Mearls On D&D's Design Premises/Goals

First of all, thanks [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] for collecting this. I generally avoid Twitter because, frankly, it's full of a$$holes.

That aside: this is an interesting way of looking at it, and underscores the difference in design philosophies between the WotC team and the Paizo team. There is a lot of room for both philosophies of design, and I don't think there is any reason for fans of one to be hostile to fans of the other, but those differences do matter. There are ways in which I like the prescriptive elements of 3.x era games (I like set skill difficulty lists, for example) but I tend to run by the seat of my pants and the effects of my beer, so a fast and loose and forgiving version like 5E really enables me running a game the way I like to.

 

[pemerton]

It is true, because every version of D&D, (as I've documented with appropriate references in other posts) has made it very clear that the DM is the designer of last resort for his or her table.

Are you saying that the presence or absence of action resolution mechanics doesn't establish any difference between systems?

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Reduction of options may not have been strictly logically necessary, but I think it was essential to actually getting the thing done, in practice.

In addition, too many options was one of the reasons 4E got really slow. I recall playing mid to high level characters and the sheer number of options meant that searching through character sheets on my turn could be daunting. Cumulated over, say, five players, and the slowdown was

4E ran pretty well in lower levels. 5E has some slowdown issues, but in general it's lighter and faster due to the relative absence of off-turn actions and builds that focused on that. I think there are things they could have done differently and in general 5E could use a bit more smoothing out but it's generally pretty good.

With many more people and playtesters, or a much longer development cycle, sure, they could probably have produced significantly more options without breaking things too much. On the other hand, I am not totally sure that they could have made a thing which would have succeeded as well in their primary goals.

Probably not.

While there are things I feel 5E could use some work on (most notably the math of saves and skills and the clunky rest mechanics; how generally weak and undeveloped inspiration is) and a few things I wish they'd better integrated from 4E (hit dice being something activated in combat) in general it "feels" more like older versions of D&D than 4E did, having moved out of the game design "uncanny valley" that I think 4E slipped into. 5E needs some polishing, not massive changes.

The fact that Mearls said fairly definitively that one of the design goals of 3.X and 4E was "DM proofing" confirms what a lot of folks thought at the time.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I also think calling wotc lazy seems disrespectful after a 2 year playtest inventing rules and theowing things overboatd they were personally very fond of.
That in my opinion is the opposite of lazy.
What they achieved was making a dnd game that is doing really well and brings a lot of people to the rpg game.
They made a decision to not listen to the 5% of people who are proclamating the doom of dnd if they don't do X.
Then I do think mearls is right. If you design for rules lawyers you only attract them. 4e was the epitome of rules lawyering when you bothered to read forums. Speaking of lazy I think about the lauy warlord who uses a weapon he is not proficient deopping to the ground to miss with a power. Which is comic style and maybe fun for a session or two but gets old fast.
There were so many updates to get holes in the rules fixed... only to rip more holes into the rules because they missed a ridiculous interaction no sane player would use or sane DM would allow somewhere in the x thousand feats or powers ending in an endless circle of updates.
And what for? A fraction of the fanbase that rathe theorizes about the game instead of playing it.
As much as I loved creating 4e characters, they did well listening to people who actually play the game. And I must say, that nearly every theoretically overpowered ability did not appear that way at the table. The game just works. And my players habe fun. And we habe 4 players who take turns DMing. That is a big achievment.
So calling wotc lazy is shamedully not true. Especially when you know how small their initial team was.

 

[Maxperson]

So, one thing that many people don't understand unless they are designing things is that there is no such thing as a "free lunch." And this applies to, well, pretty much all design choices.

Or, if design is too abstract, think about going out to eat. There may be 500 wonderful entrees and appetizers on the menu, but you can't order them all. You have to pick and choose what you want to eat, instead of devouring all of them, unless you end up like Mr. Creosote (wafer thin!).

We all want more of what we like. But I don't think we can get a much more clear statement of design intent than we have here. They specifically chose to go away from more mechanical options, and mechanical complexity, and did so for reasons of balance (more of a 3x issue) and narrative/identity (perhaps more of a 4x issue). Again, this isn't a normative judgment about what is good, or bad, but instead it is an emphasis on design.

But yes, it is clearly explained that this design philosophy is at odds with what you are describing, and why. That doesn't mean your desires are less valid, or your preferences are "bad," just like the preferences and design decisions inherent in anything (iOS v. Android, Audi v. Toyota, Gehry v. Liebskind) are "bad."

Moving back to your point, adding additional mechanical complexity has to be balanced against this design goal; because, at some point, the added PC crunch will be that little wafer thin mint, causing the whole design to explode and we end up with 6e.

Sure, we have a clear design intent given to us, but it is given to us with a nice little False Equivalence and a Red Herring when it comes to more character options.

The False Equivalence comes with the statement that their design intent is to make the game more free and loose for the DM to run a narrative game, and connecting that with the rules being comprehensive to a fault in an attempt to control everything. Player options like classes, paths, and feats are not at all the same as a rules system that attempts to control everything. There's a little bit of overlap, but not a lot. Things like pages of rules on grappling, bull rushing and over running are examples of the rules trying to cover everything.

The Red Herring is with his attempt to say that players having lots of options and the resulting imbalance of power is at odds with the loose and narrative DM style they are going for and that they play horribly together. It isn't at odds with character options and they play very well together. You can easily play a loose rules narrative style of game with whatever level of imbalance the DM/players wish, including any options the designers could include for the players to design PCs with.

 

[Eric V]

You can't apologize for intentionally being as disrespectful and insulting as you just were. You don't know me and you calling Me 'lazy' because I voiced my perspective... Yeah you don't know me or how I see things.

Was it necessary for you to be so insulting to me?

Yeah, he's like that. It's like he's BFFs with the designers or something, and so he can't differentiate between criticism of a public work vs. attacking someone on a message board.

To your post, it's true that a lot of things players could just do in 4e now requires a version of "Mother, May I?" For instance, I'd wager you'll never find a 5e DM who lets a Champion attempt something exactly like 'Crack the Shell.' Even spells have that built into them as well (I'd never play an illusionist in 5e, for instance).

As for lazy design, while I agree in broad strokes, there are some differences I would note. For Inspiration, they provide examples for it, but no hard-and-fast rules, that's true. For that particular mechanic, though, I feel it's actually the right move. Maximum flexibility for a 'floating bonus' derived by whatever means is kind of a neat cookie the DM can hand out. In our own games, people have earned it by playing up their flaws, telling a great in-game joke, and being clever and figuring out a clue to a mystery...after which they immediately spent it on a roll to get another clue, solving the puzzle, which was awesome. If the rules were 'tight' on that, it might hinder the awesomeness of the mechanic.

Stealth rules are lazy, I agree. Same with some of the other stuff you mentioned. It's not a perfect game, no matter what some people on here act like.

 

[Maxperson]

While I am certainly in agreement with you that I enjoy more mechanical options, it would be remiss not to point out that a surfeit of mechanical options exist outside the boundary of WotC published material. I have more classes, subclasses, and feats in my personally vetted collection of homebrew material than exist within the combination of all of the published WotC books.

It's always much more difficult to get the DM to accept third party options than ones by the game producer(TSR or WotC). Also, third while I mentioned that power difference is okay, at least I know that WotC tries to mitigate that to some extent. The sheer number of broken things third party people put out is incredible. In the past as DM, I spent entirely too much time trying to figure out whether third party products were too broken to use. I had that issue far, FAR less often with WotC products.

 

[Eric V]

I also think calling wotc lazy seems disrespectful after a 2 year playtest inventing rules and theowing things overboatd they were personally very fond of.
That in my opinion is the opposite of lazy.

She's not saying the whole process was lazy; obviously, gathering all that data required a lot of work.

If I gather a lot of data and publish a work based on the options that were most popular, the design might be lazy indeed: Just use what was popular (and the options weren't extremely original to 5e).

And hey, 5e is very popular indeed; as you rightfully point out, it "is doing really well and brings a lot of people to the rpg game." Which is great for RPGs as a whole!

5e is not a particularly innovative game, though. It's basically a 'greatest hits' D&D that feels like D&D 2.5. In that particular sense, I could see the design being characterized as lazy.

 

[TwoSix]

One of the reasons why I like Mage Hand Press' 5e work is they have created very different classes and class options that really add new mechanics to 5e.

Its because of this I feel they get 5e where many others, including the designers at WotC, do not get it.

Their Alchemist, Craftsman, Witch, Warden and Gunslinger Classes are pure genius in filling a gap in 5e while adding new rules to the game.

They have created a rock solid crafting and alchemy system, various rules for including guns of different tech eras, and their variant spell casting classes all do something different than the 5e core.

And then there is their Dark Matter sci-fi 5e setting. Its pretty amazing. Its more sci-fi than Esper Genesis while still being 5e.

I'd love to see a second Players Handbook done by these guys.

Love Mage Hand Press! Best 3rd party providers out there!

 

[UngeheuerLich]

She's not saying the whole process was lazy; obviously, gathering all that data required a lot of work.

If I gather a lot of data and publish a work based on the options that were most popular, the design might be lazy indeed: Just use what was popular (and the options weren't extremely original to 5e).

And hey, 5e is very popular indeed; as you rightfully point out, it "is doing really well and brings a lot of people to the rpg game." Which is great for RPGs as a whole!

5e is not a particularly innovative game, though. It's basically a 'greatest hits' D&D that feels like D&D 2.5. In that particular sense, I could see the design being characterized as lazy.

I respectfully disagree with your conclusion. It is not a greatest hits. It is a new game that takes elements of all esitions and merges them to the great game we have now. Having followed the whole playtest process I think I can say it did in no way seem lazy. But yes, a lot od innovations I really loved were thrown out again and if some of them would male it into an advanced dungeons and dragons book I would be happy. Lets see what the future brings.

 

[Kobold Boots]

Are you saying that the presence or absence of action resolution mechanics doesn't establish any difference between systems?

I think that you and I have conversations where we spend a lot of time drilling into minutiae that neither one of us intends to elaborate on based on the context of the posts that are quoted.

My overarching point right now (this post) is that with the intention of the DM as designer of last resort in every version of the rules that any table's actual experience is different from any other table's. It makes conversations about rules and validity nearly impossible when talking about practical application and only useful in the theoretical realm of a table where only "rules as written" are used.

The rules don't exist in a vacuum. No one really plays only rules as written, so whether or not action resolution mechanics establish a difference between systems, doesn't really matter.


-- personal opinion alert --
However, I do think that players who are inclined to some degree of anti-social behavior are going to look for reasons to not listen to their DM, and similarly those inclined DMs won't listen to their players. In those cases there's a high degree of passive aggressive behavior that puts the rules in the middle -- because god forbid anyone takes fault on themselves.

If I were to have a horse in the race, I'd be betting this phenomena is what Mearls is talking about and what they're not designing for anymore. Let the DM deal with that sort of thing was smart in the beginning and it's smart now.

KB