D&D 5E Dungeoncraft Interview with Mike Mearls

[Ondath]

No one ever says the complete chain.

4e was made like World of Warcraft
But
World of Warcraft was made to be like AD&D.

Late 90 Early 00 MMOs were all trying to replicate D&D in 3D space.

WoW (especially during the Classic era) had a lot of mechanics that felt like old-school D&D, things like some spells needing reagents and training being a costly thing and stuff like Paladins and Druids getting their unique skills like Wild Shapes and Summon Steeds through challenging questlines. But we have to be clear that those D&D-isms were very quickly sanded down over the next few expansions, and the gameplay became a lot more streamlined.

 

[Ondath]

At 6:59

Prof DM: "Is it true that the mandate for 4th edition was; make this like World of Warcraft."

Mearls: "Yes."

I thought this point was already settled in the "Whatever happened with 4E" panel thread, but then I saw people saying things such as "the person who spoke during that panel is a hack of a historian so the point was obviously not true (???)", so while I'm hoping we can stop re-litigating at least some aspects of 4E, I'm not keeping my hopes up. I give it 2-3 pages before this thread also re-hashes some fan favourites, including "Was 4E's monster math wrong?", "Did 4E actually sell well?", and so on.

 

[Distracted DM]

5:20 - on the lack of tension in 5e fights, and how they are boring. “Spreadsheet design gone wrong.” He describes how he fixes this problem and makes fights more tense

OK well, gonna give that a watch.

 

[Reynard]

This shouldn't have to be said repeatedly, but:

Taking inspiration from and trying to learn some lessons from the success of WoW is NOT the same thing as trying to create tabletop WoW.

 

[Distracted DM]

WoW (especially during the Classic era) had a lot of mechanics that felt like old-school D&D, things like some spells needing reagents and training being a costly thing and stuff like Paladins and Druids getting their unique skills like Wild Shapes and Summon Steeds through challenging questlines. But we have to be clear that those D&D-isms were very quickly sanded down over the next few expansions, and the gameplay became a lot more streamlined.

Absolutely they were sanded down/removed, but the use of "very quickly" is pretty relative here. The most changes happened with Wrath of the Lich King, which was about 4 years after WoW's release.

 

[Distracted DM]

This shouldn't have to be said repeatedly, but:

Taking inspiration from and trying to learn some lessons from the success of WoW is NOT the same thing as trying to create tabletop WoW.

Honestly I think it does help to say it repeatedly, because it seems easily confused or forgotten.

 

[Malmuria]

On the campaigns ending at 7th level thing: 5e should clearly just go to level 10, with some of the good ideas currently in the 11-20 range being rewritten for the 7-10 level range. It's a huge waste of space detailing all the 6-9th level spells that people never use, that could be in an optional book that has the space to more clearly support high level play. Cool high level monster ideas could have rebalanced versions for 9th-10th level characters to fight. But there is a small minority of people who do play high level who don't want to buy a second phb for that material, I suppose.

 

[Minigiant]

WoW (especially during the Classic era) had a lot of mechanics that felt like old-school D&D, things like some spells needing reagents and training being a costly thing and stuff like Paladins and Druids getting their unique skills like Wild Shapes and Summon Steeds through challenging questlines. But we have to be clear that those D&D-isms were very quickly sanded down over the next few expansions, and the gameplay became a lot more streamlined.

Well MMOs were purely player side gaming

So old school methods of giving DMs fun were ironed out since there are no DMs in MMORPGs.

This is also why monsters and fights could be made more complex because there was no DM needed to burn brainpower running it.

 

[Malmuria]

This shouldn't have to be said repeatedly, but:

Taking inspiration from and trying to learn some lessons from the success of WoW is NOT the same thing as trying to create tabletop WoW.

Though, one of the things that Mearls says--and regrets--is that they were trying to appeal to a new audience with 4e (e.g. people who played WoW but not TTRPGs), and in doing so lost a lot of their 3.x audience

 

[Bomberooski]

I thought it was a good interview overall! Actually made me want to get on the Dungeoncraft patreon to listen to the entire interview.

I'm sure there is some bitterness mixed in but Mearls seems pretty genuine about his love of the TTRPG world. I'm with him that sometimes the power gamers can make combat last a bit too long but I don't know that I am looking for a game that you fit into a one hour window.

So I think I have to approach most of Mearls comments with the fact (as he says) that he is looking for a game that can be played in a small window (which is not necessarily DnD).