Bibliophage: The Hunger Games

This post will look at The Hunger Games as a source of inspiration. As such, there will be spoilers. You have been warned.

If you haven’t read the book and don’t intend to, Wikipedia has a decent synopsis. For what it’s worth, I found it to be an enjoyable read, but you can pretty safely avoid the other two books in the series. It’s dystopian sci-fi, but it has relevance to running a D&D game. While the book borders on sci-fi and might be classified as action-adventure (it’s technically listed as young adult), it is still applicable to a fantasy game.

It’s okay for the world to suck, including the government.

In the book, there was a rebellion and the government punishes the descendents of the rebels in a variety of ways, not the least of which is the actual hunger games. Prior to the lottery, much is made of the oppressive government and the dreary, impoverished existence forced upon the descendents of the rebels. Things are so bad that, just to feed her family, Katniss must risk her life and defy the law. After Katniss and Peeta become the Tributes and head to Capital, the focus shifts to the decadence and cruelty of the elites.

Obviously, the Dark Sun campaign setting shows that there’s a place for stories of hardship and survival. Beyond that, however, it’s okay for governments to treat their people badly. When I hear people talk about their games, nations are most often ruled by benevolent monarchies where the taxes are low, if they exist at all, and all of the citizens are empowered with rights. They seem to be a perfect libertarian paradise, where the roads get paved and the army keeps everyone safe, but the ruler isn’t building a floating summer home or a giant statue to their favorite deity. The grim truth is that, historically, governments have not really existed for the benefit of the people, but to keep power and money in the hands of a select few.

It’s also true that many GMs choose to gloss over this dimension of their campaign and there’s nothing wrong with that. I happen to think that exploring the themes of taxation, despotism and inequality can add a lot to a game. The downside can be that the players will feel that they are at an unfair disadvantage if they play a member of a group that is part of a definitional underclass, even if it’s only in one part of the world.

Now, obviously you can go in too far with a dystopian setting and the theme presents some special storytelling challenges. Tyrannical settings suffer from the same problem as slave settings: either things change for the better – normally instigated by the PCs – or the entire campaign gets locked into a power balance where the characters have little agency or authority unless they’re playing the bad guys, which opens up a whole separate set of considerations.

Sometimes, there is no winning.

In order to create a facade that will appeal to the people who can help them win the Games, Katniss and Peeta have to pretend to be in love. The people running the Games endorse this for better ratings, even going to far as to change the rules so that two players can win – and survive – as long as they are from the same district. When Katniss and Peeta are the only survivors, the game masters capriciously revert the rules. In response, Katniss and Peeta decide on a mutual suicide pact using poisoned berries that is only stopped by yet another reversal. In the aftermath, both are permitted to live, but they have to maintain the charade of a relationship. Neither of them are happy about the outcome.

The Kobayashi Maru scenario remains one of the trickiest feats for a GM, because you are doing a very bad thing [1] in order to either advance the story or to prove a point [2]. The thing we can learn from The Hunger Games is that sometimes it’s okay to take away some of the victory or to thwart their goals. This is a very different thing from putting them in a scenario where the only correct plays are to run or submit. In D&D terms, Katniss and Peeta get to keep on playing, but the nature of the game has changed. Would it have been nice for the government to have gotten all warm and fuzzy over their love story and left them to live in peace? Absolutely, but it would have been a different story.

That’s the real lesson of The Hunger Games, that you can win and still not get what you want. The story goes on, but in a different direction. Once you’ve internalized that concept, you have to learn how to find the middle ground. Not giving them what they want creates tension, which is good. Denying the players too much, however, can lead towards resentment. Looking at the reverse, how often you tell the players yes, the real danger is giving them too much and draining out the sense of accomplishment.

Sometimes the good guys are just pawns.

The government uses the hunger games for some specific purposes. First, it reinforces the subjugated status of the people living in the districts. The government forces them to submit to something awful as a reminder of their impotence. The games also reinforce the idea of shame in rebellion.

There’s definitely room in a campaign for a stretch where the PCs lack genuine agency. They might not be subjugated themselves, but they also lack any sort of control or authority. They aren’t Robin Hood. They’re just people trying to get by in a shitty world. The concern with these types of stories is that, sooner or later, the players are going to expect to emerge from the cocoon, so to speak. That’s why you should definitely have an exit strategy.

Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.

Many of the characters in the book, particularly Katniss, do things because they don’t feel that they have a choice. Katniss goes beyond the fences because she can’t see another way to survive. She volunteers to take the place of her younger sister in the games. Interestingly enough, Katniss doesn’t kill any of the other Tributes without having been attacked first. Instead, she tries very hard to simply disappear into the forest so as to simply out wait her opponents.

The choices that people make under duress can be excellent fodder for a story, but you have to be careful not to take it too far. You don’t want the players to feel that they are being railroaded or that they don’t have any control.

[1] I know that there are some simulationists who take exception to the idea that a scene in which the “correct” play is to run away is generally unfun, but I’m not going to proselytize to them. If your players appreciate that particular flavor of chocolate, then by all means serve it to them. I’m just not the guy that can teach you how to do it.

[2] I think that trying to force your players to see their characters as weak is almost certainly the most dangerous justification for a no-win scenario. Part of the allure of roleplaying is getting to feel things that might not be accessible in “real life.” Taking away that ability to escape can seriously dampen your game and it strongly defines what you’re trying to do as a GM.

Precisely Backwards: Why I’m not happy with Next development

I’m still not going to be all the way back yet, but reading Mearls’ most recent Legends and Lore got under my skin. Part of the reason I wanted to take a break is because I felt that too much of what I’ve been doing here is bitching about Next. I would much rather be writing about something positive, but obviously we’re in the doldrums between editions. It’s worse in this transition because they killed 4e so far in advance of Next.

Let’s skip to what I consider the money quote:

“If the five-minute workday bothers you, you have the tools to judge its effect on your game and can take steps to fix it. If you don’t care or have never noticed the issue, we don’t make it one for you.”

I happen to think that this is exactly the wrong perspective and it’s emblematic of Next development. If I think that the 5-minute workday is a problem – and I’m hardly alone in thinking that it is – I shouldn’t have to cut things out of the core game to fix it. The Vancian play style is distinctive enough that it should be an optional module. They’ve gone to tremendous lengths to avoid offending the Grognards, but I’m going to make a radical suggestion:

Why not avoid offending any substantial segment of the population?

Take the gridless “Theater of the Mind” combat. Yeah, the majority of the community is probably going to use a map and minis, but having tactical combat live in an optional module means that people who want it can make that choice. When they announced that tactical combat wasn’t going to be the default, there was a certain amount of panic and then the community wrapped their brains around the notion. Some people who hadn’t considered trying it gave it a shot. This is exactly what we want. Moving the Vancian play style to a module makes it a deliberate choice, rather than the default option, and prevents us from having to carve into the base system to root it out.

“We do not want groups to feel that they must rest after a single battle. If you’re exploring a dungeon, we want to make sure that you feel like you can make good progress each day. We’re also aware that classes that need to rest to regain spells are the main source of this pressure, though hit point loss also plays a role. Since the game balances the fighter’s and rogue’s staying power against the wizard’s and cleric’s spell attrition, it’s important that the “workday” last long enough for the rogue and fighter to shine.”

There’s so much wrong with this that I hardly know where to begin. How about:

Do NOT define one class’ cool by the absence of someone else’s power!

No offense [1], but this is one of the stupidest concepts I have ever heard floated about in a design discussion. It’s LFQW, but in reverse and at the encounter level, so the players are experiencing it all the time. No game should be designed so that the GM has to artificially extend the time between rests so that certain characters can “shine.” What happened to allowing the story to progress organically? Worse, this is hard-coding in a specific style of encounter design, a style that is questionable at best. If the Vancian classes are doing their job, they will have considerably more center-stage time than the non-Vancian classes.

I can tell you right now what will happen if this design philosophy persists. Vancian players will complain that the things they get to do when they’re out of spells suck too much. People will design more exciting at-will abilities to compensate and the non-Vancian players will get an even smaller share of the coolness pie.

Further, I still have major issues with the notion that someone that does big, flashy things some of the time is no more exciting or rewarding than a character that does less powerful things all of the time. Do you really want the Rogue to turn to the Wizard and say, “Neener! You didn’t get a chance to memorize your spells! Guess this fight sucks for you!” Obviously I’m exaggerating, but I think the point is still valid. Having to wait until the cool kids run out of ammo before you get to shine sucks donkey balls.

“What does this mean for the five-minute adventuring day? DMs will have a crystal clear guideline on how many rounds of combat a group should tackle before resting. If the group spends less time in fights, casters grow stronger. If the characters spend more rounds fighting, the fighter and rogue grow stronger. The solution to the problem rests in the DM’s hands, who can use the tools and guidelines that we provide, plus keep track of how long fights take and adjust adventures accordingly.”

It’s a bug, not a feature.

If you want to truly understand how ridiculous and useless that statement is, imagine that you’re an experienced GM and you have to explain this concept to someone just taking up the mantle. Look, I get that you want to teach GMs how to tweak their game. That’s the main purpose of this blog. When I talk about tuning, however, I’m not talking about spackling over a fundamental imbalance between characters – when you have to “add rounds to combat” so that certain classes aren’t awesome all the time, you have a balance problem.

“That means that during the typical adventure, we expect the average party to defeat X levels worth of monsters over Y rounds of combat. In other words, we’re assuming that an adventure includes a certain amount of combat, and this amount is defined in terms of rounds and enemies.”

Is anyone else confused by the use of the word “adventure” where we would expect to see “day”? Maybe that’s just me.

Anyhow, the problem I have with this is that it seems to be an oblique fix to a concern that hasn’t seen a lot of discussion: Vancian characters have traditionally enjoyed a profound edge over non-Vancian characters in what they can do outside of combat. Rather than giving every class equal access to abilities in the Interaction and Exploration pillars, they’re mandating that you provide enough combat that people don’t feel left out. I don’t have a problem with assuming that combat will happen. I do have a problem with telling GMs that they have to include combat to make the system work.

There’s actually a fairly simple solution to this problem and, as an added benefit, it’s even classical. Why not grant non-Vancian characters access to certain things in the interaction and exploration arenas as part of their advancement?As an example, Fighters used to get men-at-arms at certain levels. Rogues used to get guild connections. At the very least, give me a module that allows me to empower the Fighter and the Rogue in non-combat situations.

[1] – Most of the time where someone says “no offense”, what they really mean is, “I’m about to say something insulting, but I want to cockblock you from being offended.” That’s not my intent here. I have respect for Mearls. I just think that this is a very destructive design philosophy.

At All Costs: The Psychology of Winning Games

(Note: I’m not back for realsies yet. This just happened to be a quick thought I had this afternoon.)

 

I’ve long known how competitive I am, which is to say very competitive. It’s no secret where it comes from; My parents are also both highly competitive, exacting people. As a teenager, I realized that my attitude wasn’t earning me any friends – in fact, it was making me look like a jerk. I learned to make the distinction between games I play to win and games I play for fun.

Today, I was reading and saw an article about this video:

In case it isn’t clear, this is two dads fighting over a little league game.

The article also mentioned this article about students cheating on tests, partially because of the pressure to succeed.

I want you to think for a moment about how we value winning in our society and consider how some of the allure of certain hobbies is that we get to win. This is the core concept behind most video games: find the sweet spot where the game is challenging enough that the player feels that they have accomplished something meaningful, but not so challenging that the player can actually lose.

The dirty little secret of roleplaying is that, for a large segment of the population, winning is a consideration.

If you take out the social gamers, who are satisfied just being around other people, and the storytellers, who mostly only care that rules not get in the way of story, you’re pretty much left with the gamists. Those are the people who, consciously or subconsciously, want the rules to have meaning and structure. Roleplaying just isn’t satisfying to them otherwise. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that these people are all rules-lawyer assholes, either. In my experience, the digital age has made it easier for groups to kick people out, leading to a reduction in the number of overt jerkwads.

It has been interesting listening to my players talk about the Fate system, because it says something about what they want from the hobby. For most of them, it’s something like this: “Well, if we were to play, I think I want to go with [character concept and backstory], which I would represent by taking [powers and abilities], which would make me the [role, not necessarily combat-oriented].” Even in a very “rules lite” system like Fate, they’re looking for core mechanical competency.

I think that the greatest strength of 4e was that its design choices were deliberate. In Next, we’re being told that we get to make those design choices for ourselves, which has the potential to be the next big advancement in roleplaying theory, but only so long as we’re teaching players and GMs to think honestly about how they approach the hobby. For right now, I think there’s a little too much “Look, we have stuff!” and not enough “here’s our thinking on why you might like this stuff.”

Gone Fishin’

What? You were expecting something sporting?

I try very hard to update this blog at least weekly, but my personal life has been exceptionally hectic lately. I’m going to take some time off – probably until the end of July. In the meantime, if there’s anything you wish I had written about but haven’t, feel free to drop me a line.

 

Stay evil!

Reading the Entrails: What the Mearls Reddit Says About Next (Part 5)

Okay, this is the last one, I promise. 50 questions seemed to call for five separate days.

Question #41

Can the Warlord PLEASE be a theme as opposed to a separate class? My players really want to be able to build this type of character through other classes, such as Fighter, Rogue, Ranger, etc., and we all feel that making the Warlord a separate class is simply too limiting, especially when the idea of a base class is that it should be broad.

Answer #41

It’ll really come down to how it feels in play. I wouldn’t be surprised if we tried designing it both as a class and as a theme to see how it plays out.

My Thoughts

• This comment saddens me. I didn’t think testing it as both was such a big deal.

Question #42

What about Warlords? I know the grognards hate those guys but they were my favorite addition to 4E. Will Warlords, as a non magical support character be in 5E?

Answer #42

How would this strike you – would you be cool with a maneuver system that also included tactical plans, and if fighters are the best at using maneuvers, a fighter with a warlord theme feels a lot like that class in play?

The hard thing with the warlord was that its powers in 4e are very dependent on the grid or on giving out extra attacks, and both of those pose some challenges to us. The 3e marshal class does pose another model we could follow, but I’m not sure people found that class satisfying.

My Thoughts

• I don’t think that the Warlord relies on a grid any more than any other 4e class. That’s in the nature of 4e rather than something essential to the Warlord.
• I suspect that what they fear about the Warlord granting extra attacks is the “killer combos” of Wizards that they mentioned as a design concern, though I don’t know what you could do with Wizard + Warlord that wouldn’t be easier with Wizard x2.
• I think that Mearls does a disservice to the design space that the Warlord could occupy. People seem to like healing and boosts that come from someone other than the Cleric.

Question #43

First of all, thanks for all the work you’re doing, also on communication. I always felt I was “in tune” with the design principles behind Next, and now I have the proofs (Also, I played every edition, and loved them all, with a special mention to late 3.5 and 4e). I will provide a lot of feedback soon I hope, and it will include some tinkering like new feats, new backgrounds and even modified spells and completely new races. Premature, but I think it’s gonna be feedback nonetheless, and being different could even be of help (I hope). QUESTION: We know that the Fighter is a problematic class that sparked 90% of the questions and all. Don’t you think that the approach summarized by the “Fighters should be the best at fighting” motto is the root of the evil, here? I mean, isn’t it clear that the name of the class (although unchangeable) generates a lot of its problems? And ultimately, don’t you think that tying Fighter as a class more to “war” would make it more focused and avoid the too broad scope that generates problems? My opinion and that of many is that many classes fight and have the right to fight as well as the fighter. My solution to this would be to make classes more situational in their math bonuses, and where fighters would have the most “easily occurring situations”, they’d also have consistent, but not flashy bonuses to balance. I wrote a short blog about this here: http://community.wizards.com/lordarchaon/blog/2012/06/15/a_solution_to_balance_vs_tradition_in_next_classes As a clarification to it and my question, I know the fighter also has the metagame purpose of being the “starter’s class”, but are you considering the other fighting classes when you develop the Fighter? And are you considering making them all potentially equally (in different ways) good at fighting – provided their favorite situation come up or is set up? Thanks and sorry for the wordy thing.

Answer #43

I think you really hit on the key issue with the fighter – the class has a definition that has ranged from the hyper focused to the overly broad.

I thought a bit about it overnight, sparked by questions here and discussions elsewhere, and it might make a lot of sense to think about the fighter as good at something a little broader.

For instance, wizards cast spells, but they also know a lot of lore, they’re smart, they can translate runes, and so on. You have a clear body of traits for the class. The fighter needs something similar that speaks to its core definition.

My Thoughts

• It might be better to think of the Fighter as something other than a lunk with a sword? **boggle** I honestly believe that this mindset is a leftover from Monte Cook’s participation in Next development. Cook genuinely believes – despite the fact that agency/LFQW come up as concerns all the frakking time – that the community lusts for simple melee combatants that just swing swords and other classes that “play smart,” never mind  that a fair number of people continue to express a desire for clever, tactical play for the Fighter.
• If you’re looking for what the Fighter has that sets him apart, I point back to my version of the Fighter core concepts, which included, “Every Fighter has a reputation and a story.”

Question #44

1. I don’t want anyone in my group to feel obligated to play a Cleric. I don’t even want them to feel that they have the option to play a Bard, Alchemist, Warlord, etc, but should play a Cleric because it’s best.
2. Hell, I don’t want anyone to feel obligated to play a “Leader” period – if we can ignore healing or survive on just a Theme or two, that’d be awesome.

I hope you’re already aiming for 1, but how about 2?

Do you feel like Dexterity is an uber-stat? Do you have any plans for making Dexterity be the sole determinant for fewer things on your character sheet?

Answer #44

1. Agreed.
2. Agreed.

That said, we’re having a devil of a time making that work, but we’re focusing on it.

Dexterity is a tricky stat. We have tried to remove it from AC for heavy armor characters and give medium armor characters a reason to ignore it (we’re revising armor for the next draft). The trick is that in trying to de-emphasize it, we often end up with more fiddly rules in the game. There’s tension there, but I think there are some release points for that.

My Thoughts

• I want you to imagine a world without healing. We fight some monsters and get hurt, so we spend some Hit Dice, but they don’t really do all that much so we take a long rest. Either that long rest recovers most, if not all, of the party’s expended resources, in which case people complain about combat not feeling gritty or dangerous enough, or it doesn’t recover much at all, in which case we’re back to the 15-minute workday. It’s a pickle.
• If being the healer is a theme and having healing is necessary (which it almost certainly will be), then the theme becomes as much of a non-choice as the class. All you’ve done is change the name.

Question #45

Are you doing anything to increase the open, sandboxy aspect of D&D?

I’ve done several premade adventures in my time, and while I think they’re pretty great, most of them are pretty linear. Sure, you can explore that necromancer’s tower in whatever order you want, but at the end of the day you’re running in one of the entrances and beating everything inside to death to see if loot or plot points come out. Even the ones that have more roleplaying in them seem to be linear. There’s a clear course of conversations and Diplomacy rolls you have to make on certain NPCs before they tell the secret mcguffin, or slap you in the face with a red herring.

I find it’s hard to motivate my players to think outside the box. They always seem to look for the conversation path of least resistance, so they can go to a dungeon and roll dice at their enemy. Then they complain about the boring, repetitive gameplay. I’m aware that as the DM, it’s my job to make the game interesting, but there seems to be little motivating my PCs to do more interesting things.

So my question is: Are there any new features to this next edition of D&D that will promote open-mindedness? My players look through the rulebooks for ideas on what they can do, but there’s so many more possibilities out there. I think the core rulebooks need more generic physics rules. How fast does a wagon move after three wizards cast Fly on it? How many HP does the Dragon loose if we cut off it’s tail in that portcullis/guillotine we made? How much damage do you take if you jump of a building and land in a haystack? Does that damage decrease if you have levels in Assassin? Are there any alchemical items that can force an Elf to lactate, and on an unrelated note, what is the going rate for a bottle of Elf Milk these days?

Answer #45

The open ended nature of RPGs is what makes them unique and has kept them around for so long, so I definitely want to see that emphasized. The trick lies in giving DMs some clear rules and guidelines for how things might work.

The tough part is figuring out where the divide between vague, easy, and complex lie. It’s frustrating if the rules don’t give enough info for a decision, but it’s just as bad if they give too much and the game becomes bloated and too complex.

Elf lactation is a serious issue that we haven’t even begun to tackle yet. The mind boggles at the intricacies, complexities, and comedy of the entire thing.

My Thoughts

• Of course, the answer that Mearls can’t give is that this guy’s players are bored because he hasn’t engaged them with the story. Unless the players are invested, they won’t respond to a sandboxy environment because they lack the motivation to think of things to do.
• Putting aside the creepiness of forced lactation, even if the question is asked in jest, I can’t help but notice that the questioner is asking the developers to do his work for him. If he thinks that the presence of “Elf milk” is good story, then he should be encouraged to come up with his own rules for it. This is called tailoring your campaign world to your needs and it’s a vital skill for a would-be GM to have.

Question #46

I started playing with 3e, so my experience is with 3, 3.5, 4, and 4.5; I don’t know much about 2e and below except from the classic video games like Baldur’s Gate.

It seems like in every edition, there will be disparities: some people / groups will be, agaisnt the same challenges, far more effective or competent at overcoming them than other groups. And for the most part, it’s felt like the official attitude towards the mechanics is that the devs are either not “good” at the game part of it that has rules, or are either dismissive or disparaging towards people who are, for whatever reason or purpose, good at building effective characters.

As such, it’s also felt like while these are fully legitimate players who enjoy the game, the game doesn’t work well for them. You can have a group of strong wizards or highly competent warblades, and they will do nasty things to what they’re “supposed” to be facing – and it’s never felt, officially, or with the dominant community, that that’s okay. It feels like we’re being told we’re playing it wrong, or that we care about something we shouldn’t care about.

I guess what this whole little editorial question is building towards is this: looking at 4e, but especially at 3e, I’ve wished that the DMG, or some other official book, would address very real disparities in character effectiveness from a standpoint from a standpoint less of presenting a set level of challenge and more like “here are some things powerful groups can do, these are ways you challenge them” – because it doesn’t matter, to me, as a player, if I can routinely trash encounters that “should” challenge people five levels above me: all that matters is that I, and my group, are actually challenged. The level of the challenge matters less than the on-the-ground concerns of level … and I’ve also wished deep in my heart that we’d see some sort of official, printed-in-the-rulebook statement that it’s okay to make “good” choices. It’s not the only way to play but it’s a valid and fine way to play, as long as you’re not disrupting the rest of the group.

Will we ever see anything along those lines in Dungeons and Dragons?

tl;dr, sort of: Can you please get permission from him and print the Stormwind Fallacy somewhere in the DMG or PHB for DnD Next?

(sorry for my rambling)

Answer #46

I think this is actually a really important issue, because it speaks to a core thing we need to deal with – it’s OK to do different things with D&D.

One of the things I really want to do with Next is build in different group and DM styles, and make it clear that those are just ways to play the game. Like, if you’re group likes to make optimized characters the DM runs the game in Nightmare mode and that’s fun, or the group that hates combat uses story-based XP and never fights anything.

My Thoughts

• I’m certain that Mearls was very happy to see this question because it comes from a person with the philosophy that he thinks personifies Next.
• My problem with this mindset isn’t the house rules, which I think generally make things hard on the community but not as much on your gaming group, it’s the notion that groups are somehow magically going to consist of players that have uniform desires about complexity, character management and agency. My experience with 3.5 was that the presence of a single power gamer meant that everyone had to become one, at least to a certain degree. This is also true of 4e, but to a lesser extent. Mearls wants us to imagine a magical fairyland where this doesn’t happen in Next.
• I think that you encourage different play styles by creating a robust narrative system over a balanced combat system. The problem with 4e was that it never endorsed or supported narrative play.

Question 47

I’ve only played 4th and 3.x, but even in a well-balanced game like 4th edition it’s become clear by the end of its life-cycle that some choices were clearly better than others. In a game with a larger power disparity like 3.x, some choices were not only better but often the only functional build. How do you plan to combat/prevent power creep in supplementary material?

Branching off of that, how do you plan to keep the support for new classes balanced with new character options for old classes? When you look at the dozen of functional builds for 4th edition Wizards, the dearth of comparable variety in classes like the Seeker and Runepriest doesn’t seem very fair.

Will all the math be baked into the system? Playing 4th edition, I always hated having to choose “math-fixing” feats over ones that gave me special maneuvers or powers because if I didn’t choose the “fixers” I wouldn’t be able to hit with the powers and special abilities I currently had.

Finally, your design team has mentioned that fighters are often a “beginner” class, but as an experienced player I like to have melee classes with dynamic and interesting combat choices, just like a spellcaster. My first class was a 3.x Wizard because at the time all I really wanted to do was throw spells around.

Do you plan on having class options for beginners who are only interested casting spells?

Do you plan on having options for advanced players who like some variety in their melee class?

If not (to either question above), why?

If so, how do you plan on making beginner choices balanced against advanced choices, especially without one option being too dull to engage new players or too complex for even advanced players to consider accessible?

Answer 47

First, I think it’s important that we learn from the past and guard against those mistakes. So, we’ve seen the sort of mechanics that cause issues in 3e and 4e.

Second, we’ve made a big effort this time to define what exists within each piece of a character – race, class, feat, spell, magic item, and so on. Before, there were a lot of grey areas. For instance, in 4e powers were fairly well defined, but feats were all over the place.

So, the key lies in establishing the limits in each area and then, most importantly, throttling way back on the flood of mechanics. We have to consider each spell, theme, or whatever with the same attention that the Magic team regards a new card.

By keeping the core options under control and expanding slowly, we can keep a handle on the worst excesses.

This ties back into class support, where we want to release overall less stuff, and the stuff we do release make as usable across classes as possible. So, we’re more likely to introduce new themes that any class can take rather than spells for one specific class.

The math will be baked into the class and race. Since those are the only things that are 100% required for the game, between the two of them they contain all the math that we assume.

We 100% will support sliding complexity within classes, though with some limits (wizards and clerics are inherently a little more complex than non-casters).

Balancing the simple vs. the complex is tricky. The important thing is to keep the math level and make the simple character feel effective, even if the experienced played who takes a few maneuvers and applies them intelligently comes out ahead. We have to allow for skill and experience -otherwise the game gets stale – but I think we can mitigate that if the beginner feels like he has an effective characters and has some obvious, clearly useful things he can do.

For instance – the pregen fighter’s damage on a miss. A beginner player always feels like he or she is contributing in a fight.

My Thoughts

• Mearls continues to mention the mechanical problems in 3.5 and 4e without seeming to acknowledge that there were just as many – if not more – mechanical problems with AD&D. It was just that the system was so rudimentary and dysfunctional that there was a subconscious understanding that house rules were required. Next seems to be built on the notion that house rules are a good thing.
• They think that 3.5 and 4e had “too much stuff.” Next will have less stuff by design.
• Mechanical advancement will come from a limited number of sources so that you’re not having to assemble many features to get what you want. Outside of class and race, almost everything will be fluff (it will not address defenses, to-hit or damage).
• Some classes will be more complex than others. Mearls continues to push the notion that people are desperate not only for simple classes, but specific simple classes, especially the fighter. Given that the generations of gamers most likely to be buying into this game (15-30) are more game savvy than us old-timers, I don’t know how well this will resonate with them.
• The design team thinks that things like always doing damage make people feel like they’re contributing… despite the fact that they are very bland. This seems like very strange market research.

Question 48

With the return of Vancian casting are you planning on giving non-magical characters some sort of “pull out the stops” type of abilties?

I know the fighter has twice per day do 2 actions, but that’s not… you know, exciting, per se. The magic stuff allows casters to perform new and different abilities, even at a limited level.

Second Question: Is there any intention to add a Attacks of Opportunity system or somesuch to give players a more effective way to control the battlefield?

Answer 48

Yes, we’re looking at a set of maneuvers that characters can dip into to gain more concrete options in fights, along with options that you can use to push yourself beyond your limits for an action or two per encounter.

We’re strongly considering adding a free attack if someone breaks away from a melee. The playtest feedback has been a little soured on letting people move around without consequence. However, the rule would be much simpler than attacks of opportunity – likely it’ll be that if you start your turn in someone’s reach, they get an attack on you if you try to leave their reach using an action to withdraw.

My Thoughts

• You’re going to be hearing “We’re working on something cool for the fighter” a lot, not just in this Reddit. I’m trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, but the longer they keep saying this without actually showing us anything, the more I worry. There seems to be tremendous pressure to keep certain classes as plug-stupid as possible.
• “A little soured” is probably a huge understatement, as this was the second most common complaint among people I spoke to. In fact, if there has been any more sparkle in the actions available to the characters, I would bed good money that this would have been #1 with a bullet. Not only does it completely eliminate the positional aspect of play, it opens the door to any number of asshat moves, such as all the monsters just walking away to beat the Wizard to death. Not having any interaction leaves the combat feeling like something out of a Final Fantasy game… except with far fewer options.

Question 49

I hated attacks of opportunity. I often dropped them in my own house rules. Unnecessary complication IMHO.

Answer 49

Keep in mind that our goal for adding a mechanic like this would be to keep it very, very simple. We are 100% NOT going to give you a long list of things that provoke. It would be moving away from an enemy and nothing else.

My Thoughts

• Translation: “We’re not adding anything more complicated because we don’t trust GMs who dislike the mechanic to be able to do what this guy did and just not use the rule. If you’re expecting optional modules to genuinely reflect all of the editions, you’re going to be disappointed.” Though, to be fair, their “damage math” doesn’t seem to be able to account for the additional DPR of opportunity attacks. With the increased frailty of characters, you run the risk of creating situations where the character can’t do anything without dying.

Question #50

I know there’s a million (okay, 500) questions in here, so I’ll keep it short and sweet:

Can you tell us more about the modular aspect of Next?

If the core rules are designed as a jumping off point where nothing that offends people is in, how will modular aspects work so we can add complexity we want back in, and how granular will these components be? Will these rules modules be in the core rulebooks, or have a separate distribution scheme?

Answer #50

You can expect the modules we see as the most popular or commonly used ones to come out with the core of the game, likely in the DMG.

The easiest way to think of modules and the core is this – the core is the generic RPG engine that powers the game. It’s fairly vanilla in design and is unfocused. Rules modules have a lot more focus. Their design starts first with asking, “Who is the target audience for this?” and designing from there. Since we 100% expect people to ignore them, we can go all out in speaking to the specific part of the audience a module addresses.

My Thoughts

• When he says, “It’s fairly vanilla in design and is unfocused”, he’s not kidding. My concern is that, without the modules Next will be bland as hell (our experience with the playtest packet), but that deciding which modules to use is going to be a mess. There was a lot of pressure on GMs in 3.5 to include everything from Wizards, even if it didn’t make sense for the campaign setting and the most common rationale used was “It’s a game, shouldn’t I get to play it the way I want to?” I feel that they’re pouring all this effort into a very simple base game that’s hardly ever going to get used.
• I love the phrase “nothing that offends people” with regard to Next, because that feels like the design philosophy, at least with regard to people who didn’t transition to 4e.
• Notice how he avoids the question of modules being a separate product. This is a bad sign.
• I think the use of the word “modules” is odd, given that it traditionally means something else entirely.

Whew… that was a lot of work. I feel like I’m supposed to summarize this and wrap it all up in a neat little thought package, but I’m not seeing anything that coalesces for me. I’m very grateful to Mearls for opening himself up like this. It takes a great deal of courage to open yourself up to so many armchair quarterbacks, myself included, this early in the design cycle.

I guess one thing that occurs to me is that they might have started talking about Next this early in large part to avoid the SURPISE! moment that tainted the launch of 4e. Another is that I’m becoming more convinced that they really believe that they can give us AD&D with a 3.5/4e shell. Maybe I just wasn’t ready to see that before now.

In any event, thank you for sticking with me as I slogged through this. I hope it was helpful and informative.

Reading the Entrails: What the Mearls Reddit Says About Next (Part 4)

Question #31

As the design stands now, are Themes just a thematic package of feats, which can be otherwise independently selected? That is, are they a strict setup (to get these mechanical perks, you need to take this Theme), or will players be able to pick and choose feats in lieu of taking a theme package?

Answer #31

You can forgo a theme and go straight to feats if that’s what you want.

Themes establish a place in the world for feats. They are also a useful design tool, as they force you to give a feat a context in terms of who uses it and why.

My Thoughts

• I’ve been thinking about this concept for a while now and I suspect that it has merit, though perhaps not in the way that the designers intend. Themes and Classes in Next are going to resemble Essentials classes in that, once you’ve picked them, there isn’t much leveling management other than noting what new thing you got. The player doesn’t have to make a whole bunch of decisions unless they want to. [1] I actually think that this is elegant design, as long as there isn’t an explicit barrier within the system to tweaking the character. This brings up an interesting idea: if a GM doesn’t want to worry as much about degenerate builds, they can always disallow modifications. This is different than the system telling the players that they can’t. It seems like a very authoritarian form of table control, but sometimes extreme measures are required.
• It’s worth noting that, as far as I know, accuracy feats are dead. This is an excellent thing.

[1]: This makes me wonder if “prepackaged” 4e characters wouldn’t be something that the readers of this blog would enjoy and get use out of.

Question #32

Thanks for doing this. Love DnD. Here are a couple of my questions:

1. What are you guys doing to end the 5 minute adventuring day that has pretty much plagued every edition of DnD.
2. Have you give any thought to being able to run a campaign in DnDNext without the archetypical party? Specially, what if you didn’t want to go with a cleric, how would combat healing work?
3. Why would anyone every use a crossbow instead of a shortbow in dndnext? Same damage, but one takes an action to reload.
4. Any hints on what you guys will be doing to the Monk in the new edition?

Answer #32

1. I really want to address this with DM advice. I think that trying to make the rules do this just messes things up.
2. This is basically the crux of our healing mechanic issues. We want the cleric to be optional. Whether we just have other classes with robust healing or a rest system that makes that work remains to be seen.
3. We have fixed this in the revisions we’ve made to the weapons.
4. I’d like to make the monk really good at fighting. I liked the movement options the class gets in 4e, and think that as the best unarmed warrior in the game the monk should be a match for the fighter.

My Thoughts

• I really wish they would stop with the notion that the Cleric is the only class that can heal. 4e demonstrated that there could be many classes that heal that felt unique and fun. The issue seems to be one of design space. The moment you say that healing is part of Cleric class identity, you’ve given away your ability to assign that to other classes.
• I’m kind of confused at what advice you can give GMs to counteract the 15-minute workday when Next is being designed to be far more dangerous than 4e or 3.5. If the PCs get the piss beat out of them for whatever reason, they’re going to want to rest, it’s as simple as that. With the mindset that “combat is war” where imbalances and unfairness occur more often, the fights that go badly tend to go really bad. The only way that an encounter doesn’t trigger this is if the encounter gets bypassed, which isn’t an acceptable solution for some groups, or if it is designed in a more balanced “combat as sport” fashion.

Question #33

Another question, Mearls, is why did you decide to pull away from giving non-casters concrete rules and abilities and have them leave their effectiveness up to what is essentially GM Fiat?

This is especially confusing since the casters stuff is still all formal and concrete and vastly over shadows what the non-casters can do.

I mean, in the playtest there’s “I can do STR mod damage guarenteed but I’m slower than the majority of things we’ll fight and have no way of stopping them from running away and kiting my ass” Fighter, “At-Will Movement=0 then fire everywhere” Wizard and the two “Better Fighter than Fighter + I got the heals” Clerics.

Since this is the playtest I have to assume that these pre-gens are general insights in to how these roles/classes will work and I’m confused and lost as to how this would ever been a good design choice.

Answer #33

There are definitely directions that will change based on the pregens. Ray of frost is a little too good at this stage. Honestly, the goal of the playtest is to generate exactly the sort of feedback you just gave us.

And, as has been mentioned, we’re working on a maneuver system.

Finally, I do think that fighters could use a unique mechanic or two that really speaks to giving them a clear edge in some way. In the past, they’ve relied on best AC and best weapon, but those aren’t vivid enough IMO.

My Thoughts

• “Aren’t vivid enough” is a phrase… Oh, let’s be honest, he’s already admitted several times that the Fighter is too bland. Time to stop beating that horse.

Question #34

1. How do you plan to balance magic item stacking?
2. Will it be possible to permanently increase a stat?
3. Will magic users have items that directly increase their abilities in a way that corresponds to magic weapons for melee?
4. Is there thought given to the “budget” that different class styles will need to spend on equipment to keep up with the balance curve?

Answer #34

1. We’re hoping to avoid +X items outside of armor, weapons, and shields.
2. Yes.
3. We’re looking to keep implements as items that increase spell accuracy/save DCs.
4. We’re actually looking at making buying equipment optional. Instead, you are given a starting package based on background and class.

My Thoughts

• If they’re going to gate permanent stat increases through the GM, they need to put in a section that describes how this might be abused or get out of control.
• I wonder how the grognards will feel about seeing a +1 wand.

Question #35

Why not give heavy armor the Dex bonus? It’s not like it constricts your movements that much; in fact, it actually gives you greater freedom of movement in combat, since you can maneuver without having to worry about someone hitting your soft parts.

My POV summarized: http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-horizons-upcoming-edition-d-d/324624-awfully-alarmed-about-armour-2.html#post5937680 Especially “Wearing armor in combat should always be preferable to not wearing armor in combat.”

Answer #35

The key is to strike a balance between low Dex characters and high Dex ones. One of the tricks to class design is to allow players to feel like they can ignore a stat if they want to focus on the class’s strengths. It’s a little irritating if a fighter needs high Str, Con, and Dex, or if the high Dex light armor guy has a better AC than the fighter.

My Thoughts

• I’m not sure why Dex mod adding into defenses wasn’t among the things they threw out because they were too complicated for the benefit.

Question #36

Mike-

It seems to me the greatest challenge WotC faces in shepherding D&D into the 21st century is one of time. Specifically, the time players spend away from the gaming table.

The original network of D&D players in the 70s and 80s, when they stopped playing D&D, went home and created content. World, dungeons, maps. They took this content and iterated on it for years.

These days players, and this is my direct experience, regardless of age or background, love the game at the table. But when they leave the table, they go play Skyrim or Minecraft or whatever.

Do you have any plans for giving players online tools to create content, worlds, dungeons, adventures, and share them with others? Vote on the best ones, search, download, modify? Crowdsource, in other words, the content creation people used to do habitually and alone?

Great job on 4E, BTW. Best system I’ve ever seen.

Answer #36

This is definitely a big issue for all games. I can’t make specific comments, but it is something that I think is a logical extension of the game. In some ways, D&D was one of the first games (along with minis games) that had a lot of away-from-the-game entertainment built into it. There is definitely something there that I want to tap into.

My Thoughts

• As a child of the 70′s, I can say that there was a lot less to do in those days. RPGs now have to compete with instantly available entertainment and I think how they do that is an excellent discussion to have.

Question #37

My sincerest thanks for doing this AMA!

D&D Next Questions:

1. I’m a huge fan of Iron Heroes, and I would love to play a D&D Next campaign that doesn’t rely on the party having access to magic of any kind. Will this be an explicitly supported option?
2. I don’t like random hit points upon level up. Will D&D Next explicitly support deterministic hit point progressions?
3. I really like the idea behind the advantage/disadvantage mechanic, but I am a bit confused about how to apply it. For example:

• In a contest, does the party with the upper hand roll with advantage, or does the other party roll with disadvantage?
• Can NPCs get advantage or disadvantage?

Answer #37

1. Yes, the core game does not assume any benefits coming from magic items. They purely make you better.
2. Yes, we’ll have options for rolling or taking a number.
3. It’s possible for one side to had disad and the other advantage in a contest. I’d recommend looking at each factor that affects the contest and assessing it as a disad or advantage for one side or the other. NPCs can definitely get either affect, depending on the situation.

My Thoughts

• Answer #1 here confuses me. People want things that make them better. If someone gets a magic sword that helps them hit more often, how does the desire on the part of the other players to hit just as often not become the new normal? Am I supposed to say, “I’m sorry, Witchknight, you can’t have a magic rod because it isn’t good story, even though Ogden got his sword”? That seems… unhealthy.
• Oh, yay. It’s not as though 4e addressed the fact that almost every group had house rules for hit points or anything. Let’s just keep unmaking the wheel and then adding it in as an optional feature.

Question #38

My biggest problem with 4E was magic items. Back in 3e, and 3.5, it was awesome to get a magic item, because it would deal consistent, extra damage (+1d4 ice, +1d6 fire, etc.). With the vanilla 4e ruleset, those are thrown out the window. Magic items were basically +1 to hit, or maybe +1 damage. I realize its balanced around this, but it just feels sorta underpowered, and lame. I like rolling lots of dice, and I never felt I could in 4e, at least at the lower levels.

I remember the first time, as a Warlock, I got a Warlock Pact Blade. In 4e, using the player’s handbook (or DMG I can’t remember), it was +1 to hit, and +1 damage. The only other thing it had going for it, was as an Encounter, you could use Eldritch Blast. What? Why was this even a thing? I can cast Eldritch Blast a million times, why was this some extra thing? It basically made Pact Blades cool for other casters, and useless to a Warlock.

How are magic items handled in DnDNext? Will we see a return to awesome extra damage, or will they say “super balanced” and +1 to hit. I looked over the Wizard, and felt he was okay, but I wanted to ask about the Rogue. I noticed that there really isn’t an option for extra damage on a Sneak Attack (I think it said you can get +1d6), but I liked how at higher levels this would go up in damage, making Sneak Attacks a valuable thing that only happened rarely. Are these types of abilities falling by the wayside?

Answer #38

We want magic items to feel awesome. I want the +1 or +2 to be something that you might even gloss over, and part of me wants to try designing the game without them.

I’d much rather have a hurricane flail that generates buffeting winds, knocks arrows out of the sky, and summons an air elemental than a +1 weapon. Key is – how many people agree with that? Are +X weapons/armor/etc iconic to D&D?

That said, I think we can have both. We’ll likely limit the maximum plus you can get, and we can then simply start with interesting/cool items and add pluses to those.

My Thoughts

• I think that +X items are only iconic in that people grok the math of hitting more often. That doesn’t make them exciting, only necessary.

Question #39

what if any thing were you disappointed by during 4th edition and how will you address it in D&D next?

Answer #39

I think that giving every class the same power progression was a compromise that we didn’t need to make. We were trying a few different things, and I think that there was too much of a sense that we needed to use a brute force method to balance things.

In Next, we’re going back to unique progressions for each class.

My Thoughts

• I don’t disagree that it would have been very possible to create different progression mechanics for different classes. I think that having diverse progression fights a feeling of sameness at the cost of balance. I mean, if Fred the Fighter gets an additional +1 to-hit and Wally the Wizard gets access to a new spell level, who do you think is going to be more excited?

Question #40

1) Any comments on Perception and the blind rogue/radar cleric issue? The wisdom=perception still has some bizarre side effects, like the fact that the characters who used to have Listen At Doors as a class feature are now among the deafest characters in the game, and that it’s considered a good choice to spec a cleric, not traditionally known as scouts, for high Perception. (And of course there’s the OotS joke that your hearing and eyesight get better with age, but that’s rarely relevant at the table.)

2) Any second thoughts on Intoxication and the fact that it’s a viable decision at low levels?

3) Any ideas yet about how to balance rogue damage?

4) Please comment on random HP and the decreased, irregular value of a Con bonus on HP.

Answer #40

1. We’re looking at skills right now and trying to determine if skills make you better than you are (a flat bonus that adds to your ability check) or strictly make you good (a flat bonus that takes the place of your ability modiifer). So, the 8 Wis rogue with perception training might just be at, say, +5, rather than at +3 added to a -1 Wis check.
2. We definitely want to avoid making it abusive, but I think it’s kind of funny that getting drunk and charging into a dungeon might be a good idea.
3. Definitely taking a long look at this one. I’d like to give a rogue a nice but not overpowering bonus that he can get every round, and a BIG bonus (like AD&D backstab) for those once an adventure ambushes or set ups.
4. Random HP will be an option alongside fixed HP. The key to Con is that adding the bonus at each level can overwhelm class contribution to total HP. We need to find a middle ground.

My Thoughts

• Unfortunately, attributes scale. Flat modifiers don’t. Decoupling skills from attributes means that there is never any chance for growth. That seems stagnant.
• I think the intoxication benefits are silly, but that’s just me. I would feel fine houseruling them out of existence.
• It would be nice if the Rogue was even remotely competitive with the Fighter.
• See above comments regarding random hit points. I think they’ve opened up a huge snarl with this by trying to bring back random hit points when that was one of the few things that pretty much everyone thought needed to be changed.

Reading the Entrails: What the Mearls Reddit Says About Next (Part 3)

Question #21

Hey, I played the playtest with a couple friends of mine last weekend and we had a blast! My one question regards healing. I liked most of the mechanics, but I felt like the human cleric couldn’t quite heal enough. I was wondering what your thought process behind the healing kit was, and why you decided to make it an item instead of a class ability.

Thanks!

Answer #21

The idea behind making it an item was to make it something anyone could take. One direction we’re thinking of taking is making a cleric’s healing a separate ability from spells, so that we can give more healing without also having to give more spells in total.

My Thoughts

• Awesome. Now if you could just return to the notion that someone besides a Cleric can heal.
• There’s something that has been picking at me: The signs point toward that separate healing ability coming from a theme. In what way is the pressure to sacrifice concept to “play the healer” different from sacrificing concept to “take the healing theme”? It seems as though the theme is just going to take the place of the class. I suppose that this is somewhat better in that player desires aren’t being completely submerged in the need for healing.

Question #22

I’ve been playing D&D for close to 30 years and mostly with the same people. So thanks for keeping it going. My first question is how do you make magic items ‘magical’ again? With earlier D&D games I played, it felt pretty awesome when you got your first magical treasure. With 4e, magic items felt more like math than magic. I’d like to get back to a game where naming your weapon seems more natural because you won’t be trading up for a long time. My second question is are you planning on introducing rules to bring back some of the more permanent risks? For example: making traps deadlier, wounds more serious, precious items breakable, curses and cursed items debilitating and poisons more potent.

Again, thanks for all the hard work. I’m excited about D&D again.

Answer #22

Long-term drawbacks are something you can expect in a grim and gritty style module.

For magic items, we definitely want them to become more mysterious and interesting. We want more vorpal swords, brass armor of the fire lord, hurricane flails, hammer of nine thunders, stuff like that, where the +1 or +2 might be there, but it’s not what’s interesting about the item.

For instance, I don’t want a suit of magic armor to be neat because it’s +1 AC. I want it to be appealing because it contains a bound fire elemental that you can call once per day, or the armor can turn into a magical aura of flame that burns away your enemies but doesn’t give you an AC bonus while it is in fire form, interesting stuff like that.

My Thoughts

• As much as I love the notion of more flavorful magic items, the problem is that Next’s tightly controlled accuracy mechanics mean that an additional +1 bonus is a much bigger deal than pretty much any power you put on the gear. I wish they would just get rid of always-on enhancement bonuses altogether. Make it be a big bonus that you can only use in special occasions.

Question #23

Do you feel that WotC’s choice to appeal to a younger and more tech-savvy audience with 4E (and, specifically, at the time it did rather than earlier or later) was a wise one, or not? How would you have handled this differently given hindsight?

What I’m getting at isn’t anything like your standard-issue “4E is a video game” or “4E is WoW” complaints — I don’t think those are valid. But I do feel like the designers made a conscious choice to be inspired by sources that appealed to a younger audience in some respects and an audience that may have not played a tabletop RPG before in others, and it does seem to me that this is an audience that places less value on buying books and owning a hard copy of every core D&D book made than your stereotypical previous-edition grognard does, and since to a degree your job is to sell books… I wonder to what degree WotC’s digital offerings made up for that loss and to what degree you might now tweak the brand strategy a little bit if you had a do-over.

Answer #23

I think 4e tried to change too much too quickly, and it didn’t look before it tried to leap forward.

The 4e changes felt jarring to some people, and I think it’s much better to manage change in an ongoing, actively played game by measured advancements.

For instance, I think that the Book of Nine Swords helped warm people to the idea of over the top martial maneuvers. We needed to do more of that in 3e, see how people reacted, see what rose to the top, before we decided to make sweeping changes to the core game. With Nine Swords, clearly a lot of people liked it, but looking back I don’t think it was such an overwhelming response that the entire game needed to follow that path.

The other side of the coin is that you can appeal to a new audience while keeping your current one happy. If you see a destination, you have to take a moment and consider what you need to do to get there, then figure out the best way to do that.

For instance, for people who might like D&D but don’t want to commit to an RPG, we have the Castle Ravenloft board game. We can make that game, and sell a bunch of copies to people who might want to play a D&D game without committing to the RPG, without messing with the RPG.

So, I think there was too much of a focus on changing the RPG, rather than looking at customers – whether current or potential – and figuring out the best way to make something that appeals to them.

My Thoughts

• Translation: “People who like tactical combat in their RPG are not WotC’s core audience. 4e was a mistake because it failed to satisfy the people they consider their core audience.”
• Book of Nine Swords wasn’t popular because of the mechanics. It was popular because it shattered the myth that only spellcasters could do cool, world-bending stuff.
• What really grinds me about this answer is that he suggests that the tactical play audience could be better served with a board game. And, if your response to this comment is that Mearls is only giving a suggestion, you might want to consider that he gave this suggestion in the context of things that are wrong with 4e. If he wants to make this comment elsewhere, irrelevant to 4e, then I don’t care. At the very best it’s a sloppy way of expressing himself.
• I also don’t like the fact that it hints strongly at the belief that the “people who like 4e” market isn’t all that important to them. We obviously weren’t their current customers when the system was introduced and we certainly aren’t being courted as potential customers for Next. Yes, he concedes at the end of the AMA that, “4e fans aren’t feeling the love yet. We’ll have that covered – just give us some time.” Simply put, you don’t tell your core market that they have to wait to see the cool. My belief is that the people at WotC think that the majority of people who bought into 4e will transition into Next simply because it’s D&D or because it’s a new RPG, meaning that they don’t have to give a lot of fan service to that base.
• You might ask, “Aren’t you just bitching that Next isn’t enough like 4e for you?” No. Absolutely not. I’m saying that Next development does not see the 4e base as a priority. They don’t hate us; they don’t want us to go away – they just want something else more. It’s fair of them to think that catering to a different audience will make for better sales. I certainly wouldn’t begrudge them a profit. Actions speak louder than words.

Question #24

Hi Mike,

I’m one of the founders of Red Box Vancouver and a big fan of Basic D&D, so I’m loving the playtest rules–especially the choice of adventure!

Are there any plans for adding monster reaction tables or morale? They’re one of my favorite parts of the old school games. The first one really helps with sandbox play/improv and the second really speeds up combat.

Answer #24

Yup, you can expect both in rules modules. I wrote a set of morale rules for tactical play, and I expect we’ll include reaction tables for our interaction mechanics.

My Thoughts

• I’m actually quite excited to see this. I think encouraging GMs to rethink the way combats end is a good thing.

Question #25

I have a wizard in my group who likes to use Magic Missile. Like, loves the damned spell. She took it in 4e (where it was the Anti-Minion Sniper Rifle) and in the playtest of 5e she squealed in joy when she saw it on her sheet. I have played a wizard since I was a kid (late 2e) and Magic Missile wasn’t “guess I have nothing better to do this turn, Magic Missile!”, it was a carefully chosen “I need guaranteed damage on that guy right now ” spell.

This sounds like an awfully narrow question, but why is Magic Missile free and automatic in 4e and the playtest 5e? It seems fair to have one or the other but not both, because it puts a clock on the encounter of sorts- “okay guys we just need to hold this guy down for X more rounds while the wizard spams it to death”- and with some combinations of skills and such in 4e it’s literally possible to pin a monster down to the point where it can’t escape while it’s being pinged to death by MM.

I’ve noticed this player (and a few others) just spamming Magic Missile because it’s automatic damage when they could be doing so much more with their turns. I’m all in favor of giving wizards something cool to do at-will as an attack, but what are the design decisions that went into making Magic Missile the way it was in the old days, and what it has evolved into in 4e/5e?

Answer #25

Here’s the balancing act – is your player happy with using MM each round? The damage of MM is low enough compared to other options that it doesn’t tilt things too much, though it feels very powerful against kobolds or goblins.

OK, I just asked someone else here at the office. Here’s what they said – we wanted at-will spells to be very iconic, and we even tried out some new ones. They didn’t go over that well, so we went very hard in the direction of iconic. Since we’re in playtest mode, we decided to be more aggressive here and see how it went over.

My Thoughts

• Yes, an auto-hit mechanic feels very powerful against things that die in a single hit. It’s also very consistent. This is hardly surprising. The question becomes whether they use Magic Missile because it’s super effective or because it’s fun. I’m going to bet that it’s the former.

Question #26

what ’bout less combat-oriented XP system? luke crane of burning wheel fame recently had a post on his G+ commenting that old keep on borderlands basicaly encouraged players to go around monsters to get the loot since it (the loot) equaled XP.

Answer #26

The XP system is the kind of thing where I want to do a few different systems and have the DM pick one (XP for treasure, XP for killing, XP for meeting story goals, etc) to establish the tone for his or her campaign.

My Thoughts

• I’m all for this. Having gone without awarding EXP for an extended period of time, I would like to see some advice for EXP-less methods.

Question #27

Hi, Mike! I’ve been playing D&D since 2e (I ran Zanzer Tem’s Dungeon my first time as DM), and I’m been a big fan of the new math system so far.

Question 1: I know healing has been a source of a lot of feedback. Personally, I feel like having more healing in short rests and less healing in extended rests (say half your total hp) would be better. Are there any plans for alternate healing rules?

Question 2: My wife really, really likes her wizard’s encounter spells from 4e. Are there any plans for an AEDU spell system in D&D Next?

Also, my three year-old daughter played her first game last night and she asked me to say thanks for making an awesome game!

Answer #27

1. The healing rules are going to get a complete overhaul.
2. We’re looking at having different magic systems for different arcane classes.
3. Cool! Thanks!

My Thoughts

• Given that someone at WotC had to say to themselves “I think this Hit Die system will work” for it to even get out the door, I wonder how they feel about it now. It really scares me to think that they’re taking an al dente (throw it against the wall and see what sticks) approach to design.

Question #28

Will the Warlord be a separate class or a theme? The Warlord is one of the best innovations from 4e, and it’s mechanically and iconically (as a fantasy archetype) different from the Fighter — a Warlord isn’t a fighter who heals people, it’s a leader first and foremost, and the 4e Warlord has many ways of approaching this: the battlefront warlord whose recklessness inspires his or her allies, the archer warlord shouting commands from the rear, the tactical genius, and the notorious “lazy warlord,” to name a few. Does the team feel that themes can adequately capture this variation and mechanical difference, or do you think the Warlord needs to be a separate class, even an optional class for use with non-core modules?

Answer #28

The warlord is tricky, because I think a theme might work pretty well for it. I can see wizards or fighters or rangers as warlords. That said, we’re not wedded to that. It’ll depend on what we see as the key features of a warlord and the best way to express them.

My Thoughts

• My bet is that Warlord will end up as a theme because it fails to meet their criteria for “iconic.” After all, the non-divine healer really only came of age in 4e. Yes, there were some non-divine options in 3.5, but they didn’t see all that much support. It seems, however, that there are some people who can’t buy into the notion.

Question #29

One of the biggest problems I had with 3.5 later in the edition, and 4e almost from the get-go, was the huge number of base classes. While each attempted to address a different character concept, many of them quickly began to blur together and address the same concept except for a minor cosmetic change.

Will the new “themes” and “backgrounds” mechanics be replacing the need for a huge library of base/prestige classes?

Answer #29

We definitely want to trim back the number of classes. The further you get from the PH, the more likely a class becomes a theme.

My Thoughts

• Except that a theme can’t define identity the way a class can. Can you really see things like the Runepriest or the Warden being viable as a theme?

Question #30

How do you intend to keep the game fun at all levels?

How do you balance the lethality and lack of powers early game in 3.5 with the daily healing nuggets and powers for everyone in 4th?

Context and Explanation:

The problem that I’ve had with D&D 3.5 is that it just was not fun to play at level 1 as a spellcaster, which had two causes: the number of spells you had per day (meaning you got one or two moments of being useful in combat) and your health, Which usually maxed out around 6, if you were lucky. Even not playing a spellcaster, usually the party had to take an extended rest every other encounter because the cleric was out of heals and everyone was badly injured.

Using just the core handbook, I saw no practical way to fix the first, other than getting a crossbow and praying you could get a lucky shot off. For the second, you could take toughness, which would move you out of the range of “taken down by a stray arrow,” but would hamper you because you’re taking a feat because you feel you need to, not because it fit your character, something I understand is a currently problem in 4th edition with the various expertise/focus/defenses feats.

4th fixed the health issue with healing surges, but no one seemed to be able to explain what they thematically meant. I liked the slight health increase and how hit-dice worked, but only one per day at level one struck me as low, and it wasn’t long before my party was seeking shelter.

5th looks like it’s going to fix the power issue for spellcasters with At-Will cantrips, which after playing seemed like the way to go. I’ve read that the current health system is still under review though, and personally, I would at least like to be able to get in more than a couple encounters (3-5) without having to nap.

Answer #30

I think the key is to elevate low level characters a bit, establish a steady power gain at low levels, but then curb things at higher levels. I think that the sweet spot in earlier editions came about because you started really weak, then hit a good spot for power, then kept getting more powerful and elevated out of it.

So, I think if we make characters a little more durable and give more options at low levels, then cut down on option bloat while still making characters interesting at high levels, we can start to address this.

Honestly, I don’t think any version of D&D has gotten high level play right. If we can do that with Next, I’ll be very happy.

My Thoughts

• I don’t think I’m better at design than Mearls, he is a professional and a good one at that, but I think he’s missing the larger point here. At some point you have to acknowledge that encounters have to be tuned for the table. Once you teach a GM to tweak the numbers to get the desired result, the individual system and all its associated strengths and flaws becomes much less important. A good GM can use pretty much any system. A great GM doesn’t even need a system.