D&D General Mike Mearls' blog post about RPG generations

[mamba]

It calls 4e the “peak” of fourth generation design—basically an extension of 3e’s build-focused, video game-inspired style—but that doesn’t really track. 4e wasn’t a refinement of what came before. It was a full reset.

it does not need to be a refinement to go in the same general direction, 5e is also still 4th gen in his classification

 

[mamba]

It's also written by one of the designers of 5E, so emphasizing how star-spangled awesome and inevitable the rising star of 5E was is not surprising but still disappointing.

not sure where you are seeing that, 5e is basically the rear guard of the 4th gen games, not the advance team of the 5th gen

 

[dbolack]

That's long enough to make my point

I am dubious of calling a handful of years "a long time". All of the early games I can think of that "don't play like D&D" in my mind are in '77 or '78. There are likely earlier examples.

 

[Theory of Games]

I am dubious of calling a handful of years "a long time". All of the early games I can think of that "don't play like D&D" in my mind are in '77 or '78. There are likely earlier examples.

Care to name a few?

 

[Divine2021]

IMHO, four pages of rules doesn't meant that the game is easier to GM.


My interest remains dead.

I don’t care about your interest, but it’s kinda silly to claim that Pirate Borg et al aren’t easier to GM. Simply in regard to time spent to prep for a game, there’s an objective difference between an OSE or a borg compared to a 5e based game.

 

[dbolack]

Aww, but how can people crap on the Forge for being the worst thing ever, if they have to accept that it actually grew out of the existing tradition and discussion of TTRPGs?

Not every plant is edible.

 

[Charlaquin]

I don't believe the Forge accurately classified Simulation.

I think there are a lot of issues with the forge’s model. But, I also think it’s important to note that a model’s utility is not correlated 1:1 with its accuracy. Think of the scene from Zoolander where Ben Stiller says “what is this? A center for ants?!” He’s made the mistake of assuming that because the size isn’t accurate the model isn’t useful. But the size was never the thing the model was trying to reflect.

 

[haakon1]

I think Mearls is mostly right, and it’s about design generations, not player generations. Gen X played all of the design generations (were faded and jaded), whereas younger generations for the most part caught only the current (2000-present, 3e-5e2024) “4th generation”, with some Millennials catching last stage “3rd generation” (2e).

That said, I disagree with Mearls that a “5th generation”, dominated by indie games focused on easing the considerable burden on DM’s started in 2023 … that seems more like a sales pitch than history.

Yes, I’m replying to the original post on page 11 … ENWorld moves fast when there’s a new interesting post.

 

[TwoSix]

I don't believe the Forge accurately classified Simulation.

That’s been a fairly consistent point of contention since the inception of Forge theorizing.

 

[Mannahnin]

While I get what this article is going for, something about it doesn’t sit right.

It frames the whole hobby as if D&D and its direct offshoots are the only meaningful throughline, and everything else is just a reaction to that. It treats D&D like the center of gravity, and anything outside that orbit—OSR, indie games, narrative systems—is either left out or folded back into the D&D timeline to make the model cleaner. That might work if you’re looking at market trends, but it doesn’t hold up if you’re actually paying attention to design trends across the wider hobby.

The part that really sticks out, though, is how it talks about 4e.

It calls 4e the “peak” of fourth generation design—basically an extension of 3e’s build-focused, video game-inspired style—but that doesn’t really track. 4e wasn’t a refinement of what came before. It was a full reset. Classes were built from the ground up around clear roles. Encounter design was transparent and easy to prep. In a lot of ways, 4e was ahead of its time, doing things that people now call “fifth generation” design: prioritizing usability, supporting GMs, and structuring content for a better, more balanced experience between players and GMs at the table.

It didn’t fail because it was too much like 3e or Pathfinder. It failed because it wasn’t. It asked players to engage with D&D in a very different way, and a lot of people weren’t ready—or willing—to make that shift.

Yuppers.

The article also suggests that “fifth generation” games are just now starting to focus on GMs and ease of play, thanks to the fallout from the OGL mess. But that’s been happening for a while. Games like Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, Mörk Borg, and even parts of the OSR have been designing for clarity, pacing, and accessibility for years. These games weren’t trying to “fix” D&D. They were offering something else entirely.

If there is a fifth generation forming, it’s not about returning power to the GM—it’s about respecting the time and energy of everyone at the table. It’s about making games that are easier to run, faster to learn, and clearer to play—because more people are playing now, and not everyone wants to spend hours in prep or rules lookup. That shift didn’t start in 2023. It’s been building for over a decade.

Even the scant examples he gives don't support his thesis. He talks about bullet point / control panel layout being examples of 5th gen design, but he seems to be talking about 5th gen as a product of the OGL threat crisis, when of course OSE had those things back in 2019.

I think Mearls is mostly right, and it’s about design generations, not player generations. Gen X played all of the design generations (were faded and jaded), whereas younger generations for the most part caught only the current (2000-present, 3e-5e2024) “4th generation”, with some Millennials catching last stage “3rd generation” (2e).

I guess depends on what part of Gen X. Only the oldest of us were old enough to be part of the first wave in the 70s.