D&DNext: Playtest Review

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 12:56 am

Mister Sinister wrote:Well, he's dodged a lot of Christmas layoffs, and given the iterative probability factor, he's likely next

Not really how probability works. If the probability of getting fired is 60% and Mearls has NOT been fired for three years in a row, the probability of him getting fired this year is... still 60%, assuming that each year's firings are independent events. Which is the key assumption in the Law of IP Boning, even though it doesn't really accurately model this situation to begin with.

Sashi · Post by **Sashi** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 1:14 am

"If the coin comes up heads 100 times in a row, assume a 2-headed coin."

Mearls has survived for so long, it's reasonable to assume that he's developed some method of Gaslighting his way into not being fired for incompetence.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 1:29 am

who is jon chung and what has he done to be worthy of such praise?

koz · Post by **koz** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 3:24 am

John Magnum wrote:
Mister Sinister wrote:Well, he's dodged a lot of Christmas layoffs, and given the iterative probability factor, he's likely next
Not really how probability works. If the probability of getting fired is 60% and Mearls has NOT been fired for three years in a row, the probability of him getting fired this year is... still 60%, assuming that each year's firings are independent events. Which is the key assumption in the Law of IP Boning, even though it doesn't really accurately model this situation to begin with.

Given that the selection of WotC employees seems to be based on 'who's in charge this year' where firings of DnD staff are concerned, I'd say his chances have gone up. Especially if someone actually bothers to look at what he's produced. Although you are right - that was borderline Gambler's Fallacy on my part.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 3:44 am

OgreBattle wrote:who is jon chung and what has he done to be worthy of such praise?

Oh great and loving God who loves and provides for me, please tell me among Jon Chung's fine works is an RPG book titled "Your Mom".

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 5:09 am

The head of D&D has been fired every year since 4e hit the shelves. Mike Mearls is the head of D&D.

Unfortunately, I think he has bought himself an extra year by the timing of D&DNext, so he won't be being fired this coming year.

I can't see him not getting fired the next year though.

-Username17

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 7:16 am

I don't know. He does have a lot of fanboys...he'd have to deliver something they'd see as extremely cataclysmic.

Then again, he's pretty close.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 7:48 am

CapnTthePirateG wrote:I don't know. He does have a lot of fanboys...he'd have to deliver something they'd see as extremely cataclysmic.

Then again, he's pretty close.

All the guys who got sacked had fanboys.

December, 2008
Randy Buehler (VP of digital gaming)
Andrew Finch (director of digital games)
Stacy Longstreet (senior art director)
Julia Martin (editor)
William Meyers (creative manager, digital design)
Dave Noonan (game designer)
Jennifer Paige (online community manager)
Jennifer Powers (marketing)
Jonathan Tweet (game designer)

December, 2009
Rob Heinsoo
Logan Bonner
Chris Sims

May, 2010
Torah Cottrill
Andy Collins

June, 2011
Michele Carter
Stephen Schubert
Bill Slavicsek

December, 2011
Rich Baker

May, 2012
Monte Cook

Bolded the names of game designers you possibly actually know. Truth be told, what used to be once-a-year cullings has grown into bi-yearly cullings. It's gotten so intense that online discussion boards don't even bother noting when editors, marketers, or artists get fired - those people live on temporary contracts now and aren't even "fired" so much as "not rehired".

-Username17

infected slut princess · Sat Jun 02, 2012 8:35 am

Mearls' crappy article wrote: These are not canonical, player-controlled rules, but a guide to resolving common tasks to help inform a DM's decision-making process.

What is up with the term "player-controlled rules"?

Mearls' diction here is very interesting. As far as I know, this is not some kind of TTRPG design jargon. It's just him implicitly confessing that he hates player agency, despite his insistence that he wants to engage the players.

Really, for Mearls, he just wants to be a wanky DM and he needs players who will be entertained enough to indulge him.

Note the dichotomy in the quote above:

canonical, player-controlled rules

VERSUS.

a guide to resolving common tasks to help inform a DM's decision-making process.

He doesn't want the rules to be a shared framework between players and DM participants that lets them resolve outcomes.

Instead, he wants the "rules" to be a tissue of suggestions that the DM can manipulate at his whim. Instead of a coherent interface that structures and informs player decision so they can interact with the game world, he wants D&D to be a tool for the DM wanking all over himself. It's about generating outcomes that the DM thinks are best, whatever that happens to be. The players just watch the cutscenes with Quick Time Events that may or may not actually affect something.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 3:03 pm

You know, a lot of grognard whining about how sub-2E editions required more DM houseruling and handholds sounds like ignorant nostalgia. You know, the kind of ignorant nostalgia where middle-age men whine that women are a lot more frigid these days while they don't realize that their flirting techniques back in the day were sexist and/or self-serving but the environment allowed them to get away with it.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 9:09 pm

Sashi wrote:A huge number of people who post to the WotC site are heavily invested in the 4E tactical minigame because that's all that exists in 4E. 5E guts the tactical minigame and says "Make something up and have fun lol".

Yup. I'm pretty much enjoying how after the 5E D&D playtest the 4E people are realizing that Mike Mearls' assault on rules coherence and standardization isn't just going to be limited to things outside of the dungeon crawl. When you account for the shill factor, post-playtest articles like this one have been surprisingly negative.

I do feel like having a laugh at their expense, though. They're like Deficit Hawk blue collar Republicans who scream bloody murder when their jobs are on the line from local budget cuts to the schools and police department. Suffer, dumbshits.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 9:13 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: All the guys who got sacked had fanboys.

May, 2012
[*] Monte Cook

-Username17

I thought Monte wasn't fired but quit?

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 10:22 pm

Yeah, he definitely quit. He sounded pissed too.

I blame Mearls.

Ghremdal · Post by **Ghremdal** » Sun Jun 03, 2012 2:42 am

Well I playtested a part of this "thing" and it sucks more in reality then on paper (and I am sorry to have spent the paper to print it out). Its like they took all the bad parts of ADnD, 3.0+ and 4th and mixed them all together. However the initial rage has cooled, I am now just disappointed.

They didn't even try something new. I never liked 4E (for a lot of the same reasons I don't like 5E, mainly that they don't know math), but at least they tried something new.

This actually makes 4E look like a good product in comparison.

Finkin · Post by **Finkin** » Sun Jun 03, 2012 2:56 am

Sashi wrote: Mearls has survived for so long, it's reasonable to assume that he's developed some method of Gaslighting his way into not being fired for incompetence.

He has blackmail material on most of the Hasbro upper management.

He has to. I refuse to believe otherwise.

Krusk · Post by **Krusk** » Sun Jun 03, 2012 3:24 pm

So my wife's friend's awful husband found out about the 5e playtest because someone broke the "never tell him about anything involving an RPG" rule. Not sure who yet, but they will get a talking to when I discover it. He is a huge fan of second edition, and basically is what you think of when you hear someone say "my favorite edition is 2nd". Every negative stereotype rolled into one.

The million dollar question. do I
1- Continue to ignore his calls/texts/emails and pretend I didn't get them
2- Attend the playtest (Me, Wife who is less tolerant of 2nd than I am, and his disinterested wife will be players) and deal with it, so that I have real world experience of how the average DND fan reacts to it?
3- Pretend I am not willing to give 5e a shot and have no interest. (Unlike most here I am willingm, although I do expect to be burned after I spend money on it)
4- Other?

If I do attend I'll post a review. Is anyone interested in that review?

TLDR - Is it worth going to a playtest of this run by someone like Mearls?

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Sun Jun 03, 2012 3:31 pm

Krusk wrote: If I do attend I'll post a review. Is anyone interested in that review?

TLDR - Is it worth going to a playtest of this run by someone like Mearls?

If you attend post an review.
If that guy is really so horrible I would not attend.

On the up side, if you have an Mearls clone you would play the game as intended. So if its an bad experience you can be shure it was played as intended...

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Sun Jun 03, 2012 4:27 pm

Krusk wrote:So my wife's friend's awful husband ...

TLDR - Is it worth going to a playtest of this run by someone like Mearls?

That depends on whether your wife wants to go because she's friends with the doofus's wife. If she wants to go, man up and go along. If she doesn't want to go, volunteer to be the excuse. I'd go with 'I'm not interested in 5th edition based on what I've seen so far'. That way, you can always change your mind later for seemingly stupid reasons.

Ie, "I didn't think I'd like it until I realized the rogue actually could do something in the game better than literally everybody else could do his job."

Hopefully you'll have a chance to say something like that. No sign of it, yet.

Seerow · Post by **Seerow** » Sun Jun 03, 2012 7:36 pm

Just saw this over on the WotC forums:

I agree with you, we don't need to reduce play to something akin to a board game. Just because 4E took this approach does not mean we can't reduce complexity, while maintaining valid choice at each point in the game, while still keeping things balanced. I'm an avid 4E fan, and I like the open feel of 4E, however its too open, it allows for bad decisions that will impact fun by DMs and players alike...

Seerow · Post by **Seerow** » Sun Jun 03, 2012 7:45 pm

Really that whole thread is a mass of horrible. If you have patience to get through the 400 or so posts, it's here: http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/ ... _unlearned

ModelCitizen · Post by **ModelCitizen** » Sun Jun 03, 2012 8:59 pm

Seerow wrote:Just saw this over on the WotC forums:

I agree with you, we don't need to reduce play to something akin to a board game. Just because 4E took this approach does not mean we can't reduce complexity, while maintaining valid choice at each point in the game, while still keeping things balanced. I'm an avid 4E fan, and I like the open feel of 4E, however its too open, it allows for bad decisions that will impact fun by DMs and players alike...

Is there anywhere in the world where people play D&D but no one has access to the internet? Can playtests be conducted there?

I don't know where exactly this guy got his ideas, but he sounds like he's parroting something he read in a forum argument. I'm sure he doesn't really enjoy having all his choices taken away for fear that he'll make the "wrong" ones, he's just convinced himself that he does because otherwise he'd have to concede that XxSepheroth669xX was right. (That being some guy who hurt his precious feelings in an internet fight three years ago.) Probably 2/3 of the talking-about-D&D-on-the-internet community gets their ideas that way, and they're the ones who give feedback in playtest.

The whole fucking internet is toxic but the majority of D&D players don't read gaming forums. If you want good feedback (about flavor/playstyle issues, not math) you'd need to find some way to poll people outside of the internet community. Ideally, find some goatherds up a mountain rolling hand-carved bone d20s.

unnamednpc · Post by **unnamednpc** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 4:35 am

ModelCitizen wrote:Ideally, find some goatherds up a mountain rolling hand-carved bone d20s.

So, you want playtesting entirely in the hands of the OSR?
...
:rimshot:
Oh, come on, low hanging fruit etc.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 5:46 am

Relevant to a lot of the discussions about 5E you're going to see.

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/20 ... 13dbf42720

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 6:03 am

virgil wrote:Relevant to a lot of the discussions about 5E you're going to see.

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/20 ... 13dbf42720

Wow, he really completely lost me. That was ponderous, pretentious, and pointless. I started skimming pretty damn fast because it wasn't getting to or making a coherent point. And then he name dropped... Keith Baker? Is that supposed to be a joke?

If that's the clarity of thinking going into 5e, no wonder it's so fucking incoherent.

-Username17

infected slut princess · Mon Jun 04, 2012 6:06 am

Seerow wrote:Really that whole thread is a mass of horrible. If you have patience to get through the 400 or so posts, it's here: http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/ ... _unlearned

Isn't that the "hundred thousand is more than a million" guy? What a fucking tool.