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.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

But again, this is a debate about the various pejorative phrases people are coming up with for design choice they disagree with. It's unfortunate that you are expending so much mental energy, to so little effort, defending those pejorative phrases.

In many ways a game rulebook is very much analogous to a technical textbook. I have reviewed many in my professional life and read through hundreds more, mostly in mathematics and statistics. (I was the book review editor of a statistics journal for several years.) There are two things that are rather challenging for writers to provide: Thoroughly worked examples and good problems. These are difficult and thus authors frequently skip them and provide either superficial examples or skip writing problems.
These are the things that make a book valuable to a reader. A math book writer who doesn't provide those has been lazy in their writing, for whatever reason---they may have had too many obligations, for instance. If it was editors putting space limitations, then they chose to include too much theory and not enough illustration and application. I don't think I used the term "lazy" in my reviews, but everyone who read one where it said "Unfortunately the author did not provide exercises" knew exactly what I meant.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

Much of that can't be cut. The character sheet has to stay, because many new players aren't going to know to go to the web and get it from the website. A character sheet is a necessary inclusion for the new players. The planes are there to teach the players a bit about them. They shouldn't have to go to the DM's book to learn a bit about the planes that exist for their PCs. The list of authors has been included in prior PHBs and is a nod back to that. The final page? Okay. I can see that one being cut.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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?

I’m really not interested in rehashing this topic that was bashed out extensively when 4e was still the current edition, but I’ll to try to explain the significance as best I can in brief.

In 4e, a player is assumed to have access to the full scope of options published for 4e, excepting stuff like dragonmarks and options that don’t exist in a given world.
The devs worked hard to keep the game balanced so that this expectation could remain reasonable, and they succeeded. Even the “lemons” were only bad in optimized games, next to the best builds, and the “best” builds still weren’t broken.
The DM or group can opt out, but the different baseline assumption changes player perception of their own agency during character creation, and is something that was very important to many 4e groups.

In every other edition, only the core options in the PHB are assumed to be available unless specified otherwise. In 5e, even some PHB options are more “opt-in”.

In the end, it’s a matter of what players can generally assume is part of the game unless the DM tells them otherwise.

Maybe I am behind the times, but I don't think *everything* can be assumed part of a 4e game at any particular person's house. That may hold in some form of organized play, but I think that's rather too expansive an expectation for home games.

Why? I’ve never seen a group IRL go by the Core+1 guideline, and every group I saw in 4e had all or nearly all options “on” in most games. (Again, excepting things that are very setting specific, or that contradict house rules, like feat taxes in games that homebrew the bonuses into the assumed math, etc)

 

[Bawylie]

I am pretty sure cutting half rhe spells would tick off quite a few spell caster players, since its rather nonsensical to assume they would only cut the ones nobody uses.

We used to play this game with way way fewer spells.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

And in many ways, it is very much not.

I'd say it's very strongly like a technical textbook. The purpose of a rulebook is to lay out what things are, how to run the game, and how things are connected to each other. It's certainly not like, say, narrative fiction or even an adventure module.

How is a raven like a writing desk?

No clue.

 

[Maxperson]

I'd say it's very strongly like a technical textbook. The purpose of a rulebook is to lay out what things are, how to run the game, and how things are connected to each other. It's certainly not like, say, narrative fiction or even an adventure module.

D&D is closer to a book on art, than it is a technical textbook.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Much of that can't be cut. The character sheet has to stay, because many new players aren't going to know to go to the web and get it from the website. A character sheet is a necessary inclusion for the new players.

It was 2014... See our website for more information, including our convenient fill-in PDF character sheet at <link given>.

The planes are there to teach the players a bit about them. They shouldn't have to go to the DM's book to learn a bit about the planes that exist for their PCs. The list of authors has been included in prior PHBs and is a nod back to that. The final page? Okay. I can see that one being cut.

They put the better formatted spell tables on the web, but the book would be a heck of a lot better if the spells had little key letters next to them (R for ritual, C for concentration, etc.). They could easily put "Inspiring reading" on the web too. Lots of things that are actually useful in play and would make the PHB much more useful as a reference tool are simply not in the book.

Like I said, this book came out in 2014, not 1994.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

D&D is closer to a book on art, than it is a technical textbook.

Agreed that it's not a technical subject like math, but it's not a coffee table book on art appreciation but instead a book on doing things. I've got books on music composition. Usually they have worked examples, study pieces, etc. And indeed many other parts of the PHB do indeed have worked out examples.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Not to rehash a debate that we've had in countless threads, but strictly speaking, you can't say "there's little or nothing to buy."

Because that's balderdash. There is, quite literally, an entire WORLD of stuff to buy.

Not really, if you look at what's on offer.

If your point is cabined more carefully to say, "There is almost no support for players purchasing things that directly allow them to go kill more stuff and accumulate more stuff to kill more stuff, as existed in previous editions, or, in the alternative, allowed for a 'win condition' of a stronghold as existed in early D&D" then yes, I would agree with you.

But .... I don't find that to be a lack. YMMV, and, of course, this is an evergreen debate.

It is an evergreen debate, but I think you're going to a bit of a reductio ad absurdum there. Yes, there is a world of stuff to buy but it's a game about people going out and doing stuff so the things they'd want to buy would, likely, help them do the things they're out to do or otherwise further their goals as opposed to, say, an ox to plow a field. The "win condition" of establishing a stronghold was actually a pretty good non-murder hobo type thing to save your pennies for.