D&D 5E Mearls interview

[darjr]

http://amazingstoriesmag.com/2013/03/interview-with-a-wizard-mike-mearls/

Apologies if this has already been posted.

I find a lot to like in this interview. Especially the realization that the rules are not necessarily the point of the game.

 

[Moon_Goddess]

You know, honestly I know rules arn't the point of the game... but honestly I'm paying them for rules.

They tell me I can run any story I can make up, but then he talks about how they're going to sell me story and keep the rules to a minimum.

Like the discussion of the 3e sorc, he felt it wasn't a good class cuz it didn't have a story for why it was different than a wizard. or the 4e warlord he doesn't like the story of that class healing.

Shouldn't those things be for the DM to decide. I would rather have a PHB full of rules and not one bit of story. Let me describe how those rules work in my world.


Sorry I just listened to the podcast interview with him this morning and his placing story over rules in the books bothers me. Story is more important than rules in the game, but when I want to buy story, I'll buy a novel, when I buy DND I'm buying the rules.

 

[Sunseeker]

As Darwin said....rules may not be the point of the game, but if we don't need rules, why do we need D&D? I've certainly got no shortage of inspiration to create a very rules-light game that I can play with a few of my friends for free. Rules, like anything else, can be good or bad. Rules may not be the point, but I am certainly playing D&D for good rules, and I happily accept any system which is founded in good, logical rules. If all we need are imagination and some people to interact, we don't need D&D.

Oh dear lord here we are back to Appendix N. I don't care who is influncing the development and creation of DDN....especially when half of them are D&D authors themselves making the whole thing look like one big circle-jerk. "Where is the inspiration for D&D coming from?" "Well from authors of D&D books." "Where do they get inspired from?" "We'll from D&D!" Geee...thanks.

I'm not interested in buying campaign settings or adventure books. I'm a creative fellow and those sorts of things have no value to me, last time I read one over I ended up wanting to make so many changes to it because of things I didn't like, things I wanted to add, or just things I thought would be cool, I never even ran it because I spent so much time making changes I had a new and original idea by the end!

I want D&D for good rules, a sound rule system, fun and creative gameplay. Things that I can do on my own, but look to others for because of their expertise in the area. If I want to read a book and pretend I'm part of it, I'll go do that. When I want to sit down at the table and play an RPG, I'll hopefully still be looking for the well-thought-out rule systems in D&D.

 

[Salamandyr]

Gygax said a long time ago, that the secret to RPG's was that the players didn't actually need the rules.

My takeaway from what Mearls is getting at, is that the rules are less important than a coherent framework for us to base our games around. Rules provide an easy resolution system for the creation of our shared fiction, but, if their relation to said fiction doesn't make intuitive sense to us, then it causes dissonance.

For instance, the longsword in game does d8 damage while the dagger does d4. This is not only a valuable game construct, but is intuitively graspable by anyone who sits down at the game, because the longsword is bigger than the dagger, and we would expect the longsword to be a more dangerous weapon. By contrast, a warlord allowing for the recovery of hit points is a harder conceptual leap, because there's nothing intuitive to someone we imagine as a "warlord" having healing abilities.

Now, once we conceptualize hit points as fatigue and the warlord as motivating us to overcome our own limitations, driving us to succeed when we'd rather lay down and die, the warlord makes sense, but it's not an easy thing to grasp and it takes a while to internalize, whereas hit points as wounds and hit point recovery as "healing" is intuitive, even if the extrapolation leads to some strange places.

 

[Li Shenron]

Interesting read...

I think I get Mearls' point about the rules. We who are in the hobby since 10, 20 or even 30+ years ago, may want rules over story and feeling, but when we started off decades ago we didn't.

Maybe back then we liked the idea of having rules to represent story and action, but certainly we weren't bickering with each other about what is the most realistic or effective spellcasting system or natural healing method... it was all a huge "wow!" effect of being able to direct characters in a story of battles but how many really were hooked because of the rules alone?

Mearls is just acknowledging that today a kid is very unlikely to look at a RPG and be inspired to play, if such RPG requires literally days or even weeks of rules study and preparations before you can even start, which can be the case for 3e, 4e and Pathfinder, which is why he's talking about "lowering the entry barrier".

Without even trying this, the future of D&D is more difficult, because it relies only in the ability of old gamers to teach their own children to play the game, but it's a feeble hope and a daunting task if such game has monumental rules.

In case you haven't noticed, the computer gaming industry is going through a somewhat similar trend (even tho they clearly don't need to worry about their hobby to wane...): the game nerds still get their over-the-top games, but a lot more focus than ever is given by the developers on simple, easily enjoyable games as the famous Angry Birds or physical (i.e. "natural") fun on all the machines like Wii, Kinect, etc...

 

[darjr]

I don't think he's saying that we shouldn't have rules. Just that the main point isn't the rules and that game designers may forget that. I certainly think it does happen.

 

[RPG_Tweaker]

Story is indeed at the heart of this hobby, but each DM has disparate inspirations and assumptions within their campaigns, so ultimately Story is the DM's purview.

WotC's goal should be to create an engine that supports the intrinsically open-ended nature of FRPGs.

I don't want a scooter and a pre-marked map, I want an ATV so I can forge my own map.

 

[Gadget]

Gygax said a long time ago, that the secret to RPG's was that the players didn't actually need the rules.

My takeaway from what Mearls is getting at, is that the rules are less important than a coherent framework for us to base our games around. Rules provide an easy resolution system for the creation of our shared fiction, but, if their relation to said fiction doesn't make intuitive sense to us, then it causes dissonance.

For instance, the longsword in game does d8 damage while the dagger does d4. This is not only a valuable game construct, but is intuitively graspable by anyone who sits down at the game, because the longsword is bigger than the dagger, and we would expect the longsword to be a more dangerous weapon. By contrast, a warlord allowing for the recovery of hit points is a harder conceptual leap, because there's nothing intuitive to someone we imagine as a "warlord" having healing abilities.

Now, once we conceptualize hit points as fatigue and the warlord as motivating us to overcome our own limitations, driving us to succeed when we'd rather lay down and die, the warlord makes sense, but it's not an easy thing to grasp and it takes a while to internalize, whereas hit points as wounds and hit point recovery as "healing" is intuitive, even if the extrapolation leads to some strange places.

I think you're vastly understating the disconnect between 'ablative-script-immunity' (which is what hit points have always been), and 'healing' (which in game terms can mean a lot more things than wounds closing over and going away).

 

[Sage Genesis]

Rules aren't the point of the game in the same way that an engine is not the point of a car: a correct statement but also missing the point, and more importantly, doesn't understand the reason why I'd pay a game designer (or engineer) money.

Still, a somewhat interesting read. Thanks for sharing!

 

[Li Shenron]

WotC's goal should be to create an engine that supports the intrinsically open-ended nature of FRPGs.

As far as metaphors go...

You and me need an engine because we know (or believe we know) how and have time to put a nice coachwork around the engine, while we don't know (or believe we don't know) how or don't have time to build the engine ourselves. But then Pathfinder is having a lot of success with selling lots of stories and only a minimum of rules!

Fact is, Mearls is not just thinking about you and me, while we keep insisting that we're the ones who make the hobby go forward by buying books regularly, even tho Mearls has said recently that those how buy only 1-3 books are many more than the regulars, so he's making the game not only for us but also for those who aren't yet in the hobby.

That's definitely the goal WotC has and should have, but the engine cannot be created only for the veteran drivers because what Mearls has tried to say is that the total money spent on D&D by those who spend a lot of money on D&D, is less than the total money spent on D&D by those (many more) who spend a little money on D&D, and his target of making the second group larger is more worthwhile (economically) than making the first group spend more. In a way, he's thinking about the future while we are thinking about the present.