Recent content by mearls

Thinking a little bit about how something like this happens, I'd wager that they talked about changing Dash for D&D 2024 but didn't. I went years letting rules we dumped pop into mind when running the game. I don't think I have ever run critical hits by the book. In terms of impact, I think...

Exactly. For an off-turn dash to fire off movement, a game object needs specific permission to move. Otherwise everyone could move on every theoretical turn. The system would be non-functional.

To pull an example of the opacity in how thing work - a lot of folks think of D&D Essentials as my baby, a project I created for reasons that range from the mostly correct (4e sales were in a freefall and the company was desperate) to the frankly hilarious (D&D 4e was massively successful, and I...

I've never seen people outside of Wizards really understand how work on a project breaks down. It's an opaque process at times even inside the building, as some of the best-received ideas come about through the alchemy of putting creative people in a room and giving them space to build stuff...

The 3.0 ones did well! However, hardcovers do even better. I think it was in late 90s that TTRPG publishers figured out that people typically much preferred hardcover books over softcover.

I like that on forums the only algorithm is other people deciding if they want to engage.

I'm getting there! That's really interesting to read about how folks react to the various starter sets. Maybe a better way to think of it is, "As many people are coming in, but not as many are buying." I've always suspect that the number of people actively playing D&D looks like a line that...

First, huge thanks to @FitzTheRuke for posting this. Very interesting! Three numbers that stand out to me: 194STARTER 2014 LAST MINES OF PHANDELVER2014-Jul 8STARTER 2024 HEROES OF THE BORDERLANDS2025-Sep 35STARTER DRAGONS OF STORMWRECK ISLE2022-Oct Do you have any sense of the number...

In terms of modular design, the idea was to keep each segment of the game as independent as possible. If we could carry over only the absolute core of things - stats, hit points, AC - then it would be much easy to add new rules elements or adjust things. The DMG had a ton of variant rules...

I'm not sure if those specific rules would've been featured, but my plan (though obviously things changed when I took a job working on Magic) was to use what became Tasha's as the first product to expand what 5e could do. You might remember two UAs I wrote: Greyhawk initiative, a variant...

You could wire up a specific debuff that the creature can use to knock out a status put on it. If you specify that if it has that debuff in place it can’t reuse it, you get a local version of a similar system. I’ve been working on something along those lines in my monster design.

Lack of time, really. Were I to hack 5e for better high level play, I think I'd try to build content for both DMs and players. So maybe something like this: Classes go to level 10 as normal For level 11+, the DM picks a campaign style and the classes get features that speak to that 5e as...

That's correct. I think there are a lot of reasons for that, but the biggest in my mind is that the work needed to play and run the game goes up significantly, but the enjoyment of playing the game remains the same. More work for the same amount of fun.

I think that's the key. Adoption isn't as important as having the option to adopt. If someone runs the game using the core rulebooks and has no problems, they can just keep doing that. Ideally, if they have an issue there's a product or expansion that solves it for them. If the boss monster...

The idea that players will optimize the fun out of a game is an old one. For a TTRPG, the design challenge comes in finding ways to give DMs the tools to keep their games fun. If the DM is bored, the game probably ends. Competitive games have solved that adjusting the environment. A video game...