Complete Mike Mearls D&D 4th Edition Essentials Interview

[Archon]

Yeah, I also have to give kudos to Kilo24, that was a spot-on analysis.

 

[Badger Kyre]

In Classic D&D, battles were fought in 10 second "rounds", but all battles, even if shorter than 60 rounds, still took 1 turn because you were assumed to take a short rest afterwards to clean your weapons and catch your breath.

This may be splitting hairs, I think in BASIC set D&D, it was changed to 10-second rounds, but in "classic" D&D it was 1-minute rounds ( or was that only in Advanced? )
Trying to explain - even in the later 6-second rounds - that you weren't actually making a SINGLE attack in around lost a lot of people, as I recall ( going back to things said earlier in this article ) - I liked in theory how 3rd tried to use "attacks of opportunity" to reinforce that the action hasn't "frozen" while you take your turn -
I enjoyed watching people get punished for standing next to 4-armed demons thinking they could rummage through their belt of fragile healing potions or scrolls and the beast was supposed to politely wait it's turn.
Abstractions ( we've mentioned extra Hit Points and Armor Class ) that can lead to the kind of "dis-association" mentioned throughout these discussions.
An awful lot of the abstractions appropriate for the wargames, collapsed like the proverbial waveform when observed too closely.

 

[Badger Kyre]

There's also the change in tone from earlier editions. 4e exudes a sense of "everyone wants to be an adventurer and slaughter monsters all day," borne out by the class/race/power descriptions, alignment system, lack of out-of-combat rules, and pretty much everything cosmetic about the whole design. It encourages roleplaying to be a colorful aside to the combat and does little to explain the increased gap between the logic of the game-world and the real-world.

And really , isn't that MORE of a return to the infancy of the hobby, before people started taking the role-not-roll playing aspect, seriously?
The original games were pretty damn Hack n slash.


Liked the rest of the post, too ( though I personally think 3rd was superior in tactical mechanics)...

And I never liked TSR's "official" settings much, either, since they started getting the "sanitized" settings in the 80's, but that's a whole 'nother ball of wax...
The degree of rules to setting was a subject of a "check for traps" - but I think essential to alot of the discussion of 4th's mechanics and "mood".
I liked the idea, if not always the implementation, of "here's the core rules ( d20 ), add setting specific X "

 

[KCL]

I actually *wasn't* aware of that GAMA incident. That's really disreputable. My only interaction with Dancey was about 10 years ago, when I questioned Wizard's motives with regard to the OGL and he told me off. (You can actually still find that thread on Google). I'm not particularly active at ENWorld, as I mostly devote myself to the Escapist community, but I'm certainly curious now.

That's really strange. I actually used to like Dancey when he was with WotC. In fact, an early interview he gave on open gaming [http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/md/md20020228e] may just be my favorite industry interview ever. It was amazingly refreshing to have him come out and say, before the OGL had even been released, that its purpose was to "drive support for all other game systems to the lowest level possible in the market [and] create customer resistance to the introduction of new systems." You'd certainly never get an answer like that from Greg Leeds today.

I found your exchange with Dancey and it's interesting to look at now. The above interview does a better job of answering your questions than his tailored response did, and it was already live at the time of your conversation, so I'm surprised he didn't reference it at all.

I had a sense that he was influential in steering them in that direction, but that may simply be because he is good at self-promotion. Thanks for clarifying.

Well, I suppose it's possible that he had some degree of influence. White Wolf and CCP merged in 2006 though, and Dancey wasn't brought in until the end of 2007.

Fair enough. I have heard nothing but good things about Goodman, so I'm glad you don't have anything negative to share.

I certainly don't dispute that many people think highly of Goodman, and I've never found a reason to disagree with them. But is he an authority on D&D's finances? Not really.

So, to be clear, your understanding of the situation is that overall Wizards is doing better with 4E than they were doing with 3.5E, although not as good as they were doing with the 2001 3E surge?

My understanding is simply that each launch from 3rd Edition to 4th Edition has been bigger and has sold out (or in) faster than the last. That's all the concrete information we've been given.

The rest is speculation. I don't know that the surge Goodman mentions, for example, ever actually happened. Was there a surge for third-party products? Absolutely (followed by a glut as the third-party market was saturated with inferior stuff). Was there a surge for D&D itself, though? Not that I'm aware of. All I know is that each launch has improved on the previous one.

I mean, the hobby shops we grew up with are dropping like flies, so even ICv2's quarterly roundups [http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/18045.html] don't tell us much about the health of D&D. Dancey has speculated that by now hobby shops may account for as little as a quarter of sales, but with the rise of the DDI it's also worthwhile to consider how important physical book sales even are to WotC at this point. The last I heard (this was in 2007), Magic: The Gathering Online had grown to about 40% of Magic's business [http://www.gamespy.com/articles/818/818114p1.html]. Everything I've seen (this is only anecdotal) suggests that the DDI is even more ubiquitous among 4th Edition players, but there are no hard numbers.

So, I'm confident that 4th Edition is doing as well as 3rd Edition did, but I wouldn't push it any further than that.

Right. The decision of whether to support third parties is a different discussion. I already went on record as saying that I think the survival of RPGs is generally going to be linked to the fate of D&D. I haven't yet decided whether I think the OGL or GSL model is better for that.

It's interesting how 3rd Edition and the OGL ushered in an explosion in thinking about RPGs at places like The Forge and even ignited an indie RPG renaissance. Would we have seen games like My Life with Master or Dogs in the Vineyard or Dread* if the OGL hadn't focused most commercial RPG development on a single system? Even more mainstream indies like Burning Wheel seem to have benefited.

* The Dread that brilliantly uses Jenga as a resolution mechanic, not the Dread about demons.

Everyone I've spoken to has been on the creative side, yes. And you have great taste in RPGs, sir! I own Iron Heroes and am good friends with the folks at Green Ronin. We had a long-running M&M campaign here at The Escapist.

Well damn, you're a lucky man! I was disappointed that Paizo rather than Green Ronin picked up the 3.5 torch. GR's products--d20, Warhammer (via Black Industries), Dragon Age, all of them--have been universally excellent, and they're more experienced, and more skilled, at developing and supporting rulesets than Paizo. It's a shame they didn't capitalize on it.

Right. I actually asked about that in my interview. It's definitely a deal breaker for a lot of folks. It seems like WOTC could create an open API for integration to the Character Builder if WOTC wanted to....

I really wish they would, too. I'd find 4th Edition a lot more enticing if I could customize it in the actual builder. At the same time, I tend to think that reigniting third-party support would go a long way toward bringing the community back together, which by extension would make RPG.net, ENWorld et al. much more palatable places. And there isn't a doubt in my mind that opening up the CB would single-handedly spark a flurry of third-party activity and bring a chunk of people back from Pathfinder. It just seems like good business sense all around, and yet they don't seem interested in doing it.

I actually can't say that I think that article you linked is readily available! I am pretty good at Google and I couldn't find it. There's so much "white noise" with regard to D&D/4E that finding anything is hard if you don't know exactly what to look for. So, anyway, I want you to know that the absence wasn't anything other than me failing a Search check.

That's a fair point. There's an awful lot of chatter out there, and these are news items from over two years ago to boot.

I totally understand. I get riled up about the things I'm passionate about too. As far as a fumble, well, the reality of it is that we publish a lot of content here at The Escapist. We are rare in that we actually even HAVE a full-time fact checker for our content (to my knowledge, no other gaming website does). But even so, sometimes things will slip through the cracks.

That's really encouraging to hear. And of course, not being aware of a fact and getting a fact wrong are two different things, and you even said something like "that I'm aware of" as a disclaimer. I should have used [motivational speaker][/motivational speaker] tags or something to approximate the tone in my head better. I was writing like I would talk as an editor to one of my writers, or like one of my editors would talk to me, but as plain text on a forum to a stranger it completely backfired and ended up sounding harsh. Like I mentioned to someone else in this thread who PM'd me, you deserve all the credit in the world for even responding, and then doubly so for not escalating when you did it.

Frankly, if I were Wizards I'd be making more noise about the success of 4E, because that message is not getting out there. Next time I interview Wizards, I'm going to steer the questions about how they're exploiting success, etc., and see where that leads.

I completely agree, and hope the opportunity for another interview presents itself sooner than later. The creative staff do a good job of interfacing with the fans, but there's never been much in the way of horn-tooting from the business side of things. They don't need to come out Dana White-style or anything, but when the overwhelming market leader takes a risk like 4th Edition and actually pulls it off, you sort of expect to hear something. Maybe it's just a Hasbro thing. From what I remember, Peter Adkison and Dancey always had interesting things to say.

I really appreciate your thoughtful response - thank you.

And I yours.

 

[Kilo24]

Yeah, I also have to give kudos to Kilo24, that was a spot-on analysis.

Thanks.

There's also the change in tone from earlier editions. 4e exudes a sense of "everyone wants to be an adventurer and slaughter monsters all day," borne out by the class/race/power descriptions, alignment system, lack of out-of-combat rules, and pretty much everything cosmetic about the whole design. It encourages roleplaying to be a colorful aside to the combat and does little to explain the increased gap between the logic of the game-world and the real-world.

And really , isn't that MORE of a return to the infancy of the hobby, before people started taking the role-not-roll playing aspect, seriously?
The original games were pretty damn Hack n slash.


Liked the rest of the post, too ( though I personally think 3rd was superior in tactical mechanics)...

And I never liked TSR's "official" settings much, either, since they started getting the "sanitized" settings in the 80's, but that's a whole 'nother ball of wax...
The degree of rules to setting was a subject of a "check for traps" - but I think essential to alot of the discussion of 4th's mechanics and "mood".

To preface my commentary, I will say that I don't have much experience before 2nd edition. I was introduced to AD&D because I was impressed by Baldur's Gate's combat engine. So, I am working mostly from hearsay and projected data as far as my understanding of the earliest editions go.

I'll agree partially with it being a return to tone, in the sense of it favoring simpler hack'n'slash gameplay. But it also lost more of justification for the way the settings functioned: 4e was tweaking Dungeons and Dragons into a substantially, not turning Tolkien and the host of other weaker influences into a playable game.

One key tonal change was using magic as a balancing factor for characters. Magic items were random DM gifts, many with a strong potential of permanently screwing up the whole campaign (think Deck of Many Things and other examples.) Paladins couldn't even own more than a few. In 4e, they are literally parceled out and are expected of every single character.
In previous editions, spells were something that only wizards, clerics, classes taking advantage of those two specific routes, or inherently magical creatures could achieve. Arcane magic had fewer limitations than divine (with 9 levels of spells rather than 7 and greater diversity within those spells) but those were two coherent, distinct paths to magical power that made a definite statement about how magic worked in the setting. Magic was something that you could detect and interact with as a separate force. 4e focused on mechanical coherence, not setting coherence, and used magic to explain away the disparity between the rules of the fantasy world and reality. The task of separating the magical from the nonmagical, or in substantially changing how magic interacts with the world is much, much harder. Melee martial characters used to only beat people with sticks, now they can suck multiple enemies towards them (Come and Get It) or heal their wounds instantly in ways that leave the real-life placebo effect crying (Inspiring Word). You could argue that it's a more epic fantasy that hearkens back to Beowulf wrestling Grendel for days underwater, or Cu Chulainn's grotesque warp-spasms, but I seemed to have missed the part where Grendel drops 72,000 gold pieces so that Beowulf can visit the local wizard to make his +3 Spear of a Thousand Fragments into a +4 Spear of a Thousand Fragments.
Therefore, if you wanted a low-magic (or higher-magic) setting, you'd either need to redesign the whole game or axe the carefully designed balance that 4e sacrificed so much for. Or, just reflavor the whole thing but deal with an even greater mechanics-setting disparity. Earlier editions looked primarily for rules that carried across the setting they wanted to depict and thought of balance second (if at all.) 4e inverted those priorities.

Another significant change was the attitude towards character death. 0 hit points in early editions? You're gone. Only rolled a 1 for hitpoints on your fighter? Better luck next time. In 4th edition, you need to fail 3 saving throws (or take half again your maximum hit points in damage) for a character to finally die. Resurrections, too, were painful in previous editions - permanently eating your character's stats and coming with a built-in chance of failure - but now they're just a money sink with a temporary debuff. This - and the constant more-refined gradual gain of powers - encouraged you to play the same character throughout the whole campaign. Early D&D was much more "Kill 'em all and hope you roll better on the next one," something which was a heavy shift. You're much more likely to invest in your character emotionally and personality-wise because you know you'll almost certainly be playing him unless you decide otherwise. (Personally, I'd consider this shift to be a strictly positive one in all but the most gritty of settings.)

I won't say 4e doesn't encourage roleplaying - there are a good few suggestions that encourage a colorful character personality and at least some level of motivation - but it discourages players from playing their characters in ways that disrupt the game. The game, in this case, meaning being a good adventuring party slaughtering hordes of evil monsters. To contrast, I don't recall the early editions doing much at all with roleplaying.

Even with all its flaws, I do personally prefer 4th edition to other editions of D&D (and most role-playing systems) in any combat-heavy campaign, as most campaigns are. Where combat is concerned, it succeeds admirably in encouraging every player to participate, in offering significant challenge but rarely permanently screwing over characters for poor luck, offering options and diversity, and being easy for the DM to run. The naive flavor does it no favors, but I'm not fond enough of most settings' flavor and few DMs (at least in the games I've played) manage to take advantage of a good setting that it's rarely an issue.And it's by no means impossible for a group to make a good narrative out of 4e, it's just not as encouraged by the rules.

I liked the idea, if not always the implementation, of "here's the core rules ( d20 ), add setting specific X "

I would agree with you here, but for one specific counterexample that, to me, shows what a system designed for a specific system from the ground up can do. World Tree is a P&P setting\system that has an elegant and powerful spontaneous magic system, non-class-based characters that still feel unique, and diverse, powerful races and advantages\disadvantages. Its setting is one of the very few I'd call unique, and disparities between the rules and the game world (like the lack of realism of hit points or the mysterious proliferation and quick learning capacities of adventurers) are explained in ways that are specific to the setting and are the basis for further depth, rather than being hand-waved away. It's rather unfortunate that the cover art as well as the novelty of the setting seems to frighten off most potential players: it's superficially designed with an anthropomorphic furry aesthetic.
You could rip out the basic system from it (and it is a good basic system) but that system would lose a lot of interesting little tidbits that the setting puts good justifications for in. Or you could swap it to a d20 base (and someone has a conversion for the races, if you look around online) but that also loses quite a bit in translation - in comparison it's rather inelegant.

Actually, World Tree's a decent part of what's inspiring me to design and code a tactical fantasy game in which magic is basically fueled by living biomass (in order to encourage heavy terrain involvement.) Seeing what that system achieved was pretty impressive.

 

[Norm Morrison IV]

There's also the change in tone from earlier editions. 4e exudes a sense of "everyone wants to be an adventurer and slaughter monsters all day," borne out by the class/race/power descriptions, alignment system, lack of out-of-combat rules, and pretty much everything cosmetic about the whole design. It encourages roleplaying to be a colorful aside to the combat and does little to explain the increased gap between the logic of the game-world and the real-world.

And really , isn't that MORE of a return to the infancy of the hobby, before people started taking the role-not-roll playing aspect, seriously?
The original games were pretty damn Hack n slash.


Liked the rest of the post, too ( though I personally think 3rd was superior in tactical mechanics)...

And I never liked TSR's "official" settings much, either, since they started getting the "sanitized" settings in the 80's, but that's a whole 'nother ball of wax...
The degree of rules to setting was a subject of a "check for traps" - but I think essential to alot of the discussion of 4th's mechanics and "mood".
I liked the idea, if not always the implementation, of "here's the core rules ( d20 ), add setting specific X "

The games were often very hack/slash, but if you look at how even the early classes were balanced, they were not balanced on combat. So the rules encouraged a roleplay based on class utility as well as a game based on the same thing.
The early game's focus (based on how the classes were balanced) was based on Exploration. You'd often hear younger players complain that the Fighter was so much more useful than a mage in their games back in the day.."One Magic Missle and I was done"...and you had to tell them they were not doing it right. The reason the mage had spells like 'read languages' and 'light' and 'detect magic' (and remember, they had to memorize these) is because the role of the Mage was not just a combat role. The mage had huge utility when viewed from the perspective of exploration. Similar when the thief was added, he was a really poor combatant...since he had huge exploration advantages over the fighter.
You never saw an )D&D group leave town without that 10' pole. Period.

You can move onto the different versions of D&D and find where the classes are balanced, it's actually a useful exercise.

 

[Badger Kyre]

but I seemed to have missed the part where Grendel drops 72,000 gold pieces so that Beowulf can visit the local wizard to make his +3 Spear of a Thousand Fragments into a +4 Spear of a Thousand Fragments.

Hilarious.
In fairness, the point was made in the article that an inherent part of 3rd - which my group also ignored - was the "common market value" of magic items.
The ramifications of that on a setting and internal consistency are mind-boggling, but hold up mechanically ( or at least arguably so ).

The core discussion there, as you seem to point out, continues to be mechanics that simulate a game, rather than simulating a setting or fantasy to interact with.


ANYWAY: I expect all these fellow Grognards will greatly enjoy this: http://www.gamespy.com/articles/111/1115803p1.html

 

[Archon]

So, I'm confident that 4th Edition is doing as well as 3rd Edition did, but I wouldn't push it any further than that.

OK, fair enough. Thinking further on this, I bet the decline of the hobby shop is hurting non-WoTC studios more than WoTC, which is probably further confounding the white noise about how the RPG industry is doing.

It's interesting how 3rd Edition and the OGL ushered in an explosion in thinking about RPGs at places like The Forge and even ignited an indie RPG renaissance. Would we have seen games like My Life with Master or Dogs in the Vineyard or Dread* if the OGL hadn't focused most commercial RPG development on a single system? Even more mainstream indies like Burning Wheel seem to have benefited.

That's a great point. I do think the OGL had a benefit in that it opened the doors for everyone to be a game designer, too. When you combine the timing of OGL with the rise of the internet and e-publishing, it's pretty amazing. I think there's more stuff available for Classic D&D now than there was when Classic D&D was the actual edition of the game, for instance....

Well damn, you're a lucky man! I was disappointed that Paizo rather than Green Ronin picked up the 3.5 torch. GR's products--d20, Warhammer (via Black Industries), Dragon Age, all of them--have been universally excellent, and they're more experienced, and more skilled, at developing and supporting rulesets than Paizo. It's a shame they didn't capitalize on it.

I have only limited experience with Paizo's products so I can't speak to their prowess, but I strongly believe that Green Ronin is one of the best design shops in the business. I have NEVER seen a bad Green Ronin product. And Dragon Age is amazing. I wish they'd take that Dragon Age system and roll it out as a generic fantasy system, a sci-fi system, and so on...

I really wish they would, too. I'd find 4th Edition a lot more enticing if I could customize it in the actual builder. At the same time, I tend to think that reigniting third-party support would go a long way toward bringing the community back together, which by extension would make RPG.net, ENWorld et al. much more palatable places. And there isn't a doubt in my mind that opening up the CB would single-handedly spark a flurry of third-party activity and bring a chunk of people back from Pathfinder. It just seems like good business sense all around, and yet they don't seem interested in doing it.

I totally agree. I actually know a half-dozen folks that are waiting for just that opportunity, and despairing it will never come.

That's really encouraging to hear. And of course, not being aware of a fact and getting a fact wrong are two different things, and you even said something like "that I'm aware of" as a disclaimer. I should have used [motivational speaker][/motivational speaker] tags or something to approximate the tone in my head better. I was writing like I would talk as an editor to one of my writers, or like one of my editors would talk to me, but as plain text on a forum to a stranger it completely backfired and ended up sounding harsh. Like I mentioned to someone else in this thread who PM'd me, you deserve all the credit in the world for even responding, and then doubly so for not escalating when you did it.

No worries.

I completely agree, and hope the opportunity for another interview presents itself sooner than later. The creative staff do a good job of interfacing with the fans, but there's never been much in the way of horn-tooting from the business side of things. They don't need to come out Dana White-style or anything, but when the overwhelming market leader takes a risk like 4th Edition and actually pulls it off, you sort of expect to hear something. Maybe it's just a Hasbro thing. From what I remember, Peter Adkison and Dancey always had interesting things to say.

Hopefully Mike Mearls is going to be more like those folks. He definitely has a voice that isn't as corporate as some others from WoTC have been. Anyone who is willing to be the lead of 4E while simultaneously blogging about OD&D has giant brass balls in my book.

 

[Badger Kyre]

Good Stuff

i wrote a fairly long response to that - and was proud of it so of course my browser crashed on form submission and isn't getting it back.

For what it's worth, I mostly agree - rangers "don't leave the dungeon without them"

but I think you overlooked, and perhaps wizard was a bad example, that they, in particular, balanced out over time, at low levels they were intentionally weak ( made good npc's for utility, yes - how many noble's daughters have been m-u in any campaign ? )-
and the experience points for them to advance was, at low levels, the hardest - so they were intentionally designed as a "long term investment" - no one complained at higher levels of the power of a wizard ( and clerics were continually underestimated ).
4th avowedly addressed this as one of the things they thought needed to change to be more fun - to make the game play at all levels how they thought the fun levels played.

I also intended to point out that 3rd edition made one of it's design mantras "back to the dungeon" - and that doesn't seem to have changed.

I for one can clearly remember when Dragon magazine articles asked us to consider the ecology of the dungeon and what all these mooks ATE - part of a tendency to want to think of it less of a "minis wargame" - and more of a world with internally consistent logic - the story "role players" if you will.
Satisfying both needs - and the needs of multiple player types ala Robin Laws - has always been a balancing act with no perfect , easy answer.

As a further aside, I am personally fond of the low-level part of the game another poster said was basically skippable, and my games are the kind of grim & gritty games to where a member of my group once said " you need to read this" and handed me " a game of thrones".

 

[Badger Kyre]

Hopefully Mike Mearls is going to be more like those folks. He definitely has a voice that isn't as corporate as some others from WoTC have been. Anyone who is willing to be the lead of 4E while simultaneously blogging about OD&D has giant brass balls in my book.

His brass balls will finally offend the Hasbro Overmind and in backlash they will lobotomize him and rehire Lorraine Williams.
And we'll see Buck Rogers games again.

 

[Benoist]

BTW, Ben, totally on target on the Holmes recognition vibe. Props to you, brother.

Thanks, man. Glad to find you here as well.

 

[Norm Morrison IV]

Good Stuff

i wrote a fairly long response to that - and was proud of it so of course my browser crashed on form submission and isn't getting it back.

For what it's worth, I mostly agree - rangers "don't leave the dungeon without them"

but I think you overlooked, and perhaps wizard was a bad example, that they, in particular, balanced out over time, at low levels they were intentionally weak ( made good npc's for utility, yes - how many noble's daughters have been m-u in any campaign ? )-
and the experience points for them to advance was, at low levels, the hardest - so they were intentionally designed as a "long term investment" - no one complained at higher levels of the power of a wizard ( and clerics were continually underestimated ).
4th avowedly addressed this as one of the things they thought needed to change to be more fun - to make the game play at all levels how they thought the fun levels played.

I also intended to point out that 3rd edition made one of it's design mantras "back to the dungeon" - and that doesn't seem to have changed.

I for one can clearly remember when Dragon magazine articles asked us to consider the ecology of the dungeon and what all these mooks ATE - part of a tendency to want to think of it less of a "minis wargame" - and more of a world with internally consistent logic - the story "role players" if you will.
Satisfying both needs - and the needs of multiple player types ala Robin Laws - has always been a balancing act with no perfect , easy answer.

As a further aside, I am personally fond of the low-level part of the game another poster said was basically skippable, and my games are the kind of grim & gritty games to where a member of my group once said " you need to read this" and handed me " a game of thrones".

No, I did not overlook the wizards growth. I was speaking of the focus of the rules, and where they are balanced. I agree that Wizards in most of the earlier games were made to grow slower due to some of their advantages, but again, they had such low HP, that they were still fragile.
And leave us not forget how long it used to take a properly run game to have even mid level characters. That's a whole other continuum.

I totally agree with you about the type of game, BTW. I left AD&D back in the early 80s because it was not gritty enough; with too fast progression. And after I left, the later versions were built for more epic/mythical styles. No value judgement on the game, just another focus.

 

[Archon]

Is it too much to ask for D&D that plays like Conan, the Black Company or Game of Thrones, and not the Belgariad or Wheel of Time?

All I want is for my player characters to die of gangrenous infections when their hit points drop too low. Is that so much to ask?

 

[Norm Morrison IV]

Is it too much to ask for D&D that plays like Conan, the Black Company or Game of Thrones, and not the Belgariad or Wheel of Time?

All I want is for my player characters to die of gangrenous infections when their hit points drop too low. Is that so much to ask?

Don't go here. Seriously. Madness, this way lies.
You have pretty much just encapsulated why I had to leave the world of D&D, because it was too overpowered for me in AD&D. This was before the Epic rules...there is no wonder why I left the House with the Door Closed behind me.

 

[Badger Kyre]

Is it too much to ask for D&D that plays like Conan, the Black Company or Game of Thrones, and not the Belgariad or Wheel of Time?

Yes, that's what I want.

All I want is for my player characters to die of gangrenous infections when their hit points drop too low. Is that so much to ask?

C'mon Archon, now you're just giving me a hard time.

 

[Badger Kyre]

You have pretty much just encapsulated why I had to leave the world of D&D, because it was too overpowered for me in AD&D. This was before the Epic rules...there is no wonder why I left the House with the Door Closed behind me.

Yeah, me too - and if i'd known when i read " the cleric's canticle"- possibly the worst book ever written in the history of man-kind - that I was looking at the future of D&D, I might have hunted down "Lady Williams" myself.

i forgot :

No, I did not overlook the wizards growth. I was speaking of the focus of the rules, and where they are balanced. I agree that Wizards in most of the earlier games were made to grow slower due to some of their advantages, but again, they had such low HP, that they were still fragile.
And leave us not forget how long it used to take a properly run game to have even mid level characters. That's a whole other continuum.

Well, i don't disagree, but my point was, wizards weren't meant to be balanced at lower levels - what i meant by it being an investment - the balance was spread over your level curve - you knew you were playing a weak character in the short term - the same was true of the monk class, and THAT's one that gets "superhero".
But seriously, a ways back my "teacher" DM and I were disussing this because he used "hero system" for all his campaigns ( which in time you learned was all ONE campaign - based on the Amber series ) - and he said, why not, high-level D&d characters are superheroes ANYWAY...
I argued, unaware at the time that I had never really SEEN high-level D&D characters...

So soon enough, in our Champions ( superhero ) campaign; a party of old PC's from his once-d&D, converted to hero-system game, came looking for a Scion of Amber, which we were unaware was one of us, a "superhero"... so we fought them.

They cleaned the FLOOR with us... and left with our "friend", whom we were unaware was a villain from an old campaign hiding on our Earth as a "superhero".

Point?

Well, besides that it's funny, the potenial always existed, but in "old" D&d , most people retired or did "end campaign" stories (look at the level on Q1 - our campaign ender )- but the possibilty existed even to become a demigod...
So even then it was a matter of preference.

While the discussion continues to go back to what metagame assumptions a set of mechanics or setting create, and who prefers what, I hope the often dogmatic defense of any given idea of "how it should be" doesn't cloud us from hoping that 4th edition doesn't indicate a failur eof interest in RPG's as we loved them.

Hail, all ye Grognards.... http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/538/538262p1.html

 

[KCL]

That's a great point. I do think the OGL had a benefit in that it opened the doors for everyone to be a game designer, too. When you combine the timing of OGL with the rise of the internet and e-publishing, it's pretty amazing. I think there's more stuff available for Classic D&D now than there was when Classic D&D was the actual edition of the game, for instance....

Very true. There's The Old School Renaissance [http://www.batintheattic.com/oldschoolsurvey.htm] (capitals and all!) in addition to the indie renaissance, and occasionally some nifty cross-pollination between them. One "new" old school game I've seen get some love recently is Old School Hack [http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/291580-old-school-hack.html]. I haven't had a chance to play it yet, but it's a pretty smooth read.

I have only limited experience with Paizo's products so I can't speak to their prowess, but I strongly believe that Green Ronin is one of the best design shops in the business. I have NEVER seen a bad Green Ronin product. And Dragon Age is amazing. I wish they'd take that Dragon Age system and roll it out as a generic fantasy system, a sci-fi system, and so on...

Paizo are all WotC alums, so I don't mean to suggest that they aren't competent. But adventures have really been their bread and butter, and prior to Pathfinder they had essentially no experience developing a ruleset. I think that shows through in the final product. To their credit though, they marketed Pathfinder effectively and brilliantly exploited the fallout from 4th Edition to build a base of loyal customers.

Back when I was young and idealistic, I had a three-step plan for D&D to achieve world domination. It went something like:

1. Win the lottery.
2. Buy D&D.
3. Give D&D to Green Ronin.

I'm getting anxious waiting for the second Dragon Age set.

Hopefully Mike Mearls is going to be more like those folks. He definitely has a voice that isn't as corporate as some others from WoTC have been. Anyone who is willing to be the lead of 4E while simultaneously blogging about OD&D has giant brass balls in my book.

Mearls was actually quite a bit more active in the community before he landed the D&D gig. I think they issue gags and nipple clamps to all new hires. Ari Marmell, Keith Baker and a few of WotC's other go-to freelancers are more interesting sources of opinion these days, I've found, but of course they're still very politic, what with having the job security of, well, freelancers.

 

[papagordo]

I have to say, I appreciated reading this interview. I'm not exactly a "consume and move on" player, but I always enjoyed 4th for the ability to make the characters I could never quite pull off in earlier editions.

I am curious - and this is in no way an insult, slight , or whatever -

this is a question of taste and preference , not "a right way" argument...

I am curious if you are an anime/manga fan and if the characters you built are kind of "super-heroish" in the manga/ kung fu/ final fantasy character sense?

It seemed to me alot of the controversy over 4th was ultimately about how much someone likes that in their game ( the teifling, eldar, and dragon races point at this nicely ).

So may I ask what kind of caharcters you made in 4th that wouldn't have worked as well in previous editions?

Well, for me, there's the Warlord class. In 3.5, I don't remember seeing a class made to lead people. (Here, I'm talking about the multiple player's handbook and the "Complete" books of 3.5)

With my warlord, I never attack to do dmg. My attacks place others on the field, make allies who are better than me attack, sustain and buff my allies. Maybe a cleric in 3.5 could do that, but you can't have a cleric that doesn't follow a deity.

Come on man. I don't mean to be a rules lawyer, but 3.5 specifically said you could be a cleric without a deity. Basically, you were just really devoted to the philosophy of your alignment and could choose your domains as you pleased provided they didn't contradict your alignment.

 

[Norm Morrison IV]

You have pretty much just encapsulated why I had to leave the world of D&D, because it was too overpowered for me in AD&D. This was before the Epic rules...there is no wonder why I left the House with the Door Closed behind me.

Yeah, me too - and if i'd known when i read " the cleric's canticle"- possibly the worst book ever written in the history of man-kind - that I was looking at the future of D&D, I might have hunted down "Lady Williams" myself.

i forgot :

No, I did not overlook the wizards growth. I was speaking of the focus of the rules, and where they are balanced. I agree that Wizards in most of the earlier games were made to grow slower due to some of their advantages, but again, they had such low HP, that they were still fragile.
And leave us not forget how long it used to take a properly run game to have even mid level characters. That's a whole other continuum.

Well, i don't disagree, but my point was, wizards weren't meant to be balanced at lower levels - what i meant by it being an investment - the balance was spread over your level curve - you knew you were playing a weak character in the short term - the same was true of the monk class, and THAT's one that gets "superhero".

--

While the discussion continues to go back to what metagame assumptions a set of mechanics or setting create, and who prefers what, I hope the often dogmatic defense of any given idea of "how it should be" doesn't cloud us from hoping that 4th edition doesn't indicate a failur eof interest in RPG's as we loved them.

Hail, all ye Grognards.... http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/538/538262p1.html

You know, I've been hearing the Magic-user-investment/too weak at low, too powerful at high level thing for over 30 years. I think I made the argument a few times.

But I see it very differently now than I ever did. I'm not saying I'm right; it's part of my job in the real world to try to find causative factors and event chains so I tend to have an outlier viewpoint.

I mentioned before that I believe OD&D was actually pretty balanced, but the focus of that balance was the exploration, not merely combat. Looking at the spell list for the mage confirms this to me. When the game is played properly, the mage may not be a great combat addition at lower levels, but the PCs won't find as much magical stuff, won't be able to read clues, often won't be able to get to other areas, unlock doors, etc, etc, without the Magic user.

I also believe that AD&D had a shift on rules balance to the adventure and somewhat to the campaign. how many Experience points did it take for a fighter to start developing politically through the rules as written? 250001 to start building a stronghold. 375001 for the magic user. This was very intentional, I believe.

I believe the classes were balanced to some degree at every level. One just needs to find what the author felt was the focus of the ruleset, the game the author thought he was writing for.

And your last comment is key. There is no right way, there should be no dogmatism, there is merely an attempt to understand. And through this, to write games that people enjoy, that may perpetuate the hobby.

 

[Badger Kyre]

Yep

I respect your reasoning, but respectfully disagree - think the curve and metagame WAS part of the balance, and I notice the Monk wasn't mentioned in your response.
Similarly, non-human races were KNOWN to be over-balanced - this balanced in the later game with level limits. If you were playing a one-shot adventure, there was little reason NOT to play an Elf.
As far as exporation, the M-U in combat OR exploration, with spells rather than skills, simply did not act frequently enough to be of great impact- why they made such good "utility" NPC's at low levels. It has always been my experience that the low-level magic-user had (usually )very little impact on our games, and we usually dragged loot to a common area for a detect magic, or a wagon to take to npc's in town.
That doesn't make you wrong, but it was MY experience. My joke about NPC noble-kids being M-U's wasn't a joke - there was a lot of overlap in the 'needs protection but occasionally important' in both "memes".
At one point in one of the Gold Box games, one of our fighters could gain 1 level of fighter, or, because of the XP curve reversing at that particular level, dual-class ( gain an equal level of wizard, and VERY nearly the additional level that let you use both classes) - for the same amount of experience. It was far more effective to "baby-sit" him through his wizard levels ( which you did anyway at low levels, we were just high level ).
Not only was it feasible in terms of experience points, but it was essential - the encounters we were having simply REQUIRED another magic-user. The balance of class utility had changed THAT MUCH.

However, it' still an interesting and valid point, and perhaps more importantly, still goes to the essence of 4th E's designers saying in interviews they wanted the game to play at any level like the "sweet spot" levels ( which is risky since, as we've seen even in this small thread, the ideas of what levels were "the fun ones" to play varies immensely even in a small group of respondents who mostly share similar age and gaming experience ).

I'm sorry - as I was saying, however, your point becomes intensely valid in that they seem to have only looked at that in terms of combat utility, rather than in exploration or social utilities - and so even if I disagree with some of your observations, the underlying point seems to heighten the degree to which 4th focused character "utility" as almost entirely in the actual encounter - perhaps even more so than the imminently "Hack n Slash" Gold Box game I mentioned.