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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iosue" data-source="post: 6535483" data-attributes="member: 6680772"><a href="http://archive.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20110315" target="_blank">Legends & Lore #6 - Gnomes, Options, and Groups</a>March 22, 2011<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?303255-Legends-and-Lore-What-s-With-the-Polls&highlight=Legends+Lore" target="_blank">Original EN World thread</a>Sorry for the delay, folks.  The actual title of this L&L is "What's With the Polls?", but that's dispensed with pretty early on:(Nevertheless, the polls continued to be the proverbial "stick to beat an ass", especially after the 5e announcement.  People continued to assume they were using the polls for major business decisions, and one poll got Monte Cook in some hot water.)No, the real meat of this article is Mearls' explanation of "the Gnome effect", one of the more insightful looks at where design meets demand.  Also, while 4e got a lot of flack for its lack of gnomes, I think this one of the benefits of 4e pushing the envelope.  I'll let Mearls explain the phenomenon:In a lot of our discussions, we tend to make an appeal to the majority.  If only 10% of players like a thing, then it seems a no-brainer that you could drop it from the game.  But as far as player options, though, the designers have to look at the bigger picture.  The money quote, for our retrospective purposes, is as follows:Given the recently popular topic of 5e's release schedule, this quote seems pretty interesting, as well:How did things end up in 5e?As far as player options go, I think that 5e was, on the whole, a success.  The question here was less one of a particular design choice, but rather one of presentation.  With the Basic Rules you get the classic races and classes.  With PHB then presented as greater player options rather than the default, various races, sub-races, classes, and sub-classes could be offered while not overloading players or groups.  5e's big failure here, of course, is the lack of a warlord, and certainly one reason why many 4e fans are dissatisfied with it.  They attempted to emulate the play of a warlord via the Battlemaster and the Bard, but I have not heard many (any?) warlord fans happy with that arrangement.Turning to volume of content, I would say that in contrast to Mearls' words here, 5e's release schedule is probably not quite the "middle ground".  At least as far was know at the moment.  It's certainly possible that they will release a lot more in the coming year with the Core Three finally released, but official word at the moment is two big cross-platform releases a year.  This seems like something that was influenced by the playtest, or other market research done at that time.  Of special note is the mention of the OGL here.  Personally, I'm convinced that if Mearls and team had their druthers, 5e would be OGL, or at the least have a very permissive GSL.  And perhaps the slower release schedule was conceived with that in mind, relying on other publishers to take up the slack.  But convincing a conservative company of that is undoubtedly easier said than done.</blockquote>

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