Mike Mearls and "Action Economy"

[Wiseblood]

I think what he meant is that ideally you should know what you can do in a round. In 5e you need to know the types of action. You need to know what can be performed with each type of action. Lastly you need to know when the actions can be used and how many you get.

In breaking things down in this way there are things you may want to do that do not easily fit one of these types of action. Which may stop some from using their ideas. More players I have seen that didn't know the rules were creative in their interactions with the world. Players that knew the rules were often only creative with their use of the rules or operating within the rules.

In my experience the rules seldom reflect the world they are supposed to operate in with any sort of verisimilitude. e.g. the two-handed property of weapons. They make a better heuristic than a rule.

This estimation is from what I gathered from the OP since I did not watch the stream and I don't twitch. Though I may convulse or shiver.

 

[Parmandur]

Don't see what the controversy is about: Mearls says that if designers make too fiddley a subclass and make players think about the action economy then they failed at the job of designing an elegant subclass that works within the base rules (like the elegant action economy shared by all players that should fade into the background during play). Keep it simple, stupid. Sound design principle.

 

[Garthanos]

I think what Mearls is ultimately trying to say is that he wants action in the game to be viewed in terms of opportunity (able to act versus unable to act) instead of in terms of economy (management of action/bonus action opportunities). Seems semantic, but it's actually a pretty huge change!

Creating additional opportunities is what warlords do so I doubt your apologetic

 

[Garthanos]

Don't see what the controversy is about: Mearls says that if designers make too fiddley a subclass and make players think about the action economy then they failed at the job of designing an elegant subclass that works within the base rules (like the elegant action economy shared by all players that should fade into the background during play). Keep it simple, stupid. Sound design principle.

A designers not thinking about it is a guarantee they will make broken things.
He didn't say your players shouldn't have to think.....he said the designer or is he being misquoted

 

[Yaarel]

Does this mean that the Dungeon Master cannot be immersed? The DM's perspective is generally third-person.

Video game designers use terms like tactical immersion, strategic immersion, spatial immersion, etc, in addition to narrative immersion, all in attempts to draw players into a virtual world and have them make decisions influenced by their absorbing involvement. There are a great many video games with a third-person perspective.

I wonder if the breakdown in communication on this topic can be reduced to the difference between understandings of immersion in the first-person versus third-person.

Immersion is, by definition, 1st person. The player becomes the hero from the heros perspective.

That makes DM immersion a great question. On the one hand, where the other players become the heroes of an adventure, the role of the DM is to become the world that the heroes adventure in. For nomenclature, I might even prefer to call all of them ‘players’ of the game, while the players take on the role of ‘world’ and ‘heroes’. In terms of tracking and describing all the monsters and persons in the world, much of the job of the DM is literally 3rd person.

On the other hand, when I describe monsters and scenes, I try do so from the perspective of the heroes. And in this sense, it is 1st person. I become their heroes, so as to describe what they see, hear, smell, from their vantage point. Moreover, when thinking about behavior and motives, I need to view the world from the perspective of each monster. So even tho heroes dont access the information about monster thoughts (besides telepathy), it is much of what causes what the heroes will see. So, the role of the ‘world’ is a fluidity of 1st-person identities. And while constantly in flux, while switching from each hero or monster, can be immersive.

 

[Yaarel]

I got the idea somewhat from PF2. I love alternating between combat measured in turns, social/exploratory measured in 15-minute encounters, and downtime/background activities measured in days. Telescoping back and forth between timescales is convenient and intuitive.

If not actually hitting hostiles or being hit by them, it is possible to switch out to a 15-minute encounter timescale, to explain a more strategic way of interacting or obviating the hostiles. Thinking in terms of what happens during 15-minutes, allows a more freeform approach and adjudication. Mass combat probably works better in 15-minute intervals.

A 15-minute encounter can be punctuated by a run-in that forces a turn-by-turn combat. But because this combat literally only lasts for less than 30 seconds, it doesnt really interfere with what else is going on during the wider 15-minute encounter.

 

[Parmandur]

A designers not thinking about it is a guarantee they will make broken things.
He didn't say your players shouldn't have to think.....he said the designer or is he being misquoted

He was pretty clear in the original, and quite clear in the Twitter response: the designer's job, particularly with making new 5E subclasses, is to make the action economy not intrude into play as a sub-game. The job of building the D&D action economy is complete, his point was to not much it up when designing new options within that settled system.

 

[Yaarel]

A consensus seems to be, one can ‘drop’ an object for free. Can one drop an object when it isnt their turn. Somewhat like a free reaction?

If not, then there is a difference between free actions that one can do on their turn, and communication that one can do when it isnt ones turn.

Action Units
• Move
• Action
• Flourish
• Free Action
• Bonus Action
• Reaction
• Communication

 

[Yaarel]

Action Units
• Move
• Action
• Flourish
• Free Action
• Bonus Action
• Reaction
• Communication

I agree with Mearls intent, to design options that remain straightforward and feel natural.

At the same, so far 5e has tried to downplay the existence of qualitatively different action types, then rely on the DM to adjudicate or waive what transpires during a turn. To some degree, this refusal to systematize what the action types actually are, seems to result in an unsystematic mess of defacto many different kinds of action types.

While the design for new options should focus on Move, Action, and maybe Reaction, it might help to think more clearly about what other kinds of action types *should* exist in the game.

 

[Yaarel]

One kind of action type is ‘always on’. The always-on action type includes senses such as the ability to see and hear, but extends to magical abilities, such as the ability to sense magic, if any. Always-on includes auras, such as being swathed in fire. Always-on includes reflexes and the ability to defend against sword attacks and make saving throws. Similarly, ongoing communication is probably best understood as an always-on action type.