D&D 5E Live Q&A with D&D R&D

[Rhenny]

I just watched the replay, and thought it was very exciting.

Top take aways for me (not really crunch, but the ideas that they presented):

Rodney said he was pleased with how the rules fade into the background.

Mike said that he loved how the bonds, ideals, flaws made it easier for DMs and players to think more like a PC and integrate the PCs into the game world.

Chris said that monsters were easy to run simply or very easy to modify and run with more complexity.

They also made it clear that Dragons had great variety and range for use. Younger ones and adults could be more like normal monsters. Older ones and ancient ones had Legendary status and were deadly. Legendary ones in their lair were even more complex and incredibly deadly.

I don't think 100 peasants will be able to kill a dragon anymore (unless the dragon is young).

I also got the sense that the "dials" (or options/mods) were much more apparent now, even to them.

 

[DEFCON 1]

You're right. I'm so sick of all the edition waring, the 4vengers, the WotC apologists, and everything. I went through this all before during the 3e-4e transition, and it all seems fairly similar save the 4e fans being the disgruntled defenders of the dead edition. The notes are all different but the song is the same.
I'm done. Done with message boards and possibly even D&D...

I find it ironic that you're leaving the message boards *now*... just two months prior to information actually getting sent out to us. You could have left the boards a year and a half ago and not wasted 18 months of your life getting more and more pissed off about it. Talk about a waste of time and energy...

 

[Raguile]

Trevor also mentioned off-camera "products will be released soon", and "this summer", both of which made Mike flinch. So even though they are still saying they have no information to give to the general public at this time about when the game will be released... there apparently *is* an internal expectation of time when things will be released.

So my guess would be they probably do in fact have a cross-media marketing campaign set up for all the different parts of the D&D brand and probably are waiting for the time to go into the push all at once.

This cracked me up, definite flinches there. Trevor also said something at the end about (para-phrasing) not having much time to do another Q&A before products come out?

 

[Li Shenron]

Is it like a separate mini-game?

...like a skill challenge, but measured in days/weeks?

My understanding was that downtime activities don't have strict rules and don't involve random rolls by default (tho the DM can always add them), but instead are guidelines/suggestions for DM and players, about what their PC might be doing during that time: crafting items, fostering good relationship with an important NPC or organization, running a business, retrieving specific information etc.

I think this will be mostly about getting narrative benefits. Crafting items of course means you end up with the item, but presumably it'll have at least other costs.

10 days might just be my "extended rest"

Something immediately caught my attention when Mearls gave the example that someone may dial short rest to 8 hours and long rest to one week...

Many DMs may want to have such long extended rest for the purpose of natural healing, if they want to describe HP and damage as mostly physical wounds, and want more realistic natural healing rates to match.

OTOH extended rest also means refreshing spells and other daily abilities, which then becomes weekly abilities. This has a HUGE effect on adventure pacing!

I would definitely be interesting in trying out a game like that, where you have to save your spells or rage etc. for days to come! But clearly, nearly every gaming would find such an idea too weird and hard to play (with the added weirdness that you get ALL spell slots on the last day, while gradually would feel more understandable).

Therefore probably just dialing extended rest to be multiple days will be problematic, unless you dial it only with relation to natural healing, but still keep daily abilities per day, as usual.

 

[RevTurkey]

Great interview. Lots of encouraging answers.

Making me look forward to the new edition more and more.

 

[Ichneumon]

It's crunch time all right. I got the feeling, especially from Chris, that they're really looking forward to this phase being over. Excited that the game will soon come out, but weary from the busywork needed right now to polish everything.

That said, I can't wait for the wild mage, the magic items, the many types of dragons, the lot. The Q&A confirmed, unsurprisingly, that this is going to be my game.

 

[Plaguescarred]

Combination and Randomness as explained by Rodney Thompson makes like interesting components for spurring creativity i like it!

 

[tuxgeo]

It's crunch time all right. I got the feeling, especially from Chris, that they're really looking forward to this phase being over. Excited that the game will soon come out, but weary from the busywork needed right now to polish everything. . . .

Do I remember correctly that Mearls said that he never wants to do this again? He has now gone through two different rebuildings of D&D from the ground up. If he stays with WotC, they will either have to kick him upstairs into full-time management, or hold onto D&D 5E Next as their TRPG for years and years, or else have him sidestep into another department entirely.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Something immediately caught my attention when Mearls gave the example that someone may dial short rest to 8 hours and long rest to one week...

Many DMs may want to have such long extended rest for the purpose of natural healing, if they want to describe HP and damage as mostly physical wounds, and want more realistic natural healing rates to match.

As a DM... I could actually see myself use this in my campaign for long-distance travel too. So I'd use both systems-- 8 hour / 1 week for long treks where encounters might only occur every couple of days, and then compress it to 1 hour / 8 hours for dungeon crawls and whatnot.

I know that would probably drive some DMs batty-- not using a consistent time scale ALL the time (because of simulation and such)... but I come at everything from a "best story" perspective. And for me, 1 hour / 8 hours recharge time on HP, abilities and such pretty much render random encounters on long-distance travel useless (since all effects pretty much have disappeared prior to the next random encounter.)

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Something immediately caught my attention when Mearls gave the example that someone may dial short rest to 8 hours and long rest to one week...

Many DMs may want to have such long extended rest for the purpose of natural healing, if they want to describe HP and damage as mostly physical wounds, and want more realistic natural healing rates to match.

OTOH extended rest also means refreshing spells and other daily abilities, which then becomes weekly abilities. This has a HUGE effect on adventure pacing!

I love the idea of tweeking that dial myself...

I can imagine a world of 8hr short rest 1 week long rest being super fun, although maybe a bit too hard, and the idea of 5 min short rest 4hr long rest maybe meaning time limits become way easier... we have 2 days till the prince is sacrificed to destroy the sun...that adventure plays out very differently in those 2 settings...