Mike Mearls comments on design

[Wormwood]

I really appreciate some DMing advice in the DMG, rather than just examples of encounters, treasure and so on. The actual construction of a campaign is something I've always find hard (although i appreciate if I practiced more I'd get better at it...).

Robin Laws is the reason I bought the DMG2.

DMing advice is always welcome.

 

[The_Furious_Puffin]

Well, he said "no more abuseable" which still leaves the option of "less abuseable".

Yeah, but as I said, not particularly comforting

Edit: I guess I'm trying to say 'no more abuseable' isn't really saying anything, because either they are extremely abuseable or don't exist.

 

[Hussar]

That's a hard balance to get right - how do you include the "serving suggestion" without pre-combining the ingredients so much that it's all you can make?

Or so that you're not picking out the carrot from the mixing bowl every time you cook because the default is carrot cake and you want to make black forest gateau?

I agree to a point.

However, in 3e, you don't even get cake mix. You get handed a bunch of ingredients and told to make a cake. Never mind that you've possibly never seen a cake and have no idea what it should look like.

Ok, cake is a bad analogy.

You get the point though, I think. Without an explicit example of doing a campaign right, how can a new DM be expected not to make all the same mistakes that we did? Railroading, disorganization, burnout - all of these things are the result of learning on the job. Why not hand a new DM a paint by numbers picture and tell him the reasons for picking those particular colors?

In the past, the DMG has been very, VERY light on any sort of advice on how to develop a campaign. Lots on how to make an adventure. A fair bit on how to make a world. But, very little on how to hang it all together. And, next to nothing on how to avoid the rather numerous pitfalls of DMing. Heck, the Wolfgang Baur article on the Wizards site a while back on how to design a dungeon is some of the best advice I've seen in years. THAT'S what should be in the DMG.

I guess I'm coming from the point of view that we've tried for years to hand new DM's the tools without taking the time to show them what the end product can look like. For example, Keep on the Borderlands states that DM's should fill in the blanks but gives pretty much no guidance as to how to fill in those blanks. It's assumes that new DM's will figure it out.

There is another approach. Come from the finished product, deconstruct it down the its basic components and then hand it to the new DM.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Players are so cute when they only read the rules that they think are in their favor. You missed this important part of the skill description-

Changing others’ attitudes with Diplomacy generally takes at least 1 full minute (10 consecutive full-round actions).

Since when is Llolth going to give you a whole minute before she kills you? Diplomacy is only broken if the DM allows it to be so.

A Diplomacy check can be made as a full round action with a -10 penalty. The DC for turning Lolth into a Playboy bunny is 50 so an extra 10 isn't a huge increase.

 

[Fifth Element]

Since when is Llolth going to give you a whole minute before she kills you? Diplomacy is only broken if the DM allows it to be so.

The last line is always the killer, isn't it?

I wonder how many "Diplomacy is broken" debates could be won by bringing up this little tidbit? (The answer is zero, of course, since one can never win an online debate. But you know what I mean.)

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I think I saw his face in my scrambled eggs this morning. I was going to call the paper, but then I got really hungry.

He makes some pretty decent points, and he's quite correct about the importance of writing the core books under the assumption that they're going to be read by new and or lazy players and DM's. More experienced gamers should know how to ratchet things up to the necessary level.

This point can't be emphasized enough. If some of the measures they're taking in the 4th edition core books seem "simplistic," or seem to be directing players toward a certain style of play, consider that perhaps those measures are directed not at you, the experienced player who knows the drill, but at new players who need to be told how to get started playing.

They don't need to write detailed instructions for us old hands. We know how to do it already. So I think that a lot of the core content aside from the game mechanics might just be kind of useless to us. I feel the same way about vast tracts of the 3E DMG. It's just part of writing for a broad audience. Not all sections are for all players.

 

[Steely Dan]

A Diplomacy check can be made as a full round action with a -10 penalty. The DC for turning Lolth into a Playboy bunny is 50 so an extra 10 isn't a huge increase.

Yeah, and we all know how easy it is to get Skill checks to absurd numbers in 3.5, regardless of Epic.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Although I'm not particularly happy with the marketing, I do wonder how much of our reaction to 4e is being affected by pure negativity on the forums. I mean, I found the Quest article rather good, giving an idea of how the structure of 4e XP awards would be changing, and also including a bookkeeping tip that some might find useful.

However, the reaction on the boards was suddenly this explosive "4e sucks - it's railroading you", and so forth.

People find what they're looking for.

 

[Driddle]

The first page or so of responses to this thread gave me the feeling I had stumbled into the Church of Mike Mearls (Reformed).

I still disagree with the attitude that players stepping into a roleplaying game should have rules-assigned tasks from the git-go: "The roles are there so that players have a better understanding of what they are supposed to do," Merls said. That, to me, seems to be reducing the experience to a simple equation or computer simulation. And if it's a core design consideration, this edition is going to be very much different from previous generations.

OK, I'll use the words. I've avoided them so far, but what the hey: I hate that.

 

[Hussar]

The first page or so of responses to this thread gave me the feeling I had stumbled into the Church of Mike Mearls (Reformed).

I still disagree with the attitude that players stepping into a roleplaying game should have rules-assigned tasks from the git-go: "The roles are there so that players have a better understanding of what they are supposed to do," Merls said. That, to me, seems to be reducing the experience to a simple equation or computer simulation. And if it's a core design consideration, this edition is going to be very much different from previous generations.

OK, I'll use the words. I've avoided them so far, but what the hey: I hate that.

But, it's always been that way. Players have always had something they are supposed to be doing. Even if the game is 100% sandbox style and all elements are 100% player driven, the players still have to be able to come up with something they have to do.

In other words, if I want to play a fighter with a 9 Str, 9 Con, 9 Dex and 18 Cha, there's going to be some problems at the table. Sure, it's all great that I can do that, but, let's face it, I'm screwing everyone else at the table. Why not tell the new guy, "Ok, you want to play a fighter? Here's three or four concepts that will let you play a fighter and be reasonably effective."

Once the player has played for a while, he can ignore that advice and try new things. But, what's wrong with stepping up with advice? Why is letting everyone make the same mistakes a good thing?