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

[Mannahnin]

This does feel really D&D-focused. While he's not entirely off-based with his first few gens, they're really D&D gens, not encompassing most of the TTRPG market.

Other folks have already mentioned how he's completely overlooking the universal systems in the 80s, like GURPS and Hero (which were fiddly-build-focused games 15+ years before 3E, and I'm sure I'm overlooking other super complex stuff like Space Opera or what have you), and disregarding Vampire and the Storyteller systems' focus on characterization and narrative in the 90s.

I find the notion that 4e is not a 5th generation game somewhat baffling. @mearls' definition, as I understand it, is that 5th gen games are ones that make things as simple as possible to run. 4e D&D was a DM's dream. It is literally the easiest version of D&D to run. I mean, when you can fit the entire ruleset for creating a monster on a business card, I'm going to argue that that's a very, very easy system to run.

5th generation games are designed for GM's? How is that not 4e?

Yes, that bit jumped out at me. While 4E did have lots of character options, calling it the high point for build-focused design is absurd. 3E had vastly more, and 4E deliberately chopped down the complexity and fiddliness of character building, reducing the list of skills, reigning multiclassing WAY in, etc. And yeah, encounter design and monster design were massively overhauled to be easier for DMs, and the rules in general simplified a ton (Grapple being an absolute poster child).

I’m extremely skeptical about this, because Mearls has been beating a similar drum since 2012, when he designed 5e and sold it on exactly the same premise he’s peddling here - that 3e and 4e were all about the bespoke character building, but with 5e they were moving towards ease of play and GM empowerment. It’s very weird to see him now lumping 5e in with 3e and 4e as a character building focused game and predicting the next generation will be the one to do… the same things he claimed to be building 5e to do more than a decade ago.

Yup.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Was just trying to confirm, as the structure seemed to imply one meaning and the actual words a different meaning.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yes, that bit jumped out at me. While 4E did have lots of character options, calling it the high point for build-focused design is absurd. 3E had vastly more, and 4E deliberately chopped down the complexity and fiddliness of character building, reducing the list of skills, reigning multiclassing WAY in, etc. And yeah, encounter design and monster design were massively overhauled to be easier for DMs, and the rules in general simplified a ton (Grapple being an absolute poster child).

Same.

It also feels...very weird to call 5e "GM-focused" because, in a very real sense, 5.0 was the "do whatever, man!" edition. It barely had "advice", and large swathes of what "advice" it did have were endless repetitions of the nigh-useless "You could do X. Or you could not do X! It's up to you". (When they weren't dipping into outright hilariously bad territory, like the suggestions for how to give XP for non-combat situations....which, I kid you not, literally tell you to pretend it's a combat and then assign XP using those rules. Like....what??? You can't make this stuff up!)

5.5e is sorta, slightly, moving in a better direction...but it's still leaning CRAZY hard on "you're the GM, you figure it out" for a crapload of things. For the already-seasoned, the well-versed, all the old-hands out there? That's great. They already know what they're doing and are quite accustomed to flipping the bird at the rulebook if it ever does anything they have even the slightest qualm with. For brand-new GMs who have never run a game before...not so much.

I think Mearls has simply conflated "not too many options for a single GM to easily remember them all" and "designed to be easy for a GM to run". Sometimes the former leads to the latter. Not always.

That said, given Mearls was one of the people who couldn't understand why folks didn't see much (if any) 4e in 5e, maybe we shouldn't be too surprised that he thought 3e and 4e were effectively the same levels of complexity etc.

 

[Gradine]

Was just trying to confirm, as the structure seemed to imply one meaning and the actual words a different meaning.

Oh yeah, I was just being jokey. More seriously, yeah, the Forge nonsense is at least trying to be categorically useful for discussing RPGs, to the extent that if you don't agree with the basics of the framework (and, let's be honest, you shouldn't), you can still talk around it in a way that promotes useful conversation; while the "generation" framework breaks down long before it would be useful for any relevant modern game critique.

So, low bar and lower bar. Which I guess doesn't make much of a difference to the limbo-er.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It also feels...very weird to call 5e "GM-focused"

That's not what Mearls did. He's saying it's a fourth generation game, not a fifth generation one.

Fifth generation games are the fantasy RPGs (and similar designs) that have come out after 5E. The Borgs, the Shadowdarks, etc., all of which do make things massively easier on GMs.

 

[Aldarc]

That's not what Mearls did. He's saying it's a fourth generation game, not a fifth generation one.

Fifth generation games are the fantasy RPGs (and similar designs) that have come out after 5E. The Borgs, the Shadowdarks, etc., all of which do make things massively easier on GMs.

If Mork Borg wanted to make things easier for GMs, they wouldn't have used half the design and layout choices that they did. They killed any and all interest for any Borg-related game from me.

 

[Scribe]

If Mork Borg wanted to make things easier for GMs, they wouldn't have used half the design and layout choices that they did. They killed any and all interest for any Borg-related game from me.

Sure, but if you get through that, or download the sane layout versions, you are looking at what, 4 pages of rules?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If Mork Borg wanted to make things easier for GMs, they wouldn't have used half the design and layout choices that they did. They killed any and all interest for any Borg-related game from me.

They do have a free version with no art or crazy layout choices. And Borg games that the Stockholm Cartel didn't make, like Pirate Borg, don't go as hard.

 

[Aldarc]

Sure, but if you get through that, or download the sane layout versions, you are looking at what, 4 pages of rules?

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

They do have a free version with no art or crazy layout choices. And Borg games that the Stockholm Cartel didn't make, like Pirate Borg, don't go as hard.

My interest remains dead.

 

[Scribe]

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

Sure. Depending on how one runs their game, or the expectations they have going in, it can go either way.