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]

I suppose that they felt that spending pages telling people what money is for might be a but unnecessary. A bit naive on their part perhaps...but I for one am glad they made the decision they did.

I think you've missed the point.

What is the purpose of money from the point of view of gameplay? Eg given that gameplay doesn't generally produce the result that armour or weapons ever get damaged; and given that the amounts of money that the game tends to be asume will be recovered make other cost of living expenses trivial; what is the money for, in the game, other than writing bigger and bigger numbers in a box on the PC sheet?

Classic D&D implicitly answers this question by (i) giving me rules about how my 9th-or-thereabout level PC can build a castle or tower or hideout or whatever, and (ii) giving me costs for doing so which are at least within a ballpark order of magnitude of the amonts of money the game will result in my PC collecting.

3E and 4e answer the question, in a different way, with their rules for the cost of magic items combined with their expectations (implict in 3E, express in 4e) about what sorts of items what levels of PC should have.

It's not like collecting money for no gameplay purpose is just what you do when you play a FRPG. I mean, maybe that was how it looked c 1977, but the 40 intervening years make a bit of a difference.

And I don’t think lazy and pragmatic mean the same thing. Pragmatism, to me, seems to include consideration. “What’s the best use of our efforts?”

Laziness does not. “What’s the easiest way to get this done?”

There seems to be some fundamental confusion here. Lazy, used of writing or composition or design, isn't a speculation about the motives of the creator. It's a description of what they have created - about the way the work innovates within its field, or is pastiche, or relies on cliches or tired tropes, or - in the case of RPG design - rests upon assumptions or undertanding of how the game will be played that aren't spelled out, or fails to address what might be anticipated as forseeable challenges or conflicts likely to arise in using the rules in play.

There can be reasons to use lazy writing - in cinema, for example, pastiche often seems to be more commercially popular than genuniely new work - and one can easily see the same being true in relation to RPG design. But that is a separate matter.

I guess I'll finish by saying I don't even have well-formed views about whether 5e evinces lazy design, except for the aforementioned bit about money. My horse in this particular race is the idea that there is such a thing as criticism of a work which is separate from either (i) speculating about the motives and merits of its creators, or (ii) collecting data about its commercial success. I'm pretty strogly committed to criciticsm in that sense being a thing.

 

[happyhermit]

Customer A to themselves: "Wow! Whether through accident or design so many of my issues with previous editions have been resolved, not by things that were added, but by things that were left up to the GM/Table/3pp and not spelled out in the core system. Having specific core rules for certain things really got in the way of my fun. It isn't perfectly matched to my preferences of course, but overall it defines the areas where I want it most while getting out of the way in others."

Designers: "We actually worked really hard to figure out what would work best for our goals and the audience we were shooting for. We experimented with some more detailed rules, even worked on entire rulesets that we ultimately decided to cut to meet out objectives."

Customer A: "Cool! It really worked out well for me!"

Customer B: "Oh, that's just lazy design, you just like lazy design then."

 

[5ekyu]

I suppose that they felt that spending pages telling people what money is for might be a but unnecessary. A bit naive on their part perhaps...but I for one am glad they made the decision they did.

And I don’t think lazy and pragmatic mean the same thing. Pragmatism, to me, seems to include consideration. “What’s the best use of our efforts?”

Laziness does not. “What’s the easiest way to get this done?”

It's almost like some folks have to speak in code.

I mean, I dont really believe they mean "write rules telling us what gold and jewels and art are for and what to do with them."

But that's practically what is being said.

If the actual thing bring asked for/about is "ways to spend gold to buy (magic or superior) items to help in combat" (I have a suspicion that's the secret code) then fest up, right? Is that the gripe hiding behind "what treasure is for?"?

 

[hawkeyefan]

If I call your GMing technique lazy, yes that would be insulting. You're not a professional, you don't hold yourself out as one, and we are communicating in the context of a friendly message board discussion.

The same would be true if I said that your golfing is lazy.

But a commentator who criticises a professional sportsperson as having lazy technique isn't being insulting. The context is very different, and professionals who aspire to perform well are expected to suck it up. The same is true for musicisans (performers and campaigners). I've read reviews of concerts, or of albums, that criticise the performers for being lazy or phoning it in or resting on past laurels or simply reworking their old material rather than trying something new or different or exciting. Those reviews may be fair or unfair, sound or unsound; but they're not insults.

When I get criticisms of my pubished work, or rejections of work I would like to publish, that's not insulting (though of course sometimes it stings). That's part and parcel of putting my work out there as an instance (or a would-be instance) of scholarship.

And Mearls as a professional RPG designer is in the same boat. Criticism of his work isn't insulting him. (Of course it's not complimenting him either. But not every remark about someone's work has to be either compliment or insult.)

Again, I’m not talking about the man. I’m talking about his work.

I am fine with people criticizing his work. That criticism can be negative without crossing some kind of line to be considered insulting. In my estimation, describing someone’s work as lazy is negative. Pretty strongly so, in my opinion, but hey, that’s subjective.

I wouldn’t really hold posters here to a significantly different standard, though. We choose to put our comments out there, so we should be ready for criticism ourselves. Again, within reason.

 

[bedir than]

Thanks!

A follow-up comment: a developed skill systems doesn't have to be complex. Here's an example (adapted from Burning Wheel, Prince Valiant, Cthulhu Dark and HeroWars/Quest):

The player states what his/her PC is doing and what s/he hopes to achieve thereby. The GM indicates what ability or skill is to be tested, and sets a DC. The player makes the check (d20 + appropriate modifiers) and if it equals or exceeds the DC the PC succeeds at what s/he is doig and thereby achieves what s/he hoped to. Otherwise the GM explains what went wrong in conception, execution, or intervening factors.​

That sort of approach can be adapted to RPGs that don't expressly include it. I use a version of it when GMing Classic Traveller. But it's harder to adapt to 5e because 5e has non-uniform PC build elements (attack bonus and attack rolls are a discrete system from saving throws are a distinct system from ability/skill checks; and then there are all the overrides, adjustments, etc that come from class abilities, feats, spells, etc). (Contrast, say, Classic Traveller where a PC is just a list of ability scores, skill ranks and equipment.)

The fact that such a simple yet complete resolution system can't be straightforwardly ported into 5e counts as more evidence of its non-lightness, in my view.

What you describe is literally the 5e skill resolution system.

 

[pemerton]

I mean, I dont really believe they mean "write rules telling us what gold and jewels and art are for and what to do with them."

But that's practically what is being said.

Put it this way: Prince Valiant has a simple rule for fine clothes - they add a bonus to the Presence pool in circumstances in which status or appearance matter. This is in a context in which the rules for social influence are quite simple (because not different from the combat rules: make a sucessful check, either opposed or against a set difficulty as the context adjudicated by the GM suggets).

What is the bonus for wearing fine clothes in 5e? How many gp worth of jewellery correlates to advantage on CHA checks - or would that be "mundane mind control" stepping on the toes of casters of charm spells?

It's not like no other RPG ever actually reconciled collecting wealth as a goal of play with having a use for that wealth within the context of the game. Classic D&D has strongholds; Classic Traveller has powered armour and starships; 3E and 4e have magic items.

If the idea, of 5e, is that it's meant to be fun in and of itself to sit around with my friends discussing the imaginary artworks my imaginary character has bought with the imaginary money I took from imaginary dungeons, then (i) the books could come out and tell me that, and (ii) I find that the game promotes odd aesthetics - if I was ever in the mood to do that, I'm not sure it would the same mood that would want to make me play out a wargame-style combat.

 

[pemerton]

I wouldn’t really hold posters here to a significantly different standard, though. We choose to put our comments out there, so we should be ready for criticism ourselves. Again, within reason.

My own view is that the standards are radically different, for the reasons I gave plus others that I'm happy to offer if you're curious but otherwise won't bore you with!

EDIT: I thought I'd test my intutioins about sports commentary, which I'm less across than other domains of criticism. I Googled "hawthorn hawkd lazy play" and the top hit was from foxsports.com.au, which included ""This is the lazy midfield play that Billy's talking about and would frustrate the Cats," Brown said." I won't bore you with the further elaboration, that pertains to teams and a football code that you probably don't know or care about, but the judgement is about the technical discipline and adequacy of the team's performance, not their individual degrees of personal effort.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think you've missed the point.

What is the purpose of money from the point of view of gameplay? Eg given that gameplay doesn't generally produce the result that armour or weapons ever get damaged; and given that the amounts of money that the game tends to be asume will be recovered make other cost of living expenses trivial; what is the money for, in the game, other than writing bigger and bigger numbers in a box on the PC sheet?

Classic D&D implicitly answers this question by (i) giving me rules about how my 9th-or-thereabout level PC can build a castle or tower or hideout or whatever, and (ii) giving me costs for doing so which are at least within a ballpark order of magnitude of the amonts of money the game will result in my PC collecting.

3E and 4e answer the question, in a different way, with their rules for the cost of magic items combined with their expectations (implict in 3E, express in 4e) about what sorts of items what levels of PC should have.

It's not like collecting money for no gameplay purpose is just what you do when you play a FRPG. I mean, maybe that was how it looked c 1977, but the 40 intervening years make a bit of a difference.

No, I didn’t miss the point. I understood exactly what you meant. I’m saying that they chose to go the route they did because they decided that their efforts were better spent elsewhere rather than on some kind of medieval price guide.

There seems to be some fundamental confusion here. Lazy, used of writing or composition or design, isn't a speculation about the motives of the creator. It's a description of what they have created - about the way the work innovates within its field, or is pastiche, or relies on cliches or tired tropes, or - in the case of RPG design - rests upon assumptions or undertanding of how the game will be played that aren't spelled out, or fails to address what might be anticipated as forseeable challenges or conflicts likely to arise in using the rules in play.

There can be reasons to use lazy writing - in cinema, for example, pastiche often seems to be more commercially popular than genuniely new work - and one can easily see the same being true in relation to RPG design. But that is a separate matter.

I guess I'll finish by saying I don't even have well-formed views about whether 5e evinces lazy design, except for the aforementioned bit about money. My horse in this particular race is the idea that there is such a thing as criticism of a work which is separate from either (i) speculating about the motives and merits of its creators, or (ii) collecting data about its commercial success. I'm pretty strogly committed to criciticsm in that sense being a thing.

No confusion on my end. I know what lazy writing means. Your elaboration here doesn’t seem to meaningfully contradict my point, does it?

 

[pemerton]

I know what lazy writing means. Your elaboration here doesn’t seem to meaningfully contradict my point, does it?

It contradicts your claim that it is insulting, and that it's about "what's the easiest way to get this done". Eg if a band is trying to compose a pastiche of their top 10 hit to try and get another hit, that may not be easy. Some popular song writers are good at this; others struggle at it.

Lazy in this context is about the content of what has been produced (within some salient context for the making of critical judgement), not about the process of its production.

No, I didn’t miss the point. I understood exactly what you meant. I’m saying that they chose to go the route they did because they decided that their efforts were better spent elsewhere rather than on some kind of medieval price guide.

This makes me think you did miss the point. You don't answer the question - what is money for in the context of gameplay - by producing a mediaeval price guide (which in any event the game includes).

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Ok. So it seems as if "lazy" is a common vocabulary to critizise a piece of work that is not as innovative as it could be falling back to traditional design which has proven ro work.
In that regard the end result of 5e resembles lazy design. But not due to designers preference but because the playtesters demanded it after the creative experiment 4e.
In the same sense I can call my own DM style lazy DMing, because I make traditional campaigns out of a book. Which seems fair enough.
I still don't like that word being used in that way. It apparently accuses the creators of not wanting to do a lot of work when in reality they went out of their way to please the audience who is longing for a piece traditional work.