D&D 5E Mearl's Book Design Philosophy

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Zardnaar]

Granted, and I get the desire for products you will use, I am lucky in that I want and use what they are providing, and have a hard time keeping up with their relaxes schedule. However, we don't have enough info to guess at what a happy medium would be: WotC has way way more data, to make an educated guess. And ironically, the "New Coke" failure of 3E may have given the D&D team the freedom to make the right decisions, with less corporate-y influence.



You cite the success of splat in previous editions, but that splat was never so successful as to save TSR from bankruptcy or the crash and burn of edition change: indeed, the community ga e the derivative name of "*-book" to mock the model itself. What Mearls seems to be saying is that they want to avoid falling into the "Complete Handbook of * Power" trap, and make each title multifunctional.

Erm splat did save TSR from bankruptcy in 1985. Unearthed Arcana and Dragonlance saved TSR.

When TSR did go bankrupt it was mostl because they were selling some products at a loss (PLanescape), Dragon Dice (ordered 1 million units sold 70k), and a return on novels that they printed to many of.

3.0 sold like gangbusters but was heavily front loaded in sales and WotC wanted that sales back and rushed 3.5 out the door. The d20 bubble popped though, 3.5 sold around half of what 3.0 did and Warcraft landed. So they rushed out 4E because they were making a lot of money off minis in 2006 when they designed it.

 

[Parmandur]

Erm splat did save TSR from bankruptcy in 1985. Unearthed Arcana and Dragonlance saved TSR.

On the hand, fair point; on the other hand, aren't those the kinds of releases that WotC is working on now...?

 

[Parmandur]

Well, I'd point out that it's not $100. It's $30 on Amazon right now for a new copy. Which is comparable to a decent meal. Less than the price that I will be paying for two tickets to Dr. Strange. Far less than I would pay for a night out. And so on.

But I understand what you're saying- I mean, I haven't bought it yet because I don't like FR. It's the principle of the matter. I may in the future, but not now.

But the difference between you and me is that I could care less if WoTC delivers exactly what I want. If they do, I'll buy it, and if they don't, I won't! I mean- to be completely honest, I don't want them to release an updated Greyhawk for 5e, because I'll probably hate it, and will still keep running the 1983 version.

Great post; while I do like the book, I think this is spot on. Don't like it, don't buy it; but, the support for the game exists, in the format WotC believes to be most useful to the widest number of gamers. The majority of players fall into two camps: people actively playing in the FR, and home brewers who crib Forgotten Realms material as they see fit. SCAG might actually be more aimed towards the latter group than the former, and we know those yeo groups form a solid majority of D&D fans because WotC revealed those numbers, multiple times, in public.

If most people are best served by X, it makes financial sense for Wizards to support X; so they throw in the other third, to give some support to people that want Y, but not a whole book of Y. It's not personal, just business. And if you don't want to buy it, don't; doesn't mean they released no Y.

 

[Sacrosanct]

On the hand, fair point; on the other hand, aren't those the kinds of releases that WotC is working on now...?

I don't think it's fair to compare business models from the 80s to today anyway. Yeah, Lorraine Williams screwed TSR by churning out tons of crap (dice, novels, etc) that led to financial ruin, but 80s TSR had other challenges to their brand that we don't have now. For example, the whole devil worshiping thing, no access to online communities, and nowadays being a geek is cool. In the 80s? Not so much lol. Without those added challenges, I think TSR would have been fine without feeling the need to churn out material. It seems the current management in WotC thinks the same, as evidenced by their release schedule.

Also, and I mentioned this in another thread, speaking from my own project management experience, if they churned out a bunch of stuff now, that means they would have to really ramp up their staffing and costs. Only to have to lay off all those people a year or so from now when there is no more material to create. And heaven forbid they decide to come out with 6e just to keep the staff busy.

No, I'd much rather have my core staff work on the essentials, and draw out the release schedule so I had the same people working on all the projects, and have them working for the next few years at least. Not only do you get consistency with product quality with the same people working them, but you also keep staff retention.

 

[Mistwell]

Ok, let's repeat my post's second part, because it apparently got lost somehow:

And what about system updates, new material, even the dreaded metaplot, because some people like living, evolving settings? DMsG material is ok, but it's old. Old as layout, old as artworks (although I like a lot of the old books' visual style) old as story, old as plot, old as system. It's not backward-compatible, and in the case of living settings, like FR, even the lore is not the same.

I generally haven't got any personal problems with Mearls. I enjoy a lot of his writings, regardless of how I like the current approach of D&D or not. I generally try to not make any personal attacks when criticizing it. But this specific quote for me is just PR talk, which wants to show in a more flattering way something, what ultimately is just "because it won't make enough money and we have to make money".

​

And let me repeat the part of your post I was replying to, because that apparently got lost somehow, "Well, what about the new gamers, who didn't [see it before]?"

I assume my answer [which was just to that part of your post] of, "They're selling the classic books..." makes sense now?

 

[Zardnaar]

On the hand, fair point; on the other hand, aren't those the kinds of releases that WotC is working on now...?

No idea but UA was the only splatbook 1E had at least in terms of splat in the modern sense that being PC options.

DM options like MM and adventures are not really splat as such as they do not bloat the edition or increase its complexity. Quite a bit of UA and WSG/DSG made it into the 2E book and increased the complexity but they were more game options than PC options with things like the proficiency system.

Te splatbook churn in the modern sense started in 1989 with 2E and the Complete Fighters Handbook and later on things like Tome of Magic.

2E was also turning out material faster than 3E and 4E (I think Paizo managed to beat this rate) but a lot mof it was setting splat and thats when things started to go wrong for TSR. Darksun fans might not buy Planescape material and a setting adventure would sell less than a generic adventure which they started figuring out around 1994 and they made The Night Below which is one of the very few good 2E adventures and it is also one of the best D&D adventures of all time.

WotC messed up 3E, and it was not really 3E fault as such had it been handled better it would have been your decade+ long D&D (see Paizo doing a better job).

4E was a big over reaction to the problems of 3E, was rushed out the door and they listened to the wrong people when they designed it (Tweet and Heinsoo made the minis game and the people who were in charge of organised platy wanted a simpler/minis type game).

In 7 years WotC also made 3 versions of the Star Wars RPG.

The people in charge of WotC after the TSR takeover and around the launch of 3E were mostly gone by 2001/2002 though. That was a big problem as later events showed. Most of the people who pushed for 4E were also fired. Mearls and Crawford were there but they were not the ones who pushed for it (Tweet, Heinsoo, Slaviksec).

5E is more your classic D&D game hearkening back to the TSR era with modern mechanics and overhauled spells and classes. You can have a more powerful class than say AD&D but you can't break it as easy with magic items (back under DMs control) and feats are optional (once again under DMs control). They basically fixed the worst offenders from 3E without throwing out the stuff D&D gamers liked about the game in the 1st place. 4E tried to fix D&D mechanically, 5E did not bother but identified the things that broke 3E and 4E and toned down the complexity. Both had to many options that lead to to powerful PCs.

 

[Jester David]

False.

You've played a character or characters that use all ten subclasses from the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide?
You've played the thousands of characters needed to even use the majority of the crunch from either 3e or 4e? Have you honestly?

Grabbing a random splatbook off my shelf (Complete Adventure in case it matters) I find the 192-page contains 26 Prestige Classes, which could be interpreted as subclasses, 55 feats, a bunch of new weapons, tools, and instruments, 75-odd spells, 30 magic items, and a bunch of other new rules on skills.
There's enough content there for a half-dozen characters mixing feats and Prestige Classes. You could have two or three level 1-20 campaigns just using this book and the PHB with no overlap in character concepts.

I bought the book shortly after it came out in 2005. January actually, since I apparently have a first printing. And even after playing 3.5e pretty regularly for three years (I was heavily into Living Greyhawk and Xen'Drick expeditions games at the time) I used maybe four pages in this book: the tempest prestige class, masterwork instruments, and a spell. I paid $40 CAD (far more than the $30 USD, the exchange rate was pretty favourable then) for those pages. $10 a page! I might have used more, but other books came along that had other Prestige Classes and spells that caught my fancy. The more books that came out, the less valuable the prior purchase was...
If I had been playing a homegame, maybe the book would have seen more use. More people tapping it for content. Or, more likely, they would have looked at the other splatbooks instead.

There is probably content in Complete Adventure that no one used. Think about that: feats, prestige classes, or spells that no one in the history of the game used once. Because they just weren't as interesting as everything else. More time writing and designing a few options than they saw being used at the table.

You aren't very good at this. How about instead of telling me what I will and won't use, what I do and do not want, and what I want for the future of the game, you just mind your own business.

If you don't want people to talk with you, you might want to avoid online discussion boards. That's kind of their sole purpose.

Tell me what YOU will and won't use, what YOU do and do not want, and what YOU want for the future of the game.

I go into what I would like to see and think would make a good sourcebook earlier in the thread. here:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...osophy/page8&p=6927758&viewfull=1#post6927758

I've pitched the idea of a Hacker's Guide a few times: optional rules, more advice on optional rules, monster customization rules, more advice on making subclasses, races, and subraces.
Plus it could draw examples drawing from campaign settings from the past as a sneaky way of updating that content. Use it as an excuse for a warforged and kender, for defiling and moon magic, for the artificer and knight of Solamnia, and other campaign customizations. It can use the ranger as a prolonged example, which is a good way to not only include a revised version of the class (without just being "here's a new ranger") but also include a non-magic variant as well. And it can even sell the DMsGuild, possibly reprinting some content from that as examples of fan design. Encouraging people to check out the website.

In short, crunch, optional rules for DMs, and advice. The big book of beginner design.

Not sure what I want after that. Or if I'll need much... There's a lot of awesome 3rd Party stuff out there as well.

I don't want a book that is just "here's the fighter book". Or even "here's the martial/warrior book". Those are boring. I can count the number of times I've looked at my copy of Complete Warrior since I stopped playing 5e on a single hand. (Most of them were looking for ideas for designing new 5e subclasses.)
But books of lore and story and information... I still use 1st Edition books like the Manual of the Planes and Deities & Demigods. I still look up monster ecology information from 2e books and the Monstrous Manual. SCAG and Volo's Guide to Monsters will still be useful when we're all playing 7th Edition.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm not dictating to you what counts for you and what doesn't because that's subjective opinion. However, you don't get to dictate what exists and what doesn't just because you personally don't like it. It does exist. I'm looking at it right now. So when you say it doesn't exist, you are objectively incorrect.

Awesome. I never said it doesn't exist. What I have said is that it is not a splat book, instead it is a setting book, and I have said that it's absurd to expect me to throw money into a fire to get a bit of crunch out of a setting book. That crunch is unusable by me.

I'm paraphrasing, but Neil DeGrasse Tyson just said about a month or so ago: "The problem with debate in this country is people act like their opinion carries as much weight and should be treated as equal as objective fact."

Strawman. I never said what you are claiming, so you are arguing against a fiction you made up.

 

[Maxperson]

Well, I'd point out that it's not $100. It's $30 on Amazon right now for a new copy. Which is comparable to a decent meal. Less than the price that I will be paying for two tickets to Dr. Strange. Far less than I would pay for a night out. And so on.

First, it's not the amount. It's that I'm throwing 2/3 of whatever the amount is into the trash, and I'm not into trashing money. Second, I've noticed something about myself over the years. I will take my wife out and spend $250 on dinner without a concern, but I'll sit and stare at a $40 D&D book in the store forever before I decide to buy it or not. Even though I know that I will get a lot more use out of that $40 than I would out of the $250 dinner. It's odd, but true.

But the difference between you and me is that I could care less if WoTC delivers exactly what I want. If they do, I'll buy it, and if they don't, I won't! I mean- to be completely honest, I don't want them to release an updated Greyhawk for 5e, because I'll probably hate it, and will still keep running the 1983 version.

I have 3e to DM if they don't make 5e into something I want to run. I'll play 5e when someone else wants to DM, at least until I get bored with the basic stuff.