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.

 

[Maxperson]

The additional player's handbooks, dungeon masters guides, and monster manuals were all part of the core rules of 4e, it says so right on the cover.

Supplements were things like the books focusing on arcane or martial power.

Which just proves that their claim that everything is core wasn't true. In any case, there was no extra obligation for the DM to include material from any of the additional "core" books than he had for one of the supplements. He had the right to refuse the use of both equally.

 

[pemerton]

Saying someone is lying is the same as calling them a liar as far as I'm concerned.

But saying that someone's words are false is not calling them a liar.

No one in this thread has said that the designers are lazy. Some have said that their design is lazy. I don't have a strong view on that, except when it comes to the role of money in the game: the game maintains the conceit of earlier versions of D&D that a significant goal of play is for the PCs to collect money, but unlike those earlier versions the rules don't provide anything much for that money to be spent on.

I think much D&D writing is lazy - Moldvay Basic is a noticable exception. Original 4e made it fairly easy to avoid the bad writing because I could generally work out how the game plays by reading the mechanical elements, which were often helpfully boxed. Essentials has the same overblown writing problem as I see in 5e material.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

But to your point of 12 to 15 more pages... Which 12 to 15 pages should be cut for the added skills section?

Should feats and multi-classing be cut by those pages? How many spells gone is that if we cut there?

That's rhetorical hostage taking.

Just looking in the the PHB, there are several things that could easily have been "for the web":

-The character sheet in the book (3 pages)
-The final page that says "what's next?"
-Appendix C: The planes. (4 pages)
-Appendix E: The list of novels and such (1 page)

Right there without any rewriting or adding to the total length of the book I got 9 pages! I guarantee I could find another 11 to free up 20 pages.

To put the editing in perspective, a manuscript I wrote for a book (technical, not game) in press came in at 1000 words over the 10000 word limit. That's 10% of the content. I thought I was fine as I had 10000 words of actual content but the editor told me that even their meta-data counted, among other things, so I had to cut! Weird... OK. I cut 1000 words from my allotment, though. In the PHB, this would be something like 30 pages.

I also looked at what they have in the PHB and it's quite thin. They have verbal descriptors attached to DCs but very few concrete examples of what different tasks are mapped to these and relatively few suggested modifiers or situations that would make them harder or easier, or suggestions about skills that might synergize or substitute. Again, I wouldn't want them to mandate these down to a 3.X level of detail, but a few pages with some tables of suggested tasks with DCs attached would be pretty useful to have in the book. I'm sure it'd be very helpful to noobs to have some "worked examples." Heck, put that on the web if you must save Appendix C.

 

[lowkey13]

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[pemerton]

In 5e, only the “core 3” are core. Everything else is *offcially optional*.

In 4e, everything, including DDI exclusives, is just as “core” as the PHB, and things are only optional by Rule 0 houseruling.

its used to indicate what is an assumed part of the game, and what is “extra”.

What does this mean? I can see that it has some relevance in organised play, but otherwise it seems meaningless to me.

In the absence of an organised leagure of some sort, no one can force me to use an option or not use an option.

Here's a concrete example: in my 4e games we have used material from PHB3, namely some psionic classes, some hybrids, and feat powers. Does that mean that shardminds are acceptd in my game? Who knows - no one has ever wanted to play one, and so it has never come up. Likewise for seekers. That said, if someone wanted to play one, unless there was good reason to think it was broken (certainly not the case for seekers, as I understand it!) would there be any reason to say no?

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

On the other point... Why do there need to be rules on what you spend treasure on in the PHB? Isnt that a choice very much specific to settings? To character desires?

Havent had any problems with players characters spending treasure in my games so far.

The issue is that there's very little for them to spend it on. They can't buy magic items (as per the rulebook, anyway) and once they have whatever mundane items they need, there's little or nothing to buy.

 

[pemerton]

LYING is to LIAR as LAZY DESIGN is to LAZY DESIGNER.

No, unless by "lazy designer" you mean "someone who produces lazy design". But not if "lazy designer" means slothful designer. Which is what others, and perhaps you, seem to be implying.

If I describe someone's musical composition as boring, that doesn't mean I'm saying that the composer is a boring person. If I describe an author's writing as lazy (eg because it relies on cliches), I'm not making any judgement on the character of the author - for all I know they worked day and night to produce those cliches! Enid Blyton produced 1000s of words per day, but that doesn't exempt her writing from being vulnerable to description as lazy.

The general point is that "lazy" is a term of criticism, and that criticising a work isn't normally expressing a judgement about the character, morals etc of the person who produced the work.

 

[5ekyu]

That's rhetorical hostage taking.

Just looking in the the PHB, there are several things that could easily have been "for the web":

-The character sheet in the book (3 pages)
-The final page that says "what's next?"
-Appendix C: The planes. (4 pages)
-Appendix E: The list of novels and such (1 page)

Right there without any rewriting or adding to the total length of the book I got 9 pages! I guarantee I could find another 11 to free up 20 pages.

To put the editing in perspective, a manuscript I wrote for a book in press came in at 1000 words over the 10000 word limit. That's 10% of the content. I thought I was fine as I had 10000 words of actual content but the editor told me that even their meta-data counted, among other things, so I had to cut! Weird... OK. I cut 1000 words from my allotment, though. In the PHB, this would be something like 30 pages.

I also looked at what they have in the PHB and it's quite thin. They have verbal descriptors attached to DCs but very few concrete examples of what different tasks are mapped to these and relatively few suggested modifiers or situations that would make them harder or easier, or suggestions about skills that might synergize or substitute. Again, I wouldn't want them to mandate these down to a 3.X level of detail, but a few pages with some tables of suggested tasks with DCs attached would be pretty useful to have in the book. I'm sure it'd be very helpful to noobs to have some "worked examples."

Sorry but this is exactly the point i was making... Everytime somebody thinks judt add more pages if cuts come up they asdume what will be cut is stuff **they** thinks are not needed.

If you look at industry standard - including character sheet, source material suggestion (books, movies tv) and a bit about upcoming products in the line are all ubiquitous. Thats not by accident.

As for the planes stuff... Simce rhe beginning book is meant to cover a lot of different levels, campaigns etc that seems maybe something some folks might not see as expendable.

And as for how you woulda shoulda coulda done dcs differently, again their specific design goal was for gms to set dcs and gave them basic guidelines in the phb and more in the dmg.

In my ecperience trying that "assign it" guidelines tends to get hurt by trying to provide a lot of examples - as the examples get treated as "the rule" not "examples of some cases the rules can produce."

My bet is, they had seen that too.

 

[lowkey13]

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[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*