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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 5352598" data-attributes="member: 5143">I didn't get to go to this panel, unfortunately.  Although, I did attend the "new products" seminar where they went over a bunch of their products for the next year and a bit and explained the rationale behind them and what they would contain.  They did go over some of this in that seminar as well.I got the distinct impression that they have a new philosophy going forward.  That philosophy appears to be:1. Make the game more closely resemble the editions people grew up with(1e/2e).2. Keep things simple for new players.3. Use much more "fluff"(although, Mike Mearls hates that word).They used the road analogy during that seminar as well.  Saying that Essentials was only 10 products and then it was over.  That it was just for getting people in at 1st street and nothing else.  But that the design philosophy of Essentials would likely go forward into future products.They really emphasized point 3 above.  This was because Mike Mearls was put in charge of the new D&D philosophy and he feels the game needs more story and context than it has had in the past.  One example given was "When you introduce a magic item in a book, give the STORY behind the magic item, not just a stat block".  Mike relayed a story about a type of armor from the Heroes of Shadow book called Haunted Armor that had a hole in it about heart level, so that you got the sense that someone died in the armor, and that's why it's haunted and therefore that's how it got its magic powers.  He wanted to emphasize the fact that people don't go around creating magic items constantly, that most were created naturally by circumstances beyond people's control.He also mentioned the fact that they were introducing a book with more non-combat options for players later next year that would also have advice on how to better understand the role your race plays on your character(although, he refused to give details about the book since it is just in the planning stages and was only approved as a concept a week or two before GenCon).They explained that part of the reason behind the addition of item rarities was as an effort to add story and roleplaying to magic items.  They felt that magic items didn't feel special partially due to their lack of story, but partially due to their availability.  They also felt that DMs were losing control of their games to players because of the open availability of magic items and wanted to give DMs back the power to choose what magic items were and were not available.  It also ties into the aforementioned point about magic items not being created.  The idea of common items is that only the most basic of items are created by anyone.</blockquote>

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