The Gaming Den

A lot of people would say that this a little too early to pass judgment. To these people, I say that we're talking about a guy who thought that this was an acceptable character to bring to the table for one of the first videos previewing the system people have been waiting on for 18 months:

A dwarf in a steel top hat and steel tuxedo called MC Killzalot, the most famous dwarven rapper who's on the skids after a disastrous attempt at a prog rock album. Oh, his class is Fighter.

We've seen scans of the 5E D&D starter set and it confirms our worst fears. There's no hope that Mike Mearls was just banished to the time-out corner with his D&D Legos while the adults did the work on the project. His thalidomide baby, as another poster put it, is about to be discharged from the hospital after the parents promised a Gattaca ubermench that would sweep the Fitter Family Fair. So fuck it. There's no doubt that 5E D&D is going to flop and thus there's no hastiness in counting this chicken before it's hatched. In two months, Mike Mearls will have been in the hotseat for two editions of the world's largest TTRPG going down in flames.

So what's next for this J. Michael Straczynski-level hack?

He's too fucking lazy to write his own system or even to learn about the systems he worked on -- let alone a brand-new one -- so a career on the OGL/GSL circuit is as likely as this guy writing a system from scratch. And I don't think that even Paizo would be idiotic enough to hire the equivalent of Rob Liefeld. But then, they hired Mr. Write Feats To Raise Money For His Kitty Cat, so who knows. Mike Mearls' golden parachute might be good for one last jump. Still, I feel equally confident in predicting that his reign will be seen as one of the most disastrous in entertainment history. He'll be on the short list of people who managed to singlehandedly derail and crash a cultural icon before its prime. Personally, I think that he's going to be for the TTRPG industry what Jack Thompson was for the legal profession and what Ken Penders was for the comics industry.

EDIT: Edited for the creation of more hatred.

He'll continue to fail upwards and will become the next President of the United States of America. At which point he'll decide the problem with legislation is that it's too fast and needs more opportunities to be logged down and ground to a halt.

5E Essentials

Next World of Darkness

TiaC wrote:Next World of Darkness

Win.

Well since he goes home every night to be breastfed by his mother, does it really matter what is next5 for him? Maybe she will change his diaper a little more often since it needs it frequently as full of shit as he is.

The nominal head of D&D was fired every single year that 4th edition was in print. Despite the fact that Mearls was very vocal and bragged about his role in the process to fans, he wasn't actually head of D&D until 4th edition was shit canned.

Now, I've been absolutely amazed at WotC's inability to see through his bullshit. I have no idea what he's been showing to the people on the inside, but from the outside it's been obvious that he's just been fucking around for like 3 years during which he's gotten a paycheck. That being said, back when they folded up 4E, I said they couldn't possibly avoid releasing a new edition longer than 2014, and they are releasing whatever they have lying around in 2014.

Rereading the "5e is vaporware" thread is interesting, because of course every single thing they had announced at that point has been scrapped entirely and some of it was reworked into Numenera. 5e really has been vaporware the whole time. I really don't know how Mearls will escape the Christmas layoffs after D&DNext is a failure. But somehow I guess he'll manage. Mearls' ability to not get fired after fucking up game designs is legendary.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA wrote:And I don't think that even Paizo would be idiotic enough to hire the equivalent of Rob Liefeld. But then, they hired Mr. Write Feats To Raise Money For His Kitty Cat, so who knows. Mike Mearls' golden parachute might be good for one last jump.

Well, James Jacobs on working with Mearls:

James Jacobs wrote:Mearls: I've worked with him several times–he wrote several adventures for Dungeon magazine back in the day under my stewardship of the magazine. He's a really creative guy who has a deep love and respect for many of the game's traditions, and those are two of the most important qualities someone needs in order to be able to run the D&D brand, in my opinion. He's not the only one driving the D&D Next boat though. I've not actually really paid much attention at all to how D&D Next is developing—haven't had time to, to be honest.

So what's next for this J. Michael Straczynski-level hack?

Come on, Babylon 5, Crusade, and Jeremiah were all pretty good. What's up with this?

Ikeren wrote:

So what's next for this J. Michael Straczynski-level hack?

Come on, Babylon 5, Crusade, and Jeremiah were all pretty good. What's up with this?

He'll never forgive him for One More Day.

Ikeren wrote:

So what's next for this J. Michael Straczynski-level hack?

Come on, Babylon 5, Crusade, and Jeremiah were all pretty good. What's up with this?

First off: no. They were not actually all that good. Go back and watch some Babylon 5 sometime, it's actually extremely hokey and everyone makes stupid choices that don't make any sense all the time. From the little choices like the leader of a multi-trillion dollar space station running around in an unlit cargo bay to fight a monster instead of sending in security goons or just fucking spacing the contents or something that doesn't risk trillions of dollars on his hand to hand combat prowess on up to big choices like how everyone seems to be tripping on their dicks to make stupid ass deals with seemingly literal devils unironically called "The Shadows." I won't comment on Crusade because it was shitty enough that no one cared enough to even watch the fucking thing and it was cancelled before it even aired.

But secondly: every single thing he does, and I mean every single fucking thing involves stupid characters making stupid choices to advance stupid plots surrounding shitty time loops and incomprehensible deals with obvious villains for no fucking reason. All of it. And... it's all bad. But for some reason, people keep letting him write for major and beloved characters. Why do they do this? They have to know what's going to happen. Straczynski is going to make them behave wildly out of character and make stupid choices to evolve a stupid plot and then storm off the project and blame everyone but himself for things being stupid.

Superman? Grounded. Wonderwoman? Stupid time loop thing. Spiderman? Sins of the Past and One More Day. Shit, any one of those would be enough to make an author live in infamy forever. The fact that all of his shit is like that just makes it incomprehensible he's still a celebrity.

-Username17

My personal theory is that Mearls runs the weekly D&D campaign for the WotC bigshots, and his job is their way of ensuring weekly content for their enjoyment.

Babylon 5 is a Greek tragedy. The weird characterizations and odd decisions make sense in that context.

Is there such a thing as a good show around here?

I rather enjoyed the first and second season of the "new" Battlestar Galactica, most of Legend of the Galactic Heroes, and every single episode of Tekken Toppa Guran Lagan*.

*no caveats here, just remarking that I cannot spell the name of this show from memory.

Ikeren wrote:

So what's next for this J. Michael Straczynski-level hack?

Come on, Babylon 5, Crusade, and Jeremiah were all pretty good. What's up with this?

Regarding Straczynski, after Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors his writing took a sharp dive and never recovered.

virgil wrote:Is there such a thing as a good show around here?

I don't know if you're looking for 'new' stuff, but Adventures of Brisco County Jr. is a great show.

Bruce Campbell was also in Burn Notice, and the first two seasons of that were really good. The third and fourth were not bad.

Avatar is an amazing show.

That should keep you busy for a while.

Edit - And since I'm participating in this thread:

Lago PARANOIA wrote:So what's next for this J. Michael Straczynski-level hack?

I think he'll have a successful kickstarter to release a Dwarven rap album by his character MC Killzalot. Eventually, he may even try a second one for a prog rock album...

Lago PARANOIA wrote:J. Michael Straczynski-level hack?

I guess I must have missed the 3e sourcebook Mearls wrote, where he poisoned the whole edition and retroactively turned everyone's old D&D campaigns to ashes.

Tumbling Down wrote:I guess I must have missed the 3e sourcebook Mearls wrote, where he poisoned the whole edition and retroactively turned everyone's old D&D campaigns to ashes.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/article ... enaissance

I always assumed once he got fired he would do the obvious thing

Kickstart "M&M the Mearlz RPG that is how I would have made 4e and 5e perfect if someone else hadn't messed it up". This will promise to be the ultimate edition of totally not DND and fix every problem of every edition ever. It will have a super robust online toolset, and lush hardback leather bound, full color books with awesome art.

Then once he raises a ton of money (relatively) he will announce the project delayed while he blows it on his bills.

Once people finally stop believing him and determine the product isn't coming out we have two options.
1 - People just get over it and ignore him, allowing him to repeat the cycle 3-4 more times and potentially being hired on at some other studio.

OR

2 - People get mad enough and someone somehow has a legal case to threaten him if he doesn't release Something. So he mails all subscribers a PDF of the game on a CD. Its a totally unformatted document he typed in word (probably in a weekend), and its a steaming pile.

I don't know which of those two will happen, but lean towards the first. Hes good at making friends and convincing them not to fire him.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:http://www.escapistmagazine.com/article ... enaissance

So what you are saying is that Mearls is actually more like Jim Lee, and not J. Michael Stracsynski?

I don't know who Jim Lee is and what's more I'm not sure why my comparison of JMS to Mike Mearls doesn't hold when the name is brought up.

Assuming good CM, that escapist pic is a fantastically good model.

I give Mearls a 70% chance of being hired by Pathfinder.

Yes, as the "anti-fourth-edition-edition-place" Pathfinder probably should not do that. But that motivation wars with "likes hiring high profile incompetents" and "stupidity".

So I make it 70% odds he ends up working on Pathfinder 2.0.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:I don't know who Jim Lee is and what's more I'm not sure why my comparison of JMS to Mike Mearls doesn't hold when the name is brought up.

Because JMS is literally retroactively harmful, whereas Mearls is only harmful going forward; because putting D&D temporarily under the weather, in a way the brand can recover from once Mearls is gone, does not actually compare to the permanent marks JMS left on Spider-Man before fucking off.
To compare to that level of fucking up, Mearls would have had to write a DMG III going "Remember that Sorcerer you played? IT WAS A MONK ALL ALONG! Remember those cool things he did? NEVER ACTUALLY HAPPENED!". That level of awful is simply not feasible when you're just a lazy fuckup; you have to be some kind of truly dedicated fuckup, and really work your ass off.
Mearls might be a witless clown, but the only (still-living) D&D designer whose awfulness can compare with JMS' is Bruce R. Cordell.

And for what it's worth: Jim Lee is an awful relic from an awful, bygone era in comics. He is a lover and purveyor of bland and terrible redesigns. He is dug in to a managerial position, which he refuses to be dug out of, and from where he can impose bland and terrible redesigns on the works of those below him. He is talentless and uninspired and he famously couldn't meet a deadline if his life depended on it. He is, in short, Mike Mearls.