New Legends and Lore: The Rules

[Gundark]

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (The Rules)

Discuss

A few thoughts. I find it interesting to see dials on the DM side as well, I wonder if it would be possible to have the dial set on the low end on one side of the screen and set on the high crunch setting on the other.....

That, and it looks as if 5e will be able to be played without a battlemat.

 

[AeroDm]

My take from all of these articles is that I, like many people, want the elements Mearls is describing to take shape into a game. But this is because I interpret the words to my own angle, hearing what I want and agree with. Everyone does this and it is easy to do so because the articles are intentionally vague and general. The game, though, only gets to take one angle. It is a far cry different to put these principles into action than to describe them.

 

[KidSnide]

My take from all of these articles is that I, like many people, want the elements Mearls is describing to take shape into a game. But this is because I interpret the words to my own angle, hearing what I want and agree with. Everyone does this and it is easy to do so because the articles are intentionally vague and general. The game, though, only gets to take one angle. It is a far cry different to put these principles into action than to describe them.

I have a similar reaction. That having been said, I feel like many (most?) of the design motivations behind 4e were reactions to specific problems in the 3.x game. As a result, at least in some ways, 4e moved even further away from some desirable properties of 1e/2e.

I think it's refreshing to see the WotC designers taking a step back and think some things through from first principals. There's an element of marketing in this, but I think it's mostly an attempt to create content for DDI. Legends & Lore was introduced as one of 4 columns to provide something new every day. It's just that this column happens to be about game design which is the sort of thing that excites the type of people who post on boards like this.

It seems like the entire message board community thinks this series of articles is the forerunner to 5e (and, I suppose, it might be). But we don't really know when Mike had these thoughts. It's easy enough to imagine that he's updating thoughts he had in 2004 or 1996. Surely, WotC is thinking about the next edition (that must always be true). But he could easily be writing these columns just because (1) he has interesting thoughts, (2) the Magazine guys decided they needed 4 weekly columns and (3) he volunteered.

Of course, that would be a lot less fun to speculate about...

-KS

 

[Ron]

@KS: Although I think Mearls is actually showing where the game is heading, I am not so sure WotC would be ready to release it as a new edition as they don't want to further alienate the current players. They might go for a relaunch of fourth edition with the core books structured with a complexity dial. The more complex game would be completely compatible with the current books whereas the simpler option would be what Essentials should have been but WotC was too afraid to go.

 

[AeroDm]

It seems like the entire message board community thinks this series of articles is the forerunner to 5e (and, I suppose, it might be). But we don't really know when Mike had these thoughts. It's easy enough to imagine that he's updating thoughts he had in 2004 or 1996. Surely, WotC is thinking about the next edition (that must always be true). But he could easily be writing these columns just because (1) he has interesting thoughts, (2) the Magazine guys decided they needed 4 weekly columns and (3) he volunteered.

Of course, that would be a lot less fun to speculate about...

-KS

For sure. Hell, I've been arguing a lot of these same notions on my site and the ideas aren't truly my own as I've been hearing them in different iterations for nigh on a decade. The unique thing about this series is that they are coming from the source, from WotC, and they basically acknowledge a return to the foundation of what the game is about. We really haven't had that before. Regardless, my point stands that it is easier to reference the foundation than to actually tear the game down to stone and rebuild.

 

[Gundark]

But he could easily be writing these columns just because (1) he has interesting thoughts, (2) the Magazine guys decided they needed 4 weekly columns and (3) he volunteered.

Of course, that would be a lot less fun to speculate about...

-KS

yep its fun, but if the above is true then why wouldn't he shoot down the 5e rumors?

 

[delericho]

Aye right!

Firstly, and obviously of overriding importance - he's got the rules of football quite wrong. If a midfielder picks up the ball and throws it into the net, that's a free kick. A penalty occurs when a team commits some sort of foul while within their own box.

As for the rest: it's a nice idea in theory, but I'm really sceptical, for two reasons:

- How do you balance a system with all these different complexity levels? Especially if different people at the table can use different settings?

- How do you provide ongoing support for this? Different sourcebooks for each setting (turning everything into even more of a niche product than they already are)? Or combined sourcebooks (so huge parts of each book are guaranteed to be redundant)? Or do it all in DDI (meaning a lot of extra work for the same $6 per month as if you only offered one setting)?

Also, what about the pregenerated adventures? And Encounters, and similar? Are they going to assume some complexity settings, or are they going to bloat up to try to support them all?

It's a shame. The notion of complexity dials really suits me, not least because I don't like the current Combat Complexity setting of 11. But I'll believe it when I see it.

 

[pemerton]

I think this has been mentioned before in response to earlier Mearls columns, but this idea of adding more complex subsystems to substitute for a basic action resolution mechanic can already be found in the Burning Wheel (and I imagine in some other games as well).

 

[Anselyn]

As for the rest: it's a nice idea in theory, but I'm really sceptical, for two reasons:

- How do you balance a system with all these different complexity levels? Especially if different people at the table can use different settings?

- How do you provide ongoing support for this? Different sourcebooks for each setting (turning everything into even more of a niche product than they already are)? Or combined sourcebooks (so huge parts of each book are guaranteed to be redundant)? Or do it all in DDI (meaning a lot of extra work for the same $6 per month as if you only offered one setting)?

Also, what about the pregenerated adventures? And Encounters, and similar? Are they going to assume some complexity settings, or are they going to bloat up to try to support them all?

I agree that there could be complexities here. The MM column is:

a weekly column where I write about various topics on D&D’s history, how the game has changed over the years, and where it’s going in the future.

But I guess we should let him speculate about an ideal set of rules with just his Designer head on rather than always require the marketing and monetisation to be the first part of the process. Let's see what our objective is - then if we can reach it. But ...

Anyway, the Pathfinder AP books - from what I've seen - have interesting tidbits about the world in them apart from the adventure. They are generally a good read and that helps them be a good buy.

Think back to the days when we had White Dwarf, Different Worlds, Challenge magazine etc. Did you only read the bits of the magazines that were directly related to your current game or did you read them thinking about what you would, could or might play in the future?

I think an interesting presentation of a portfolio of options for a game could be fun to browse. Interestingly, this probably wouldn't work in a DDI PDF-by-PDF model as it may not lure the reader into even opening the file.

It's the entertaining melange that works. And wasn't there a survey of homw many pages of gaming stuff you'd buy/read a month? The buy/read rate doesn't have to equal the adopt-for-play rate.

 

[delericho]

Anyway, the Pathfinder AP books - from what I've seen - have interesting tidbits about the world in them apart from the adventure. They are generally a good read and that helps them be a good buy.

True, but there's a difference between providing extraneous fluff that I might use, rather than incompatible mechanical stuff that I can't use. I can use my Eberron 3.5e rules with 4e; I can't meaningfully use "Martial Power" with 3e.

Think back to the days when we had White Dwarf, Different Worlds, Challenge magazine etc. Did you only read the bits of the magazines that were directly related to your current game or did you read them thinking about what you would, could or might play in the future?

But again, there's a difference between a magazine intended for reading and then disposal, and a sourcebook that is intended for ongoing use.

(Although, actually, that raises another oddity about RPGs: Dragon and Dungeon mag weren't ever really just mags - by striving always to provide stuff that could be kept and used at a later date, they were often more like mini-sourcebooks published every month. Not really relevant to the topic at hand, but it just strikes me as odd.)