D&D 5E Mike Mearls on D&D (New Interview with James Introcaso)

[Sacrosanct]

I've bought all of the AP, but that's probably more because I have the disposable income to do so. But I haven't played through any of them completely except Tiamat. It's becoming very clear to me that my use of the AP is to pull info out of them for my own homebrew adventures. So they still hold value, and there's a lot of good generic info in them setting wise, but I won't be running the actual adventures. Being older and all of my group being older (with jobs, family, etc), we are much more prone to play shorter adventure modules than long APs. It took over a year to finish Tiamat.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Their "story-first" perspective seem very evident, and does give us lots of clues of things going forward. Although he didn't mention what is coming up in 2017... the fact that so many of the monsters in Volo's Guide were fey creatures, and quite a number of the UA subclasses were fey-based as well (which we'll get officially in the Big Book O' Mechanics in autumn 2017)... leads me to guess that that autumn AP will be a Feywild adventure (following up the Acererak jungle adventure this spring.)

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I'm a little disappointed that it sounds like we won't be seeing PHB 2, DMG 2 and possibly even MM 2. (From Mearl's comments on some consumers believing those books suggest that the first ones are obsolete).

Personally, I prefer crunch to be in that kind of product (and frankly ONLY in that kind of product).

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[Mercule]

I don't really mind the two AP a year approach, but I don't see me buying another one for the foreseeable future. Why? Because we're a group with minimal time (4 hour session, every fortnight or so). I picked up the Starter Set on release day and we moved into PotA afterwards. We're a bit over halfway through and I'm still looking forward to Curse of Strahd. I'll grant that my group should probably be moving through the adventures considerable faster than we are, but even twice the speed means we'd just be starting CoS. I can afford to be choosy. After trying to convert Tyranny of Dragons to Eberron, I've decided that it wouldn't save me much (if any) time and effort over rolling my own.

That means that the only adventures I'm likely to pick up in the next year or two will be those that are targeted at a non-Realms setting. I don't know whether we'll play through them or not, but I'll at least send WotC a vote with my money. The same goes for non-adventure books: I'll probably buy non-setting rules (presumably the PHB2 or whatever) and setting books for other settings. I'd happily to a rotating tour of the various campaign settings, in the form of a full-length AP set in each. OK. I definitely wouldn't pick up Spelljammer and maybe not Planescape, but most of the others would be pretty cool.

I definitely think the overall pace of the release schedule is pretty good, though. My only quibble is with the details of what they're releasing.

The hedge against power creep hadn't occurred to me as part of the AL rule. I don't play AL, so I hadn't given it much thought other than it seeming odd. In this light, though, I really, really like it.

 

[Mercule]

I'm a little disappointed that it sounds like we won't be seeing PHB 2, DMG 2 and possibly even MM 2. (From Mearl's comments on some consumers believing those books suggest that the first ones are obsolete).

Personally, I prefer crunch to be in that kind of product (and frankly ONLY in that kind of product).

While I agree with your preference on crunch, I didn't necessarily get that we won't see crunch-only/heavy products. Just that they won't be called PHB2, etc. I thought it was specifically called out that they were working on a crunch-heavy product for this year.

Hopefully, it's not called "Volo's Guide to the Adventuring Life" or something like that. I'd much rather see something as bland as "D&D Rules Expansions, Volume 1" than something that carries even a trace of setting branding. That assumes, of course, that it's not a Realms-specific expansion. I've been intentionally assuming that "Volo's Guide to Monsters" is not relevant to my game because it's Realms-branded by virtue of having Volo's name on it.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I've been intentionally assuming that "Volo's Guide to Monsters" is not relevant to my game because it's Realms-branded by virtue of having Volo's name on it.

I suppose it could be argued that WotC made a mistake in branding that guide as such, but it's really not FR only. It has information that is generic, as well as many references to other settings. Basically, they threw everything (Greyhawk, FR, etc) into one generic FR setting. I prefer Greyhawk myself, and I can use everything in Volo's guide in my GH setting no probs.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Jer]

I've been intentionally assuming that "Volo's Guide to Monsters" is not relevant to my game because it's Realms-branded by virtue of having Volo's name on it.

What does "intentionally assuming" mean? Does it mean that even if other people suggest that it isn't really a Realms-only product you aren't going to believe them?

If not, then you should really find a game/book store that carries D&D in your area and browse through it to decide for yourself. To my eyes its no more Realms content than the Player's Handbook or the DMG are. The back half is really Monster Manual 2 (or maybe "Monster Manual 1.5" since it isn't a full-sized Monster Manual), and the front half is really a fairly neutral set of ideas about various "classic" D&D monsters that can be used in a lot of different campaigns and aren't Realms specific. Or at least aren't any more Realms-specific than the Monster Manual and the other core books already are with their off-hand references to Realms deities and whatnot.

I suppose it could be argued that WotC made a mistake in branding that guide as such, but it's really not FR only. It has information that is generic, as well as many references to other settings. Basically, they threw everything (Greyhawk, FR, etc) into one generic FR setting. I prefer Greyhawk myself, and I can use everything in Volo's guide in my GH setting no probs.

I get the feeling that Wizards are positioning Volo as a multi-world traveler rather than just a Realms traveler. Nothing specific - just nods and off-hand comments in the flavor text and whatnot. Maybe I get that more from my perusal of the Dungeonology book than the Volo's Guide - Dungeonology seems to suggest that Volo has been to a lot of places, not just on Faerun.

 

[Staffan]

I'm a little disappointed that it sounds like we won't be seeing PHB 2, DMG 2 and possibly even MM 2. (From Mearl's comments on some consumers believing those books suggest that the first ones are obsolete).

From what I understand, it's not so much that there won't be a book that's "More rule options for PCs", but more that it will be called "Player's Companion" or "More Character Options" (or something flavorful), rather than being called "Player's Handbook II". Sort of what they did with Volo's Guide to Monsters - it's really a Monster Manual II, but they aren't calling it that.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I actually have really mixed feelings on their "This Year's Story" strategy, on a basic level I think it's wonderful, every AP they've released since (and including) OOTA has excited me and I love the MMO expansion like effect of the experience, everyone's talking about the new content, we theoretically get thematic players options alongside each release (they could stand to make that more consistent though), a huge part of me would be thrilled to follow this every year, getting the books as they come, picking up each release and running it for my grup, and having a year of SKT, followed by a year of fey-wild-adventure and so forth. Potentially even using the AL releases as side-content or whatever.

The mixed part comes in that i'm a total worldbuilder/lorehound type who wants to eventually publish (in free pdf form or otherwise) my campaign setting once it reaches sufficent level of substance and polish, and most of the other people willing to DM in my group are somewhat turned off by the idea of running a module. So i'm picking up APs because they're awesome, and then they tend to go on the shelf because my group only really does homebrew content. Maybe if i could run more than one game a week it would work, but time commitments suck.