D&D 5E Mike Mearls' AMA Summary

[doctorbadwolf]

In my current long-term campaign, I have three of five players who have everything written down/printed out/or spell cards of every spell or ability they have. Darndest thing as I didn't say anything about doing that. Surprised me as at the AL tables I DM I find players all the time like you mention who don't print or write down anything.

The monk doesn't have his abilities written down but he has so few he can memorize them. Ironically, the elven ranger has none of his spells or abilities written down and he's the oldest player and a Warrant Officer in the Army!

That's people for ya!

Oh, I don't particularly disagree [MENTION=6704184]doctorbadwolf[/MENTION].

Thing is, that's where the pipeline was closed. Most DM's learn from other DM's, rather than starting cold. When you lose 2/3rds of your DM's, that pipeline gets a lot smaller. And, couple this with a system that is not particularly inviting - walls of text, text that is written in a very specific voice, and, again, a MOUNTAIN of supplementary material, the odds of new DM's coming in gets smaller and smaller.

Think about it, by the end of the first year of 4e, we had the core 3 plus, what, ten more supplements? Plus Dragon magazine material. Plus whatever else. There are entire game lines that have less material than that. Never minding that we had double that by the end of the second year. That's incredibly intimidating to someone who is new to the hobby.

Is it? Not IME. nearly everyone I saw with an interest in playing found out about ddi and used that, or started out just using the phb unless a player came to the table with a different book. Since new ppl have no expectation of official supplemental material being wildly imbalanced, I saw little (if any) conflict over such material, and again, DMs felt no need to read through whatever book it was, unless an older edition player told them they should.

For the DDi groups, there just wasn't any pushback at all at the number of options, except from some players. 4e DMs, again, seem to mostly not even take any notice of the number of player options, because why would they?

Everything you list/describe, so far as I can tell, are things that intimidate or put off groups or players, not DMs. (Or are things that are entirely beside the point, because they were never contested in the first place, like the format of the books).

 

[Lanefan]

Let us further assume that the average table has one DM.

We will then postulate that 4e creates 2 hybrid player/DMs per table, while 5e does not.

But is the CR/xp value of the hybrid-version DM higher enough than the average-version DM to justify a separate entry in the Monster Manual, is the question.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Hussar]

Also, DBH, to use your own words, you mention barriers to groups or players. Well, that, right there, is a narrowing of the pipeline. The fewer groups or players that adopt the system, the fewer new DM's you are going to have. That's just obvious on the face of it.

While, I admit to finding the idea that 4e jargon was difficult to grok a bit baffling - most of it seemed so intuitive to me, I do realize that a LOT of people found the jargon very off putting. The endless arguments about roles (as an example) didn't come out of nowhere. People really had a tough time making the connection that role wasn't a straight jacket but rather a fairly broad descriptive term. But, since the game framed the character within that jargon (Defender, Controller, whatever), people found that off putting.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

[MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION] [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]

Right, the issue was how the game was presented, not the system itself. I've been saying that since 2009 or so.

And yes, 4e is a lot like New Coke. Most people dislike it for reasons hat have nothing to do with what is actually inside. It just looks too different, and they wanted the same.

Regardless of all that, I think Mearls still completely fails to understand 4e, in spite of being one of the guys who wrote a bunch of it. He understands the "h4ters" just fine, though.

But yeah, if "jargon" made 4e too hard for new players, I'd love to hear how he explains the kids who taught themselves to play adnd. Nonsense. Perception and marketing screw ups killed 4e. Not jargon.

 

[Hussar]

[MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION] [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]

Right, the issue was how the game was presented, not the system itself. I've been saying that since 2009 or so.

And yes, 4e is a lot like New Coke. Most people dislike it for reasons hat have nothing to do with what is actually inside. It just looks too different, and they wanted the same.

Regardless of all that, I think Mearls still completely fails to understand 4e, in spite of being one of the guys who wrote a bunch of it. He understands the "h4ters" just fine, though.

But yeah, if "jargon" made 4e too hard for new players, I'd love to hear how he explains the kids who taught themselves to play adnd. Nonsense. Perception and marketing screw ups killed 4e. Not jargon.

Again, you'll get no argument from me. But, jargon was very much part of the marketing. And, let's be honest, the jargon for AD&D is fairly light, had the advantage of the fad years to drive new gamers, and much of it was reasonably intuitive. And, let's not forget, those kids didn't. Most people didn't play AD&D by the book but rather played some hodgepodge of house rules, mixed with Basic/Expert D&D and their own misunderstandings of the rules. To the point where changing groups meant learning practically an entire new game sometimes.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Again, you'll get no argument from me. But, jargon was very much part of the marketing. And, let's be honest, the jargon for AD&D is fairly light, had the advantage of the fad years to drive new gamers, and much of it was reasonably intuitive. And, let's not forget, those kids didn't. Most people didn't play AD&D by the book but rather played some hodgepodge of house rules, mixed with Basic/Expert D&D and their own misunderstandings of the rules. To the point where changing groups meant learning practically an entire new game sometimes.

Right! And none of that stopped them from playing, because they didn't walk into a game store and hear negative stuff about the game, and their friends who were introducing them to DnD weren't telling them that what they were looking at wasnt a real rpg, or whatever.

IMO, that is the difference.

Adnd wasn't really light on jargon, though, as an aside. And it had barriers to entry much more confusing than jargon. As for intuitive, we will have to agree to disagree. IMO, just about nothing in ADnd was intuitive. I also found the keywords and conditions and such of 4e very intuitive, because I had no real attachment to older edition names for things or whathaveyou.

Even some stuff we got wrong, the game played fine before we figured out we were wrong. And 99% of that was someone at the table assuming a word meant what it meant in an older edition. Most of the time, things did stuff that made sense for the name of the thing.

 

[MoonSong]

His thoughts on 4e always baffle me.

The DM pipeline was closed? Or the new player to DM pipeline was closed? Either way, false. 100% false.

I haven't seen so many players try out DMing in any other game, much less edition of DnD. As fairly easy as 5e is, I've seen 4e DMs stop DMing in 5e because they don't want the hassle or figuring out CR, especially since CR will never actually be accurate. And all the work they have to do to make things work beyond that. I've got a player who won't dm 5e, but loved DMing 4e, and the main thing for him is magic items, and improvising in a balanced way, both of which he felt he had more freedom with in 4e.

I can grok most complaints about 4e, but it definately was the most new DM friendly ttrpg I've ever played.

I kind of agree, 4e was extremely easy to run. Not as easy as just not caring about whether what you are doing will hurt the players, but easy. On the other hand I have a hard time running 5e, the xp/Cr budget is somehow more complicated and way more unpredictable, and if you don't do it right your players are gimped.

 

[Shasarak]

Nah, Lincoln was more of a Paladin. Booth was a rogue.

I always pegged Lincoln as a Dwarf.

 

[Hussar]

Right! And none of that stopped them from playing, because they didn't walk into a game store and hear negative stuff about the game, and their friends who were introducing them to DnD weren't telling them that what they were looking at wasnt a real rpg, or whatever.

IMO, that is the difference.

Adnd wasn't really light on jargon, though, as an aside. And it had barriers to entry much more confusing than jargon. As for intuitive, we will have to agree to disagree. IMO, just about nothing in ADnd was intuitive. I also found the keywords and conditions and such of 4e very intuitive, because I had no real attachment to older edition names for things or whathaveyou.

Even some stuff we got wrong, the game played fine before we figured out we were wrong. And 99% of that was someone at the table assuming a word meant what it meant in an older edition. Most of the time, things did stuff that made sense for the name of the thing.

Hehe. Quit saying things I agree with.

Remember, you're taking a single line of an answer here, not a detailed discussion of why 4e failed. And, while I agree with what you're saying, there is no way Mearls is going to go on record saying that. "Hey, you guys that are buying our new game, you suck! You sunk our last game because you were all acting like asshats" is just not going to happen.

So, take what you're reading with some grain of salt. I have no doubt that Mearls knows EXACTLY what sunk 4e. But, since that's in the past, and there is absolutely nothing to be gained by dredging it up, he's always going to toe the line of never, ever saying anything negative about how people behaved. It would be blindingly stupid for him to do so.

IOW, give the guy a bit of a break. We know he's pandering to a crowd. He knows he's pandering to a crowd. And there's bugger all any of us can do about it.