D&D General Mike Mearls says control spells are ruining 5th Edition

[SkidAce]

You don't see the experience of play as resembling the experience of cinema or story. That's fair. Unfortunately for you, most people do see at least some similarity between those experiences, and as a result, they want certain components, like pacing, rising and falling action, satisfying conclusions, and a perceptible (but not necessarily obvious) "arc" or "direction" for how things went.

I think this view is key to a LOT of discussions about D&D rules, gameplay, and expectations. (and arguments! )

Fortuitously my views are balanced in the middle, and over time our group(s) determine what feels right for us.

 

[Remathilis]

The people who made the Indy movies are trying to entertain an audience. I'm just trying to keep my character alive.

Yes. D&D is about survival, not entertainment.

What??

Here, the "That was it?" would be immediately followed by "YEEESSS!!!" and a cheer.

There's a joke to be made about love making here, but I'm pretty sure it's against ToS.

 

[Remathilis]

I dont know if its an urban myth, but I love the story of why he did that.

I've heard it's legit from Spielberg in various interviews, but even in the pacing of the movie it worked because it comes so late into the film you can sense Indy going "I'm too tired for this".

But if Indy did that every fight, the movie would have been boring.

 

[Marc17]

Yes. D&D is about survival, not entertainment.

Well, different people play the game for different reasons. Some treat it as a strict game with win and lose conditions. Others just want the drama and story it creates. Others just want to be immersed in what they expect it to be. I can't really argue against that as I have met plenty of individual people who treat real life the same way.

 

[Remathilis]

Another point to be made here: that was some very weak sharing of spotlight going on there by players and DM alike. Some of those summoned elephants should have been given to you and the Ranger player to control so you had something to actually do in the fiction.

Sorry you had to experience it the way you did.

For what it's worth, the group only had one Monster Manual with us that day (and it wasn't common to have devices to use your SRD on at table) so when the first wizard summoned celestial elephants, he pretty much hogged the only MM. He was pretty much out of useful spells (remember, every buff spell was disjunctioned away and the lich has SR to beat damage/cc spells, so the wizard was mostly playing Pokemon trainer on his turn).

It might have helped to give out some elephants to the other players, but honestly both the rangers and I had pretty much checked out. She rolled her save every round (and never got the 20 needed) and I tracked initiative.

 

[Minigiant]

is one of these meant to say 3.x? just the way the sentences are presented makes it seem like one of them ought to say something else in a comparison structure?

Both 3.5 and 4e went for the first camp. But 3.5e was retroactive while 4e is deliberate.

 

[Stalker0]

I am annoyed by people who try to "fix" Legendary Resistance instead of fixing the "I win button" spells, got in at least one argument with a youtuber about it once

I know this is 20 pages back but I wanted to address it.

As noted several times in this thread, control spells are not innately OP, they just tend to be OP against single monster encounters.

So from a design perspective, it makes all the sense in the world to target the boss monster for chance (which directly addresses the boss monster issue) instead of the changing the spell (which impacts all encounters, some of which needed no change).

It’s scalpel vs hammer

 

[Incenjucar]

The current year is 2025. Attention spans have changed since the 1970s. Many players are not, themselves, entertaining to watch play for hours on end.

I've heard it's legit from Spielberg in various interviews, but even in the pacing of the movie it worked because it comes so late into the film you can sense Indy going "I'm too tired for this".

But if Indy did that every fight, the movie would have been boring.

I've basically had the scene happen in PF. My whip-and-sword rogue/bard pulled out a cantrip that shoots a metal projectile on their first turn, I gave the leader of the enemy group a finger gun gesture and said "Bang". Critted. They died. Flunkies gave up - end of encounter.

Once and it's an amazing story. If that became the norm nobody else would show up.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The current year is 2025. Attention spans have changed since the 1970s. Many players are not, themselves, entertaining to watch play for hours on end.

I don't think even attention span is required to be invoked. It's simply true that folks want to feel like they're spontaneously enacting an epic tale of adventure with rising and falling action, decent pacing, and a conclusion that feels at least reasonably solid. The idea that 100% of the story should exist exclusively in retrospect is, simply, not the thing most players are looking for, and no amount of rules changes, GM policies, lengthy adult conversations, or other kinds of stuff will strip players of that desire.

It would be like us saying that Lanefan should just have a nice long talk and reread the rules of 5e to give up his own preference for 100% retrospective story and embrace the contemporary approach. It won't happen and he knows that, and it would be rude and inappropriate for any of us to tell him to do this.

I've basically had the scene happen in PF. My whip-and-sword rogue/bard pulled out a cantrip that shoots a metal projectile on their first turn, I gave the leader of the enemy group a finger gun gesture and said "Bang". Critted. They died. Flunkies gave up - end of encounter.

Once and it's an amazing story. If that became the norm nobody else would show up.

My term for things like this is "a sometimes food". You can have a bag of chips sometimes. You can have candy sometimes. But having them all the time is bad for you, and having one specific type of candy exclusively would get stale real dang fast. Even if you have an iron stomach and a massive sweet tooth, splurging too hard will just make you sick sooner or later, and then you'll be averse to having more of that particular thing.

That's where anticlimax sudden victories lie. They're candy. They're delicious as a surprise treat. But anticlimax is not a meal, and cannot fill the space that a meal would.

 

[Lanefan]

Ahh, victim-blaming. A classic. "It's your fault for getting bored when you literally cannot participate with the game!"

If I'm out of action for an uncertain length of time, I have several options. In rough order of best to worst in terms of what I could do next:

--- continue paying attention (quietly!) to see what happens next, i.e. seamlessly slip from participant to audience
--- find something game-related to keep me occupied (e.g. rewriting my character sheet) while still paying enough attention to be ready if-when I'm back in play
--- find something non-game related, ditto
--- disengage completely to the point where I have no idea what the party did while I was out of action and have to be summoned or woken up or alerted if-when I'm back in play (online play and the distractions of home make this far too easy)
--- sit there and scowl like a petulant child
--- go home for the night.

Er...no? Like literally not, even if you don't use an adblocker. Which the vast majority of people do. That's why YT keeps trying to find ways to prevent adblocking.

I gave up on adblockers once too many sites started insisting I whitelist them as a condition of using/viewing the site, thus defeating the point.

Point me to the place in the rules of 5th edition D&D where it says that this sort of thing is going to happen, where your character is completely locked out of participation in the game, and thus your presence at the table is at best irrelevant, and at worst, actively hindering.

As written that wouldn't appear in the rules, and nor should it. However, something along the lines of "As a player, be aware up front that certain game effects, die-roll outcomes, and in-character choices may put you out of play for a while. This is normal, and to be expected in a game where characters can be knocked out or killed and where players can choose to have their characters act alone, or not act at all." should very much be in there, front and centre; and if it's not that's a flat-out failure on the part of the rules-writers.

You are completely excluded from gameplay. You cannot play the game. That's what these things do. It's happened at every table I've attended where these sorts of mechanics are used extensively. You yourself spoke of a player breaking out their phone! That's quite literally them searching for something to do because they have been excluded from participation in play.

For all I know, a player busting out a phone at my table could very well be doing game-related stuff; as all our spells, pantheons, game logs, and setting maps are online along with about 95% of our rules.

In fact, I'd be disappointed if a player, on having a character perma-die during low level play, didn't bust out a phone or tablet right away in order to roll up a replacement!

But does this analogy actually apply to a D&D game? Does a D&D game have a "bench" where half the players sit, doing literally nothing to participate?

Metaphorically, yes; that being the times when the player's character is out of action, or away from the party, or dead awaiting revival, etc.

The actual analogy for these things is not the bench where players go to rest. It's the penalty box, where they are forced to witness, but unable to act.

Same difference.

It is neither war nor sport. It is a game. Pretending that either of these things directly maps to what is going on leads to incorrect conclusions.

Game played as war or game played as sport, then. Semantics.

I would rather that the game itself be properly designed so that the GM intentionally playing their part as effectively as they can directly creates good gameplay, and players playing their part as effectively as they can directly leads to good gameplay.

The fact that you even need to have a choice between "play effectively" and "play entertainingly" is a demonstration that something has gone wrong with the game design.

As others in this thread have noted, oftentimes the most effective play (in any game, not just D&D) is also the most boring. I'm not sure there's a way to design that out without at the same time making everyone play exactly the same.

If doing so is disruptive to the situation overall. I thought that would be obvious. For example, if two players keep dragging out every scene with 20+ minutes of just those two talking, with everyone else just sitting there waiting for them to finish yet another drawn-out conversation, that is being disruptive. It's treating the game space as their little personal playground for roleplaying their characters together. That is selfish and inappropriate, sapping the time of others solely to be an audience for them.

Having an aside convo in a session, even having multiple, isn't bad and, as you say below, is often good. But that doesn't mean it can't be disruptive--just as the stereotypical "murderhobo" player is disruptive, even though being the person willing to draw steel is not inherently disruptive and is, in fact, often a helpful thing for a group to have.

Murderhobo play is the reason for doing this, isn't it? As such, how can it ever be disruptive?

As for private in-character conversations, your original take very much did come across as "they should be shut down in general and merely assumed to have happened without being played through", hence my response.