Video Slashdot's Rob Rozeboom Interviews D&D Designer Mike Mearls (video) 139
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Mike Mearls is the Senior Manager for the Dungeons and Dragons Design Team. He's been with D&D publishers Wizards of the Coast (a subsidiary of Hasbro) since 2005, Before that he was a free-lance game writer and designer. In this conversation with Slashdot editor Rob "samzenpus" Rozeboom, he talks about changes in the latest version of D&D and how the company interacts with players. (We'll have some more chat with Mike next week, different wizard time, same wizard channel, so stay tuned.)
Slashdot welcomes reader video submissions. Email robin AT roblimo dot COM for info.
No thanks (Score:1, Informative)
Bring Back AD&D 2nd Edition (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No thanks (Score:4, Informative)
Honestly, it's not the versions that I have a problem with, it's that they've converted to an optional content/material publication system, to a required core update system that delivers no new content, just new rules. Wizards seem to have forgotten the value of charm and mystery along the way.
I remember when the problem really began with random miniatures instead of just buying what you need. The whole intent was to FORCE you to buy more to get what you need to play. I jumped ship, and I think lots of other people did too.
I playtested "D&D Next" this last weekend (Score:4, Informative)
I playtested D&D Next this last weekend, and enjoyed it a lot. It's nothing like 4e, whatsoever. The mechanics go back to 3e, but are even simpler. Skills are simpler, there was no need for a battlemat, and we enjoyed 6 combat encounters in under 3 hours, and plenty of roleplaying. I encourage all D&D fans to check it out, if they ever played AD&D, 3e, or 4e. AD&D players will find it more balanced, and bereft of THAC0 insanity. 3e players will like the skill simplification, and overall feel of the mechanics. 4e players will... be glad to get rid of 4e's powers, forced movement, positioning, Opportunity Attacks, and all other combat clutter.
Re:I playtested "D&D Next" this last weekend (Score:4, Informative)
A few years back, WoTC pulled ALL of their PDFs of the books for sale. Compare that to Paizo, if you buy directly from them they give you the hardcover AND the PDF.
Heck if we look a little closer at Amazon's top selling gaming books, many of the v3.5 books are still in the top 40 (#19. Players Handbook 3.5). It's also worth noting that most 3.5 D&D Books/Supplements/Modules can be used with Pathfinder with little (to no) modification at all. Thus all that money one might of spent on 3.0 and/or 3.5 wont be wasted.
Further, with D&D 4+ WoTC changed the OGL to severely restrict any other company from publishing supplements for D&D, whereas (again) Pathfinder kept the original OGL from 3.0/3.5 which allows ANYONE to create content for Pathfinder.
Re:Dear D&D Designers (Score:5, Informative)
I love your constructive criticism
Sorry, that was sarcasm and I forgot the tags
Earlier D&D editions were hardly great - IMO, all editions had serious problems. I just started playing 4 and actually quite like it so far, but haven't played it enough to really judge it. It does, however, have a more epic feel where you start and you seem reasonably competent rather than building up from very weak characters with no power to a godlike beings. My group is more roleplayers, so really we don't get into dungeons all that often - it is more about working toward some goal (often political - for instance, we spent 4 years of realtime and about 20 in gametime usurping a kingdom by building up a false champion).
3.0/3.5 if you didn't design your leveling from the beginning for your specialty class, you were screwed. You have to point bash, and that takes the fun out of feats - your character is basically fully designed from the start or worthless later on and also makes feats practically worthless - you may as well give 3 choices and then fix the rest based on those choices and not bother printing the rest.
1.0-2.0 you could role crappy and have 11 hit points at 11th level. Most 11th level monsters would kill you in 1 hit. Don't laugh - I made it to level 5 and had 5 HP on a wizard once (game ended, but I spent a lot of time bleeding to death in that one), and level 8 and had 10HP on a thief. Thief died in a claw-claw-bite after a spectacular backstab on a Troll that left it with 1HP - it turned around (ignoring the half ogre fighter in front of it) and claw did 12HP, claw did 11HP, bite did critical 34HP (we were playing -10HP to death and DM decided troll ripped both arms off and then bit off my head... and was chewing it when the half ogre clobbered it for 20 more damage "killing" it). My replacement character was given max hits but was one level below the rest of the party (this was the DM's "death penalty").
Low level D&D wizards sucked. Not as much as the Rolemaster elementalist with first level spell "boil water", but cast one magic missile and have to sleep 8 hours really sucks (and that is about all I got rolling 3D6 and not playing with a point bash DM that let me roll 4D6-1die for stats where I may have additional spells). When the DM gives extra experience for combat you can't participate in because you are out of spells, it sucks even more. Then they make the experience curve worse for Wizards.
In first and second edition, multiclassing was cool early on, especially if you were working around the wizard's cast a spell and need to sleep 8 hours, but made the midgame difficult (late game was sometimes OK, especially if one class was wizard and got 4th and 5th level wizard spells). Human changing class had less of an impact later on, especially if they just put in 3 levels or so to get some beneficial thief skills and switched to something else.
In first and second edition you could have an unplayable starting character. The worst I ever rolled had 4 threes and a max stat of 6 (my D6s are cursed, I'm pretty sure). I rolled a character not much better than that in Call of Cthulhu (max stats were 8 and 9, most were between 3 and 6) and not only was he playable, he got the nickname deadeye after the GM penalized him for being drunk (it was by prescription) and then rolling 1s and 2s on percentile dice for critical hits in several sessions.
Personally I didn't like halflings or to some extent dwarves in most of the released versions (not sure about 4.0 because I rolled my race randomly and it wasn't dwarf or halfling). Dwarves were pretty much pigeon-holed into being fighters or clerics, but halflings were worse, being pretty much useless as anything but thief.
1.0-2.0 and maybe 3/3.5 low level wizards/sorcerers suck and you spend most of your time doing nothing (I never played a wizard/sorcerer in 3/3.5, and again didn't play either much, as I was in a long running Rolemaster game and our group fell apart shortly after that due to life happening and we're jus