11 replies to this topic

[Adrift]

Just saw an announcement that Mike Mearls has left the design team for DnD 5th Ed. I'm not a game designer fanboy, but this makes me wonder as to whether this bird is gonna fly.

[Kormydigar]

Where? I know Monte Cook left the team yesterday but Mearls is leaving too? Do you have a source?

[TaleSpinner]

Yeah, I can't find anything. Mearls commented on Monte's leaving yesterday, but sounds very commited to it himself. Link please...

[Lars Porsenna]

Yes, linky please...

If Mearls is leaving, I really don't see anything good coming from D&D 5e.

[Bruunwald]

I've exhausted all my contacts and leads. No idea where this is coming from. Maybe somebody's getting Mearls and Monte mixed up.

Hey! Say that five times fast!

[Adrift]

Where this is coming from is I'm an idiot. For some reason, I read Monte Cooke and Mike Mearls were transposed.

Sorry about that.

[Spike]

Well crud. I was actually a bit hopeful when I heard Monte Cook was helping design 5e that WoTC might be doing a long overdue about-face and deciding to get back to the roots of the game.

Pththtthhhh.... so much for that.

[haldir]

Wizards & the old D&D way will never ever happen again. Gotta keep attracting the WoW crowd to or back to rpging.

Hoping thou everything goes smoothly for them. While I may have given up on WoTC's D&D awhile back, doesn't mean I wish ill will to them for 5th ed.

[Loim]

I admit that my saves vs. change are very high. I still love me some 2nd Edition AD&D. I was not all that thrilled with 3.0. I liked 3.5 better, and I like Pathfinder. I never played 4.0. Having said all that, I hope 5 does well. I grew up in an environment and an area where I was teased and laughed at for playing RPGs. I caught lot of crap for playing the old SSI Gold Box games, EQ, and WoW. Anything that potentially brings more interest to RPGs, tabletop or otherwise, is a good thing. I am sad to hear that Monte Cook is leaving this, since I've overall been impressed with his previous work.

[Reaperbryan]

Mike remains with WotC. Monte, per his personal Blog, has left due to ... he's classy enough he won't say. Differences, I suppose.

http://www.montecook...gi?montejournal

[Adrift]

Yeah it is too bad, I had a lot of hope for DnD. I really wonder where the game would be headed if they weren't owned by a publicly traded company.

I find his post a few days back relating to good game design being integrally linked to 'listening' to playtesters and players to be of paramount importance. What's the good of making a game if it isn't what anyone wants to play? Having been at Gen Con plenty of times, I always got the sense that the WotC crowd only wants to surround themselves with a bunch of 'yes men'.

[Sanael]

As a manager for a Wizards Premiere retail location, I've been amazed at the differences between the two flagship lines at WotC. D&D is a great game (even though 4th ed isn't "D&D" by my personal definition) and receives huge support for organized play and so forth, but WotC doesn't seem to do as much with the info they get from org.play events; on the other hand, Magic:the Gathering is constantly in flux, and the design/development teams for MtG always seem to put paramount importance on how the game plays and how people are playing it.

I suppose it's because MtG is much more fluid to begin with, a new expansion that really changes some aspect of the game coming out every quarter--as a player, you can see the changes happen. D&D is by nature much more stagnant, and there isn't a great way of getting realtime feedback of how people are actually playing the game (things like Character Builder information aside), so even when they do make a change, they may change it again three times before a book comes out and players won't notice all of the r&d behind the end result. Even so, I've looked at new D&D releases and thought to myself, "people want this? Really?"

I don't recall ever hearing of WotC banning a magic item because it combos too well with a certain character class, and their ability to do just that is one of the greatest contributing factors to the health of the Magic game.

I'm rambling...I think it's really bizarre that Magic has made use of the publicity machine Hasbro offers, yet continued to develop into a great game, whereas D&D has become much more "Hasbrofied."