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.

 

[5ekyu]

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.

Some people like their rulebooks being like textbooks, some like rules like computer code but clearly WOTC in 5e went specifically for a non-textbook, non-computer code style. They are far from alone in this choice.

I expect PF2 to be more in line with the style you seem to think rulebooks for games should be.

 

[pemerton]

there are two kinds of argument being made here. The first is that both 3rd and 5th edition are heavy weight rule systems. The second is that they are of roughly even weight as such. Page count and rules density on a page is an indicator, but cannot be conclusive about weightiness in this sense. For instance, one could envision light weight rules, expressed verbosely. The two arguments can be sustained separately or together. In making this judgement, one has to think about where 5th edition D&D sits among contemporary RPGs. Then there is the question of, who for? RPGs that posters here might agree are light weight, could seem heavy weight to someone unfamiliar with the kind of manuals these boards address.

I think the question of weightiness is rightly a relative one - is 5th edition D&D relatively heavier than Savage Worlds? - and is rightly measured from the perspective of the community of hobbyists who are familiar with them. Having DM'd 3rd edition and 5th edition, running weekly sessions for years, I find that the systems of equal weight. That's the bottom line, for me. I've played both for hundreds of hours, and in play, 5th edition is as heavy as 3rd edition. I've played Savage Worlds, and it seems lighter than both to me.

5e doesn't seem remotely rules-light to me. It has intricate PC-building rules; and on the action resolution side it has extremely prescriptive rules for resolving two fields of endeavour (fighting, and using magic) while virtualluy no rules for resolving most other fields of endeavour. This feature of action resolution generates two sorts of rules-heaviness: (i) the combat and magic rules themselves, including the lists of equipment and (much longer) of spells; (ii) managing the difference between fields of endeavour - for instance, is an archery competition resolved by using the combat rules or the rules for ability checks? Or some interaction of them as is found in the rules for grabbing people in a fight?

What do we mean by heavy though?

D&D 5e is a gateway game. There are millions of new players, who aren't hobby gamers, who are playing it.

I am familiar with the scale of light-heavy from boardgames. Perhaps it is used differently with RPGs.

Not all light games are gateway games, but all gateway games are light.

I don't think this is an especially useful metric, personally. At least in Australia, chess is a "gateway game" - schools have chess clubs but not checkers clubs or backgammon clubs or ludo clubs or Chinese checkers clubs - but I don't think that chess could be called "light" compared to any of those other games.

The ‘average person on the street’ would find all RPGs heavy. Compared to other RPGs, 5E is mid-light.

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).

What other RPGs are you comparing it to?

Here are some games that seem clearly "lighter" than 5e, in that it is easier to build a PC (fewer choices required, less understanding of mechanical minutiae needed to make those choices) and easier to resolve action declarations (less search-and-handling required, fewer special cases, and the like):

* Dungeon World;

* Basic Roleplaying;

* Classic Traveller (in principle; the actual editing of the books makes some of the rules hard to recover, but that can be remedied by a referee who is familiar with the system);

* Prince Valiant;

* Cthulhu Dark;

* HeroQuest revised​

Cortex+ Heroic is perhaps more borderline, but that I think also is lighter than 5e.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Some people like their rulebooks being like textbooks, some like rules like computer code but clearly WOTC in 5e went specifically for a non-textbook, non-computer code style. They are far from alone in this choice.

I expect PF2 to be more in line with the style you seem to think rulebooks for games should be.

Not at all. I have no desire to play PF. I want it turned 1-2 notches towards that style to improve the value of the book at the table, not 10 and turn it into a legal code.

A good technical textbook is actually very readable. It often has lots of text and explanation about what the concepts mean and how to apply them. Sadly, many textbooks are pretty bad and look like a giant list of meaningless equations.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

5e doesn't seem remotely rules-light to me. It has intricate PC-building rules; and on the action resolution side it has extremely prescriptive rules for resolving two fields of endeavour (fighting, and using magic) while virtualluy no rules for resolving most other fields of endeavour. This feature of action resolution generates two sorts of rules-heaviness: (i) the combat and magic rules themselves, including the lists of equipment and (much longer) of spells; (ii) managing the difference between fields of endeavour - for instance, is an archery competition resolved by using the combat rules or the rules for ability checks? Or some interaction of them as is found in the rules for grabbing people in a fight?

VERY good expression of why I feel the skill system is under-developed.

 

[5ekyu]

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




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.

Again, if you believe that all those RPGs out there who put character sheets, inspiration sources etc all have it wrong about how useful those are as far as providing what will be seen as a worthwhile product to their audience, you may be in the minority of highly successful game publishers who left those out and were happy about it.

 

[Maxperson]

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

And for people too poor to have a computer?

 

[SkidAce]

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.

If this was true, then why does the the DMG have this....

Buying and Selling
Unless you decide your campaign works otherwise, most magic items are so rare that they aren’t available for purchase. Common items, such as a potion of healing, can be procured from an alchemist, herbalist, or spellcaster. Doing so is rarely as simple as walking into a shop and selecting an item from a shelf. The seller might ask for a service, rather than coin.

In a large city with an academy of magic or a major temple, buying and selling magic items might be possible, at your discretion. If your world includes a large number of adventurers engaged in retrieving ancient magic items, trade in these items might be more common. Even so, it’s likely to remain similar to the market for fine art in the real world, with invitation-only auctions and a tendency to attract thieves.

 

[pemerton]

Well, that's an exceptionally lazy argument, because employing "lazy" to describe something you either don't like, or don't understand, is itself the height of laziness; its a synecdoche for bad criticism, employed only by the most slothful and dim-witted, who lack the capacity to fully engage with the work they are critiquing.

Not that I would make a moral judgment, of course. That would be ... lazy.

If you don't like "lazy" as a term of criticism, fine. That doesn't mean that using it, or even that calling my use of it lazy (in some sort of pragmatic contradiction), is making a moral judgement.

Googling "New Yorker lazy writing" gave me this. The New Yorker is happy to entertain "lazy witing" as a term of criticism, so I feel I'm in reasonable company.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

And for people too poor to have a computer?

Staples charges exactly the same to print from a PDF as it does to make photocopies. So does the public library.

 

[SkidAce]

From Xanathar's....rules for buying magic items (i left out the tables)

Buying a Magic Item
Purchasing a magic item requires time and money to seek out and contact people willing to sell items. Even then, there is no guarantee a seller will have the items a character desires.

Resources. Finding magic items to purchase requires at least one workweek of effort and 100 gp in expenses. Spending more time and money increases your chance of finding a high-quality item.

Resolution. A character seeking to buy a magic item makes a Charisma (Persuasion) check to determine the quality of the seller found. The character gains a +1 bonus on the check for every workweek beyond the first that is spent seeking a seller and a +1 bonus for every additional 100 gp spent on the search, up to a maximum bonus of +10. The monetary cost includes a wealthy lifestyle, for a buyer must impress potential business partners.

As shown on the Buying Magic Items table, the total of the check dictates which table in the Dungeon Master’s Guide to roll on to determine which items are on the market. Or you can roll for items from any table associated with a lower total on the Buying Magic Items table. As a further option to reflect the availability of items in your campaign, you can apply a −10 penalty for low magic campaigns or a +10 bonus for high magic campaigns. Furthermore, you can double magic item costs in low magic campaigns.

Using the Magic Item Price table, you then assign prices to the available items, based on their rarity. Halve the price of any consumable item, such as a potion or a scroll, when using the table to determine an asking price.

You have final say in determining which items are for sale and their final price, no matter what the tables say.

If the characters seek a specific magic item, first decide if it’s an item you want to allow in your game. If so, include the desired item among the items for sale on a check total of 10 or higher if the item is common, 15 or higher if it is uncommon, 20 or higher if it is rare, 25 or higher if it is very rare, and 30 or higher if it is legendary.