Will the real Mike Mearls please stand up?

[Obryn]

I'm a whole lot more interested in the game he produces than in his deeply-held convictions.

-O

 

[GX.Sigma]

Hey, we all had weird ideas about D&D in the early 2000s.

 

[slobo777]

It seems to me, good game designers experiment. They try four bad ideas for every good one. Being creative types, that make stuff up just to make stuff up, and follow a chain of concepts just to see where it goes. They formulate theories that get taken apart. They put stuff out there, see how it goes, learn, and try to do better the next time. Mistakes teach them more than success.

If Mike Mearls had the exact same game design goals and philosophies now as he did 7 or 12 years ago, whatever they might be, I would be afraid to trust him or his work.

This. There is creativity and going where a design takes you, there is experimentation, there is fashion. Afterwards, there are attempts at a narrative to explain what is you did and why . . .

I'd fully expect Mr Mearl's dislike of "Mother May I" games with over-bearing controlling DMs is still in place. However, you don't *have* to design a game with built-in limits to manage them.

Edit: Enjoyed the review. It's all true. However, I also *enjoyed* B2 when it came out and DM'd it more than once. My own dungeons made in the next two years owed a lot to B2's design (i.e. they were rather contrived "ecologies" of small groups monsters living a few doors apart, with just one or two dungeon features keeping them separate).

 

[wedgeski]

The only part of Mearls's history as a designer where I think he truly stumbled was with the Essentials refresh of 4E, and that's assuming he was behind the idea. Maybe Essentials represented what he would have done with the 4E design philosophy had he been in control from the start, but the game was in the wild by then, and its faults should have been fixed in a way which didn't utterly confuse and irritate 3/4 of my gaming table.

Otherwise he's doing what all good designers do: learning, experimenting, trying to do a good job. He's intersected with various different sections of the gaming community through the years, and 5E seems to represent a final attempt to create a game which will have something for everyone. I admire the effort, even as I fear it's doomed to failure.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

And essentials is what lead me to actually buy into 4e.

In my opinion it does not matter what his real opinion is. But when I look at the playtest, I see great things. As long as he does a good job, giving us a game that is real fun to play. Flexible and feeling like DnD.

 

[Bagpuss]

Up until 4th Edition came out, the style of gameplay where players said "I want to try this" and the DM/GM/ST/whatever said whether they could or couldn't was pretty much universal.

Actually I think 3rd Edition was the first D&D edition to move away from that "Mother May I?" approach, with the codified feats, and defined rules for considerably more actions than previous editions. Want to do X? You have to have a feat (or at least a feat made you better at it) but if you have the feat there is nothing the DM can do to stop you, because the rules for that action are in the PHB.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Eh, Gary Gygax changed his views over time too, going from rules-lite (OD&D) to rules-heavy (Dangerous Journeys), and back to rules-lite (Lejendary Adventure), for example.

The capacity to change one's mind is a trait to be admired, imho.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Up until 4th Edition came out, the style of gameplay where players said "I want to try this" and the DM/GM/ST/whatever said whether they could or couldn't was pretty much universal.

I don't think that's true at all. Treating the rules as holy writ is a tendency within rpging that goes all the way back. In the early 70s, Gary Gygax used to be weirded out by all the letters he received asking for rules clarifications. The Sage Advice column in Dragon to answer these queries started in issue #31.

Then there's rules heavy rpgs that attempt to be complete, such as Chivalry & Sorcery, Hero System, GURPS, and 3e D&D. In fact, any version of D&D looks rules heavy if you compare it to a game like Amber, which I've played a fair bit. Amber is a real 'rulings not rules' system. There's almost nothing but rulings!

 

[Minigiant]

He evolved....

and no one pressed B

 

[jadrax]

then designed 4E

Mike Mearls is not listed as a designer on any of the 4ed core books, he was brought in as a developer to clean them up.