D&D General Mike Mearls sits down with Ben from Questing Beast

[Yaarel]

I understand the reasoning for the pivot; makes sense. I just think the decent way to make it would be to shift editions officially, and not the fuzzy half-way method they used to give us 5.5.

There was ambiguity in rhetoric, about whether 2024 is a new edition or not. This linguistic evasiveness seems 'corporate', where Hasbro insisted on a new edition for profit injection and branding control, while the designers at WotC insisted on no new edition for continuity and PR. The designers (and I too) saw 2024 as an update of 2014, compiling developments across the decade and recalibrating some math. Re mechanics. Notable updates related to recalibrating player options so the ones that felt a bit subpar beefed up to be more online with the weightier options. Nerfs happened too but were rare, such as relating to attacks "per turn" multiplications. Monsters recalibrated as well to be more consistent with the expectations of their CR, and generally the new monster math is welcome. There was no "power creep per se" but the better options were made the standard. Re flavor. Descriptions with "race" connotations phased out. Because so much of old school fantasy gains inspiration from fantasy literature before and after World War 1 and its worldviews of those eras, the phasing out racist language and implications actually affected much of the feel of D&D. (I welcome the more contemporary sensibilities.) D&D is about immersive worlds of imaginations. The old school 'races' were doing the heavy lifting instead of 'culture', where defacto stereotypes were functioning as the flavor options. The 2024 update phased out the dependence on antiquated racial assumptions. But because these core rules are for many different settings, the refused to commit to any specific cultures to replace the racial ones. The result is a 'vanilla' description for each of the player species, pleasant and minimal. The intention is for each setting to decide which species are present and what their cultures are. Each setting can present the cultural options more carefully, and is more free to flavor the core options for whatever purpose that makes contextual sense in the setting. Ultimately, 2024 feels more like an update of 2014, to tweak the math, shift the tone to appeal to recent generations, and to prepare core to function well for setting creativity.

 

[darjr]

You were there?? Did I meet you and forgot? I was on the panel!

I’m referring to a year before. Is that what you mean? I wasn’t there for 2024

I’m not sure if it was after this panel or another.

 

[Wolfpack48]

it will never be enough for the suits, so that does not feel like a relevant criteria. Their need to generate ever more money is not working so great on the MtG side from what I hear (not that I follow MtG), so I am not expecting all that much on the D&D side either

The big question mark is their VTT, they poured more money into it than in D&D over its lifetime, and so far they have very little to show for it…

I'd argue that giving the suits what they want actually makes LESS money for the company, simply because they have zero interest or understanding of the audience or product.

 

[kapars]

Youtube will become more positive about 5.24 / 5.5 when they publish the new SRD and third parties can start making money off it too.

 

[TiQuinn]

I'll just say that you can be player-driven and still make lotsa money. I mean, 5e2014 actually proved this.

Because lotsa money is relative to corporate executives, hence terms like "under-monetization."

Or to quote Hammond and Gennaro in Jurassic Park:

Gennaro: "And we can charge whatever we want. $2000 a day. $5000. $10000. And people will pay it. And then there's the merchandising..."
Hammond: "Donald, I did not build this park only to cater to the super rich. Everyone in the world has the right to enjoy these animals."
Gennaro: "Sure, we'll have a coupon day or something."

 

[Willie the Duck]

Your classic D&D games (OD&D, AD&D, B/X, etc.) have tremendously simple monsters but they also have a "simple" system to work out the threat level of them - what in 3E and later got termed "Challenge Rating" or "Challenge".

So, in OD&D and AD&D you were meant to only get full XP when fighting monsters of a similar challenge. The basic system was 1 HD balanced 1 player level, with special abilities adding on extra hit dice.

But the other side of it was that classic D&D tied almost everything to hit dice. No ability scores or anything like that. If you wanted to build a "broken" monster, you did it with special abilities or massive damage. There are a lot more moving parts in 3E+, and thus the need for better systems to calculate the monster's threat level became necessary.

To add to this, where WotC-era games can use a single rating, classic D&D games had a level of reward only roughly tied to that threat-level assessment. Most of the xp you would get would come from the treasure distribution, and that came from a treasure table list that looked like "C, 3xL, & Q (coins only)" or similar. That's the large moving part for those games, and one that 'breaks' (renders inconsistent) challenge vs. reward on that side.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I'll just say that you can be player-driven and still make lotsa money. I mean, 5e2014 actually proved this.

WotC lucked into having both. 5E14 wasn't put into production expecting to make the money it did, that was just a happy accident.

So the extended question would be which other TTRPGs make a lot of money while also being player-driven? The only issue though with trying to answer that question would be trying to parse any person's personal definition of "a lot of money" and "player-driven".

If the game keeps the company's lights on and doors open, is that "a lot of money"? Or is that just the baseline standard of what a company needs to do to survive, and thus "a lot of money" actually has to mean gaining quite a margin for profit.

And as far as "player-driven"... does that just mean easy and simplistic rules that anyone can understand after a single read-thru? Or does there also have to be a certain level of intricacy and strategic analysis in gameplay while also being easy to for anyone understand and play?

To me it's kind of a fool's question... as I don't think there would be any agreement on any definition so no answer could ever satisfactorily be given. And which is also why I don't think 5E14 could be held up as some sort of paragon of the form.

 

[darjr]

WotC lucked into having both. 5E14 wasn't put into production expecting to make the money it did, that was just a happy accident.

So the extended question would be which other TTRPGs make a lot of money while also being player-driven? The only issue though with trying to answer that question would be trying to parse any person's personal definition of "a lot of money" and "player-driven".

If the game keeps the company's lights on and doors open, is that "a lot of money"? Or is that just the baseline standard of what a company needs to do to survive, and thus "a lot of money" actually has to mean gaining quite a margin for profit.

And as far as "player-driven"... does that just mean easy and simplistic rules that anyone can understand after a single read-thru? Or does there also have to be a certain level of intricacy and strategic analysis in gameplay while also being easy to for anyone understand and play?

To me it's kind of a fool's question... as I don't think there would be any agreement on any definition so no answer could ever satisfactorily be given. And which is also why I don't think 5E14 could be held up as some sort of paragon of the form.

The design wasn’t an accident. And it does make a lot of money. I think saying that as facts is the opposite of nitpicking.

 

[SteveC]

If you're wondering if you should go to Gamehole Con: yes. Yes you should.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The design wasn’t an accident. And it does make a lot of money. I think saying that as facts is the opposite of nitpicking.

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