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.

 

[Parmandur]

5E is a light-mid system. Indeed, Mearls describes it above as a storytelling system (which I think in general terminology implies it’s a bit lighter than it is). 3.x/Pathfinder is a mid-heavy system, Hero is a heavy system. Of all the things 5E is, it’s not a heavy system.

That’s why it’s so popular with streamers. I’ve spoken to loads of streamers who switched from Pathfinder to 5E because it’s a light system, which is much easier to run for a show.

On the relative scale to other editions of D&D, it is pretty middling in complexity. To the average personon the street, even a board game literate one, it is going to seem rather heavy in my experience.

 

[Morrus]

Mearls On D&D's Design Premises/Goals

On the relative scale to other editions of D&D, it is pretty middling in complexity. To the average personon the street, even a board game literate one, it is going to seem rather heavy in my experience.

The ‘average person on the street’ would find all RPGs heavy. Compared to other RPGs, 5E is mid-light. And it’s waaaaay lighter than a lot of boardgames.

Not sure what “in my experience” means. Are you saying you’ve surveyed average people in the street and asked them to rate the heaviness of 5E compared to other tabletop RPGs? That’s awfully industrious of you!

 

[Maxperson]

3 and 3.5 had 12 core rulebooks and about 60 WoTC published supplemental works.
4 had 8 core rulebooks and about 26 WoTC published supplemental works.
5 has three official core rulebooks and 8 supplemental rulebooks.

"Noticeably fewer rules"

Thanks,
KB

The core books are what you need to run the game. In all three of those editions(along with 1e and 2e), only the PHB, DMG and MM were core. Even with books like PHBII, MMII-VII(I think), Essentials, etc., those are not core books. They existed as supplements to the game if you bought them.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

I never said the designers were lazy people, no matter what you and your ilk try to frame it as. They might work very hard in a great many areas (not that you or I would know), but some of the design in the game is lazy, in that it either defaults to a much older edition's framework, or remains ambiguous with few good examples of how to run it for the DM. That's lazy design.

I very much agree. There are several places, especially in the PHB, where the designers just punt on things. For instance, buying and selling magic items or making items. Heck, much of anything with the game economy. I mean, what do PCs do with the treasure they collect, anyway? WotC just skipped it and offered excuses about why they were skipping it. They didn't provide all that much guidance in the PHB about setting DCs or how skills work. While there are things like that in the DMG even those are kind of sketchy and, of course, many players are likely to only have the PHB. Regardless, one would presume that the natural place to put examples of how skills work would be where the skills are described.

So... lazy here really refers to the fact that the designers decided to blow off parts of the game that nearly any reasonable person would expect to be addressed to some degree. They've filled some of this a bit later on, but even so it's sketchy and highly focused on fluff. I totally get why they don't want to make hard-and-fast rules that RAW lawyers interpret as a property right and I also would understand if they decided to mark certain systems as "not for AL" but doing nothing just leaves a lot of things unanswered.

Now I get that 5E was supposed to be less rules-heavy than 3.X and 4E, but I find it a bit... too convenient that the parts of the system the designers didn't want to deal with, strategically, got left up to the DM. So my guess was that there was some strategic laziness there. Still, why do I pay a game designer? Oh? To spend time on Twitch. (Actually I don't spend time on Twitch but they sure seem to.)

 

[Oofta]

I'm pretty sure I did.

I mean, WotC paid me to, so if, like, I forgot to, you'd really be helping me out if you said I said it.

Well, that does explain it. My eyes glaze over whenever I see one of your posts so I must have missed it.

 

[Maxperson]

I very much agree. There are several places, especially in the PHB, where the designers just punt on things. For instance, buying and selling magic items or making items. Heck, much of anything with the game economy. I mean, what do PCs do with the treasure they collect, anyway? They just skipped it and offered excuses about why they were skipping it. They didn't provide all that much guidance in the PHB about setting DCs or how skills work. While there are things like that in the DMG even those are kind of sketchy and, of course, many players are likely to only have the PHB. Regardless, one would presume that the natural place to put examples of how skills work would be where the skills are described.

So... lazy here really refers to the fact that the designers decided to blow off parts of the game that nearly any reasonable person would expect to be addressed to some degree. They've filled some of this a bit later on, but even so it's sketchy and highly focused on fluff. I totally get why they don't want to make hard-and-fast rules that RAW lawyers interpret as a property right and I also would understand if they decided to mark certain systems as "not for AL" but doing nothing just leaves a lot of things unanswered.

Now I get that 5E was supposed to be less rules-heavy than 3.X and 4E, but I find it a bit... convenient that the parts of the system the designers didn't want to deal with at all, strategically, got left up to the DM. So my guess was that there was some strategic laziness there. Still, why do I pay a game designer? Oh? To spend time on Twitch.

Again, I don't agree that it's lazy design to leave it open. It's just a different design philosophy. Let's take the magic items example you list above. It took me all of 30 seconds to throw out the price list for magic items in 3e. It was too cheap most of the time, and too expensive some of the time. I found that I have to come up with my own prices that varied depending on circumstances. As for item creation, 3e took a process that was imaginative and fun and made it a pedestrian experience. To me, magic, including creation of items, should be a fantastic process. The idea of 3e that you can just plunk down X gold pieces, spend some experience, and cobble together a holy avenger in the back of the wagon while you traveled to the next city(assuming you'd never been there before) is just....:: I had to change the creation process as well.

My personal preference is for somewhat more in the way of rules, feats, classes, paths, etc. than we've seen so far, but not nearly as much as what we saw in 3e(my favorite edition so far) and 4e(my least favorite edition so far).

 

[Parmandur]

The ‘average person on the street’ would find all RPGs heavy. Compared to other RPGs, 5E is mid-light. And it’s waaaaay lighter than a lot of boardgames.

Not sure what “in my experience” means. Are you saying you’ve surveyed average people in the street and asked them to rate the heaviness of 5E compared to other tabletop RPGs? That’s awfully industrious of you!

Most of the people I know who play started with 5E: they tend to see it as complex and involved (though rewarding).

 

[Morrus]

Most of the people I know who play started with 5E: they tend to see it as complex and involved (though rewarding).

As I said, anybody new to RPGs will find any RPG to be complex. People without a point of comparison aren't useful for measuring for how complex a specific RPG is in the continuum of RPGs.

Sure, it's complex compared to the card game SNAP or hide-and-seek. It's simple compared to the HERO system or EVE Online. We're talking about RPGs, though, where it's light-to-middling.

 

[Oofta]

Shove your award, Oofta.

I never said the designers were lazy people, no matter what you and your ilk try to frame it as. They might work very hard in a great many areas (not that you or I would know), but some of the design in the game is lazy, in that it either defaults to a much older edition's framework, or remains ambiguous with few good examples of how to run it for the DM. That's lazy design.

As for 5e being perfect...it's true that no one has said it is, to the best of my knowledge.

It's also true that virtually every single time people try to point out a criticism of it, the criticism goes mostly unacknowledged and the critic gets personally attacked, like what happened with the poster above who had the misfortune of being insulted by Defcon.

So...maybe it's not perfect, but the defenders here sure act like it.

"Me and my ilk?" Good grief. Get over yourself. If I say that everything Bob says is a lie, I'm calling Bob a liar.

But seriously. I don't think 5E is perfect. But saying design decisions are lazy because you disagree with them is just ... well ... lazy.

 

[Morrus]

Shove your award, Oofta.

"Me and my ilk?" Good grief. Get over yourself.

I think it's best that you two don't respond to each other any further, please.