D&D 5E Mike Mearls Interview with the Escapist

[Sacrosanct]

But surely consistent rulings are assisted by clear rules and mechanisms. I think their are some costs with leaning to heavily on DM rule interpretation. My experience in AD&D was that significant aspects of the game - especially stealth and some aspects of social activity were just avoided and the game style space narrowed to dungeon crawling. I also guess I want my DM to set the context, run monsters intelligently and engage - not to be tied up micro managing rules. Furthermore, given how hard it is to get together these days, I would rather play the game than have long debates about rules.

Never had any of your problems. That isn't to say the don't exist (obviously you feel they do), but if those were significant problems to the majority of the player base, then one would think they would have been addressed sooner than 25 years into the product's lifespan.

For example, none of those things you say were avoided were in my game. In fact, they occurred a lot more than in 4e (where the majority of gameplay revolves around combat). Most times you just role-played out social interaction. If a check was needed for some reason, most often a plain old ability check was done. Simple, quick, and didn't disrupt play at all. As far as having long debates about rules, that stopped when I was about 14. It's the DM's game. Even if there was a rule in the book that didn't jive with the DM, it's the DM's game. I'll go back to what I said earlier. If you don't like your DM, find another or DM yourself.

I've been DMing as long as I've been playing (over 30 years) and from my experience, I spent a lot less time managing rules in AD&D than I ever did in 3.x. My feeling from feedback from other DMs over the years is similar to mine in that regard: 3.x was a bitch to DM compared to other versions.

 

[dd.stevenson]

The problem with kids today (I realize how this sounds) is that they're coming to D&D quite certain that they know what an RPG is, from video games and MMORPGs. They need to unlearn some of these notions, which is always harder than learning from a blank slate, and they need to do so with less focused rulebooks and much less published adventure support, and with a guy running D&D who would rather they tell him what D&D should be like rather than he tell them.

With respect, I disagree. I find that video gamers (young and old) have no problem spotting when "play to find out what happens" gets violated by QTEs and other scripted events. They instantly know when a single-player level doesn't have enough branching pathways. Open world and sandbox games are very popular and well-known.

I have every confidence that these same players can hear the question "Would you like a sandbox campaign, or plot-driven one?" and make a well-informed decision about which concept excites them the most. Moreso than many D&D forum posters.

To put it another way, I don't believe that sandbox gaming is a delicate fleur that needs Mearls to nurture it in order to thrive. I think it will do just fine with a callout in the DMG alongside other great D&D playstyles, and with the same level of campaign planning advice & resources given to other play styles.

 

[drjones]

Yeah, that's likely the intent of it.

I'm thinking in terms of how everyone might contribute to a stealth encounter... The wizard puts things to sleep.

There are tons of things even a low level wizard can do to help a stealth op. With illusions, invisibility, distractions, stuns, holds, sleeps etc. In many ways they can be more creative than the thief who is going to be better at the actual sneak roll but has a smaller toolkit to get creative.

 

[drjones]

I have every confidence that these same players can hear the question "Would you like a sandbox campaign, or plot-driven one?" and make a well-informed decision about which concept excites them the most. Moreso than many D&D forum posters.

Yeah I am old as heck and I still run my campaigns as hybrid sandbox/linear in a manner that is pretty similar to the way some CRPGs are designed, and for the same reasons. Players want freedom to set out and explore and follow their characters whims and motivations to a certain extent. But Players also want to have overarching goals to pursue and big plots to unravel. They want to start their own guild/town/fortress but they also want to go on an adventure to rescue a princess now and then.

And just as CRPGs cannot support truly open world design without massive budgets or simple systems or small scope a DM is hard pressed to create a truly sandbox campaign without placing limits on the scope to keep it manageable. And players understand that if they decide to bugger off on a tangent that the DM will need time to re-purpose what they have written and write new material to support the new plan.

When I was a teen trying to DM second edition I was completely paralyzed by the amount of work it seemed to require. It sounded like I was supposed to have weather systems, continents full of realistic geography and an entire history of fantastic cultures that made logical sense with languages, currency, geo-politics. I got the impression that the first step was to BE Tolkien and build your world. Those early modules did not read as 'we left this dungeon without an overarching plot or reason to exist because we want you to be free to run sandbox campaigns' they read 'this is just a game where you kill monsters in a dungeon so there is no need to have more than a paragraph of justification or background as to why you are doing that'.

More scripted adventures from Dungeon and the like and later those darn viddie games were how I learned to put together my own stories that players enjoyed taking part in. I think wizards are right to make the intro stuff hybrid sandbox/linear because it gives new DMs direction so they know where to start and what to do next while also giving them room to play and explore. I mean the DMG is not even out yet, of course the adventures should not expect the DM to be expert or be adding a lot of new material to fill out what is presented in the books.

 

[Haffrung]

There are tons of things even a low level wizard can do to help a stealth op. With illusions, invisibility, distractions, stuns, holds, sleeps etc. In many ways they can be more creative than the thief who is going to be better at the actual sneak roll but has a smaller toolkit to get creative.

It occurs to me that a way to make Sleep effective against more powerful creatures is to add this effect: regardless of HP, on a failed save a single target has its passive Perception reduced by 10.

 

[Remathilis]

The problem with kids today (I realize how this sounds) is that they're coming to D&D quite certain that they know what an RPG is, from video games and MMORPGs. They need to unlearn some of these notions, which is always harder than learning from a blank slate, and they need to do so with less focused rulebooks and much less published adventure support, and with a guy running D&D who would rather they tell him what D&D should be like rather than he tell them.

Not to ruin your AgeRage, but you're wrong.

Do a Google search for "Final Fantasy XII Hallway". Here is a sample of the thoughts on perhaps one of the biggest and most anticipated JRPGS of 2009:

http://www.wired.com/2009/12/final-fantasy-xiii-preview-2/

There are other examples, but they involve a lot more swearing.

Gamers today are spoiled in massive sandboxes full of side missions and extra quests. I guess that qualifies as a lazy railroad, but I'm fairly sure the loss of prominence of sandvboxes AREN'T from "video gamers".

 

[Raith5]

Never had any of your problems. That isn't to say the don't exist (obviously you feel they do), but if those were significant problems to the majority of the player base, then one would think they would have been addressed sooner than 25 years into the product's lifespan.

For example, none of those things you say were avoided were in my game. In fact, they occurred a lot more than in 4e (where the majority of gameplay revolves around combat). Most times you just role-played out social interaction. If a check was needed for some reason, most often a plain old ability check was done. Simple, quick, and didn't disrupt play at all. As far as having long debates about rules, that stopped when I was about 14. It's the DM's game. Even if there was a rule in the book that didn't jive with the DM, it's the DM's game. I'll go back to what I said earlier. If you don't like your DM, find another or DM yourself.

I've been DMing as long as I've been playing (over 30 years) and from my experience, I spent a lot less time managing rules in AD&D than I ever did in 3.x. My feeling from feedback from other DMs over the years is similar to mine in that regard: 3.x was a bitch to DM compared to other versions.

Good points. I dont want to overstate the problems I noted in AD&D and I dont think they are necessarily replicated in 5e. But I think there is a lot of survivor bias going on with regards to players of our vintage when it comes to the "Its the DM's game" story: we prospered/got through this type of play but a lot of people I played with felt excluded by this type of play and left the hobby, couldnt find another DM etc.

Sure the DM is always going to have the final say about the context of rules but I think having simple and commonsense rules binding the DM and players is a necessary part of a good RPG. In this sense I agree with what Mearls says in the interview.

 

[Schmoe]

Too much emphasis on designing rules that automagically match what DMs would naturally do without reading the books.

Sometimes the natural thing DMs tend to do without rules support is bad. I've played adventures written by new DMs. They're not good. The natural adventure mode for new DMs is the lazy railroad. Sandbox adventures are not natural. "Play to find out what happens" is not natural.

There is adventure writing wisdom that new DMs don't know and can't get from playing videogames because it's uniquely applicable to tabletop D&D. In the DMG I would like to see an analysis of the top 30 adventures of all time, looking for commonalities and distilled into recommendations, guidelines or even--yes--rules.

I'm sure it is true that most people don't really read the books before playing but what you write in the books still matters, it will still filter down through the playerbase in various ways from the people who do read them.

I'm not sure I get this. You start by mentioning the emphasis on rules-design that is intuitive to new players, and then go on to say that new players don't design good adventures. Adventure design and rules design are not the same thing, and I see a real advantage to having intuitive rule design.

 

[sunshadow21]

Never had any of your problems. That isn't to say the don't exist (obviously you feel they do), but if those were significant problems to the majority of the player base, then one would think they would have been addressed sooner than 25 years into the product's lifespan.

For example, none of those things you say were avoided were in my game. In fact, they occurred a lot more than in 4e (where the majority of gameplay revolves around combat). Most times you just role-played out social interaction. If a check was needed for some reason, most often a plain old ability check was done. Simple, quick, and didn't disrupt play at all. As far as having long debates about rules, that stopped when I was about 14. It's the DM's game. Even if there was a rule in the book that didn't jive with the DM, it's the DM's game. I'll go back to what I said earlier. If you don't like your DM, find another or DM yourself.

I've been DMing as long as I've been playing (over 30 years) and from my experience, I spent a lot less time managing rules in AD&D than I ever did in 3.x. My feeling from feedback from other DMs over the years is similar to mine in that regard: 3.x was a bitch to DM compared to other versions.

While this is all true, 3.5 was also a far bigger game popularity wise than either it's predecessors or 4E turned out to be. I expect 5E will also, over the course of time, end up closer to earlier numbers than 3rd edition numbers. A big reason is precisely the whole "it's the DM's game" attitude. 3rd edition, and PF, and a great many other games of different stock, engage the players directly and more fully than most editions of D&D have. A tabletop game is not just the DM's game; players have to deal with the most of the same challenges that DMs do, and a dedicated player will likely spend almost as much time outside of a game as the DM will. 3.x became a nightmare to DM, that much is true, and Paizo seems to have recognized this in their many efforts to make it easier for the DM while retaining the aspects that really interested players. 5E, on paper, does a decent job of finding the necessary balance, but in play, it still is going to be very DM reliant, and that could turn into a problem with the wider casual market that wants to know exactly what to expect every time they sit down to play, regardless of what group or DM they are sitting down with. In the end, I agree with the basic concept of what they tried to do, but it's a dangerous line to walk. Simplicity is good, but when you start designing simplicity for the sake of simplicity, you can actually end up making something far more complex and harder to deal with than if you had acknowledged and dealt with the inherent complexity for the very start. Also, after many years of working customer service, I can safely say that relying almost entirely on common sense is not a good core design strategy; people are stupid and will do stupid things if allowed.

In the end, both PF and 5E approach the ideal balance, but neither really make it. Because I've already in invested in PF, I'll stick with it while hoping to see evolutions that move it back toward being a bit more DM friendly; 5E isn't likely to see any of my money, however, because at this point as I can look elsewhere and find systems that manage to be both rules light and not entirely dependent on the DM for me as a player to understand what my character can do. 5E tries to do this, and with the right group, I would play it, but as a go to system, it sticks too close to the brand's DM centric roots to be of much interest to me personally.

 

[Rygar]

Not to ruin your AgeRage, but you're wrong.

Do a Google search for "Final Fantasy XII Hallway". Here is a sample of the thoughts on perhaps one of the biggest and most anticipated JRPGS of 2009:

http://www.wired.com/2009/12/final-fantasy-xiii-preview-2/

There are other examples, but they involve a lot more swearing.

Gamers today are spoiled in massive sandboxes full of side missions and extra quests. I guess that qualifies as a lazy railroad, but I'm fairly sure the loss of prominence of sandvboxes AREN'T from "video gamers".

Actually, he's right.

Today's "CRPG's" are really just shooters or action-adventure with the RPG label slapped on them. All events in game are resolved by Player skill, the Character's ability has no impact on outcome. The character's stats perform no real function, the character's "Role" is irrelevant as it has no impact on the game, and there's no consequence to any actions. Sure, you could "Roleplay" in Skyrim, but the game doesn't notice and it is really just you pretending at your screen. Same thing in Mass Effect, the game treats all "Roles" the same. In games like Mass Effect where there's dialogue, your morality is irrelevant, you can flip-flop without consequence, and no matter what you say you always get the same outcome. Even if you kill a character, a new one is put in his place to issue his dialogue and quest. In Skyrim you don't even get that much interaction.

It is a huge difference from an RPG where your decisions matter, your Character is what decides outcomes, and the world reacts to your roleplaying. If someone sat down and tried to play an RPG from a CRPG style: They'd resolve combat by whether or not they could punch the DM, their alignment/morality would be "Whatever I need to be to get the quest reward", and they would expect that no matter what they do it wouldn't impact the game world.

So he's right, there's *a lot* to unlearn. Just the seperation of Character and Player in terms of resolving actions alone is wildly different today, primarily because the games that are labelled "CRPG" are actually some other genre because they don't implement the Character to simulate an RPG and they don't recognize roleplaying to simulate LARPS, they're not even trying to be anything out of the RPG genre.

Nevermind the whole problem of those video games using magic compasses and blinking objects so that the Player doesn't have to put any thought into the quest, just follow the arrow and click on the thing that blinks. Then you have Dragon Age 2, where the dialogue is so irrelevant that they put in a bunch of icons so you don't even have to read it, just click on the icon for "Nice" or "Mean" and don't worry about what the outcome might be.

At this point, for most video gamers, "CRPG" means Shooter or Action-Adventure where someone talks to me and things blink at me to tell me to click on them. There isn't even a common ground of stats, abilities, character derived outcomes, or consequence from action today.