D&D 5E (2014) Will there be such a game as D&D Next?

[El Mahdi]

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[El Mahdi]

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[D'karr]

Is it possible that the things being said come across as stupid, off-hand, and idiotic only to those possessing a bias towards this to begin with?

Maybe this is worthy of some introspection, so that we (the collective D&D fan base, and specifically those fans here at ENWorld) don't repeat the mistakes and angst that accompanied the release of 4E...?

It would be really hard to catalog yourself as a fan, and with the same breath say you are not biased. By definition being a fan, makes you biased.

Maybe a better thing would be to evaluate the statements within the context they were provided. Mike Mearls is the Senior dude at D&D R&D. His words are weighted more heavily, and with greater influence on the future of D&D than those of random redshirt #13 on the internet. Random redshirt #13 has very little, or no, consequences to the stupid things he says on the internet. Mike Mearls, unfortunately does. Whether that is a biased view or not is irrelevant.

I agree that we (the D&D fans) should not make the same mistakes as before. I hope that WotC has learned that lesson too. The fans will have D&D for as long as they want, whether WotC publishes it or not. WotC are the ones that suffer financially without the fans.

 

[El Mahdi]

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[El Mahdi]

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[D'karr]

So this sounds to me like you're saying the responsibility is all Mearls' as to how he says things, and not in how we (the fans) read things?

If this so, how is this learning from the past...?

Who's reading into things exactly? Good one.

 

[El Mahdi]

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[D'karr]

It was a statement of what I gleaned from your post, and a question of whether I had it correctly.

If you don't wan't to answer the question, and instead just want to read it as snark (and reply based on that) that's your choice. But if you're so inclined, I'd prefer an answer.

You had it incorrectly, and yes it looked a lot like snark.

The last paragraph, in what you quoted originally, was pretty clear

I agree that we (the D&D fans) should not make the same mistakes as before. I hope that WotC has learned that lesson too.

So reading into it that all the responsibility rests on Mearls is "reading into it."

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

"Mike Mearls:...but we were always careful not to say it's a character class."

This and the tone of this part of the conversation IMHO was along the lines of "we were never going to make it a class, and we pretty much had already made up our minds about that, but we worded things in such a way as to keep our options open". I didn't anywhere get the impression that Mike's tone conveyed any taste for the warlord at all. The 'shouting back arms' quip was certainly one of those things you would NOT want to hear from a DDN designer unless you have a very specific and not widely held view of hit points.

Honestly, I don't pretend to even have an opinion on what the Warlord will actually look like or if it will be interesting to me. BY ITSELF it isn't even something that MUST exist, just an awesome part of 4e, the loss of which would be a real negative. I can always still buy and play a 5e that is otherwise interesting to me.

Like you, I like the idea of martial healing and agree, it is perfectly fine and works quite well within the model of D&D hit points. I'm not real optimistic that it will survive, but its something that seems like it can be added on in a module in theory, so whatever.

Overall, while it would be hard to argue the podcast is saying Warlord won't exist, they say the opposite, it doesn't make me warm and fuzzy about DDN in general. At best it is a pretty big 'meh'.

 

[pemerton]

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.

<snip>

Unless he's Born Again Old School.

I share your puzzlement. I don't really see how this game fits with the Mearls of old, who (back in 2002) said

The simple truth is that few in the gaming industry put any real, useful thought into their work. The Forge is really the crucible for a lot of the real examination and exploration of the underlying structure of RPGs. Outside of the Forge, there are few other designers who think of games in a useful, interesting way. . .

The Forge might be useful. It's the sort of thing that you have to go look at and judge for yourself. I find it a bit too steeped in jargon, but a lot of the end ideas are useful to think about in terms of my work.​

It doesn't seem like a game informed by Forge sensibilites. (Whereas 4e definitely does have that feeling, at least for me.) What I particularly mean by that is that, because of its assymetric resource recovery schemes for classes, D&Dnext seems to depend very heavily upon GM force to make it work, but that isn't called out. A Forge-theorist might make a GM-force heavy game, but would know that was what s/he was doing, and would therefore be explicit about it.

Those statements from Mearl's tweets are not evidence in support of anything Pemerton has interpreted them to be saying,

<snip>

I don't have a problem with "those comments lead me to believe...", or "this sounds to me like..."

How would someone's statement lead me to believe something about what they're doing unless it was evidence for that? I mean, that's basically the definition of evidence: something is evidence of X if it would tend to lead a rational person to believe that X, all other things being equal.

Pemerton and others (including yourself) have made a lot of claims and flat statements in this thread as if they are fact

I have said that I have evidence that the warlord in 4e form won't exist in Next. My evidence I've pointed to: the tweets, the podcast. And I've offered (in this and other threads) some pretty detailed analysis, the main part of which is that D&Dnext simply doesn't have the game-mechanical space for the warlord to do its thing.

Obviously it's your prerogative to disagree with me, but I don't really like the insinuation that I'm being misleading.

I just think that communication devoid of accuracy and understanding is pointless, frustrating, and also leads nowhere interesting. Unfortunately, when it's done because of bias, it's also mischaracterizing and fallacious

This seems to be an attack upon [MENTION=11821]Obryn[/MENTION]'s integrity as a poster (and, by implication, mine too). I feel it would be more fruitful to actually try to rebut our analysis. For instance, how is a designer who makes jokes about "yelling severed limbs back on" going to make martial healing work, in the context of traditional D&D damage and healing mechanics? Personally, I can't see it.

Is it possible that the things being said come across as stupid, off-hand, and idiotic only to those possessing a bias towards this to begin with?

The thing which [MENTION=336]D'karr[/MENTION] said was stupid was the joke about yelling severed limbs back on. I don't think you have to be biased to see the comment as silly. Obviously no 4e player thinks that a warlord who rouses an unconscious PC is "yelling severed limbs back on". Rather, to the extent that those players think about it at all, they think of hit points in more metagame terms - as marking a wearing down of energy and resolve - and see the warlord's inspiration as reinvigorating the unconscious PC.

So why is that such a big deal?

Because for reasons that Obryn and others have given, the warlord is a litmus test, a canary in the coal mine, for a certain sort of 4e play. Everything that is distinct about 4e - it's tight action economy; it's overtly metagame hit points; it's encounter-based pacing and resources; it's synergistic group play; it's self-conscious story of violent yet heroic high fantasy - is leveraged by the warlord. It's the poster child for that way of playing and thinking about 4e.

That's why these particular 4e-players take uncertainty with respect to, and downplaying of, the warlord - and the martial healing that is associated with it - as a sign (and not the only one - people can read the playtest rules, after all, and draw inferences from them and their development over time) that D&Dnext is unlikely to support 4e play along those particular lines.

And are clear in stating that whether it's actually called a Warlord or not, you will be able to play a character that looks like, smells like, and PLAYS LIKE a 4E Warlord.

Anybody saying otherwise is simply not telling the truth.

So, I will be able to play a 4E Warlord character in D&D Next, even though it might not be called a Warlord.

There seems to be some misunderstanding. As I read this thread, no one is denying that WotC have said that, in Next, you will be able to play a character that looks like, smells lilke and plays like a 4e warlord. Rather, people are saying that WotC is mistaken in making that claim. (Perhaps WotC is being disingenuous; perhaps WotC doesn't understand the implications of its own mechanics; perhaps WotC doesn't understand the relevant approach to 4e play. This is the puzzlement that I share with [MENTION=6680772]Iosue[/MENTION].)

Whatever the explanation for WotC's mistake on this point, the evidence that people are pointing to to support their claim that WotC is mistaken is pretty clear: these particular 4e players look at the mechanical underpinnings of the 4e warlord as it plays at their tables - and I've mentioned some of them above - and they note that Next (i) lacks those underpinnings, and (ii) also seems to lack the points at which such underpinnings might be bolted on. In other words, the evidence people are pointing to in arguing that WotC is mistaken in its claim is not evidence to do with WotC's intelligence or moral character - rather, it is an argument based on game design, and on the relationship between mechanics, the scope of possible designs, and play experience.

This is why I really don't understand why you are raising issues about good faith in posting, when the people you are criticising are making design arguments, reinforced by reference to comments by WotC designers about relevant design considerations (like the relationshp between wounds, hit points and martial healing). If you think that people are wrong in not seeing scope for their style of warlord play in Next as it currently, or might, stand, it would be great to hear your design analysis.

I do not believe though that Mearls and company have a problem incorporating metagame mechanics into the game. Hell, Hit Points are nothing but a metagame mechanic. It just appears to me that they want such metagame mechanics to be built into the system in an organic and unobtrusive manner.

"Organic" and "unobtrusive" seem to me to be in the eye of the beholder. I don't think you can do a warlord in the particular style that I have described in this thread, and this post, in a a way that would be unobtrusive to the relevant audience.

My hope, up until the end of last year, had been that the warlord would be a distinct class, leveraging metagame mechanics, which those who don't want martial healing, complexity in the action economy, etc could opt out of. Rolling it into the fighter would make the opting out approach less viable - because there would then be a list of class options that would have to be vetted line-by-line - and hence makes it more likely that the fighter warlord won't leverage metagame mechanics in the relevant fashion at all.