Recent content by mearls

Pool of Radiance is an all-time classic. Looking back at the original computer game, it's an incredible design. Ruins of Adventure, the tabletop version that TSR published, is a little too faithful to the game but is worth owning. Shameless plug time: If you like the concept of a city perched...

The new Starter Set.

I think having two boxed sets was really smart. Plus, checking Amazon it looks like neither one is available for delivery before Christmas. I think they sold a lot more than Amazon planned for. That's a great sign!

As the business grew it was seen as a liability. When Baldur's Gate 3 was announced at E3 in 2019, I and Swen Vincke did an interview where the ranger came up. We had already done the ranger UA, and Larian was already changing the ranger from the PHB. We either took similar paths or one group's...

Yes! There were some interesting areas that had heavy splits, usually around randomness. There is definitely a segment of TTRPGers who love dice, and a segment who are OK with them in controlled amounts. Randomness is a polarizing thing.

That's a relic of the design process. We started with the things with the lowest rating and worked our way up between packets. If something stuck around and was kind of mid, it stuck around precisely because it was mid. It wasn't bad enough that it needed immediate triage, so it took time to get...

There's a maxim of game design I have learned the hard way over the years: Good ideas and bad ideas only sort themselves out after a month or so of development. Almost every case of 5e falling short comes down to time, because we inevitably had to go through somewhere between three to six...

If we lived in a world where game designers got ahead based on their ability to design and work with a team, rather than their marketability or media skills, we'd be in a world with much better games.

Yes! I put together the list for Tales from the Yawning Portal. I used sales numbers, both print and PDFs, as a starting point. I also did a lot of research on forums and social media to see which adventures people chatted about.

I love Forge of Fury. When I run it, I make the NPCs and factions more dynamic. The core design is great, but having the black dragon randomly pop out of the chasm by the entrance was a ton of fun. Scared the heck out of the players.

This is really great news. What I really love about the new Starter Set that Justice led is that it is so crazy usable. There was so much thought put into every aspect about it. Can't wait to see where things go from here!

In my experience, the players just use the stuff on their character sheets. Core rules (like grapple and stealth) default to 2014, since that's what everyone remembers. Folks use the buffed healing spells when they remember them. Otherwise, I think the game is in an uncanny valley where people...

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...