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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 6249191" data-attributes="member: 59082">So you're saying that Mearls "slaps" you in the face with is words? That seems rather extreme. I'm curious: how has he slapped you in the face? I'm not saying that your impressions are wrong, although it seems we differ, perhaps greatly, in how we interpret Mearls. But as with Mearls, considering that he did not literally slap you in the face, there's some degree of interpretation involved, which implies some degree of flexibility. Again, I'm not saying that your impressions are as much "wrong" as much as, perhaps, based upon certain assumptions which I don't necessarily agree with, which seem to imply that you take a lot of what he says on bad faith.I suppose I'm asking you to be open to seeing otherwise, which I ask of myself as well. So often these "conversations" end up with two people espousing entrenched positions, becoming further entrenched due to perceived slight. It isn't about one trying to convince the other, but each of us taking what we can from a discussion and evolving and expanding our own perspective. That's my approach, at least. So the main difference in our views is that you see Mearls as catering to (anti-4E?) edition warriors, and I do not. I fully realize that I could be wrong--and I certainly haven't read every L&L--but I just haven't seen it. What I see is him looking critically at previous editions of D&D, perhaps especially 4E as the most recent and divergent style from the traditional approach, with the intention of creating the best, and most embracing, possible version of D&D yet. Hopefully he's not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, though.It isn't about me or what I want, but looking at the larger community - what the general response and feeling is, which seems more towards the idea of 4E games serving the rules more often than they should. The weight of evidence, even if it is anecdotal, is that there wasn't as much meshing going on with 4E as there should have been.There are lots of people that love 4E, lots that like it or are indifferent, and lots that dislike or even hate it. This is always going to be the case with any edition, but I think the point from a design perspective is to tip the scales more towards the "love-to-like" side of the spectrum than the "dislike-to-hate" side. In a thread a few weeks ago I was taking to task by a couple people for saying that 4E "failed" in this regard, but I do not mean to say that it failed as a game, as a fun version of D&D, but that it failed in that the scale was tipped too much towards collective dislike-to-hate. This has nothing to do with how good of a game 4E was (or wasn't), but how much it inspired and was embraced by the community as a whole. That might not matter to you or I in our respective gaming circles, but it does matter to Wizards of the Coast.OK, I hear that you want Mearls to "show you the money." But the problem is that if you have a strongly skeptical, even pessimistic attitude, going into it, you're likely to be setting yourself up for disappointment. One thing that WotC won't be able to do is please everyone. But what I think they're trying to do is incorporate the "best of" various editions into 5E, perhaps with its own unique flavorings. Whether they succeed or not remains to be seen, but I think we can safely say that for some it will be viewed as a success, for others as a failure - but the question is how many, and to what degree, of either spectrum. I simply advocate for an "innocent until proven guilty" approach, which allows for some degree of openness. But if you're expecting a snake and a snake-like form appears before you, you're going to see a snake even if its actually a rope (to use an old Hindu analogy). My impression from our brief interaction here is that you are expecting a snake.</blockquote>

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