5E Announced (For real this time)

[Username17]

Here's my problem. Someone seriously posted Anatomy of Failed Design: Skill Challenges on RPG.Net, and Mike Mearls came out and responded. And here is his response:

I have a pretty simple question, and I'm actually serious about this. This is not asked in snark.

If you think skill challenges have failed, why is it a bad thing that we're tinkering with them? You basically build a case for the rules' shortcomings, but then seem unhappy that we're working to fix them.

I think that R&D now has the attitude that if something doesn't seem to work correctly, we're going to fix it now, rather than hope that nobody notices. Because the truth is that people do notice, and it doesn't help anyone to push aside problems people are having at their game tables.

That doesn't mean we'll errata the hell out of whatever happens to be the topic du jour. We're more interested in gradual experimentation that leads to a final fix.

After that, Mike Mearls went on to make a dozen more failed Skill Challenge overhauls. That is not a joke: seriously a dozen. The problem is that Mike Mearls doesn't know what the fuck he is doing and insists that him just fucking around and crapping out shitty experimental material is his right and something that he should be paid for.

Mike Mearls is going for the "moving target defense". The idea is that if he keeps changing the rules, that peoples' complaints about the rules will be invalid. That might keep his job secure, but it never ever results in a game that anyone can understand and certainly not in a game I want to play.

-Username17

[hogarth]

I mean, even the Penny Arcade guys got bored with 4e and went Pathfinder.

I don't think Gabe actually switched to Pathfinder. I thought he was excited by what he saw in the Beginner Box, but then he received a flood of feedback pointing out that Pathfinder doesn't actually address any of his complaints about 4E (e.g. it's hard to challenge high level PCs).

[Ferret]

"Seriously, more people have played 4E than have played pathfinder"

None of the data I've seen, and none of the anecdotal experience I have supports this statement. What makes you think 4E has a larger playerbase than Pathfinder?

[RobbyPants]

Or maybe just tired of the Edition War.

It's probably this. Now, once 5E comes out, there will be new arguments to be had, and all bets are off.

[K]

Well, the new edition war will be between 5e, 4e, and Pathfinder and/or 3.5, .

That will be a clusterfuck. No DnD edition has ever had two or three editions it had to beat.

The biggest problem is that when 4e was being designed anyone could tell that they were on the wrong track from their design teasers and the teasers we've seen right now don't seem much better.

[talozin]

"Seriously, more people have played 4E than have played pathfinder"

None of the data I've seen, and none of the anecdotal experience I have supports this statement. What makes you think 4E has a larger playerbase than Pathfinder?

I think it's hardly impossible, or even unlikely, that more people have played 4E than have played Pathfinder, even if the result of their playing it was to grumpily throw it back down and go back to 3.x.

[Dominicius]

We should have our own "Reasons why Mike Mearls can't design games" thread.

[Gx1080]

@hogarth

Of course that there's some mean-spirited messages on ht e Paizo boards, but I also checked /tg/ and the mood is the same.

[NineInchNall]

Here's my problem. Someone seriously posted Anatomy of Failed Design: Skill Challenges on RPG.Net, and Mike Mearls came out and responded.

God, I remember that thread. Good times were had by those with popcorn.

If you think skill challenges have failed, why is it a bad thing that we're tinkering with them? You basically build a case for the rules' shortcomings, but then seem unhappy that we're working to fix them.

Hm, how about

If you think the bumper keeping the Pinto's gas tank from exploding has failed, why is it a bad thing that we're tinkering with it? You basically build a case for the bumper's shortcomings, but then seem unhappy that we're working to fix it

Yeah ... Mike? We're not mad that you're trying to fix it. We're mad that you sold us an exploding car in the first place. We're also mad that you haven't fixed it yet, because we still have exploding cars in our driveways.

God damn.

[RadiantPhoenix]

On, "What's the difference between design and development?"
From an interview on StarCityGames.com with one of the then-developers of Magic the Gathering:

Q: You have what a lot of people consider to be a dream job. Not that we're trying to flood Wizards with a bunch of terrible resumes, but what would you say are the qualifications for being a good card designer?

A: There's an important distinction in R&D that a lot of people don't realize, and that is design versus development.

The designers are in charge of thinking up new ideas. They aren't supposed to worry their pretty little heads about balance, or even mana costs — they just have to think up cool ideas. Then they hand their ideas, in the form of a set, to a development team — so the qualifications for being a designer are things like creativity and imagination. Our main designers right now are Mark Rosewater, Mike Elliot, Bill Rose, and (to a lesser extent) Richard Garfield.

The development team is in charge of testing the cards (in both Limited and Constructed), changing the costs, balancing them, and fine-tuning the ideas. The qualifications for being a developer are the ability to build good decks and play them well; the ability to recognize good cards, bad cards, and broken cards; and most importantly, the ability to fine-tune cards to make them as cool as possible. I'm a developer, not a designer. Other developers include Henry Stern, William Jockusch, Worth Wollpert, Brian Schneider, and Mike Donais (though Mike has been dabbling in design more and more lately).

Both groups need to be able to argue. That's really what we do all day. When we aren't actually playing Magic, we're sitting around arguing about it. And I really love to argue. That's why I went to grad school in philosophy — because they were paying me to sit around and argue all day. Now I get to argue about cooler subjects and get paid more. It really is a dream job.

[souran]

"Seriously, more people have played 4E than have played pathfinder"

None of the data I've seen, and none of the anecdotal experience I have supports this statement. What makes you think 4E has a larger playerbase than Pathfinder?

What data are you talking about? The "Data" as it exists shows that lots of people are still playing 3.x D&D. The data would even appear to indicate that 3.X D&D is the "hidden playerabase" of all rpgs and that more people are playing that than pathfinder or 4E.

And thats actually the real isue. The idea that "pathfinder is winning" or "4E is winning" has always been a false issue in the first place.

3.X D&D is winning. Pathfinder sales have been good, but seriously the essentials materials sold as well, so did the latest 4E sourcebooks. Both games are outselling the other pen and paper games by a healthy margin.


I have yet to see a place that has had to cancel their D&D encounters events. I have yet to find an FLGS that doesn't stock 4E and that says it doesn't sell. I have also found FLGS telling me that they are selling plenty of pathfinder.

The real issue and the real reason for 5E is the same issue that existed in 2008. There are lots of people who have just spent the past 4 years playing 3.X D&D. Pathfinder didn't get more of them than 4E did, they both got a subset of the 3.X market, neither one of them anything close to the market dominance that 3.x had.

[RobbyPants]

Penny Arcade is already making fun of it.

[souran]

Actually, they are making fun of the masses who play D&D.

Funny enough, until I found this board the only people I ever met who DID NOT like 4th edition were people who pretty much could have fit in this panel.

They didn't really ever attempt to use the rules, they played games that were basically juvinile sex comodies, and they had strange often creepy crap that they did that was essential to the way they played the game that was exactly the sort of thing that made parents aprehensive about letting kids play it.

[ishy]

They are making fun of mearls. They are just saying how shitty they think the received feedback will be.

Of course the way you handle that is to do more than just. Here are our rules, now give us feedback.

You have to have some goals and something that indicates what and how people should test and what and how to report their findings.

[Windjammer]

I really love to argue. That's why I went to grad school in philosophy — because they were paying me to sit around and argue all day. Now I get to argue about cooler subjects and get paid more. It really is a dream job.

That's really awesome. A guy who prefers arguing about the mana costs for Magic cards to contributing to the enlightenment of mankind.

I'd be the first one to admit that there are severe limits to academic philosophy, but someone reasonably trained in it not wanting to be part of it in favour of designing Magic cards earns the Beavis & Butthead Award in my book.

[erik]

Um, lolwut Windjammer?

A guy chooses not to be a Philosophy professor

... and nothing of value of lost.

Making MtG a better game may have made people happier than having another philosophy professor in the world. In fact, there's probably an ample pool of phil graduates to fill that job he didn't take, so there isn't even a net loss of philosophy teachers as a result of his decision.

He's doing what he enjoys, no, what he loves. Seems like a good fit.

[Prak]

[Swordslinger]

After that, Mike Mearls went on to make a dozen more failed Skill Challenge overhauls. That is not a joke: seriously a dozen. The problem is that Mike Mearls doesn't know what the fuck he is doing and insists that him just fucking around and crapping out shitty experimental material is his right and something that he should be paid for.

The whole concept of skill challenges is busted, yet for some reason people still keep asking for them. As a designer, that's a hard place to be put in.

Of all the fan made stuff, I have yet to see anyone come up with some kind of good universal system for skill challenges, nor am I even sure why you'd even need a system for that in the first place.

The whole idea of the skill challenge as a whole is stupid. It's contrary to the open ended nature of RPGs. In an RPG you should never classify encounters that always require attack rolls or always require skills as a general mechanic. While there might be certain encounters in games that are best solved with skills, trying to create an isolated system of skills only is stupid.

[Ice9]

Well, there's often the desire for something that feels "more significant" than rolling a single skill check. Hence Extended Tests, Skill Challenges, and various skill-stunt rules.

I don't think it's necessarily impossible to make a system of that nature which actually has tactical interest, but generally, the more complex you make it, the more specific to the type of challenge it becomes. Which means either:
A) You have a whole bunch of different skill-challenge variants, and will probably need more as new situations arise.
B) You have a highly abstract system that will feel dissociative to some people.

Also, as the challenge rules get more complex and tactical, there's a tendency to forbid anything from short-circuiting them, which is poisonous to outside the box thinking. If you've got an elaborate challenge about getting across the ravine, and then one of your players remembers that the Pocket Monolith they found earlier expands big enough to make a solid bridge, you've got to just go with it - the other way leads to revealing the treadmill.

[tzor]

Of all the fan made stuff, I have yet to see anyone come up with some kind of good universal system for skill challenges, nor am I even sure why you'd even need a system for that in the first place.

The whole idea of skill challenges from the original release edition announcement meetings was the ability to have some of the characters fighting the monsters (on platforms that are moving ... a really key idea in 4E ... right) while at the same time the whatever it is was working on the complex device to open the way out, kill the monsters, or do something otherwise heroic and important to the people fighting the monsters. (It was hard to really tell because even then they were incoherent fucks.)

Not only was this FAIL, this was TOTAL FAIL.

But raiders of the lost arc combat sequences was presented at the time as the reason.

[Ikeren]

Want a good picture of Mike Mearls and Monte Cooks thinking?

Here, have all of their Legend and Lore articles from 2011:
http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx ... l/20111227

[ishy]

When I read legend and lore I get depressed about the new edition, yet when I read the rule of three articles I feel better.

Why the fuck did they keep Mearls and fire Rich Baker?

Going through the rules of 3 archives he ((as far as I've gotten)) he says these kind of things:
- Powers are too similiar
- We fucked up with not providing enough story with monsters
- Skills don't work as written

And he actually explains why they made the choices they did.

Now some of the shit he is saying is utterly retarded. But unlike Mearls / Monte he actually says some good things too.

[Swordslinger]

Want a good picture of Mike Mearls and Monte Cooks thinking?

Here, have all of their Legend and Lore articles from 2011:
http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx ... l/20111227

Yeah, with Monte and Mearls at the helm, 5E is pretty much fucked.

[shadzar]

There's an article up on the Escapist. I lost it at the end of the first paragraph.

For the first time, the creators of D&D are setting out to create a role playing system that is compatible with - and takes inspiration from - every previous edition of the game.

impossible. because they are not compatible. the creation of editions of the game is what has destroyed it.

3rd would have done much better had it jsut done what 2nd did. tried to clean some thing up without revamping too much. 4th then became and abomination.

sadly the current designers dont know what was good form older editions because they have been removed form them for so long they have lost sight of D&D and only know it by name, not by any look or feel or outcome.

[hogarth]

D&D adventures should be one hour long.

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx ... l/20120319

I'm not sure what the point is in this article; aside from character generation, I think you could easily do the low-level adventure Mearls described in 3E or Pathfinder. I agree that making a character would take longer, but that's one of my favourite parts!