you have to ask yourself how do you use creation to beat down orcs and goblins? And then it's just like - make magic weapons. That's it, you get to imbue a weapon and make it magical and that just felt very sensible, very obvious; and the great thing is in there our system it's not game breaking; it's powerful but it's not over-the-top. This is one of the subclasses I think really encapsulates when we're doing things really right the initial playtest feedback was through the roof positive. I think we had to tweak a few things here and there but it hit that note I think of ... I was joking when I said this should have been the Players Handbook but really it should've been in the Players Handbook because it's so iconic. As soon as we showed it to people they were just like "Yes this makes sense. This fits, the mechanics make sense, the mechanics are easy, there's nothing in those mechanics that's tricky or strange or clever. It's just obvious. I make things magical, I make my armor better and make my weapons better. I make things, that's it." But it just hits such a resonant tone and that's always what we're shooting for we do these new subclasses - we want to hit that resonant tone. You can go for the thing that's very experimental that people haven't seen before, and that's part of the approach, you need to do some of that. But when you're doing things where people just look out and go "Oh yeah that's D&D", yes do you feel really you feeling good about yourself as a designer because I fill the gap that everyone wanted to play but they couldn't play. Maybe they didn't know the gap was empty until you gave them this, and then suddenly everyones playing it. And I think that's how we are really truly growing the game when we do that, when you could imagine "Oh if you could go back in time and give Xanathar's to the Players Handbook team, this is one of the domains, one of the options, they would just be "Oh, yes, of course let's put this right in the Players Handbook." That always feels good as a designer when you do that. To me it's it's not the exotic new wacky thing it's the thing that's just like, "You've invented baked potatoes. Now that you've invented it everyone will have these with their steak forever", I just feel like, "Wow, that's kind of cool!" Because it fits, and that's when we know as designers, as creators, we're connecting with the audience, we're hitting on things that people want, we're hitting on things that just make sense to people, and I love that feeling as a designer on a game like Dungeons & Dragons, that has a history, that has a big active user base, it means we as designers are in touch with players, that work on the same page. I love that feeling." [CENTER] [ATTACH=FULL]111322[/ATTACH][/CENTER] [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Mike Mearls "Invented The Baked Potato" in Xanathar's Guide With The Cleric Forge Domain
Top