D&D 5E (2014) Open Letter to Mike Mearls from a pro game dev

[delericho]

I am appealing to authority : Mike's.

That's not what appeal to authority means.

 

[Hussar]

Ok. Ignoring other stuff for the moment but can someone explain to me how DnD combat rules create a coherent narrative? I really don't see it.

 

[Minigiant]

And would you similarly complain if in the next combat the roles (and rolls) were reversed; that the mighty Orc rolled a 3 and accomplished nothing then got 1-shotted by the Greataxeman's 17? If yes, then your point is valid. If no, well...

Lanefan

Well the orc isn't a PC, so 99% of the time no one spent twenty plus minutes creating it and planning to role play it long term. So no.

But you can't one shot an orc in Next anyway. They have the Relentless feature.

Essentially MM has been in his speech, writing, and game design saying that having a PC do nothing before it dies is bad or unfun.


It is a core question of Next's design. Do we keep a traditional aspect of gameplay even if it is unfun?
Doing nothing in a fight because you missed attacks the whole (very short) fight is not fun. Do we keep it?

 

[Morrus]

OK, so overnight this thread generated tons of post reports, and at least a couple of (opposing) people decide to use those reports to lecture us mods about stuff and make sarcastic and snide little comments, which is always a great way to make a post report. I had hoped the thread would settle down into an interesting discussion on the nature of playtesting or game design qualifications, but with Gorgoroth being extraordinarily rude to people, and people responding in kind, I guess that's not going to happen. I'm going to close the thread again (seems Umbran was right the first time!)