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

[Iosue]

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?

I think it is in a sense an impossible dream. You can be as positively clear as you want, and the people who want to discount their comments as lies will still have their ammunition.

IMO, WotC has been fairly clear in their communications, barring hiccups like editing problems in the playtest. Though I do think the last two L&Ls in particular have been subpar. But somethings they have to play close to the chest, because if they say, "This is where we are right now," and then something changes by the time they get to playtest, then you have those same critics accusing WotC of breaking their promises.

 

[D'karr]

I think it is in a sense an impossible dream. You can be as positively clear as you want, and the people who want to discount their comments as lies will still have their ammunition.

Agreed, but not making stupid comments takes a lot of wind out of those sails.

But somethings they have to play close to the chest, because if they say, "This is where we are right now," and then something changes by the time they get to playtest, then you have those same critics accusing WotC of breaking their promises.

Also agreed, but saying stupid things is not playing close to the chest. Similar to the axiom of "if you can't say anything nice", there is one "It's better to look stupid, than open the mouth and remove any doubt."

At times I really wish some at WotC would simply keep their mouths shut.

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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



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

It surely seems like that's your argument in the context of what I recall your positions being expressed as previously, but perhaps I'm missing something there. My point is that there's NOTHING weird about Mike advocating for old-school sensibilities, he's been in that camp since day one. I don't know a lot about what Mike did before 2008, I don't own any of that stuff, wasn't even slightly interested in 3e, but he's been unabashedly a 1e fan for at least the last 5 years. So when you say "Yeah, that's weird" my response is "actually, no it isn't weird". The words 'in charge' are rather a red herring, you were stating that he was responsible for AEDU being in 4e, but in fact that is not at all true, Rob Heinsoo is responsible for that. Mike might have invented the mechanic, but for all I know it was 34th in a bullet list of suggestions he made, I can't say. Rob picked it up and ran with it, and Bill Slavicek signed off on it. Had Mike been in charge who knows what we would have gotten?

That's all there was to it. I'm not trying to get into some sort of fight over it. Mike probably ALWAYS had the same problems with Warlords. I don't know what would be the purpose of stating that he's acting weird now would be overall except to minimize the significance of the whole "shouting limbs back on" statement and spin it as being more acceptable to say me, as in "He's just playing devil's advocate here, look he did a lot of the core 4e design." My response is merely, "this is not weird for Mike, he's simply not in tune with my sensibilities, and 4e is not evidence to the contrary." which is at least a reasonable argument, IMHO.

Anyway, if the whole thing makes sense some other way, then that's fine, I don't get it, but its not really a big deal. We're all cool.

 

[Obryn]

If one doesn't like such things being called out, then one should be more careful in how one states things.

Shouldn't this standard also hold for the developers?

Call it out all you wish, you still don't get to dictate the terms of the conversation any more than I do.

-O

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think it is in a sense an impossible dream. You can be as positively clear as you want, and the people who want to discount their comments as lies will still have their ammunition.

IMO, WotC has been fairly clear in their communications, barring hiccups like editing problems in the playtest. Though I do think the last two L&Ls in particular have been subpar. But somethings they have to play close to the chest, because if they say, "This is where we are right now," and then something changes by the time they get to playtest, then you have those same critics accusing WotC of breaking their promises.

No, I would just expect that the "Design Journal" would show how the thinking went. "We stated that we wanted to do X. We tried implementing it in ways A, B, and C. A was very unpopular for reason Q, B was unworkable for reason M, and C didn't actually solve X so we didn't do it. As a result we have not done X and our current thinking is that X is no longer a goal. However, as with other things, if we later find that X can be achieved we will revisit this decision."

People can then of course still bemoan the demise of X, but they can't fault anyone and there's no appearance of a lie, there are just cold hard facts. Look at the way design is carried out these days on PF, you can read the whole saga on the forums. The designers post and respond, there's a relatively positive dynamic between them and the community and there are relatively few surprises or accusations of bad faith, etc.

WotC talks about communication, and they have guys running around making statements all over the place, but what they lack is an official, coherent, systematic journal of the process, and they don't ever engage in any kind of actual discussion with the community except now and then through the once-removed medium of an interview where there can't be any back and forth discussion or detailed two-sided analysis. This is the problem. Mike needs to GET THE HELL ONTO THE FORUMS AND TALK BACK AND FORTH WITH PEOPLE, and make that the main form of communication, and maintain a design journal that documents the currently state of what's going on and is an actual working document. THAT would fix the problem. Now, maybe there are other ways to go about it, but clearly the current practice of random drive-by statements and vague one-way articles isn't cutting it.

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[Obryn]

I'm pretty sure I don't have the ability to dictate anything here at ENWorld.

I'm also certain I haven't attempted to dictate anything here at ENWorld.

You're "exhorting" people to use the words you want them to use, and not use the words they are using. Hence, trying to set the terms for the debate.

I'm happy to argue what I think the content of blogs and journals imply, but I'm not going to stop using terms such as "evidence" to suit you. You said you'd call it out; that's your call. I just don't think that argument let semantics leads anywhere interesting.

-O

 

[sheadunne]

No, I would just expect that the "Design Journal" would show how the thinking went. "We stated that we wanted to do X. We tried implementing it in ways A, B, and C. A was very unpopular for reason Q, B was unworkable for reason M, and C didn't actually solve X so we didn't do it. As a result we have not done X and our current thinking is that X is no longer a goal. However, as with other things, if we later find that X can be achieved we will revisit this decision."

People can then of course still bemoan the demise of X, but they can't fault anyone and there's no appearance of a lie, there are just cold hard facts. Look at the way design is carried out these days on PF, you can read the whole saga on the forums. The designers post and respond, there's a relatively positive dynamic between them and the community and there are relatively few surprises or accusations of bad faith, etc.

WotC talks about communication, and they have guys running around making statements all over the place, but what they lack is an official, coherent, systematic journal of the process, and they don't ever engage in any kind of actual discussion with the community except now and then through the once-removed medium of an interview where there can't be any back and forth discussion or detailed two-sided analysis. This is the problem. Mike needs to GET THE HELL ONTO THE FORUMS AND TALK BACK AND FORTH WITH PEOPLE, and make that the main form of communication, and maintain a design journal that documents the currently state of what's going on and is an actual working document. THAT would fix the problem. Now, maybe there are other ways to go about it, but clearly the current practice of random drive-by statements and vague one-way articles isn't cutting it.

It is currently more like design notes than a journal. It is unfortunate because the glimpse inside the design bubble is lost by not maintaining a more professional journal of the process.

I don't think though that it would have much impact on the current discussions because people would argue with the decisions regardless of the medium it was presented in, but I would enjoy it.

I'm not sure Mike on the forums would lead to much coherent conversation. I know when I'm designing stuff I flip-flop back and forth. If he were to say something on the forum and then say something else the next day, it would cause all manner of hoopla. Best he stay well hidden, until they release an actual complete draft document for a playtest, instead of the bits and pieces we've been getting. Once that document is presented to the playtest community (a year from now?) then the entire design team should devote themselves to monitoring and participating in forums until the playtest period is over. Then rinse and repeat once more before the finally document is ready. I'm not sure we'll see that happen though.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It is currently more like design notes than a journal. It is unfortunate because the glimpse inside the design bubble is lost by not maintaining a more professional journal of the process.

I don't think though that it would have much impact on the current discussions because people would argue with the decisions regardless of the medium it was presented in, but I would enjoy it.

I'm not sure Mike on the forums would lead to much coherent conversation. I know when I'm designing stuff I flip-flop back and forth. If he were to say something on the forum and then say something else the next day, it would cause all manner of hoopla. Best he stay well hidden, until they release an actual complete draft document for a playtest, instead of the bits and pieces we've been getting. Once that document is presented to the playtest community (a year from now?) then the entire design team should devote themselves to monitoring and participating in forums until the playtest period is over. Then rinse and repeat once more before the finally document is ready. I'm not sure we'll see that happen though.

Sure, but the point is if the design journal says something like "need to figure out how to do X" and you go to the Forums and say "Hey, I need to do X and here are some possibilities I've seen suggested/thought up/copped from other games, here's what 1/2/3/4e did, what do you all think of these things?" then you're likely to get some useful feedback, and if you then engage on specific ideas you can have some back and forth and people will feel like "wow, we actually were involved!". And frankly it is fine if posting is limited or filtered in some way so 9000 trolls don't screw it up.

Honestly, again looking at some of the PF forums, you normally can get very intelligent discussion on specific topics without problems if you are clear about what is being discussed and keep the level of the discussion elevated. I'm sure Paizo moderates their forums of course, but take for example the adventure design contest thing they were just running, anyone could post/vote and it was no problem. If any posts were removed I doubt it was a whole lot. Maybe that wasn't exactly a rules debate, but clearly it shows the actual game designers interacting on a daily basis with the people who play/buy their product. Why is it impossible for WotC to do this? Plainly one of these 2 organizations enjoys a good relationship with its customers and one not so much....

It is not workable to basically design an entire game and then put in front of people and call it a playtest. Games are hierarchical, basic design features provide the context and structure for the rest of the design. At the point where you've created an entire draft of a whole game, and presumably vetted it with at least some internal playtest, etc. you are far down the road to commitment to the basics of that design, the very parts people are most likely to want to influence. I think the opposite is the better practice. It is a concept we have learned the hard way in the OSS software world, release early and release often.