The Dance of the Staff Blogs (w Collins, Cordell, Schaefer, Tweet, Bonner, Mearls)

TerraDave

5ever, or until 2024
So, long long ago D&D staff had blogs on the WotC forums...then they went into Gleemax proper, breifly reemerged in the forums, then back to Gleemax...

Guess what: the forums are back.

Here: with new posts by Bruce Cordel, Andy Collins, Peter Schaefter, and Jonathan Tweet.

Note that not everyone seems to have migrated, and many posts are still over on gleemax.
 
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That's funny. I was just looking for the old staff blogs.

I had remembered something I read on a staff blog a long time ago: it was a post that was like "It's hard to reveal anything because everything is all of a piece. For instance, if I show the first line of Mount, it will reveal a core mechanic."

Since then, I've been wondering: What's the core mechanic that would be revealed by that particular spell? At the time, I was like, "When I open up the PHB, I'll look at Mount to see if the developers are blowing smoke or not."

Of course, that was earlier in the design process and Mount, and the core mechanics, may have changed since then. But we've seen a lot of rules now, and I'm still mystified by what the mechanics could be.

I haven't been able to find that post. I feel like it was either Noonan or Collins, but I could be wrong. Can anyone else find it?
 


Tweets blog also has some tidbits:

Exploring misty and broken ruins (the Mithral Mines map), the PCs were beset by four foulspawn hulks. Hurray for easy monster rules! This session got very little prep time, but 4E makes that OK. The encounter-building and monster-leveling rules are so simple that I was able to run leveled-up monsters right out of the Monster Manual with no real prep work. Oh yes, and it was my first game with the Monster Manual in my hands. Sweet.

Anyway, it was a tough battle that actually had the PCs retreating to a safer, a sacred circle.

The whole battle was flavored by a fear effect, as the PCs are on Panic, after all. So the PCs suffered -2 on attacks as they quailed before their fearsome foes. On nice thing about 4E is that all the PCs are making attack rolls, so an attack penalty affects all the PCs. PCs who could get to the sacred circle were relieved of this fear (equivalent to the normal +2 bonus for being on a sacred circle).

When the hulks were dead, the PCs proceeded with a “skill challenge.” They used their skills to find their way across a crazy, spooky landscape. Or at least they tried. They lost healing surges as they trekked around and lost more when they finally failed the skill challenge, and they’re still lost.
 
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I hadn't seen those Mearls posts before. I like his unspecified MM creature that is repurposed to a water creature that chokes you.

I found that Noonan quote I was thinking of:

Dave Noonan said:
But there's a small downside to that tight integration: it makes it hard to reveal just part of the system. If I showed you phantom steed, for example, the first three lines of the rules text would each require explanation...and those explanations would lead to reasonable questions on your part...and those answers would lead us elsewhere, and...well, you get the idea.
Dave Noonan's Blog

I'm curious about the first 3 lines of Phantom Steed!
 

We know that this is a power entry, and now we have seen bunches of those.

And then you would have to explain things like encounter vs daily and so on. And now we know about those things.
 

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