Mike Mearls comments on design

[The Ubbergeek]

And character sheets are just like character sheets in MMO games, since they show you the extent of what your character can do.

What's your point? A good system of organization is a good system of organization, no matter what it's origin.

If an idea is good and can be important for benifits to the game, why not do it?

 

[Hussar]

Me, I'm very, very happy that they are going to design the core books with newbies in mind. Let's face it, if you've been gaming for 20 years, you probably don't need a whole lot of help getting a game started. Sure, pointers are always good, but, really, how much hand holding do you need.

IMO, from what I've seen, it's going to be more like, "Buy the core three, they come with a home base statted out (we know that from previews), they come with a fairly strong level of flavour that is consistant with the mechanics - go ye now forth and game".

Do you or I need this? Probably not. We've likely got a dozen or so different campaigns floating around in the back of our heads at any given time. But, that's because we're not new to the game. We've done it. We've learned from our mistakes.

I think it's simply a different teaching method. Instead of handing people all the tools and saying, "Go build a house." they are going to say, "Here's a house, here's how WE made it. You can use these tools to build your own house, or you can just use ours, take your pick."

I much prefer the latter. It's a much better way of teaching. That way you avoid every group making the exact same mistakes over and over again. Tell new players and DM's up front, "No, this is a bad idea, here's why. We did it. We tried it and it doesn't work." Sure, people are free to try it anyway, but, at least they can start from a position of being able to draw on other's experience.

To me, that's precisely what the core 3 should do.

 

[Rechan]

There is a lot of risk being taken with D&D with 4E. I believe the risks are being taken now while D&D is a strong brand and market leader because D&D can take a dip in numbers and still right itself. I feel like 4E is a 'let's see what sticks" experiment in flavor with a solid mathematical background. There have been 7 years worth of 'more fluff, less crunch' threads on various message boards. The counter-argument has always been that crunch sells. Maybe 4E is giving fluff a chance. The merits of the fluff in question I will leave to the 10 eyed spheres.

Another thought is that crunch is always delivered in splatbooks. Usually with very little fluff. Adding flavor to the core provides something to cushion the blow, to be stacked on.

 

[LostSoul]

Second, what's to stop the DM from asking the players to create quests?

Awesome.

 

[Cadfan]

Not trying to get flamed here but that sounds a lot like a quest log in say, Guild Wars.

Her'es your quest.

Here's the XP and items you'll get if you do it.

Its the same thing as appointing a player as chronicler for the party, except on note cards and with the DM overseeing things a bit. It sounded very useful to me for newer players and DMs. Less useful for experienced players and DMs. And its just a sidebar on advice for new DMs.

 

[Ahglock]

The alternative is this.

In a section on magic traditions, which would serve as readymade examples for newbies, you'd have the Golden Wyvern Adept. I assume they're going to do something like this anyway, so we're already halfway there.

Under "Golden Wyvern Adept" you have: Typical Feats: Spell Shaping, blah, blah, blah.

There you go. All the same flavor and hooks you asked for, but without hardwiring it. It's like the prestige classes in the 3.5 DMG. Easy to use, easy to toss out.

Not sure why Mearls didn't see that this was what the poster was going on about, nor why this isn't just as useful, cool, and flavorful an idea as the "we won't tell you anything about the Golden Wyvern, we'll just name a feat after them and let you do the rest" schtick.

Cheers,
Cam

Like it, I also cut and pasted with credit to you in a thread on Glemax. If that bothers you I will remove it.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Golden Wyvern seems kinda like the 3e default pantheon to me.

The default pantheon (in 3e it was the Greyhawk pantheon, I guess) ended up being used in probably half of the campaigns I've played in. In probably another quarter it was the Greyhawk pantheon with altered names. Basically, whenever it was a more hack-and-slash campaign, or else a short one- or two-shot campaign, or even a more RP-intensive campaign without much of a focus on religion, it was enough for our cleric and paladin players to just grab an appropriate name from the PHB.

Obviously this didn't impede anyone from introducing their own pantheons, and the rulebooks made it pretty clear how you'd go about adding new gods with their own favored weapons, domains, etc.

So I can see "Golden Wyvern" being something like this: wizards will (by default) be associated with arcane orders, just as clerics are (by default) associated with gods in 3e. DMs can stick with the default vanilla orders - "Golden Wyvern," etc. - or they can easily modify them, or create new orders. You can probably even remove the orders altogether, just as in 3e you can have clerics "of an ideal" in a godless world.

Try out this analogy a bit (although I'm sure I'm not the first to use it). Do you get upset when you have to memorize a whole new list of gods every campaign, or else have to justify why Corellon is so much more of a jerk in this campaign than he was last time?

 

[Umbran]

Rechan and ByronD,

If you can't just ignore each other for the rest of this thread, I'm going to have to ask you both to stop participating at all. Beating your heads together in public is a derailing the thread doesn't need, so please stop. Thank you.

 

[Steely Dan]

NPC Challenge Ratings were notoriously unreliable...

Exactly, is a 15th level drow incarnate a reasonable CR 16 opponent?

…Doubtful, but then again the whole CR/EL system is pretty arbitrary and subjective.

 

[Simon Marks]

The central message of the DMG for 4e is pretty simple: make the game fun for everyone. Communicate with your players. Make expectations clear. Work with the players, not against them.

Here's hoping they explicitly state this in the rules.