D&D 5E Dungeoncraft Interview with Mike Mearls

[Zardnaar]

That my friend isn't the issue I was taking about.

Simplify the mechanics and high level D&D would still be unfulfilling.

The problem with low level 00s MMO play and high level D&D play is the same. As Meals said, spreadsheet design. The numbers are there but it's not fun.

Because like another poster said, there is a lot of romanticism of D&D and having it look a certain way. There is little thought on how it would be played at that level.

The 4-9 sweet spot in most editions is due to having just enough options to have fun tactically and strategically for most PCs.

Below level 4, you don't have enough resources to think strategical and too many bad options to use tactics. Above 10, you have too much that you can lean too hard on tactic or strategic and such the fun out the game.

One game that attempted to fix this was 13th age. As you level you replace lower level abilities with higher level abilities so your total number abilities at a certain point caps out and all you do is just upgrade them. This keeps your high level play from being a ton of options with slowdown play and a ton of resources that trivializes play.

Alot of video games rpgs the upgrades are a lot more incremental.

 

[Reynard]

I understand the rationale, I just think space saving does not trump usability,

I think space saving usually improves usability. The problem with RPGs is a lot of writers forget they are designers (Note: I speak from experience) and they get too invested in their own prose (usually because they are paid by the word).

The stories and evocative language of RPGs is important. But we can have that AND concise and clear rules.

 

[mamba]

I think space saving usually improves usability.

I tend to agree, I do not want a ton of prose, but the case here was incorporating the spells into the stat blocks, which does increase space usage for the purpose of usability

 

[Minigiant]

I tend to agree, I do not want a ton of prose, but the case here was incorporating the spells into the stat blocks, which does increase space usage for the purpose of usability

Ideally, you'll include special monster spells in the MM. Like an elemental spell for each dragon that could be reused for other casters. A Vampire Charm spell. A Lich death spell. Etc. etc.

 

[myrkulyte]

I think space saving usually improves usability. The problem with RPGs is a lot of writers forget they are designers (Note: I speak from experience) and they get too invested in their own prose (usually because they are paid by the word).

The stories and evocative language of RPGs is important. But we can have that AND concise and clear rules.

I think while trimming down the prose can hugely improve usability, the usability goes up if you don't have to flip through pages as much, which means repeating information multiple times in different sections. For example, repeating a rule where it is referenced or having a picture of part of a dungeon next to the key for that area. Takes up a lot of space on the page but makes life way easier.


Also, bit of a pet peeve of mine but being paid by the word doesn't really increase word count, the word count is usually set by the publisher ahead of time. The writer is then expected to match the word count so they can't really boost their pay just by like, turning in twice as much text as the publisher wanted. Not that I have any experience writing for rpgs but I can't imagine a scenario where a writer could line their pockets by being more verbose than they would otherwise normally be.

 

[Reynard]

Also, bit of a pet peeve of mine but being paid by the word doesn't really increase word count, the word count is usually set by the publisher ahead of time. The writer is then expected to match the word count so they can't really boost their pay just by like, turning in twice as much text as the publisher wanted. Not that I have any experience writing for rpgs but I can't imagine a scenario where a writer could line their pockets by being more verbose than they would otherwise normally be.

In my experience, assignment outlines are not particularly detailed, especially as it relates to "fluff versus crunch." Usually you get word count targets for sections, without necessarily a lot of guidance on how to divvy up those words. So you might get "monsters: 3000 words" but not number of monsters or balance between stats vs lore etc.

Every developer/editor is different though and my experiences are limited to, well, my experiences.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Yeah, I got to admit Mike's comments about high level play having players smoke the monsters really didn't reflect my experiences.

Out of interest were your table playing the monsters without any DM improvements (on the part of the monsters or the characters)?

I have had to significantly change the monsters for our higher level game, but my data is unusable because we have added much homebrew into the mix on the part of the character design.

 

[TiQuinn]

Out of interest were your table playing the monsters without any DM improvements (on the part of the monsters or the characters)?

I have had to significantly change the monsters for our higher level game, but my data is unusable because we have added much homebrew into the mix on the part of the character design.

In some cases, yes, in others, no. Odyssey of the Dragonlords didn’t really need much changing according to our DM while Dungeon of the Mad Mage required more adjustments and the final fight had to be completely different, but then he pulled in the stats for Tiamat from Tyranny of Dragons (I think?) for the final fight in that one. He’s also used monsters from other 3PP. So I would say maybe if we were going strictly off of WotC sources or the 2014 Monster Manual, the PCs would trounce, but as time went on, designers made adjustments to their material to even up the challenge?

 

[DEFCON 1]

I think that's a bit off the mark wrt the smaller groups being "in trouble. Magic items exist for a reason. One of those reasons is mitigating that "trouble" around the group's needs so that the challenge can remain for both small and large groups. Designing so monsters are fit for small unoptimized groups without magic weapons just makes a mess when any one of those three conditions start changing

I wasn't even talking about magic items... my whole belief in the capabilities of the encounter building rules / challenge rating system is based on the number of PCs that can heal. As soon as you add a second healing-capable PC (and goodness forbid a 3rd or 4th in a standard party)... you basically should halve the challenge ratings of all the monsters.

For some reason the 5E14 encounter building rules will double the XP challenge value of the monsters as soon as they outnumber the PCs (so that a Medium fight jumps to like Deadly with the addition of like a single other monster to the fight even if that monster is like a basic goblin)... but yet does not take into account having two healers, and thus the party almost never seeing any healing downtime. PC goes down to 0, one or two other PCs right there to get them back up... rather than a 4 PC party with a single healer that has no way to mitigate things if that single healer is the one going unconscious.

Your point about magic items can indeed exacerbate the problem... but I still believe adding a 5th PC (that is a second healer) to a party will throw off the balance in their favor positively much more than introducing a handful of magic items. I'd take that 5th PC over magic items any day if I was only concerned about survivability and the ease of winning fights.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I think official dnd should include high levels (say, levels 11-20) but that all that info should be in a PHB2 for the 5% of players that actually want it. Such a book would have space for legit high level options, like bringing back prestige classes, high level feats, more high level spells. The core books, however, would focus on giving 95% of players the game they actually play.

The problem I foresee in this is that they two materials still have to be mechanically married to each other*, but the developers of the lower-level stuff will have little reason to design to ensure that the upper level stuff works well. That seems to have happened with 3.0's Epic Level Handbook. Not an insurmountable problem, but a challenge.
*at least or else there will be a lot of mechanical dissonance when people hit the cut-off.

Interesting anecdote for level caps. Years ago I asked Frank Mentzer if he could change one thing about BECMI, what would it be. His answer? Cap levels at level 20. Obviously level 20 is higher than level 10, but the core reasons are the same: it gets messy at higher levels and fewer people play the game at higher levels so you have a diminishing return on time+effort+money spent creating that content vs. players who play that.

But to the person who mentioned this upthread, even though most players don't play past level 10, seeing there is nice. Personally I would have capped core at level 15 and done a high level campaign supplement later. Cook and Marsh did it right with the Expert set level limit, IMO.

It's worth mentioning that Cook and Marsh made clear on p. X8 that they expected there to be follow-up material taking the levels up to 36.

I think it's very hard not to do this. I know EGG supposedly initially mostly wanted high-levels (especially upper level spells) for enemy archmages and the like, but the instant you put them, artifacts, and epic monsters like beholders and elder dragons into the game, people want to play around with that stuff.

I don't think there's a right answer. However, if you are going to include that stuff, and expect people to actually play it, it really behooves you to make the system work well at that level, and I don't think they ever did. Mentzer put a lot of stuff in the game in his expansion from B/X -- rulership, war, and tournament rules; planar travel; description of the game universe, etc. -- but most of it didn't really need levels (except maybe 'name level and past' although even that is often arbitrary). Re-building the upper levels to make a more mechanically cohesive game would have been do-able, it's just not really been done with D&D.

Or you can go the Godbound route and still play epic characters, but just reset the mechanical scale back down to not unlike low-level D&D characters (just redefining the in-fiction level scale of the units, etc.).