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

[Sword of Spirit]

Unless you started playing with OD&D, every edition had concessions to new players. Heck, the Red Box was a product solely and explicitly aimed at new players.

You know, that's a really important bit of data for marketing purposes. The Red Box is one of the most iconic D&D products ever, and introduced a lot of people to the game. That's definitely something to consider in any analysis of what works or doesn't work. (I'm pretty sure they've done that analysis, hence the Starter Set. It would be interesting to find out how well the Starter Set has been selling.)

I would probably do it in a way to really distinguish it from the rest of the line maybe with different binding and a lot of art and maps, but thick with a lot reference information of nations, organizations, personages and history, everything anyone could possibly ask for in a FR guide except for game mechanics and stats. Have it serve basically as a setting bible and and as a art/coffee table style book with a higher price point to make up for the fact that it is a niche product and outside the normal cycle of releases with player content.

This is good. I want that.

The 100 year leap was a critical error. I feel the same way about that when they did it with Star Trek: TNG from TOS. It limits storytelling more than it expands it, but that is all water under the bridge at this point. You can't reset without breaking everything else. Although I understand why creators do it. It almost never ends well.

What they can (and I think should) do, is cover multiple eras in the book. For instance, when covering Waterdeep, they give you the history up to 1358, then talk about the important people and events then, and then continue the history, pausing for more snapshots of the city at important points (I'd recommend that they coincide with the first presentation of each edition), and after giving a snapshot of the current 5e stuff, they give future possibilities, maybe three or four different paths that Waterdeep could take. And they do that for all of the other regions of course.

I think they could easily fit all this into a book without crunch, and considering the very concise prose of 5e products.

 

[NotActuallyTim]

You know, that's a really important bit of data for marketing purposes. The Red Box is one of the most iconic D&D products ever, and introduced a lot of people to the game. That's definitely something to consider in any analysis of what works or doesn't work. (I'm pretty sure they've done that analysis, hence the Starter Set. It would be interesting to find out how well the Starter Set has been selling.

This is what I'm talking about, though. How recognizable was The Red Box to the people who came before? And how many can look at post Red Box DnD and say "Yeah, that's my game"?

Every new thing is always, inevitably not quite the same as what came before. Sometimes, it is a bridge too far for older community members, even if 'older' means 'joined just before this one big change' because people like recognizing something before they jump into it. A lot of people take one look at the new and different, no matter what the actual experience might be and walk away. Then they congratulate themselves for doing so.

It's not a DnD thing. It's a human behavior thing, and in order to attract new players consistently, the game has to go through some contortions and alterations. Without these, it won't be interesting enough to attract people on its' own merit. At the same time, each change has the danger of making some community members jump off the boat, and the more changes, the more danger of this happening.

But since WoTC has the money from previous PHB and AP purchases, it's a question of how well they can bridge the gap between old players and new, or if it's going to be more profitable in the future to just pick a direction and move towards it, never mind the people who will definitely leave as a result.

TLR can't please everybody forever, or even most for some of time. Keep up the balancing act, or jump?

 

[Demetrios1453]

I would probably do it in a way to really distinguish it from the rest of the line maybe with different binding and a lot of art and maps, but thick with a lot reference information of nations, organizations, personages and history, everything anyone could possibly ask for in a FR guide except for game mechanics and stats. Have it serve basically as a setting bible and and as a art/coffee table style book with a higher price point to make up for the fact that it is a niche product and outside the normal cycle of releases with player content.

The 100 year leap was a critical error. I feel the same way about that when they did it with Star Trek: TNG from TOS. It limits storytelling more than it expands it, but that is all water under the bridge at this point. You can't reset without breaking everything else. Although I understand why creators do it. It almost never ends well.

I like the idea of a coffee table book campaign setting. In a way, the 3e FRCS was something like that - I remember Sean K Reynolds (I believe) doing a sort of informal poll on the old FR usenet asking about a higher price-point setting book right as 3e was coming out. That book would be a good base for the type of book you're talking about, just with a lot more maps, full-page art (which is something that we got to great effect in SKT actually), and the like. And, if it works, it would be a good format for other setting books as well.

But if we're going the coffee table book route, what I really want to see, somewhat further down the line, is an expanded Monster Manual in that format, once we've got pretty much all the classic D&D monsters updated after several more VGtM-style books. Imagine a thousand monsters or so in one big book, like an old medieval bestiary. Not only would it look amazing (like the 5e MM does now, of course), and be a great conversation piece, it would be hugely useful for any DM to have three or so MMs' worth of monsters all in one book for once (well, at least not in easily-ripped three-ring binder format, with everything getting out of alphabetic order as time goes by, like we had in 2e).

 

[wedgeski]

It means that I dislike the current strategy and use of the Realms strongly enough that I'm no longer willing to purchase product associated with the Realms. So, I'm not even interested in the content. It has Volo's name on the cover, so I'm very intentional in my assumption that it's explicitly for the Realms. If it was general purpose, it wouldn't be titled as though it were a Realms book.

Your protest is costing you the pleasure of a fantastic book, just so you know.

 

[fjw70]

Uh, there are electronic versions of everything... have been for years now. They get released on the same day as preferred stored get to sell them. All the 5E products I have bought have all been electronic copies.

Electronic versions of;
- Player's Handbook
- DMG
- MM
- VGtM
- VGtM alternate
- Lost Mines
- Lost Mines alternate

You can figure out the links for the rest of them.
Yes, these are NOT pdfs. They are effectively database versions of the products. They have at least twice the usability of a printed version or a pdf. Yes they can only be used inside of a VTT application. But they exist.

LOL. Let me modify my statement and say that this edition is missing electronic versions of the books that don't require a VTT to use.

 

[Mercule]

Your protest is costing you the pleasure of a fantastic book, just so you know.

I had mixed feelings about the previews, honestly. The mind flayers, for example, looked really well done, but I don't care for any aberrations and don't use them. I use giants, but didn't really care for what I read on them (didn't hate, just didn't "do it" for me). Hard to justify that purchase, but maybe I'll pick it up, sometime.

Regardless, I'll cop to have had a really, truly, horrible day at work, yesterday. I may have overstated my position a bit. I'm still very much opposed to playing in a "Forgotten Realms RPG" and want to see D&D as a separate brand that includes the Realms along side other officially supported settings. I still think the Realms have bled too far into core products (diluting both the D&D and FR brands in the process). And I still think the current "brand strategy" for 5E sucks. That said, I probably wouldn't really let Volo's name kill my purchase any more more than Van Richten's did in the 1990s.

I actually am done buying adventures set in the Realms, though. I've given them a couple years to move on to the next setting and it seems like they're just doubling down on a blandified Realms. As I indicated, earlier, if the day ever comes when new players view the SCAG (or similar book) as the fourth core book, then D&D has "moved on" for me. On the other hand, if they were serious about cycling through settings, such that people who dislike, say, Eberron, are livid at how much support it's getting in another 2-3 years, then I'll eat all the crow you want to feed me. Of course, then I'll be on the other side, as well, because what makes Eberron worth publishing/purchasing is the details and the non-generic setting elements. I thought the 4E statement that any race could have any Dragonmark was a bad move, and I can only imagine how much worse it would be if WotC did to Eberron what it's doing to the Realms.

 

[Mercule]

Uh, there are electronic versions of everything... have been for years now. They get released on the same day as preferred stored get to sell them. All the 5E products I have bought have all been electronic copies.

Electronic versions of;
- Player's Handbook
- DMG
- MM
- VGtM
- VGtM alternate
- Lost Mines
- Lost Mines alternate

You can figure out the links for the rest of them.
Yes, these are NOT pdfs. They are effectively database versions of the products. They have at least twice the usability of a printed version or a pdf. Yes they can only be used inside of a VTT application. But they exist.

Not usable in perpetuity. Can't move to my Kindle or otherwise sit comfortably on my couch and read. Doesn't count.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I had mixed feelings ...<snip>... much worse it would be if WotC did to Eberron what it's doing to the Realms.

Well, I don't know what to add. I certainly don't disagree in that I'm not a fan of FR and would prefer it not to 'become D&D.' OTOH, I don't think this is a poor decision on WotC's part from a strategic perspective. FR is far and away the most popular non-homebrew gameworld, it makes sense for them to use it rather than any other one specific world.

 

[Queer Venger]

As usual Merric, thanks for posting, you should be made a regular columnist here, your posts are very timely and your links work!

 

[Mercule]

Well, I don't know what to add. I certainly don't disagree in that I'm not a fan of FR and would prefer it not to 'become D&D.' OTOH, I don't think this is a poor decision on WotC's part from a strategic perspective. FR is far and away the most popular non-homebrew gameworld, it makes sense for them to use it rather than any other one specific world.

It's not necessarily a poor decision, economically. If it makes them money, it makes business sense. It's more akin to a die-hard comic book fan being concerned that the MCU means that the print version is going away.

My concern is that of a consumer who wants to see D&D continue to be a cornerstone of the TTRPG market. While I play video games, watch movies, and read books, I don't see those as core aspects of the D&D brand (which is, to me, about a pen-and-paper TTRPG). Actually, despite having started play on most of the D&D video games, I've never found any of them interesting enough to complete and the best of the books are still atrocious assaults on literature -- at least as far as I was willing to subject myself to them -- and probably play a certain role in my feelings about the Realms. If they help drive support the TTRPG, then I have no objection. If they interfere with the quality of D&D as a TTRPG, then I'd actually rather they not be made.

Similarly, I'm not interested, as a consumer, in the viability of the FR brand, except as it helps the D&D TTRPG support multiple settings and/or home brewing. In this regard, one of the benefits D&D has over, say, Fantasy Hero or Fate (yeah, two ends of the complexity scale) is that the core game has a sort of very loose, but shared, mythology/lore. I have all the tools at my disposal to craft my own setting, whether that's pure Realms, "Greyhawk except XXX is stupid", or full on home brew with half the classes rewritten. Again, if the support for the Realms benefits this sort of setting sandbox, even indirectly, then awesome. If it starts to calcify things around too strong of setting assumptions, then it's a problem. This is one reason why I don't play Pathfinder -- it's too focused around Golarian, even if it's theoretically non-setting specific.

As a consumer, I have interest in the financial success of WotC only so far as it benefits the products I want. I explicitly do not want the D&D and Forgotten Realms brands to merge. Obviously, my dislike of the Realms setting, specifically, makes the merging of the brands a bit more of an issue than it otherwise might be. I don't really want any specific setting to be synonymous with the D&D TTRPG, though.

Ultimately, as a consumer, I'd rather see D&D end production than morph into the Forgotten Realms brand. A better scenario would be to see the 5E system end up as "open source" with the Realms held by WotC and spanning multiple media, including a FRRPG as well as movies, etc. Something like Freeport, that doesn't require a specific system. Actually, I'd probably be really happy to see all the D&D setting opened up, like that. A Fate of Eberron conversion would be awesome.

That doesn't mean that I expect WotC to cater to my specific desires. It does mean that I'm going to voice my desires and act in my own interests (which include not dealing with the Realms). At a certain point, it may also mean that I'm no longer a D&D fan. Such is life. The reality is, though, that, other than the core books, WotC has only put out three products for 5E that I'm in the market for: LMoP, PotA, and CoS. Tyranny of Dragons was functionally inseparable from the Realms without essentially rewriting or just pretending (I tried). Ditto for OotA. I'm not sure about SKT, but my understanding is that it has heavy ties. SCAG obviously has a high Realms content. Volo's Guide may or may not be interesting, but I don't feel like I need a monster book, since I enjoy making my own lore around ecologies. So, from a certain perspective, WotC may abandon me before I abandon them.