D&D 5E Mearl's Book Design Philosophy

Maxperson said:

Why would a setting specific book count as a general release for all games?

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It has content usable for all games, and FR is the default setting, so it has content usable for "default" games as well.

Volo's is a setting book, too - maps and lore for the default setting, in addition to monster stats.

I think that if you are looking for a setting-free mechanics splat, you're looking for something that WotC isn't really interested in making at the moment.

I regret doing this thread now…


I thought the quote was interesting from a book planning perspective, in that they don't sound like they want to do the "standard" books, the Deities & Demigods or Manual of the Planes. The books most of us were expecting at one time or another. Which is an interesting move… It makes their future books more unpredictable, but also more open to experimentation.
And it's something Paizo also did, eschewing doing the psionic book and the planar book.


But, of course, the thread immediately became another "WotC needs to release two-six splatbooks a year!" thread.


Sigh...




Really, even a single dedicated splatbook might almost be too much.


Subclasses be small. You can fit three and a picture into a two page spread. With 11 classes, you could give each class 8 pages for 12 new subclasses each, doubling even the number available to the cleric and wizard (and 6x as many for the bard and druid). And that's still *only* 88 pages! What do you fill the remaining 72 pages of a 160-page book with? Another 100 subclasses? 12 new classes? 150 new spells?
And then what? With (only) a dozen new subclasses they'd have published enough class for years and years of campaigns. What do they release next? You won't need more subclasses ever. The edition's done at that point...


Even making those 88-pages of 132 subclasses would be tricky. A quarter will be excellent hybrids of lore and unique/distinct mechanics, a quarter will likely have solid lore but weak/generic mechanics, a quarter will have strong mechanics but a flimsy story, and a quarter will just be there to hit the page count.
And there's no way you can remotely playtest 132 subclasses, so that goes out the window.


How is this remotely a good idea?

Maxperson said:

Yeah, I get that. When I buy a book, though, I don't really want to be buying a bunch of stuff I'm never going to use in order to get a bit that I will. Currently, I play 5e, using books that other people have purchased. I won't spend a dollar on the game myself, though, until I get some general release support, which means that I will continue to run 3e games. If/when 5e ever bothers to support players who want more than core material and setting books/adventure paths, I'd love to start running the game.

If/when I do start buying, I run the Realms, so I'll buy the Sword Coast book, but I won't be buying the Dragonlance book at all. I don't run that game and I'm not going to throw my money at a bunch of Dragonlance pages for whatever rules are in there that I might use.

General release books are something that a lot of people want. WotC threw out the baby with the bath water on this. 3e and 4e had too many general releases, but that didn't mean that they had to drop down to next to none.

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But to WotC, SCAG is a general release book, aimed at their two main demos: FR players, and home brewers who are cool with picking from the FR generic buffet table; taken together, that is actually the general audience for D&D. They have been clear on that point.

Now, they are planning a "first major rules expansion" of an undetermined sort, but we know it is slates to do Psionics, neo-Rangers, feats, spells and a smorgasbord of new class and probably race options. The current hip theory on the boards is that we might get setting specific stuff for all the other settings: Warforged, Kender, etc. But who knows?

Maxperson said:

Yeah, I get that. When I buy a book, though, I don't really want to be buying a bunch of stuff I'm never going to use in order to get a bit that I will.

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But that's always the case. When you buy the big book of crunch, you only use a small fraction of it. A feat, a subclass/prestige class. You're always paying for content you're not using since no one runs a dozen PCs at the same time.

How many 3e characters have you played? What percentage of your 3e books do you think have seen play at the table?

I'm A Banana said:

It has content usable for all games, and FR is the default setting, so it has content usable for "default" games as well.

Volo's is a setting book, too - maps and lore for the default setting, in addition to monster stats.

I think that if you are looking for a setting-free mechanics splat, you're looking for something that WotC isn't really interested in making at the moment.

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Yes, I get that WotC isn't interested in my money or the money of those like me who would like at least SOME support.

Jester David said:

But that's always the case. When you buy the big book of crunch, you only use a small fraction of it. A feat, a subclass/prestige class. You're always paying for content you're not using since no one runs a dozen PCs at the same time.

How many 3e characters have you played? What percentage of your 3e books do you think have seen play at the table?

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I've used or seen used a lot of the content of the 3e books that I purchased. That's not the point, though. It's not how much I DO use, it's how much is usable. When I bought 3e books, 90%+ of those books were usable by me, or else I didn't buy them. Some books I never purchased. I can also say that had they released just 1 book a year, I'd have actually used that 90%+. The only reason I didn't use all of it is because they put out too much of it.

To be honest, someone who puts such heavy conditionals on buying the books is probably not worth the effort of chasing. It seems likely that you'd never buy the books, not matter how good they were at meeting your conditions, if you got this far without doing it.

I think that Demetrios1453's speculative tripartite split for future books is a very coherent idea. It does mimic the Planescape Boxed Sets that I have purchased in PDF - a Player's Guide to the Planes of Chaos, a DM's Guide to the Planes of Chaos, a Monster Supplement, and an Adventures in the Planes of Chaos booklet. Added together, they probably would come in at less pages than a modern hardback...

Entsuropi said:

To be honest, someone who puts such heavy conditionals on buying the books is probably not worth the effort of chasing. It seems likely that you'd never buy the books, not matter how good they were at meeting your conditions, if you got this far without doing it.

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I can't fault anyone for wanting what they want...but threads like these certainly hint at the challenges that the WotC team faces on what to produce and how. For every person who says they like what they're doing, you get one who hates it, one who likes it but wants to also see X in addition, then people who just disagree with what he said or say he's lying...and every other kind of response imaginable.

No no matter what they do, there are going to be people who will be disappointed. It's just the way it goes.

Entsuropi said:

I think that Demetrios1453's speculative tripartite split for future books is a very coherent idea. It does mimic the Planescape Boxed Sets that I have purchased in PDF - a Player's Guide to the Planes of Chaos, a DM's Guide to the Planes of Chaos, a Monster Supplement, and an Adventures in the Planes of Chaos booklet. Added together, they probably would come in at less pages than a modern hardback...

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I agree, that was a great point by [MENTION=6801060]Demetrios1453[/MENTION], and I think that approach seems the most rational given the diverse audience they are trying to appease, while also trying to grab new players.

Entsuropi said:

To be honest, someone who puts such heavy conditionals on buying the books is probably not worth the effort of chasing. It seems likely that you'd never buy the books, not matter how good they were at meeting your conditions, if you got this far without doing it.

I think that Demetrios1453's speculative tripartite split for future books is a very coherent idea. It does mimic the Planescape Boxed Sets that I have purchased in PDF - a Player's Guide to the Planes of Chaos, a DM's Guide to the Planes of Chaos, a Monster Supplement, and an Adventures in the Planes of Chaos booklet. Added together, they probably would come in at less pages than a modern hardback...

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Just checked on DMsGuild for the original Planescape box: players guide and monster supplement were 32 pages each, while the DMs booklet was 64 pages; the PDF including maps and such is ~290 pages of material.


I could see a theoretical Volos Guide to the Planes covering the DM setting information for the major Planes, PC options and relevant nee monster options, easy.

Entsuropi said:

To be honest, someone who puts such heavy conditionals on buying the books is probably not worth the effort of chasing. It seems likely that you'd never buy the books, not matter how good they were at meeting your conditions, if you got this far without doing it.

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I put no heavy conditionals on buying books. As a result, I purchased most of the 3e general release books, but none of the Eberron ones as I was uninterested in that setting.