Mearls New Campaign

[Salamandyr]

81 B/X is, in my opinion, pretty close to the stripped down core I want from D&D. There's pretty much nothing you can't do with it right out of the box(es...you need the Expert Set too), and it's simple and rules light enough that you can add things to it to get the game you want.

 

[Tortoise]

81 B/X is, in my opinion, pretty close to the stripped down core I want from D&D. There's pretty much nothing you can't do with it right out of the box(es...you need the Expert Set too), and it's simple and rules light enough that you can add things to it to get the game you want.

That's the beauty of it, very house rule friendly without really requiring any.

 

[mkill]

Or... maybe he just wanted to play some non-work-related D&D and that old box just caught his fancy. Mearls has talked about playing other older editions before.

Or maybe I'm just not paranoid enough about the correct way to roll a d20.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Or maybe I'm just not paranoid enough about the correct way to roll a d20.

The correct way is to put the die in the palm of your hand, lightly curl your four fingers over the top to create a small 'cup' that you can shake the die in, shake your wrist 5 to 7 times, then on the final downward flick of the wrist, unfurl your fingers allowing the die to leave your hand and bounce a few times on the table.

That is the correct way to roll a d20. None of this 'hold the die between my fingertips and then spin it while letting it go' nonsense!

 

[Alan Shutko]

I may be bringing too much of my own baggage to the table (I was recently micromanaged to death by a manager far less technically competent than I am) but this whole article made me nervous. Managers should NOT get deeply involved in the design or implementation process. A little oversight and intelligent questioning is fine but development is NOT their job.

I think management should have the vision and guide things, but should not necessarily micromanage. I think the influence Steve Jobs had on Apple shows that this can be very successful.

 

[grimslade]

Meals is an excellent designer and developer. Iron Heroes and a lot of his work going into 4E are fantastic. The fact that he is running a B/X campaign and adding mods to it for an office campaign is good. I think we may be reading too much into it, but if you wanted to see how a campaign is affected by having a simple core and adding mods to it, basic and expert is a pretty good start. I am not saying 5E will be like BECMI, but without having a finalized ruleset and you want to plan out how the brand will roll out products after launch, some mods may have less disruptive impact early on in a campaign as opposed to a later introduction. Feats would be a major disruption introduced after a certain level. Prestige classes, not too bad. This is good news, if it is the case. They are trying to get a big picture look at adding rule sets to the game and how it impacts play.

 

[Iosue]

I think it's an excellent idea. B/X is about as "core" D&D as you can get, and perfect for this kind of experiment. Plus, it'll provide a control group for the design team. If they only work in the 5e ruleset, they might get tripped up by tunnel vision and/or group think.

 

[howandwhy99]

+1 if you want to play in Mearls' game!

[aside, wasn't this column labelled under Monte? where's Mearls' name? EDIT: ahh.. just refreshed]

 

[BobTheNob]

I think starting from the basics is the way to go, and you dont get more basic than basic.

But dear lord...no races as classes please.

 

[kiltedyaksman]

Races as classes don't bother me.

The elf is the elven fighter/magic-user. The halfling is the halfling fighter/thief. No big deal.