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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mistwell" data-source="post: 8771301" data-attributes="member: 2525">Video #6 QuestionsQuestion about the Free Basic Rules and OGL and Piracy issues: Mearls felt making a version of the game free is helpful in reducing piracy. But ultimately making people a fan of D&D first is the most likely way to get them to buy content later (though he thinks the analysis is different for indie creators). He doesn't view the job of WOTC to be law enforcement. Mearls engaged in piracy for video games in his youth, like Ultima III, which led him to buying Ultima V later. He did the same with Napster, and then eventually moved to buying in iTunes because the storage stays on the cloud and was always there even when you switch computers or platforms. Piracy in his mind is just people sharing stuff as introductory, and if the content is high enough quality, and the physical book is high enough quality in art and texture and such, people will buy it.  The best way to counter piracy is to offer a service customers really want. Similarly Mearls mentions with digital products, doing something which makes the features and game faster and usability so great you'd want to pay for that rather than a static version is the key. [Note: This predicts DNDBeyond]The basic game is intended to lower the barrier to try the game. A one-shot for a friend to try the game is accessible if they can just download those rules and sit down and play, or like at a convention. The goal is to make it easier for people to join us in our completely awesome hobby.Question about the secret to a really good process: Iteration is part of it, and iterating with a purpose. Trust with the people you're working with is also highly important. Finally, having clear goals and vision early on so people know what they are working towards and not working at cross processes. Knowing your goals doesn't mean knowing your end product. Just that you know what you're constantly working towards philosophical objectives. Questions: Which mechanics were difficult to say no to? Mearls says he really liked using dice instead of static bonuses, like plus 1d4 instead of +2, but nobody agreed with him. Some class mechanics, like the charge action, were kept out for good reasons. Like it undermined fast turns. Flanking was similar. There was a lot of argument about bonus actions and it was originally rejected by Mearls and took 3 months of persuasion and convinced Mearls it was his idea (though it was not). Playtesting the DMG: The focus was what would make the DMs job easier. Lists of treasure were roughly done on just asking experienced DMs what they thought would be appropriate for a level. Playtest DMs sometimes drove the optional rules in DM, with requesting optional tools to add. Adding some additional styles of play which slightly varied from the core styles. DMG was the hardest book to do. They couldn't really do iterative testing the same way. Questions on Monster races? They wanted to get away from penalties. Considering a lot of options on how to handle that. Not sure about the savage species route. Ability score penalties were not really dinging characters - if you had a negative charisma dwarf, you typically just wouldn't play a sorcerer and dumping charisma was not meaningful. Question on contracting out Mayfair games: Mearls says don't want to dilute their focus. They don't tend to want to do other RPGs, unless they were adapting 5e to something else, because they are a big fan of slowly improving things over time with iteration and you lose that if you start from scratch with a whole new thing. Question about the number of books people like to acquire: Mearls repeated people tend to buy the core books, and then four expansion books over a decade. Their mindset changed to much more user experience and looking at a big picture for the game. When looking at a new product they have to ask what it brings to the table. They are focused on cultural milestones and ways to make a new book an event and not just the next thing for the next month. Get people talk about D&D, even if they don't plan to buy something. They do a product because they can tell a story about that product that makes sense and exiting and is engaging. For example "The biggest dungeon ever published for D&D" and here is the book for the DM, and here is the book for the players with character options and cool lore. Things with backgrounds specific to the locations and setting. Things which can ground a character in that campaign. They are being more story and adventure focused. By expansions people tend to think of mechanics and crunchy, and so maybe they will focus on just four big mechanics focused expansions with a lot of other books on story and adventure. So they're not always dumping a giant book of new mechanics out there.</blockquote>

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