D&D 5E Will there be such a game as D&D Next?

[AbdulAlhazred]

He seems to have few problems with being able to sleep limbs back on, though.

I really wish they'd have the courage of their convictions and actually make hit points into "meat points". Then they could implement a real wound system that wouldn't leave people arguing about what hit points are. Reduce people's capabilities as their hit points go down (Star Wars Sage did that) so that you aren't leaping around swinging your weapon happily when you're down to two hit points out of fifty. When you're reduced to zero, you drop, and then you get to make a roll on the Permanent Injury table to see which body part you end up lacking. It won't happen, but at least they'd be showing consistency in their treatment of hit points, and I'd rather have that than permanent arguments.

Indeed. It certainly would be refreshing. At this point I can't even imagine what the narrative could possibly be at Mike's table. Is there one? lol.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

To be honest, the more I think about it, I have a theory that one of Mearls' roles as Team Lead is Devil's Advocate. As in, the design and development guys' job is to freely innovate and try things out. Mearls' job is to act as a voice of conservatism, of those players left behind, of the ephemeral "feel" of old editions. One of the problems of 4e, completely apart from its quality as a game, was that for a subset of players it didn't "feel" right, or it didn't easily support their style of play, or at least seemed that way on first glance. So Mearls' job is to say "Okay, is this simple enough for B/X players? Will this cause dissonance for those who've played hp as meat (despite explanations to the contrary in every edition)? Will this ability break immersion? Is it abstract enough for all to enjoy, or has it tipped into the area a significant number of fans find dissociated?" Things like that. That's essentially the only explanation I find for the Mike Mearls who once coined "Mother May I?", took the piss out of Keep on the Borderlands, and was a member of 4e's design team virtually from inception to now, would now be touting rulings not rules, core simplicity, launching the playtest with the Caves of Chaos, and now talking about shouting severed hands back on. Unless he's Born Again Old School. And basically, that dynamic was on display in the podcast.

It's just a theory, though. Not trying make excuses or persuade anyone. It could just as easily be bunnies.

Eh, Mike was never IN CHARGE of anything in 4e. I don't know why people insist on elevating his role there. He was just a worker bee among other worker bees, one who apparently came up with a fairly important piece of 4e mechanics in a one-week design huddle in the midst of a 2 year development program. It was Rob and Bill and etc who were calling the shots, not Mike, not until they were booted and he was put in charge.

Even from the start of 4e Mike has made no bones about being a 1e fan. If you go back over the things he's written since 2008 when I started paying attention that's fairly clear. His one adventure contribution to 4e, KotS, is a perfectly stock AD&D adventure in fact. Its a rather horrible 4e adventure, almost a poster-child for what is wrong with WotC adventures, but it is at least a workable 1e/2e adventure with a dungeon, a bad guy, a couple side quests, various humanoid baddies, a couple monsters here and there, and some treasure. Its 3e incarnations were better (Sunless Citadel for instance, which is a rather good adventure of that ilk) but published in say 1983 KotS would probably be remembered today as an enjoyable if not outstanding effort.

Likewise if you look at the L&L articles Mike wrote at the start of his tenure in the driver's seat at WotC you will find a love of player challenge centered sandbox exploration play, a rather old-school sort of taste. Recall his attempt at a "choose your own adventure" sort of illustration of D&D play with the survey every week asking what your adventurer would do next in the dungeon? Its a fun sort of play, but only one niche of what D&D has been about. I certainly don't know that this is ALL Mike is interested in, but when I look at his adventures, his play examples, the game he is writing now, and other statements he's made, including the podcast, it is hard to escape the notion that his ideal would be to be in Lake Geneva in 1973 sitting next to Rob Kuntz and Old Geezer delving in Castle Greyhawk.

While I think Mike is a fine guy and no doubt he has a mission of serving all D&Ders and I'm sure would be very pleased if he can do that I am no longer confident that he's got the wide perspective on play styles and etc that would make that happen. That or the constant pressure of dealing with game design plus community relations and etc has reduced him to only being able to really consider carefully a much narrower range of options. He seems to be steadily but surely cutting back the scope of his DDN efforts over time so that as things have progressed we have gone from a game intended to serve as a platform for all future play in any imagined style of D&D that is reasonable for D&D to a much more limited remodel of essentially early 80's era TSR AD&D with some additional aspects drawn from late 90's 2e and/or early vintage 3e perhaps (we have yet to see MCing and you could trace background/specialty/etc back to many different points from 2e onwards).

Of course it is possible there's is/was a more progressive game designer buried somewhere there within Mike. I dunno, never talked to the guy or played with him, but if so it hasn't been on display much in the last 5 years. That could be a change of heart or just a fondness for D&D specifically to be a certain way, but he's sure doing his damnedest to make 1983 come back. If he was just a "devil's advocate" then the resulting game design would look much more progressive IMHO.

 

[D'karr]

To be honest, the more I think about it, I have a theory that one of Mearls' roles as Team Lead is Devil's Advocate. As in, the design and development guys' job is to freely innovate and try things out. Mearls' job is to act as a voice of conservatism, of those players left behind, of the ephemeral "feel" of old editions.

You might be right. I have a similar role in my job. The big difference is that I have those conversations with my designers, and security guys. It works wonders because they then have to evaluate things from multiple angles, some of which they might not have considered. And when posed with those questions from the outside they will have an answer of why the design went in X or Y direction.

I'm the Devil's Advocate in the "design" room. I don't go playing Devil's Advocate in the board room, or in public communications with the customers. That is one sure way to look like your team doesn't have a clue, good leadership, or a good idea of where it's going with "my product".

Doesn't inspire much confidence when you do that with the wrong (inappropriate) audience.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You might be right. I have a similar role in my job. The big difference is that I have those conversations with my designers, and security guys. It works wonders because they then have to evaluate things from multiple angles, some of which they might not have considered. And when posed with those questions from the outside they will have an answer of why the design went in X or Y direction.

I'm the Devil's Advocate in the "design" room. I don't go playing Devil's Advocate in the board room, or in public communications with the customers. That is one sure way to look like your team doesn't have a clue, good leadership, or a good idea of where it's going with "my product".

Doesn't inspire much confidence when you do that with the wrong (inappropriate) audience.

Yeah, no kidding, its not the role you choose your Chief Designer to play in public with an audience of stakeholders that have a wide variety of different interests in your product. If that's what WotC is doing, they have a lot to learn about community relations.

 

[Iosue]

Eh, Mike was never IN CHARGE of anything in 4e. I don't know why people insist on elevating his role there. He was just a worker bee among other worker bees, one who apparently came up with a fairly important piece of 4e mechanics in a one-week design huddle in the midst of a 2 year development program. It was Rob and Bill and etc who were calling the shots, not Mike, not until they were booted and he was put in charge.

Now look veeeerrrry carefully over my post, note that I haven't edited it since you've posted, and show me where I said Mearls was in charge of anything in 4e. I'll wait.

...

Now, since we can agree that Mearls was not in a lead position in 4e design (at least nothing like he was later in 4e's publishing life, or where he is now), I have no idea why you'd characterize his contribution as just a worker bee. He was on the first development team that broke down Orcus I. He's specifically named along with Rich Baker as the ones who broke 4e design open and came up with AEDU formula. That's 4e! Everything else is just cleaned up 3e. He was a member of Flywheel Team and Player's Handbook Development, the teams that wrote the mechanical book on classes and powers (why else do you think his name is on the cover of the PHB?) He was on the Magic Item Creation team. He was part of the design team from the beginning. His name is on MM1, MM2, MM3, DMG 2, DMG 3, PHB 2, PHB 3 (and first credit on most of those).

He was for quite some time the public face of 4e hate. There were no few 4e-haters who said upon the announcement of 5e, "Mearls is still in charge, so I'm not interested." Disagree with him all you like. By all means, say that what he wants to focus on right now is not important to you or germane to your interests. But can we stop pretending that he was just some hanger-on "4e Developer In Name Only" who happened to luck into a position of power after all True 4e Creators were let go? He was there at the beginning, he was there at the middle, and at the end, at the point when 4e fans almost universally agree 4e found its stride and had actually realized the promises made in those early books, he was in charge.

 

[Iosue]

You might be right. I have a similar role in my job. The big difference is that I have those conversations with my designers, and security guys. It works wonders because they then have to evaluate things from multiple angles, some of which they might not have considered. And when posed with those questions from the outside they will have an answer of why the design went in X or Y direction.

I'm the Devil's Advocate in the "design" room. I don't go playing Devil's Advocate in the board room, or in public communications with the customers. That is one sure way to look like your team doesn't have a clue, good leadership, or a good idea of where it's going with "my product".

Doesn't inspire much confidence when you do that with the wrong (inappropriate) audience.

I don't disagree in general. But I do think there are certain marketing and perception issues at play here. WotC is trying to woo back players who have left D&D for past editions. The design and development is almost all 4e guys. It helps to stress to those customers that WotC wants their business, and will be offering them the kind of things they want. If Monte Cook was still around he might have done the job (at least as far as 3e folks go), but with him gone and Mearls and Crawford basically being the public face of the design team, it falls to them.

I've said before, though, that while I can understand Mearls focusing on a simple Basic game that provides classic play, and while I do think WotC would have to make special efforts to reach out to the lapsed Classic, 1e, 2e, and 3e players, I do indeed understand the frustration 4e fans feel that no one's wooing them.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Now look veeeerrrry carefully over my post, note that I haven't edited it since you've posted, and show me where I said Mearls was in charge of anything in 4e. I'll wait.

...

Now, since we can agree that Mearls was not in a lead position in 4e design (at least nothing like he was later in 4e's publishing life, or where he is now), I have no idea why you'd characterize his contribution as just a worker bee. He was on the first development team that broke down Orcus I. He's specifically named along with Rich Baker as the ones who broke 4e design open and came up with AEDU formula. That's 4e! Everything else is just cleaned up 3e. He was a member of Flywheel Team and Player's Handbook Development, the teams that wrote the mechanical book on classes and powers (why else do you think his name is on the cover of the PHB?) He was on the Magic Item Creation team. He was part of the design team from the beginning. His name is on MM1, MM2, MM3, DMG 2, DMG 3, PHB 2, PHB 3 (and first credit on most of those).

He was for quite some time the public face of 4e hate. There were no few 4e-haters who said upon the announcement of 5e, "Mearls is still in charge, so I'm not interested." Disagree with him all you like. By all means, say that what he wants to focus on right now is not important to you or germane to your interests. But can we stop pretending that he was just some hanger-on "4e Developer In Name Only" who happened to luck into a position of power after all True 4e Creators were let go? He was there at the beginning, he was there at the middle, and at the end, at the point when 4e fans almost universally agree 4e found its stride and had actually realized the promises made in those early books, he was in charge.

Your argument is essentially "Mike was responsible for the way 4e is designed, so you must therefor be happy that he is designing 5e since it will thus be designed with the same sensibilities" and I'm simply pointing out that MIKE WAS NOT IN CHARGE OF 4E, he DID NOT decide what did or didn't go into it. That was the responsibility of Rob Heinsoo, Bill Slavicek, and whomever, not including Mike. I've written a lot of software in my life, and just because I came up with some clever algorithm to use in a given application or wrote a piece of the UI doesn't mean I was the guy who decided what tools or architecture to use, or even if my own contributions were acceptable or how they finally turned out. The point being your argument fails because MIKE wasn't the one deciding what 4e's goals were or what it would ultimately do or look like. Thus the notion that I must find DDN's design to be in the hands of someone who's ideas and opinions I agree with is dubious at best. I pointed out in my last post a number of reasons why I would NOT think that Mike is the guy I would pick to make the game I would want to buy. The most central of them all of course, which needn't be stated, is that DDN is indeed nothing like what I want to see, and is in fact VERY much looking like a sort of AD&D rehash IMHO. Seemed like a pretty good argument to me and no amount of telling me how many 4e books he helped with changes the fact that other people were telling him what to do and deciding how the game worked overall.

 

[sheadunne]

You might be right. I have a similar role in my job. The big difference is that I have those conversations with my designers, and security guys. It works wonders because they then have to evaluate things from multiple angles, some of which they might not have considered. And when posed with those questions from the outside they will have an answer of why the design went in X or Y direction.

I'm the Devil's Advocate in the "design" room. I don't go playing Devil's Advocate in the board room, or in public communications with the customers. That is one sure way to look like your team doesn't have a clue, good leadership, or a good idea of where it's going with "my product".

Doesn't inspire much confidence when you do that with the wrong (inappropriate) audience.

You are correct, the role of "devil's advocate" is essential in meetings to avoid the common problem of group think. The role should never be taken by the person in the leadership position, and it is certainly not a role anyone should be playing in PR and Customer Services. And I doubt that's what Mike is doing.

I imagine that what we're hearing and seeing is the same conversations that were going on behind closed doors during every edition design. We asked to see this stuff, so we're getting it, whether we like it or not. Transparency is a two-edged sword. We're going to be seeing differing opinions from every member of the design team on any particular design decision. If we weren't seeing it, wouldn't we still be speculating?

Personally I don't like the method they're using for playtests. I think it's a poor way to develop the game. I am certainly not seeing any meaningful organization to the playtest system, nor am I seeing any end game. What we seem to be getting are design notes, which I don't find particularly helpful or meaningful.

 

[D'karr]

I do indeed understand the frustration 4e fans feel that no one's wooing them.

I don't think it's a "need to be wooed". I just really wish they stopped making stupid, many times off-hand, comments that simply make them look like idiots. The podcast is a perfect example.

WotC has a horrible track record of actually communicating clearly. In addition, you will always have those that view WotC as the "evil empire" and discount their comments as lies. Why give those people more ammunition? Why make your communications more obfuscated?

Make sure that what you are going to say to the public is what you really mean, and be clear in your communications. Is that so hard to do? Is that an unreasonable request?

 

[Iosue]

Your argument is essentially "Mike was responsible for the way 4e is designed, so you must therefor be happy that he is designing 5e since it will thus be designed with the same sensibilities"

This is a bizarre non-sequitur. I have made no argument like that, in fact I did the exact opposite when I said,

Disagree with him all you like. By all means, say that what he wants to focus on right now is not important to you or germane to your interests.

I have further repeatedly said in various threads and various forums (the latest in the post just before yours) that I understand 4e fans being upset that nothing of late in announcements or playtests seems targeted towards them.

Let me review this particular discussion:
Bluenose: Mearls seems to have few problems with being able to sleep limbs back on, though.
Me: Yeah, that's weird, given what he's said over the years and his involvement with 4e virtually from inception. My pure speculative theory is that he's either Born Again Old School, or he's basically taking the design role of advocating for the non-4e base.
You: Mike was never IN CHARGE of anything in 4e. I don't know why people insist on elevating his role there.
Me: I never said he was in charge. I said he was part of its design and development from the beginning. Disagree with him if you like, but give him his due when it comes to 4e. You know he came up with AEDU, right?
You: Your argument is essentially "Mike was responsible for the way 4e is designed, so you must therefore be happy that he is designing 5e since it will thus be designed with the same sensibilities"!
Me: WTF?

and I'm simply pointing out that MIKE WAS NOT IN CHARGE OF 4E, he DID NOT decide what did or didn't go into it.

NO ONE said that he was, and it's not PARTICULARLY GERMANE TO THE DISCUSSION.