RollPlay Presents: a 5E Roundtable Discussion (EP1)

hello everybody and welcome to a very special roleplay presentation I have some of the greatest nerds on the internet here to talk about Dungeons & Dragons and I'm very excited Mike I have known you a long time Matt we go way back mr. Matt Koval you and I have met only once and briefly as frog men that's right yeah but we'll we'll take we'll take a moment because there may be folks in the audience who are not familiar with any of these beautiful faces and we'll we'll go around and we'll get a little a little introduction from from everybody so down down below me in the overlay we have the world's second most attractive Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master Matt Mercer I'm the wrister I'm a voice actor but uh primarily and these circles here I'm the known as the dungeon master for critical role which is a live D&D 5th edition live stream that we do on geek and sundry's twitch every week or me and my voice actors get into all sorts of chaos and then get yelled at for it by the internet yes you may have heard of critical role once or twice before I like that you just you just put that in the job description now that's gonna be good be good yelling but just a lot of yelling yeah and uh roleplay roleplay fans will also recognize Matt from a couple of very exciting one shot so Iran we've played dogs together and yeah all right you're on our swan song live show so we we go we go way back next to Matt is the other Matt how do you two want me to differentiate the two of you would one of you like to be math I'm I'm evil Matt and he's good man it's the facial hair you yeah actually I might be able to like we could hang on can i there we go that's ridiculous no Matt Matt Matt see is fine you call the Colville that's what everybody work does I'm the writer at Turtle Rock Studios there's only like you know 60 people at that company and five of them are named Matt so coal bill which means I'm constantly feeling like I'm back in seventh grade PE I'm the lead rider in a video game company and I have a YouTube channel in which I try to convince people that they should run dungeons dragons because it's easy and it's fun and I write I write that comic book yeah excellent and then rounding out rounding out our cast over here is my different Mike morels Mike what what do you do so I too am yelled at by people on the internet what binds us all together though I'm yelled at primarily for screwing up fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons having launched the game being Coley designer in the game like three years ago ever since then I have plotted to destroy it through poorly design on earth Dianna entries and play test stuff that we've sent out now luckily we have Jeremy Crawford on hand to foil my my ambition to destroy FF Edition and to actually make the stuff that I write actually function for the game so Jeremy cross part of what made it a necessity to to invite all of these people is that you had to have at least once been accused of ruining gaming forever yes bro there's a very recent very long response and a threat on the critical role subreddit going into excruciating detail about what a horrible person networks I actually think that how he's literally destroying never happened Dungeons and Dragons is what I read today so Wow oh I haven't read this no it's amazing you're worse than Laureen Williams oh wow it's spectacular it's really rare on a really any on any sub form I go on where a comment has been already pre collapsed by reddit algorithms and says -25 next to it you don't need this so we I mean we're we're here to talk about that that very thing Dungeons and Dragons and to going to depth a little bit about fifth edition particularly to discuss kind of how we play it the game itself to harass Mike about its mechanics and for him to harass us about mishandling game and yeah we're just gonna spend the next little while hanging out and and talking 5ee the game has been out what three three years now almost exactly came out in July summer of 2014 so we're halfway through the lifespan of the previous edition of being a right fifth edition has had some time to settle its roots a little bit we're in the thick of it and there's a ton of material and opinions God knows and experiences with the game so far but I want to talk about particularly I want to get a started by just talking about like what when we think about fifth edition particularly for the edition Dungeons & Dragons what is 5e about what is this game what is this a game about if someone asks you I would love to I would love to hear what you tell them when they ask what is what is D&D 5th edition about Mike I might save you for last cuz I think yours is yours is the most informed with these opinions but Matt if somebody asks you that what would what would you tell them but what is the game what is the traditional D&D yeah I would say it is a collaborative storytelling game with mechanics to decide whether or not you succeed or fail whether that be in moments of interacting with other characters that bring the world to life or combating evils and dangers in the environment for the dish and D&D is the most recent iteration of a system that you know relatively easily allows you to build a story with your friends at a table use the dice to see these successes through or these failures through and see where the story takes you from their evil Matt your thoughts is this for is this the question coming from someone who like theoretically doesn't know nothing nothing about yeah okay I think about the game or dungeon dragons at all yeah I would say it's a medieval fantasy role-playing game and it's designed specifically to be easy to house rule and and that's probably as far as I would go with it because I sort of assumed that in this day and age anyone I was talking to know what then RPG was so that's that's a fascinating point and I want to I want to linger on that a moment because in in this particular environment which is to say like twitch I think there's probably a bigger audience now than there ever has been for the whom that's not true that idea of knowing what a role-playing game is I disagree like surely they have they have everyone's made a character it might have been in Skyrim you know it might have been you know in but not necessarily a tabletop role-playing game well no that's true yeah okay but I I'm generally I'm philosophically opposed to that chapter you get in the beginning of all these RPGs where they just hope that the person reading it has never bought they've somehow tapped into this market that no one has ever heard of an RPG before so they're gonna try and explain it they say it's like cops and robbers but and like whatever everybody knows what RPG is in this day and age we've had we've had several decades of strained metaphor trying to explain like snakes and ladders but there's no board the board of mind I might describe it as being like World of Warcraft or like World of Warcraft and Game of Thrones and I would expect that to do the job and if the person doesn't know what like what the polyhedral czar then that's a whole other federal occasion so so Mike how are we doing however I'm describing dragons I I think it's it's it's it's close to a lot of the answers you know that that makes sense right and the but when you're coming at it from a design perspective from where we were and that K it's funny because when you were as soon as you're asked the question and we start answering him like I had this very vivid flashback like 2012 we had to make the case for like even doing fifth edition right to keep it going right you know why should there be role-playing games and it forced us to kind of think about it in terms of not what it is but what it does you know you can do the snakes and ladders and the dice and all that stuff but what it does for people is it gives people a creative space that you share with your friends and you don't really have that anywhere else I mean you without that without technology right or without the structure that D&D brings and I know that's not an answer I could give you someone was like I want to play D&D and I'm like no but that's what he does you're not you're not answering like Juan Edwards here like me the like regular human answer but what it points to is to say that going to be my answer would be something along the lines of it Dungeons & Dragons is a creative exercise you and your friends are going to together build a fantasy world and go on adventures in it and one of you is gonna take on the role of the person who plays everyone but the players and then each player takes on the role of one specific character in the story and that would be basically my answer I think in the wrong Edwards sense he would want an answer like it's about teamwork and heroism right I mean some some people are gonna want to hear the some people are gonna want to hear the it's about an elf and a dwarf and a fighter and a Triton bard going on an adventure and saving the world some people are gonna want to hear it's about killing things and taking their gold and getting experience points and some people are gonna want not evil Matt's answer about telling stories with your friends and I think that to a certain degree they're all they're all true but and we'll we'll get to the like how people actually play D&D versus the way the game is written later but I think that what's cool is that they're all the same like those are all answers to the question of what what D&D is so what's different about fifth edition then say would what would what would it be like perhaps for someone who was used to let's say we reached back into the distant past of 1978 and we we grabbed I don't know one of those people off of Gary's table and brought them forward or gave them a copy of 5e what what makes 5e its own game versus say merely the the iteration of all other deities that came before it make you money yeah yeah biggest thing is that it's the first edition of DD that's really been but designed knowing that it's D&D and by that I mean it wasn't built looking at like well can we be more like this other type of game or can we be more like this current trend it was really about what is Dungeons and Dragons you say D&D to people what pops in their head and what can we build a game that makes that answer true like as true as possible and making those sort of tropes you know like we variant we made for instance like fireball as a third-level spell is damage-wise math wise it's too powerful because but but we did that by design because right OD a fireball right getting fireballs awesome so it's like yes it is right we're gonna make that true things like that and so I think that's like you know because we we also have the advantage of those the first time having that sort of connectivity between between designers and players where we could really reach out to the audience and go beyond the forums and actually get like the people who are playing the game but aren't going online to complain about it I guess that's right you have more than our pRb Ginette yeah right so you could actually get to people who were just playing the game and in accepting the game fort it was and then in getting their sort of view on what direction should the game go it's very much in the in its design I come from a software background way back in the day we very much thought it was like this is an operating system that's made for a specific purpose to play Dungeons and Dragons so we want to know if you play Dungeons & Dragons what features do you need like this really isn't a game where we want to try to do some radical new thing and change what it is cuz that's just not what this audience needs or wants right yeah and that makes sense right the idea I think you can you can feel it in the DNA of 5e that it is even if you weren't party to the the sort of play test and the run up to that there is there is a very like a DM Venus to to it right it feels like there are things that are in the game both for good and potentially for ill that speak to that D&D thing so I mean like not non-evil Matt you I know you've played you played Pathfinder as a D&D variant are there other versions of D&D do you have as much experience with I mean where I grew up for many years playing a D&D second edition I played 3.0 3.5 it did not find her so and I've gone back and since I played first edition you know to try it out since then so I've basically tipped into all the different if I ran a fourth edition campaign for a couple years so yeah I pretty much touched every edition and I think what makes what makes D&D D&D are certain phrases in certain mechanics like armor crying armor class is something when you hear that it's meaning we think of a D&D and that's gone over into all their forms of media whenever you see other games if you've touched the endear and everything about it you go oh that's because of DMD when you talk about the different classes you have you know that the cleric the paladin the wizard you know the the the the rogue these are all things that really as as fantasy archetypes and the abilities that are inherent within we're really really defined by a Dungeons and Dragons when it first came out so those are the types of things that you expect to see those are the things that each addition has carried through as they developed and have been this constant so I mean there are how much you change the rules as long as you kind of have those core elements to it saving throws is another big one you know these are all different things as long as these exist then very much it still feels and is the continuation of DNV so it feels it feels to me like fourth edition tried to move a little bit away from some of those things where took took a risk in moving away from some of that stuff and I think at least from my perspective the fan reaction was fairly clear I'm actually a big fan of 4ee but I don't know that it's it's certainly not doing the same thing that five years doing in terms of being Dungeons and Dragons I think it's a great game but v II definitely succeeded more in the being D&D kind of space when you were made when you were developing 5e were there any of those mechanics that felt less like points of inspiration and more like shackles let's say for the design right because there are things that you you I'm sure had to feel like you were required to include yeah and I think you know the trick to it was really instead of thinking those as shackles that are holding us back the thinking is a challenge like and you know it's such a cheesy answer it's like something you give like you know like what do you say your greatest weakness is my girls like when you're in a position we're like this is kind of like a weird thing to have in a game like why would you have a lineman but then you realize your users are all asking for it you have to come out at it from the angle that this is a benefit you can't actually evil evil Matt Colville has something to say they're asking for it they're asking you know I think you're absolutely make about about people have fans of dungeons and dragons seem to have a masochistic relation ship with alignment where it's like we hate it it's the worst you get it out of here but if you're like what if we just took a lineman nothing like no can bring it back yeah it's not D&D I can't be lawful evil yeah because I it's one of those things where this and this where Danny gets and I could i'ma try not to ramble right but the D&D is a culture that's what we discovered we're working in the game it's not a game it's a culture so you can say game wise alignment this this is kind of silly but like for having arguments on line wise Oh alignments awesome right like what alignments Batman right that gives you like two weeks of dreads right like because it's really it's it fuels the stuff you're doing when you're not at the table playing the game and it fuels that it feels it connected you know it's a connection between each each play group D and E is weird and that everyone plays it never plays it wildly differently yet potentially right which is weird because you can't you can't say the same thing about say like monopoly or many other games that you you play them the one way which is to say by the rules yeah but I think that kind of gets to be earlier than we were talking about where is Dean I mean you can even asses Dean even a game right it's a great you know so I guess that's that's the question right we can look at it as the cultural impact of D&D and that's obviously huge right there is there is obviously a huge you look at most people think of when they think of role-playing games they think of Dungeons and Dragons right we have this sort of Kleenex effect that is happening or band-aid effect right with Dungeons and Dragons where like you said it's it's as much the I mean even on Twitch most tabletop role-playing game streams are categorized as d indeed right so how do you I guess how do you differentiate DV like I guess this is a question for everybody but obviously like Matt you're the main game that you play and are known for is 5ye evil Matt are you are you like playing or talking about any games that are not dungeons variants right now no yeah right like no I've played dozens of RPGs but as I sort of grew out of that idea of playing other RPGs and I probably go through another two or three lifetimes playing D&D every week without feeling like I exhausted what I want to do with it interesting so you are you telling the same are using when you're doing this telling the same kinds of stories with D&D right because deedie it's it's a game and it has mechanisms for doing certain things do you ever feel like you are like beholden to those things particularly no I think you can tell you know it was like Isaac Asimov that wrote caves of Steel and blew everybody away because he wrote a detective story in a science fiction universe no one had done that before right and that's you get this explosion of sci-fi the leads to like the new wave and to me that's like D&D you can tell any kind of story you want in the context of dandy and that's how I think of it like I said my player is a write up saying what is the next campaign you guys want to play and there were four or five different options and they're all wildly different kinds of stories and you know I didn't feel I didn't feel constrained at all because D&D is not a genre it's a meta shanwa it contains all this other stuff it contains some things I like about alignment actually is because alignments one of the few things in the game that it's like a signal it's a it's a flag planted on the hill of Conan esque you know fought for in the grey mouse or Elric play which is now obscure because it's got law and chaos in it where is law and chaos in our culture outside of D&D so you mentioned or you mentioned earlier that you believe that 5e is ostensible in a way that maybe previous editions of Dungeons & Dragons aren't right that you can hack or or redesign the things that aren't working and is that would you say that's a part of what gives it that flexibility for you well I know I've never felt constrained in the kinds of stories I can tell inside D&D with any addition I've been crazy in love with each edition of D&D serially and never once felt actually I maybe that's not true maybe fourth edition did kind of make me feel that's the only Edition I abandoned because I felt like the kind of game I wanted to run it didn't support but otherwise otherwise no I don't think the rules of D&D really have to me any impact on the kind of stories you can tell with it well I guess I guess that means Mike you're out of a job here's here's a rule book with some pictures of elves and dwarves in it that just say do whatever you like get a deck of cards with that yeah I mean I think I think that's I think that's fascinating because I I like like very firmly disagree with with the idea that you can do anything with Dungeons & Dragons or that you should but I can see how a lot of groups and a lot of players can make that work but we're getting look we can get back to this and Matt you and I can talk as much length as you'd like about it later but I think that I think that's I think that's fascinating I think it brings us to the idea that every group of of players is potentially playing a different version of D&D and so how do you how do you account whether they like it or not yeah right well and that's things like how as a designer or as someone who plays the game and GM's the game how do you account for the fact that if you're not playing the rules of the games exclusively you're playing the rules of the game and people's cultural baggage how do you how do you get around that like non-evil Matt you you have experience playing with like large groups of people who are predominantly known for their work as voice actors and maybe role-playing game fans secondarily or in a tertiary way how do you keep everybody on the same page totally with with like a campaign and with the game particularly with the indie a lot of that comes from comfort at the table you know we we thankfully have been playing the game before we started streaming for two years and any gaming group that's played for an extended period of time together you eventually find that comfort balance you begin to learn each other's quirks learning how to work together what each person's spotlight moment kind of looks like or what things they like to jump in for I'm guarantee you if we started streaming the very beginning of that campaign with a bunch of newbies that you saw it would have been a lot rougher because it was a lot rougher everyone's having a great time but it was still a lot of work on my end to try and get everybody together and and make things work in gel you know there's a lot of hand-holding but also trying to teach them you can try anything you know doesn't mean it'll succeed but you can try anything so it's been an experience of learning how to cultivate different personalities who previously had no I your understanding of what a role-playing game could be or how it necessarily works but like Danby and most role-playing games the magic of that moment where the player clicks and gets it is kind of the the real drug what keeps you know back in that table the idea that you can spawn you know action or reaction from nothing and so working with with these actors the whole time it's been kind of fun to watch them kind of flip honestly watch them go from people who their whole life is based around performing arts and and you know not game centric things to now we have text threads every day talking about you know ideas for the next campaign characters they want to make they'll tell me about dreams they have based on the sessions that we ran Laura Bailey now has a ton of bear iconography artwork and you know statues in her house now just because she decided to have a bear as a ranger back in the day on a win so it's it's crazy how it just influences that so I'd say it's definitely it's shifted now to where they become more almost role players on an equal level as they are actors as far as right Horton's very hang well I think I mean I think that kind of that kind of engagement in the narratives that we're building is a very it's a very human thing right the the way that people will describe a role-playing game campaign in recession of a campaign of D&D as like a thing we did not the thing our characters did that that very deep like personification of the thing in them in the past tense right remembering it as as if you were there actually doing it I mean but that's natural that's what humans do right like if you get if you run into somebody while you're driving you don't say my car hit that guy's car right say I hit that guy I mean unless you're trying to like get out of being blamed for hitting them right yeah I didn't kill a man the front end of my car and momentum and inertia are responsible referring to your character in the first person is totally natural everybody everybody does it well that's kind of what some magic about the experience and there's a woman who named Jennifer will let who wrote a book called me myself and why it's so about bikes you know psychology and in the body it's a wonderful book but she has a section that talks about role-playing games and pendants and dragon and how the experiences that you created the table the memories that are being recorded are being recorded in the same part of the brain that actual physical memory of experiences you're having are there's something about the storytelling method the communal storytelling method that records it so it when you remember when you recall these experiences you don't remember necessarily being at the table with your friends rolling dice you remember being on the collapsing bridge under the mountain you know and your friend reaching out and grabbing your hand and you tell these tales as if they actually happen which is why people who don't know Dean do you think you're crazy at the party does it ever worry you at all that like these these things that we're internalizing is our own actions predominantly rotate around the killing of other things like sentient things you know I think I think the thing the thing that's interesting about this and I want to I want to use this to kind of bring it back to Dee Dee in what way is to the rules of Dungeons & Dragons whose additions specifically enable that kind of closeness to the narrative like what about this game versus any other game makes that possible for me within the context of Dungeons and Dragons I remember when I first got into second edition of the indie it was the openness it was the idea that there were a lot of very dense rules but beyond that scope anything was possible it was that mentality and that kind of freedom that really drew me in as the game progressed and the mechanics got more defined and people kind of made it more into a game that it was tangible on a general scale I guess the exceed the open role-playing experience and the gainy combat you know dice rolling experience began to become two separate entities you had to work really hard as a DM to be able to weave the two together and the fourth edition was a perfect example of a very in my opinion divergent separation between the two like I had I felt like I was doing double duty as a DM to make the combat feel like a transition naturally to and out of the role-playing game and it was almost like you know alright let's go put our pencils down and go play a PlayStation fighting game for a little bit you know is was a very different experience in fifth edition' to me was was a return to form of the older editions of it being a more fluid transition and really kind of lending being able to marry the role-playing narrative aspects to the combat elements and not feeling like you're playing to separate experiences well so that that experiential separation thing and I know that Mike this is something that you've you've put some thought into okay can we talk about the the both cultural and mechanical stuff about that split which is to say rolling initiative right like it is it is the flag in the ground that tells everyone we are moving from one thing to a different thing we are we are putting down our funny hats and silly voices albeit temporarily to pick up our pencils and our dice and fight a thing and that's the stakes are changing how much is the idea of that transition that clear combat time versus non-combat time important to the idea of dungeons dragons generally and then 5e specifically no I I think I think it's pretty it's important but I think it's important it's easy to make it too important and I think that's going into like what Matt was talking about earlier you was just talking about that the combat becoming its own game rather than part of the game but on the other hand it is important because that is essentially all I could think with is that's the moment in the game where you tell you what okay now really pay attention to this right if you're just in you know the Market Square in you know the in Sharn somewhere you know you're trying to find some guy you can afford to kind of not pay attention you know the idea of teamwork is and isn't as key you know the stakes are lower you know okay we're just trying to find this guy we're looking for and then when the DM says roll initiative now everyone the stakes are raised and everyone kind of knows can't need to be paying a bit more attention because now I kind of have a roll the film the McClaren can need to be looking after people heal from the fighter I need to get you know get in there and start beating stuff down and that's why I think it's really nice culturally and mechanically because it does it signals that shift in the game like you know this is when in the movie the music swells and everything is gonna get you know you don't film a fight scene the way you film the scene of you know Jason Jason Bourne talking to someone you know yeah it would actually kind of funny how to think approach but also getting a little bit back to what to it another a spur to what Matt was talking about we did in the design of fifth try to slice down as many of the layers between what we saw is their character identity and the things you did as an example saving throws now in fifth are just ability score checks and whenever possible we wanted to get rid of all the terms and and and and things that were between what we thought of is like this is what defines your character we kind of saw that as the ability scores and then everything else in the game you know make it really driven by saying okay I rolled an 18 strength my character is super strong and so make that okay making strength checks and I'm using my strength to attack and I'm using shame for a mice might money you know in athletics check and things like that and so I think that's was the challenge with combat was to have that moment where the camera works so to speak is different but it's not like now I went from watching a movie to playing a platformer video game or some like that were do I just feel like it's too disconnected and that's that is a criticism we really saw way off or forth when we were sort of doing our market research was that people really were aware of them over that divide and they felt unsatisfying to them right so mechanically the the divide exists to separate two different kinds of narrative because you're using different tools to manage them and I think this whole situation is really interesting because a lot of people who are coming into Dungeons and Dragons now have more familiarity with say games like Final Fantasy whose original version was based on Dungeons and Dragons and Final Fantasy is the epitome of the oh you're doing a thing hold on we're gonna interrupt you now you fight with a totally different set of rules completely different viewpoint stop that go back to the other thing so people I think now it's it's self reoccurring right you you you hear that music in your head that's starting the fight when the GM says roll initiative and I think it's very much become a cultural a cultural aspect so was there ever was ever a point at which that was on the chopping block that idea of having the to firmly separated phases or has that just been a given from from the developmental get-go I think it's gonna give it just because managing the action potato requires it you know when you think about it and we notice this that players whether they explicitly state or not were aware this idea that non-combat and combat are two separate phases and combat does require a more rigid turn order just to keep things I think really straight for the DM because we're in non-combat I'm not tracking as many stats so specifically as I say hit points you know I don't have to refer to as many things like I need to look up a different saving curl or special ability that the nice thing about pacing is very rigid turnover is it a turn order is that it gives the dungeon master the time to look stuff up and to manage things without play feeling like it's screeching to a halt it's the ogres turn it's a natural beat that I'm gonna take a look at the ogre stats and go okay he's gonna smash you with his Club right as opposed like you were talking if you're talking for the ogre and I to keep like oh we okay the ogre will give me a sec well I really don't know if the ogre wants to say okay he's gonna think you would just get the flow is different let me consult this box text that tells me about the ogre 45 minutes later and then so what were you saying yeah yeah yeah absolutely I think guys like personally I think that's that's a really interesting divide right that player engagement how much attention people are playing paying to the game as you go and that kind of slap in the face that like it's a fight now pay a different kind of attention to it yeah I think so I go ahead continue I was just say like I I think that that's something that that because there is a pedigree of this particular design of dungeons and dragons as a lineage of games has become a given in in a lot of games people will look at a game they haven't played before and when they see that there is a different version or another way of doing initiative or no initiative order at all it's very disorienting yeah yeah I was gonna say but what's and kind of thing off that D&D has its cultural touchstone because it was one of the first real tabletop role-playing games to ever emerge and the popularity that it's a you know been afforded over the past you know only nearly half a century of its existence its it's become this kind of general good kind of middle gateway to tabletop role-playing games universally because it has cultural significance and people recognize the name combined with the fact that it has a little bit of everything it has customization if you want to go deeper into characters but you don't have to go into super deep customization if you don't want to it doesn't specialize in anything which I think the longer you play role-playing games and the more you you find what you want out of role-playing games you tend to you know explore other systems that are more tailored to the specific type of game or story you want to play D&D still remains that good kind of base well-rounded type of system to introduce to people or to come back to if you wanted to try something I don't say generic necessarily but something that that's comfortable it's the comfort food of tabletop role-playing games yeah yeah yeah and I think that's I mean that's that's a position that it has as a product in the in a market to write as being this very gateway kind of thing into all other role-playing games most of the time culturally when someone asks to play a role-playing game they're thinking about dungeons dragons versus say like in Nordic LARP unless you live in Denmark well so so that's I want to talk a little bit more about the the ability to use D&D to tell a bunch of different stories and how much mechanically Danny might require to get there right like I think that I've said lots of times I think we probably all agree that that if you play a role-playing game if you play Dungeons & Dragons particularly long enough you make the move from player to designer right everybody has made their own thing they have they have altered the alignment system they find a thing that's a burr that they don't like something that rubs on them and they they say you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna change this I'm going to throw it out I'm gonna rewrite it whether it's a smart decision on their part or not this is the thing that I think happens ultimately and so mammer sir I know you've made some some content for fifth edition but I want to I want evil Matt can you you talk a little bit more about about that because you said right at the get-go that part of your description of the game is that it is like hackable that it's something that you can change in what ways do you think that's true I just heard what sounded like a coming from someone's microphone I asked that question a different way I don't think I I'm not sure I'm well equipped to attack that what when we talk about hacking the game what do we mean also changing changing the core default assumptions of the game either mechanically yeah I think I disagree with your assumption that if you play this game long enough you're gonna be I'm a designer I think definitely I've been playing the game now with lots of different people including the same group of people since I was 15 and there are definitely the majority of them have no impulse or interest in becoming a designer I think what it does do is it is it awakens in certain players their nascent engineer there are engineer style players who who they don't know it yet but they want to monkey with stuff and for them that's the juice and there but there are certainly people who are perfectly happy playing this game every week for three years oh yeah yeah like when I when I say when I say that like they become designers I mean in very small small ways like adjusting the default assumptions the game either by changing the stats of a monster or by creating a new monster or something usually it's something small right sure rather than like making their own their own game no I get that I just have I just have my own personal experiences I have lots of friends that don't have any interest in doing that like they're there they take the game for granted and that's the game that they are happy to play players just players or they also game mastering know they're just players I have like I have good friends of mine who have no desire to DM and and and if they tried it they would probably wouldn't be very good at it and that's and they know that and so they're perfectly happy to just play the game that's their that's the juice for them they're not they don't they don't sit around wondering they'll put up with me saying hey I want to try this new initiative system they're like okay sure fine but that's not for them that's not the juice the juice is not I want a monkey with this game I want to tweak how these monsters work they don't I don't I don't I don't think it's inevitable to all players eventually becomes Dan's right well and that's I think that's a thing right is that there's there's a cultural idea and and I would love I would love to be told that I'm wrong about this but I think that there's a cultural idea that you begin knowing nothing you play the game some percentage of those people become Dungeon Master's and then some percentage of those people understand the game enough to like make their own so like there's a very clear assumed escalator built into the way people look at dungeons dragons do you think that's that's true am I talking on my ass no I think that's absolutely true right my goal is just to increase the number of players who to make it easier for them to go from wanting to DM but being intimidated by it to know it's easy it's fun you'll enjoy it but my own personal experience is that not everyone wants to get behind the screen not everyone has that kind of story solar / engineer inside right I will say - to Adams point though almost everybody I know who's gone behind the screen has once they've been playing a while found themselves whether they intended to or not beginning to customize create and design their own stuff you assume that even players that only do modules and only run elements you know half the nature of the game is having to improvise or just things in the fly based on unexpected circumstances or player choices and once you get the sense of oh I really can't alter and adjust anything to suit what I need in this moment I don't not be Hooven to what's written in these books then then you can't help yourself a beginning to tweak change shift and and write your own unique homebrew elements to the game from that point sure yeah absolutely I think that's i think for some players that's inevitable yeah so what's the what's the difference then between someone who is willing to play Dungeons & Dragons versus someone who's willing to DM dungeons the Dragons is it purely experience or like what what helps people move from from one of those roles to the other the thing I've noticed is that and this is one of the things that I think we all love about this game in this hobby is that there's actually several different routes into getting behind the screen and when I was starting off you'd see players players look at the Dungeon Master's world that they'd built and they're like that's amazing I want to do that it's a very different experience than saying I want to sit behind the screen and and and judge this game now they wanted to build a world right and and even that oh look at those maps that guy drew I want to draw I want to draw my own Maps you know it's there's at least four or five different discrete ways paths to getting behind the screen I don't think it's just I don't think it's inevitable and I don't think there's only one way to do it no certainly I definitely don't think it's inevitable I think that necessity is often a the product of a dungeon master - right that people people say I really want to play Dungeons & Dragons I don't know anybody else all of my friends I look at me I bought the book I guess I'm the DM what what's the like I would love to I'd love to see the the marketing data here between like people who buy DD books versus people who show up and read other people's D&D books and make characters and what the the like target audience is they're like is is it a priority of of like say fifth edition as a design mic is it a priority of this game to make it easier to Dungeon Master is making more Dungeon Master as a priority of this version of the game 100% right and that was something to which we saw in building the game and realizing we looked at what we knew about D&D back in the 80s and 90s persons say the aughts I guess the zeros whatever we called that decade and now we're a dark times there was the there was a very much a shift in how how many new people were coming into the game and actually we saw compared to historical numbers third and fourth saw a significant drop the new player a quick acquisition engine the kind of fancy term for it had really not sputtered to a halt obviously because people we're still coming in but you didn't see anywhere near as many players and that was one of the big questions we try to answer with v like what's happening you know like why is that and I think a lot of it is that on one hand you want rules to help you guide the game right if you're a new dungeon master and you have to answer a question if there's rule for it you can just look the rule up and implement the rule great that's one less thing to worry about the under their hand every time you add a rule to the game for the dungeon master to use that's another new thing the dungeon master has to account for or have to implement because the trick to a role-playing game tabletop role-playing game is the rules are passive until the group makes them active right if there's a rule for climbing the wall if we don't know that rule exists or does about it doesn't add anything until there's a wall exactly or even until someone realizes that we had to question them like when I first started playing 3.0 one of the best Dungeon Master's I played three Oh with I the first three sessions we use saving throws for everything like there's one point I want to climb a wall make a reflex save like okay like we didn't whatever right you're the dungeon master it's what I'll do and it was fine it was great that's yeah we were chance yeah we're playing the night below I remember playing for that it was like the keep and like the the evil cleric with the wings and we had a fantastic time like that was like you talk about like you know burning memories I still remember you know being Bjorn the dwarf in that broken courtyard with my flail dive-bombing on top of the cleric from like I think the top of the ledge and I'm sure we played nothing like the actual rules I'm sure like the DM had the cleric make a reflex aim and I made a fortitude save and I rolled higher so it meant I landed on top of him like that's what's interesting about it and then and then getting that that balance because you can imagine and I've seen this happen you can picture the the enthusiastic new dungeon master who's running the game and everyone is having a fun time because there's this energy in the storytelling is great but then someone either stops the game because oh that's not how the rule should work and like then you have this real interesting question of well is the rule actually helping us or is it actually getting in the way because we're having fun making fortitude saves to determine if Bjorn the dwarf could jump on top of the flying cleric and but if we instead actually looked it up and started implementing the rules would that actually give us a more enjoyable time and I think that's such a really huge question and tables are for playing game design right it's the only type of game where you have that come up you don't play Monopoly and you roll the dice and land on boardwalk and go oh I I just I got a hotel why not write like no because it's competitive right people are gonna you know or if you're playing a video game obviously all the rules are implemented at the time if I'm playing overwatch I can't just decide I'm gonna play as tracer and open up a coffee stand instead of like taking part right I can't do that sir copy simulator well I've heard I've role-playing games described as in comparison and contrast to two other games in a in a video game the video game tells you everything you can do and in a tabletop role-playing game the rules tell you everything you can't do right they bound the rules only in what isn't possible for you everything else is possible and and I think that to a degree I think that's true of role-playing games because there is this space for improvisation of mechanics not just of the narrative the AI you can say well based on what I understand about the basic way that say fifth edition works I can make a call mechanically yes that's kind of says so it's gonna feel enough like a rule you could have written into the book but because it was enough of an edge case or because it was irrelevant at the time you don't you don't have to you know have to do it but Matt you had you had a reaction to that I would've been shaping in the bed what you got I don't I I think I probably misinterpreted what you were saying it sounded like you were saying that tabletop RPGs like D&D have tell you what you can't do and I've never encountered that I've never seen like a rule that said you can't get out the rules say the rules the rules bound the space that the natural assumption I think for some players not all that if there was no rule for that you can't do it right and that's something that you got people got to get over the thing I like about fifth edition is that I get this all the time on because of the nature of my channel people want to ask me rules questions sometimes I think cuz they haven't been paying attention to the point of my channel but and I often I read what their question is about the rules and I am like ah this is one of those things that Mike he wrote it that way on purpose because he wants you to decide how it works and you asked a question really early on Adam you asked about like what would somebody even 1978 or 1975 think about fifth edition and I think that they would completely recognize it as opposed to somebody from two thousand or two thousand eight they would be like wow there's more class they would want to argue about the sorcerer as a class right they would want to they would want to argue about the use of hit dice and how that was changed and a lot of people would sigh with relief that finally someone had pulled the trigger on making armor class go up and set it down which is something they had been talking about for years back then but they would 100% recognize the design of fifth edition because it is supposed to first of all there's lots of sharks Mike morels loves charts yeah it's designed to be ambiguous it's designed to use natural language that's part of the intent of the game because the DM to have to come up with an answer and that is so much more satisfying I think it makes up it makes better masters than earlier the like the last two editions of the game adding I think there's there's a fascinating space between here is everything you could ever want a rule for right perhaps do you know you have to do all yeah these do you have to do all of these things and if there is if it's there's no rule for it I don't know too bad you're on your own tweet angrily at somebody and then the the vast sparseness if same old vaidhi Andy that is supported by this in what way it's clear right and I think that we've maybe internalized it a lot as we move through games that if there is a sparseness is a responsibility of the dungeon master or the table at large to make up rules but the idea that we're not going to give you rules for everything but we're going to give you the space in which to create your own rules for those things where you can make rulings based on the assumption that you know how this game works because you've read it yeah we're sitting forcing the DM to to interpret something is Brian that and that feels to me like a pretty massive leap of faith for Dungeon Master's right like I feel like a game like third edition is in a lot of ways much like over preparing for a session because I see this time and time again where new game masters are like I spent eighteen hours prepping this adventure and and I made a map of every room that could possibly gone into and I did all of his stuff and I'm exhausted and being a DM sucks and I hate it because I haven't done it before and I need to be ready coach the same way third edition and and games like it say don't worry we've got you covered we've thought of everything where is a game like five e is a lot more old-school in that sense in that it basically just pulls the rug out from you and says I don't know make it up like here's the rules we care about to make the game work but there may be other spaces where we haven't haven't filled it in so what what is five five you as fifth edition do both in in your experiences Matt and Matt as game masters and Mike as a designer what does it do to help alleviate that how does it how does it make it possible for people to play that without having all of the epochs of role-playing experience that some of us might have I think one ammunition was a little bit before morals was saying condensing everything to be attached to the ability scores means in theory you you could play the entire game just rolling those modifiers if you really really wanted to if you're talking some of the sword roll add your strength amount of fire you know if you want to try and dodge something roll add your dexterity modify like in theory everything could be condensed Jenny's done that you're describing you're describing a vampire LARP I think yeah survival but um but I think because it kind of streamlined the idea of making the ability scores the core mechanic and everything kind of expands from there the village of the dungeon master they don't feel like they have to necessarily know every single intrinsic rule they can make judgment calls based on what they feel is the necessary ability check in that scenario if you're a first time Dungeon Master you couldn't theory run the game with just the ability square modifiers if you really need to then once you know the skills pretty well then you can branch out into the skills you know and then you know working in the proficiencies and stuff you know if you were really really scared to dive into the ruleset I know I have a bird who gets excited in the background my apologies I've met that word yes you have I think I think because the system doesn't lean so heavily on the floating modifiers in the situational modifiers the older editions did where you know bonuses and pluses and minus would happen based on certain circumstances the introduction of the advantage and disadvantage system I think was a great way of streamlining you know being able to reward or give consequences to fast-paced circumstances and role-playing and/or combat and so I think for the dition has taken some of these what what used to be in third edition very elaborate rulesets trying to prepare for a community that wanted to know the answer to everything and thence them down into a couple of small mechanics and said you know what these will work in most situations it's your call and I think those that is it very welcoming completely agree I think that fifth edition has the advantage over it's more like mold if I cook over it over a third edition and fourth edition I think which by the way I love both of those quite a lot and then it's not trying to trick you into thinking that there's a rule for everything in the first place yeah right when you read like you know you talked about spending 18 hours working on an adventure and third edition is like no we have all the answers here it's like well great you're gonna spend those 18 hours now reading this book because gosh and that's seductive for a lot of people that there is an answer and it's gonna be super robust when you find it and if only we sit here long enough and hand out enough copies of The Player's Handbook we will find that answer to that rule and that is it's intimidating and I think it's dangerous and it teaches players bad lessons because there is no game that has an answer for everything regardless of how robust it is and fifth edition never it never even implies that so I think there have to be lots of new Dungeon Master's out there who aren't getting worked up about that stuff because they read the book and it doesn't occur to them not to just wing it and you're like matt said use the stat modifiers for it just give the guy a I don't know maybe the boat maybe there's a bonus out there plus somewhere I'm just gonna give you advantage because I know how that works so I mean it it sounds it sounds a lot like what we're talking about is as a designer like I would I would find hearing hearing that about a game that I designed a little unnerving because you can't control people's behavior in that way you can't be sure that they're getting the same experience that you had intended in your rules so we're gonna get the same experience anyway that's an illusion right well exactly but but I think the thing is the only way you can impart what you want out of your game to the people who are playing it is the design of the game it's the game itself and it's there's certainly room for GM's to to create their own stuff and I think that it's it's really powerful I think that's what gives 5e some of its its legs the ability to like like you said like I don't know how this is gonna go let's just make a rule based on the rules we already understand and those are clear is a framework but what I guess Mike what is what is in Dungeons and Dragons that you put there explicitly as a rule either because you knew people would need a rule for that thing or because it was something that you wanted to be sure that people would play in a certain way so that actually when you think about rules and the design of it the stuff that you're saying okay now let's put a what we thought of in the design as a high wall like this is something which we really want you to notice that actually really focused on character class design where you Dan that's where when you see people say oh this is broken right you think of a game like hearthstone or magic people talk about something being broken it's the car it's the card everyone's playing it's too good the game's boring now because everyone's playing the same deck this card is broken we you think about broken in D and D it's usually because a character isn't just doing one thing really well they're doing something that everyone wants to do so well that no one else really feels like doing it and that's really where you get those the real benefit of those hard rules of people applying is when you cut you you bring in this idea of teamwork you know that hey I am the cleric or I'm the bard I can heal you and you are the barbarian and you're here to beat stuff down rather than heal it you know then heal the rest of the party or you know and everyone kind of having their job or their role because that's when you know the game is a group game and it said its most enjoyable where everyone everyone feels like the hero when everyone feels like they have a chance to be the main character you know we have this kind of thing when you look at some of my Dragonlance you know as opposed to say the Lord of the Rings we're Lord of the Rings each character kind of has their arc but really like Gimli and Legolas are along for the ride they're not really the main characters but when you look at someone like dragon lands and one of things I liked about it was a kid when I read it was this idea that everyone each of the characters has this very important arc and I think that was because that started as a role-playing game campaign right if I show up to play Raceland I'm not gonna be content to be like oh I'm just the wizard I'm just gonna cast a spell and hang on the background I mean I feel like I feel like I've definitely had raistlin's who are like looking at their phone most of the time you're like Raceland it's your turn man what are you doing do you want to say anything I just say something rude or mean I'm just gonna be a dick and I'm just well and that's kind of a challenge she was right you need to be the design for that player cuz that that it's it's an interesting thing I mean I could go on I'm gonna like spiderweb here and go off on a different tangent but that player is important because that might be your cleric right well that might be your wizard who's taking up that role but your employer I think that that above and beyond their role in the party that person might be someone you want to play games with and yeah there are lots of different ways to play role-playing games and I think that that person knew that that off Raceland is like a valid style of playing Dungeons and Dragons we may not all like it but that's a thing yeah I think that that place is the point - and you consider the the more defined the rule sets are for a system the more you try and create boundary for every circumstance the more people feel the pressure that there's only one right way to play the game yeah and any variation is doing a disservice to the system and other people that play it and make you a detriment to have at the table and I've seen that mentality happen in games all my experience growing up playing role-playing games in many different systems and I think I think this is you know a lot of systems these days fifth edition and very much included are starting to understand and adopt the idea that being able to have core base general rule sets that can be applied loosely and liberally all throughout the game and then allowing the players to kind of fill in the gaps with their own ideas allows a much broader community to enjoy it in so many different ways and prevent that type of that competitive kind of rules argument overtaking the game continuously as it once did back in the heyday of things second edition on yeah so in a in a game and I often find that that the more complicated a game is the more the more rules there are the more of the sort of end of life fan tends to be attached to it like the longer someone plays something the more complicated is the deeper they get involved in it and the less likely they are to play anything else which is a great customer but not necessarily a great person to have in your gaming group because then when you're like hey so we've played a lot of this game I want to try something else they're just they'll leave or light your house on fire so I think and I wonder about this and Matt obviously you've got some experience with like long-running campaigns and people getting getting engaged with stuff but to what degree where is where's the sweet spot in terms of how complex the game should be to reward giving a about the rules versus being like cool off Raceland you can play and you never actually have to learn the rules and we're all level 20 and your turn takes 20 minutes because you never know what you're doing because you never read your character sheet I like where's where's the where's the space there that that's going to keep people playing but not get boring as you as you master it and like how does 5e approach that space it's like I had experiences that passed with like the amber dices role-playing game and I was younger which I loved I loved the book series and I liked the idea of there being this kind of purely based on you know what the GM figured should say Theatre fail but when you have such an open-ended rule set essentially and it's all about interpretation it I don't know it becomes difficult for the players to understand what they're really capable of difficult to see the reasoning as to why things succeed or fail and eventually players lose interest in the narrative and I finding that sweet spot I mean from a designer standpoint Myka definitely hits with this better than I can from from my experience playing the game a lot of that is defined by your game group and and the communication early into your game or campaign of what kind of game rome wants to play if everyone's there for a very heavy story oriented narrative and a you know are not to bound up in the rules then you can tailor a game to facilitate that have a gaming experience but I also have a lot of friends miner grew up with who love you know full hardcore dungeon crawls and love the idea of just playing a very tactical you know Diablo esque gaming experience and are very sticklers about the rules and that's where the fun is there's nothing wrong with that either but I think communicating that and finding finding that balance within the system you want to play and how hard you want to implement it it's important more table the table than it is for an overall system in my experience I suspect it's a great having Mike here because III I suspect Mike would say that that balance is in the class you choose and that the Raceland player who is upsetting you because they refuse to learn the rules if that guy just switched to like barbarian or fighter he'd be having a great time and no one will be angry at so if that's if that's the case why is that not called out particularly in the text or like if you're playing and I think this is a valid thing to discuss because if you're playing while you're playing if you're playing on mobile I could see you like the slow burn I'm glad we could give you something to explode over like a MOBA it will explicitly tell you like this character is easy to play right these characters um this character is difficult so what is and I'm not I'm not gonna take sides on this but what is the decision there of obfuscating that yeah Mike so yeah it comes down to there's the biggest thing is if you tell and this is what we we found this in testing so I can say this is actually something we found if you tell people essentially what what this is what you mean to say hey you're new and you want to play a character and have fun here's the simple character for you to play yeah that's what you're saying last what don't write what they're hearing is hey since you're kind of stupid I'm gonna pat you on the head and give you this character that's really simple now go have fun and try not to ruin the game like you know it's really and you see this even in what I used to play a lot of overwatch you would see people complain like oh if you're a bastard main that's pathetic like that bastions easy mode like oh you're good at Bastion what a joke right and that becomes part of the game and actually becomes a source of some toxicity because you I had friends who just like playing bastions they thought it was cute right they liked the emotes in like the bubs the the the tweaks and then the sounds and then they go in the community and find oh like they're awful right like you're a bad person because you're playing this character cuz it's no skill right like you see that happen all the time so it's really tricky because on one hand you want to guide people and this is this this is the danger of the book right because a book is it's a book it's printed it's done it's not a conversation that when you label things then you have to consider the benefit of that but then you have to consider the drawback and you have to think of that long term because you know you don't want to be a position where you tell someone this is the simple character the implication is that this these other characters are somehow better right and it's people's rules complexity because that's not that's a lesson you want to give people especially nerds will see that as a challenge so if you're like listen for your own good please this is the way to start the game play one of these classes to figure it out they'll be like you I'm playing the hardest one you got and then they have a miserable time there your game sucks and it was it was there was actually a time when in fifth edition was going to launch with Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons like we're gonna bring that name back for exactly that reason like how do we graduate people get them in but when you look back the historical numbers people just didn't play basic DVD back in the day we bought the red box and then once there's a weari which is so weird because basic D&D is a much better game than a D&D like just means a rule Cyclops is one of like all-time great RPG books ever do right and it's the thing is if you took basic I I think if you if we could all get back at a time machine and hop back into basic D&D and say look let people pick race in class in basic D&D then I think you would have seen a much different story because I think just that alone because I remember very vividly being 12 years old and finding ad mean a B and D and going wow I can play a dwarf fighter thief that's awesome I want to do that and I think that was you know one of the you know that's the interesting thing about the game right is you want to tell people imagine anything and then be it okay but don't imagine a wizard because that's hard to play it's very tricky and that that is why when you look at the basic D D document we put out the P the free PDF we very intentionally like that list of spells is picked to be as simple as possible while being satisfying like we wanted people to feel like okay you're playing the full game but we're gonna cut out as many the choices as possible and we're gonna cut out as many of like the more techy er complicated things like if I remember right if you basically play a cleric using basic D&D as we publish it now you're basically Keeler and if you're playing a wizard you're basically a blaster and and we didn't want to then put in other things that might make you feel like oh but I really should be making this choice you know like we wanted to boil it down to be as simple as possible because that ideally if you're to tell me someone wants to start playing D&D like download basic dandy like that's what we want you to do like like that's like the official which is the coast like company policy right like that's we want you to start I want you to start there and make your first characters there then purchase your players handbook listen now forget it my first character is gonna be a half dwarven Attili eight or slash sion assists i'm gonna triple multi click well yeah i know me think that that's a really show it's a difficult thing when you're designing something like you said at the very beginning might be a big part of D&D was increasing that new player level right rebuilding that that included base and being able to stagger the the releases and i mean again i would i would love to see the the like advertiser the former now long dead advertiser in me his ghost would love to see all the like marketing data around this stuff and like how people get into the game and whether that's actually like working if people download the PDF first and then buy The Player's Handbook or they do the nerd thing and they're like basic I don't think so no a lot of it too is just the cultural like what we what we definitely see and this is actually why we got away from Claire's handbook two three and four or whatever was that I you go to the store and you're gonna be told by the players handbook like that's it right like that is a game store has a vested interest in you purchasing a product right right but there's that but we also have the the starter set for sale but we would still see even people not even thinking even other players would say no the players have month because The Player's Handbook is Dungeons and Dragons because that is such a difficult time like I think at one point I think what if we didn't do a Player's Handbook right but I just think the disconnect I just call it something and that's also why if you notice like we have not I don't think we have yet to recycle a title from an earlier edition for our expansions and that's that that is by design that is in part to be fresh and interesting but also to not make you feel like Oh monster manual - I need to buy it right now it's not it's a sequel to the original Monster Manual yeah or it's the latest one if you come from the video game world you think mom's manual two is the correct one Smigiel one is just for jerks I don't even think they're still running the servers for [Laughter] monsters anymore but the problem though is that I think and we I'd love to I'd love to segue into into you a on this into into a North Arcana but the problem is is that if you look at many long-running role playing games the later books are just straight-up better designed than the earlier ones because the game has been out so long right fourth edition Dungeon Master's guide to awesome book full of great stuff you could never have known when you're writing Dungeon Master's guide one it was just impossible but now it feels like Dungeons & Dragons you mentioned before Mike that the the game is a book a book is printed you can do new runs of it but in the quantities that Dean D is printed there's a lot of first and second printings of the player's hand book you have this other vector for releasing new strange material how how did understand art sarcana come about and and how has it how has it been as a as a design thing for you and then Matt and Matt I would love to hear your opinions as game masters about the material in those in those supplements cuz I know I have I have but where did that come from what's the what's the impetus behind that so there's there's two main things behind it the first is just the basic game design thing of we feel like we when we establish the open play test for fifth that we set a standard that we have to live up to now that we don't do big new mechanical things that the that the community doesn't get a first crack at the now that's not always possible like if we were doing like a license game you probably couldn't do a free play test first because I'm sure you know once you get to licensing all that stuff but in general we felt a that not only made the audience feel like okay this game is ours which was important to us because it kind of goes back to the idea of like we think of D&D Dungeon Master's is like high end you know like this is software they're using to make stuff so that they're all power users right they don't to be talked down to but also from a design standpoint you know it really gives us a nice clear destination for our design when I back in the day before fifth edition every role-playing game I worked on you would eventually have the meeting where three or four guys always guys are in a room arguing about how to change the game and you realize that in the course these meetings they're not arguing on behalf of anyone but themselves they might say well my gaming group this right but it doesn't but if that's like their gaming group have been gaming it for 20 years right it's that right and so what the play test does is it lets us have the voice of the user in the room like we are on in this case yeah exactly here yeah no it's like and so you have silica for Zen affairs guide to everything we have with these new subclasses coming out and it was great because the meetings were like okay people are saying that the samurais ability is not powerful enough like this ability is too weak people like the samurai like we asked them do you like this they go yes I love this this is great but then they very get very grumpy about this one ability and then in the comments we can see no it's just it's not delivering the firepower it needs to for people to pick samurai over say some others of us so now our effort isn't or guys arguing in a room over what we should do next each one just having the right idea it's four guys arguing about what's the best way to deliver on what our audience wants and I think that is a huge help like it just and I think so much of the success of hip addition and even you know especially in the the follow-on products has been because we've had that dialogue that we are designing toward what the audience wants not to what for kind of randomly chosen people and kind of cosmic to it are you happen to work it was the coast yeah you know we're in this meeting room that day and this is what we've decided and you know there's no principle behind and I think that's the important thing like I think that's another thing about fifth edition why it's done well for us and you a kind of reflects it on earth Kirk Anna is a manifestation of our bigger overall plans for DMD this idea that DNA is a community it's not just the designers and a bunch of people you know waiting outside the design tower to be given the word on high it's a community the designers are as much a part of the community as the first time DM is as is the you know the don't give up you know I give a damn racin guy right like they're still part of the beanie community and so I think that is a principle that we then say okay given that's our principle highly designed for this game in the future with that principle how do you express that and that's where you a ends up uh it also is great because it's a total filter right like when you do a bunch of new subclasses and people just say like we just don't like this then okay we won't give it to you yeah and then you didn't spend tens of thousands of dollars on a print run of some stuff that got internally playtested and and it ends up that nobody actually wanted yeah the laser ninja subclass yeah you know precisely and also I think I will totally cop to the second reason is it's just fun like I like doing it yeah we talked about that a little bit when we were talking to Gen Con about you a as a as an experimental design space because the stakes are relatively low like if something says this subclass is bad I hate it they you're not you're like yes of course but it's fine it's it's in this space we've created for for that stuff so I like I personally in in the campaign that I'm running because it is so mechanically focused and because balance is so so important to that particular campaign I tend to the audience's chagrin to avoid the UA stuff because I know that it's experimental right I don't want to give someone permission to play a class that's going to be massively under overpowered for whatever value that is that's going to upset the balance of the of the game because I just know they're not as well play tested but what about what about the mats do you you guys use you a in your games do people play classes from there is it sight unseen just like welcome to the game or do you have to like test it yourself first me personally I prefer to test a little bit you know I've played the system enough where I can kind of spot glance balance decently but once again we're not a heavy you know like I'm looking into your on ours is we the mechanics are sound enough to the point where there's a structure that we can play and where we feel comfortable that it's you know everyone's in the same page but we're and we try and stay about as above board as our memories allow us to as far as you know you know sticking to the rules mechanics but I'm more concerned with player fun and in a lot of tables player fun can be damaged if one player is vastly more powerful than the others so it is a concern even if you're running a rules like game to make sure that these things can fit into your into your game I I don't mind bringing it in if a player wants to try it out like for instance there was the UA Ranger that came through and there was a lot of talk about possibly one of our players laura bailey switching over to the new ranger and there were some things that I liked about of it I think fixed elements of the Ranger class there are some things that I thought were a little too powerful and some things that didn't quite fit the way that she liked playing her character and so we ended up kind of grabbing a couple pieces from it and plugging him into the existing one so it didn't feel too much of a change so that's an example of one that I didn't really feel comfortable pulling completely over into the system but like conversely some of the racial classes we've incorporated the the revenant when that was put out as UA for the gothic heroes element there we've incorporated a lot of UA stuff in discussions for the new campaign ins coming up right now of course with zenith are coming up as well it's gonna help us tremendously I think something that that's a unique not a disadvantage but there's a unique element here where for a tabletop group playing at home introducing a class that tensed ends up being broken and then receiving that class the stakes are much lower right like if you have someone change class we have a new person make a character within an episode people are gonna be very attached negatively or positively to that character and it's much harder to be like okay never mind the next episode this will carry this character we'll get anyone and to just kind of like adapt that way because there is this whole other sub thing of of the game as being not just a group of people playing it yeah a lot of care has to be taken because of the responsibility of the falls on you know those of us who run these streams that the community looks to whether it be for inspiration or unfortunately sometimes how the rules are played and it's like well it's just how we do it we mess up all the time but uh but yeah so there has to be some level of care taken in implementing unofficial released content and as an example for the fruit and you know speaking honestly the Ranger and the initial 5e release and the Beastmaster that when were players is playing I feel didn't perform on the level I feel at a lot of other classes are in there are it was that was a very politic way of saying that there are there are intrinsic some classes that are stronger than others by nature as a level I find the Paladin is an extremely powerful class it's a great class and it doesn't bother me because once again if your point of the game is to have fun and the players are all excited that they have one person that's really powerful that they can kind of get behind and go that's fine but not all game tables are like that sometimes people feel that if one player exceeds them as they level that the power imbalance becomes a point of frustration so you have to definitely keep that in mind I like you I think it's a great way to for the same reasons that Mike said to bring the community in there to get testing out their stuff before these things become official they can be you know there can be a lot of strong testing behind it a lot of good ideas and opinions on how to get it to its optimal level and released out there and I think it's a good example for a lot of people that are starting to get interested in game design like we were talking about earlier D GM's have been customizing and willing to homebrew stuff for their game at home the UA is a great way of watching the process it's a great way of seeing how the guys who actually make the game you're playing test their and tweak it and eventually release a final piece of content and they through DM skill that's been a tremendous boon for a lot of people out there to to see what other people are creating and home brewing and putting out there and having a rating system people can you know help each other improve that process I think it's great I'm I'm I think Santa thorez guide is exactly the the right thing to do once all this content comes out there's always been the kind of argument between the RPG systems that continuously read the release supplements you know it's a it's very much a business for Mark Ryden Hagin it will work it's fine I got a hundred and eighty two pages it's not quite a novel I mean we just will publish it it's fine it's fine it's totally fine a good way to get around having to perpetually release supplements and addendums and then only put out additional supplements when you feel confident the content has seen enough real testing and work and you can feel confident that it's ready to release formally into the public so Matt Matt Matt Colville do you because I know I know members her and I both get tweets immediately as soon as it you a comes out like what do you think of this is it gonna be in your game how soon can you incorporate in this game do people do people imagine that you should have an opinion about these things every time their release them so yeah all the time yeah a grossly grossly misunderstand what content master I am actually more I obviously I get tweets and posts on the subreddit about what I think of this new class but but way more often than that I get people asking if I allow you a stuff out of course that and the thing that that surprises the thing that that's question always surprises me because it means that there are Dungeon Master's out there like every time somebody asked me that I presume it's because their Dungeon Master just said no so they just got shut down a priority by a dungeon master who didn't even look at the thing they were trying to do and they come to me and they say do I allow in in the in the utopian world of Matt Koval's game does he allow you a stuff and I'm just shrug and I'm like man I would love my player out the thing with the unearthed Arcana content for me is that it's just so most of our players never see it never go to it I think what I learned from my time the tabletop business is that any given group typically only has one person who is the one going online and doing all the research and learning all the other cult they're called the dungeon master well the Alpha gamer that was for Adam for them at upper deck was the Alpha gamer who was the one that read the FAQ and would go online and participate in forums and that person would bring that content to the rest of the group and there are typically the dungeon master but not always I wish more of my players would go I just had a crazy analogy pop into my head with Ridley Scott directing Blade Runner and all these actors like Edward James Olmos coming up to him and saying hey I just says City speak hey could I just invent the language and Ridley Scott's like yeah man go for it and Rutger Hauer being like what if I had like short white hair that's amazing and then yeah what if I what if I improvise the most important line in the whole movie what I just made that up on the spot Thanks you know it's like okay go for it because we all we all want to be like and then Harrison Ford would come and say hey what am I supposed to do he would say I don't know man your ex why pay you for you're the actor so that's to me that's the you a analogy is that there are players out there who are like who had guy and I'm like I haven't read that I'm not gonna read it I'm gonna find out whether or not that's broken or not based on you playing it if you're excited by the samurai class or by the Sion or whatever then I'm excited to see it happen and if it turns out that there's a problem at the table look man that's my entire game broke down because the paladin put is 18 in charisma and it became a 20 and then when he had seventh level all of a sudden no one ever failed the saving throw and that didn't have anything to do with your attack on right so that notion that the I have to police this content it's like what I'm hearing I'm hearing the rest of five years as broken as the rape don't ask me what I think cuz I haven't read it I've got to do I've got a game to run if it turns out that there's a problem we will discover that at the table and we'll solve it at the table I can find a way to challenge you in the context of the game and ultimately my experiences players know when they're getting away with something and they don't like I don't like I don't like that feeling of this is this is I somebody should take this away from me because it's really right they want a level playing field and so if I have to I'll go to the player and say okay this isn't the one thing isn't working and they'll be like I've never gone to a player and said there's a problem with this thing and not had them be like yeah no you're right they're instant and so at that point I've had a different experience yeah yeah it's gotta be it's gotta be a do syncretic and personal and down to the group but yeah that that notion of I just treat the players like adults and if there's a I think 80% of problems with the design I can or at least the wages the design is being expressed in our game right which is obviously idiosyncratic I can fix it the table the one thing stuff I can't fix I just talk to the player about yeah yeah I mean that's that's the that's the the core I think thing about playing role-playing games with anyone ever regardless of the game that you're playing is that it's a conversation managed by a rule set and you have a conversation with other people and don't be a dick and don't try to like get away with like pulling one over on somebody and like it's it's meant you're meant to be collaborating that isn't always how it plays out I would I would say game balance is also in its own sense a very obtuse intangible entity you know it's the best intent to be balanced but situationally some things will be broken some things will seem completely useless and that's just the nature of the game you know you try your best to keep it together and even in my experience in in 5e we've been pushing into the epic levels of this final arc of our campaign and the game is unwieldy in a lot of ways in those higher levels but it's designed to be that because a lot of players want to have that crazy power level inning and experience that but it's it's a very difficult thing to keep as cohesive as the rest of the campaign when players have access to so many abilities and powers that allow them to essentially break your world but you kind of have to kind of have to write yourself on and be being able to accept that type of experience as a dungeon master that balance balance is constantly shifting and it's your because it's your job as the game master to listen to people who whether are complaining about balance issues or you know seeing it in your game and then adjust accordingly whether that means talking to the players and and you know maybe reducing capabilities of certain things they can do or adjusting the difficulty that rolled around to make it still feel a challenge but even that like I said well like most most games you're running you're you're trying to see what works and hoping it does yeah well I want to I want to talk about because I reckon as we're getting we're getting near the in here but I want to make sure that we have some time to talk about a couple of things that were they were really interesting to me in the conversation we had before this that all surround the idea of dungeons and dragons not merely as a game played at a table but as a form of entertainment right because that's that's a new thing right yeah there have always there always been like actual play podcasts there have always been you know there always been people playing games with these things happening as as soon as the technologies been available but there's a we're in a weird place now when it comes to Dungeons and Dragons and role-playing games overall so you know you Matt Mercer you just finished a very long campaign at a very high level of play what about that makes it good as I think to watch what makes DD fun and entertaining for people to watch what buys more of their attention because it's Dini not just like a bunch of people making up a story and what what gets in the way I would say it's interesting people identify with with the unknown aspect of us of an improvised storytelling you know a story the idea that this is no it's you know a room of writers that created this predestined outcome that you're experiencing the the possibilities of success and failure in real time with these these players at the table and also it's a form of entertainment that is genuine that a lot of people either never had access to before as an example or have it in a very long time they grew old they had a family they have a you know a career now and so people are now beginning to connect with this as a means of kind of reclaiming these these fun thrilling times of their youth or beginning to dive into these these stories that can go literally anywhere and that's where it's on one hand it's important to try and have some the mechanics in there still some people that know the game well can still you know since I guess I'm trying to say is uh and part of me I'm still a little hungover for my bachelor party so my brain wanders sometimes it's time you know people who are who are tuning into this want to be on the edge of the seat with the players they want to to feel the visceral reality of a bad choice or a good choice and you know tactically sound scenarios and what I'm discovering when you have a high enough level campaign like this it's new to us as it is to them I've never run a campaign such high level before and he's so so when you when you say that like people that people want that uncertainty that people desire that I like I've struggled with his name we you and I have talked about this before I I wonder if that's strictly true and I I think sometimes they do and it feels like sometimes they don't in that we have this idea of how a narrative is meant to go I think that people want like the the big climactic battle and and I think that Matt Cole that I would love to hear your thoughts on set-piece battles and sipping Dean he but the big climactic battle people want that traditional narrative arc they want to feel like oh are they gonna win I don't know all they pulled it out at the end hooray like maybe somebody died and that's sad but like we won at what cost like there's a very clear idea of what a big deal narrative is supposed to feel like and Dean D can really that up like really hard it can be like oh it's the Bigfoot they killed him in the second round but that's the that's the dichotomy between what satisfies the players one satisfies the viewers right and layers are satisfied by knowing this is the result and so it happened because of the way the dice fell I find that satisfying to like I I actually really like if I'm watching a D&D stream and it goes the way the game wants it to be not the way the players want it to be that feels more real to me because I'm a fan of Dungeons and Dragons as a game it's just an issue of Education I think as more viewers become educated on the nature of the game they're gonna learn to recognize because right now I don't think everyone sees it as it's happening so the reason is happening the way it is is because that's where the dice went so as that's with her yeah and I wonder about the audience right like how many people in the audience care that you are playing Dungeons & Dragons right like what what percentage like bill they'll do that thing where they're engaging with the brand or they're like oh it's a D&D game and oh you're a barbarian and you're a fighter but how many of them care about those mechanics enough to buy in when a fight goes sideways and doesn't feel cinematic yeah well no that that that's actually been an interesting discussion for a while I think it's interesting I believe most people are seeking or at least are expecting the classic media genre tropes like you said the arcs and the moments of tension and the perfectly you know metered out points of success failure and then almost losing and then sweeping it at the end and then yay that's what people are expecting and are used to but what makes these type of streams so different and unique is the fact that it can go sideways and people to the point where some folks even tune in expecting it to go sideways and then get frustrated if the dice do adhere to that narrative but like like Covell said i think it's it's a lot of just education i think this is a new thing this is something that none of us expected to be a thing and people are just trying to learn that it is a different form of storytelling media that has its own quirks that has its own unexpected narrative shifts and you know if you're playing it right let the dice be as they live but sometimes it may be disappointing sometimes it may be far too stressful and that's just kinda what you gotta buy in for for it from you know I think it's just gonna take time as well remember that when people went to the movies for the first time and they would see a picture of a train coming towards them people screamed and ran from the theater yeah because they have not learned how to watch a movie and and that's that's what I that's what I wonder yeah if we if we if we drag this out into an imaginary future where we're you know the the path of continued live play happens does that audience get bigger right there will always be people who tuned in because they're like I want the funny voices I want to imagine the cool world I want to like I like the people right there are a few people who are like yeah but like look at you using your feets correctly yeah make that extra attack that's right how much where where is that leaves that balance going to continue are we gonna have more and more people who are for me the ultimate I feel like the ultimate goal of streaming a role-playing game is not necessarily to entertain people but to get them hype about role-playing games I want them to be like oh this is a thing I can do I can be Matt and Adam and I can I can make I can be as smart as Michael about the game I can know this much and I want that but I wonder if that's a reasonable goal like am i am i imagining a future that I'll never have I I don't think so at all I think part of the reason a lot of us even got into doing this was for the hope and as Koval said before of showing people an example of how you can do it you know that barrier of entry has been so difficult to explain for so long I can't tell you how many social events or how many you know scenarios where people come to me overhearing a conversation demon-like so how does that work and I spent five minutes faltering trying to explain it right and this this goes back to what what Matt Koval is saying about precedent right about expecting us as as public figures in the space to make those calls so that they can go back to their table and be like well like my council said this which I think part of part of our responsibility is making sure that when with whatever eyes we have on us we maintain the idea that every is all the choices we make are purely our choices and then you know that we there is no real from our standpoint at least real authority outside of maybe the man who does help design the game who's there in the corner there's a number of times where I've said if you don't like this here's some Twitter accounts the thing is for me part of part of what I find appealing about about the game is when the players get over that like I'm gonna fireball and ask me again on my next turn thing and they really engage with the mechanisms and they're playing the game at the same level as I expect from them right I set these high these high goals for that and when that happens when the audience is like wow they outsmarted Adam they're using the rules correctly they're doing the thing and they're playing the game that to me feels like as valuable as oh I love this character or I'm I was so happy when this character made this decision yeah no i-i've I can there have been a number of battles throughout my campaign and on the livestream where I've realized the players made really poor choices and this is going to go very poorly there has been times where they've made really good choices and like you said they've they've outsmarted you as the DM and an encounter that you thought was gonna be a pretty decent challenge into being trivialized but that only fills me with pride that means that you've brought these players through this journey to the point where they can ascend where they can you know come together as that ramshackle team and surprise you that's the thing that's the thing that I think is fascinating about the role both the historical traditional expectation of the role of the GM as like sadistic Overlord versus the true nature of a game master which is really like you like it when the players are smart enough and paying attention enough and they they beat you and you're like yep you got me and you have that that moment is like I'm so proud of you you little cutthroats like good job yeah yeah I think that's absolutely keys but the game Dungeons & Dragons I don't think as written is structured very well to be entertaining and I blame Alan trading for this and also I mean it's not his fault they're not nothing it wasn't designed for this so so Mike from from and I want to ask you to speak for all of wizards but obviously Wizards like Greg do you know and and their team right like Greg's team of a they've decided that that streaming role-playing games and role-playing games as entertainment is a thing now not just for us but Wizards is doing things with this this venue but for you as a designer how has watching short and long campaigns and newcomers people with very strong opinions about the game make those so clearly and obviously public what is happen well as far as on the design effect you know it's fascinating because I think in some ways streaming is the technology that role-playing games have been waiting for since they started off right because one of the things I really very vividly back when I started at Wizards 12 years ago now I we always have this interesting tension in dungeon dragon compared to other games if you take magic the gathering stay back and o5 you could say someone could come up and say hey my great now I'm a great magic player like okay let's play magic and then you could pretty quickly see if they were actually a good magic player or not right if they're making clever plays they have good combos they understand card advantage and all this other stuff you could say okay yeah that's true you are a good magic player or you could say actually I'm sorry you're not like maybe amongst your friends are really good but in terms of a general absolute like assessment and you have some ways you could improve Dini never had that you know one things we always had was I'm the best dungeon master in the world I my players we've been playing for 30 years and I'm on the best DM and here's how you should run your game to me that now looking back that's kind of like the restaurant if you want you know where it's like hey my five regulars think this is the best restaurant in the world but I only have five regulars like you know it and what streaming is done is it's let us now actually see the game how it's played and then understand how the game can improve and how the game what it actually means to be a good dungeon master what it actually means to be a good player and it's really fascinating to look at the difference in attitude toward Dee Dee amongst people who started in the past three years versus people who in playing 10 20 30 years and there is there is a big gap and I think there is I would be shocked if like if we ever did a 6 Edition which I think it's a natural evolution you know everything you mentioned earlier someone brought up you know the fifth expansion you do is just more informed by the game it's the design gets its chair uh it is definitely going to be informed by how people are playing online and recognizing and a lot of ways what you recognizes there are a lot of rules you just don't need because they're just getting in the way you know like right you know and then but it also tells you is like look you know we talked early but initiative in combat like do you need a little structure like that when you're in non-combat like people often will say oh a game let's add a mechanic for social interaction and they kind of end up reinventing combat from the points and armor class and we're I think actually watching people stream makes you think well maybe what we really need is more something from the initiative end which just makes it so that the person who maybe is in super assertive or feels calm well-being can feel comfortable piping up right like it's the classic thing like when you're when you're demeaning oh if you're leading a meeting and you notice someone hasn't spoken for five or ten minutes give them a prompt to speak right just little like thinking of the rules more as table management tools I think that's what's something that's really changed for me is thinking of like when we talk about initiative I would not have had that insight five years ago where I said oh an issue it's like you know it's like you ring the bell and now it's like okay that's get ready for combat so much wood is be watching people play and realizing that's just kind of what naturally happens it's like I could never pick that up as a player or Dungeon Master because I'm in the moment but watching people play you know it sort of shows yeah I think the real value that's why earlier I said well he's dungeons and dragons you kind of think is it even a game or is it really just a structure for this activity to take place within you know and so I think that's really where you know why and all think it's part of why we as a company you know personnel like streaming but as a company it's great because it's it's the best tool to show people this is what makes D&D fun it's yeah you've use this analogy in the past and I'll keep using it it's like trying to make someone fall in love with baseball by giving them the rules of the game all baseball's great you should totally get into baseball here's the yeah here here's the rule book right now read about it no no what you do to make something to follow the baseball you bring into a baseball game thank you yeah and that's how you make them fall in love with it you know my my daughter she's almost three now you know like I did she's not gonna like read the rules of basketball with me we're gonna sit down and watch like you know the 86 Celtics seasons you know like you know in summary DVD together and that's how I'm gonna make her fall in love basketball and I think there is old there are a lot of parallels I think between role-playing games I think they're much closer to a sport than they are to a traditional tabletop how dare you describe I think it's true I think it's very much about there's a difference between and this as a as a twitch broadcaster sort of first and foremost I think that this is a thing that comes up for us as well where people are like why would I ever want to watch someone else play a video game and it's like well why would you ever want to watch baseball or basketball or any others like that's a ridiculous question I see that all the time it's like but it's for some reason we don't think necessarily change that's changing that's changed yeah I mean 35,000 people watched Matt playing D&D on Thursday night so obviously obviously it is entertaining yeah but it's changed really I had that same reaction risk I'll live totally bit like when I first heard what he sports it's like what why would I want to do that I had a friend my roommate played video games we had a friend Cory he would just watch him play games and that just seemed weird to me and now when I'm like you know it's a weekend it is not there's a hearthstone tournament dawn and I'm cleaning the house I have that hearthstone tournament that's what I'm watching while I do stuff cuz it's really I'm like totally all in on it I mean it's like I was at the first Blizzcon and there was nothing to do there was nobody there and they were having the starcraft finals and there's like 30 people there's chairs for 5,000 and mean just a couple dozen other people and I'd never seen I'd ever watched other people play a game before but after about five minutes sounds like yeah I get it because these guys are the best and they play different than I do and now I understand a lot more about how this game was designed then I did back when it was just me my buddies playing and that completely clicked with me why you would want to watch people playing this game and also like you know how many generations grew up with Johnny Carson right they just like who cared what the guest was they just liked spending time with that guy and that's the that's those people streaming minecraft you know those people streaming their game a vast percentage of it is just people like that guy don't really care what he's playing and that seems strange to some people but it shouldn't it's perfectly natural right which I think puts an interesting point up about Dungeons and Dragons as unknot a game right like there is a game called Dungeons and Dragons but there is also role-playing in a fantasy milieu that is familiar and uses a familiar language that you may or may not be intimately familiar with but the actual action that's taking place may bear little to no resemblance to Dungeons and Dragons like I think that a lot of people when they run into stuff that makes D&D less fun to play or watch their inclination is to say it to the rules and just throw them out and just make up a story which is a pretty natural inclination but as a company Wizards of the coast can't make money on it let's just play D&D so we're whoa wait so you actually automate too and that's yeah and that's a question right future of the indie is it not a game like no it that's what we've learned is that Dean he's a culture that was a huge insight for us in fifth edition because before that third and fourth edition both said D&D is a product so we need to do a product every month and we need to kind of put you on a support plan where you want the new thing every month and the I remember very vividly when we're working on fifth there was someone made the analogy to harley-davidson they said basically we are like Harley's harley-davidson doesn't try to sell someone a new motorcycle every month right they don't but but what they do is if they sell you a Harley and you buy into the idea of Harley as a culture you think yourself I'm a Harley rider that's who I am that's this something important about who you are that has huge value in them itself and you could say well you can make money on the t-shirts and on you know the button on my they live glasses right now but like the heart there's a Harley dealer actually right down the street from Wizards and it's interesting because like every summer they have basically Harley fest like it is one Saturday during the year where they have they have music and they have free food and it's just the idea is being riding a Harley means something about you and it's something that sets you apart and when you meet other people who value riding a Harley that's a connection you have and I think DeeDee is very similar even if the game itself the role-playing game it maybe it's a commercial activity it's some future point just you know right now we're doing great it's awesome but you can see that you know there's still space beyond that and maybe that's not the primary economic driver maybe it is like movies maybe it is like video games when you think you know how Harley Davidson makes money I don't have any insight into their books but it for you to tell me they make more money off t-shirts and boots and jeans and whatever I wouldn't be surprised these Nike makes more money off the solution that does offer shoes exactly there there are and I think this is true of any it's it's more especially true of luxury brands but I think it's true of anything with a high buy-in and the idea of fandom generally as a commercial endeavor in and of itself is a thing but there are lots of people who own Lamborghini t-shirts who have never touched a Lamborghini before right there's there are people who have never played Dungeons & Dragons who own critical role t-shirts right there's there is a space that is developing our around the the cultural aspects and reinforcing the cultural aspects of Dungeons and Dragons and the the game itself I think in a way is given more flexibility in terms of what it's doing in that space right yeah and I think that's I think that's fascinating the idea that that in the future there there is this idea that D&D might not be as guys I mean in the future we're all just gonna like crack a thing and inhale RDD nanites and then yeah or you know VR I've been assuming like yeah something we don't drown in global flooding or die in some sort of so I mean so let's let's talk let's talk for a second about about the the growth in the future of Dungeons & Dragons either as a game like the rest of 5yz lifespan or D&E as a thing as we see it because I really want to take a second to just like point out the homogenous nature of the people who are in this this talk right and the people who represent like when I was joking about the High Council like it's only partly a joke in that like look how say me we are my favorite thing my favorite thing about reading fifth edition was not it wasn't a rule it wasn't like a new class or the way anything like that was handled there's two paragraphs in DD that talk about taking just like half a second to think about your character and how they do or don't conform to their cultures expectation of sex gender and sexual behavior right and that tiny piece of Dungeons & Dragons got dragged from one end of the Internet to the other right like I more than any rule more than anything else in the game I saw vitriol around even daring to mention the idea that someone who might not be like your character might be allowed to be diverse in some way I feel like that at this point is a given for for a role-playing game especially role-playing game it has some some cultural cachet like D&D does like even just mentioning it but a lot of people see that as a political choice to include your character might not be straight or America your character might not be a part of a traditional understanding of gender so as people who are playing the game and who are in many ways the the sort of face of the culture of the Dragons what what are your thoughts about that right like how do we keep it from D&D being purely a a white man's game i it was it's been a white man's game for a long time and that's the issue as these are about the the classic culture that this game came from that's where it's been for so long and it hasn't been that way for a while but but unfortunately that's the expectation that's the joke and people's thinking in culturally ever since the Satanic panic or when you say DMD people who are outside of media centers will immediately think oh Satan or guy white dudes with beards in a basement and that's just kind of exactly that that's just kind of the expectation what we're seeing now and what's exciting me is thanks to streaming media thanks to social media thanks to the interconnectivity of generations across the spectrum this game is being introduced to people all around the world literally in countries you would never have expected that have now opening their first gaming stores that are sending pictures of their gaming groups of all religions creeds skin color sexualities you know it's it's incredible and that's changing and what's changing because because of this current new wave this this this kind of regeneration and Renaissance of tabletop gaming but you're gonna see that betrayal because I'm because there is that the idea of I love this I love that this is this defined me when I was younger and I don't want to see a change away from what defined me and I understand that mindset I don't agree with it I think it's very toxic and I think it's fading and whenever that whenever a cultural motif like that is fading the death throes get very loud and angry and I think that's that's why we're seeing that as well it's it's people are seeing the end of that era the end of that gatekeeping era and as such it's triggering a lot of anger and V trio but we're seeing so many more people coming into this from all ages and backgrounds and skin colors and creeds and I that paragraph that you saw get read across the internet is gonna be the defining characteristic of what makes this game live and breathe for the for the future and frustrating that here in this box like you said we have four white male dudes it's not gonna be like that in five years it's not gonna be like that in ten years yeah exactly and that that to me is the goal right that that today this is what this panel looks like but in five years it's not right that that's not the case anymore um and I mean I think this is this is in my experience this is the first time that I've seen in the rule book for Dungeons and Dragons and is why it was such a big deal this explicit call-out to say like think about these things about your character like if you can pretend to be an elf listen I play a lot of straight characters that's I can role play a straight person you could think maybe for a second about role-playing someone who is not like you right if you could pretend to be an elf it's not that hard to pretend to be something else so what do you mean Mike do you know much about this this like choice to include this in the game I mean obviously you've had to deal with a lot of the back oh yeah from this no it was very conscious is a very conscious decision because when we talked about so I for me I may become out of a little weird angle I have always felt really divorced from geek culture like I never really felt like part of it because I always felt that geek culture was all about these these gatekeepers you know these gatekeeping mechanisms right I remember very vividly going to college and meeting sort of like-minded geeks were beyond my small social circle in high school and really not feeling like I fit in cuz I didn't get any of the references I didn't know anything I was intermittent at best comic book collector so I didn't know much about a lot of characters and that I think for me always kind of gave me this feeling of being an outsider in my what was supposed to be my world and so we very consciously in fifth edition I remember very I like sitting down for lunch over you know we've got a Mexican restaurant every Wednesday or Tuesday with Jeremy Crawford and we just said look we want to make this game as accessible as possible and we can we're doing that mechanically how else do we do that and I think from Jerry's perspective he's gay and he has trans people in his immediate family you know that was something which he kind of took as his mission it's like it was like you know basically saying let go make this work as well as you can because you know we don't want we don't want to deliver a game that's very like mechanically accessible but and not culturally accessible but that cultural gatekeeping is still taking place like oh you don't know who Tiamat is well but whatever right like you even know who that character new t-shirt is that kind of stuff right ah you know and I always really hated that stuff and I think there is you know we talk about like toxic masculinity I think we've always really thought of it as oh it's like the jocks lifting weights and stuff and I don't that's not it at all right it's the one the mindset right it's this idea that I am gonna walk into a room and quickly establish the hierarchy of who's it to the top which is gonna be me cuz I'm mr. hierarchy builder and gate keeper and everyone else who doesn't fit with me I'm gonna push out the door and it's a great artist oh good there's a great article from Kevin Smith that he wrote a million years ago about why comic book stores look the way they do and it's because they don't want you going in they don't want normal people going in compost or so that's why they are dark and stinky and you know I think that's changed a little bit recently but certainly that was true of the stores that I went to and even worked at was there was all this signaling happening to keep non nerds of a certain kind of nerd out and it's just it's I think that fifth edition and and critical role have a lot to do with like just exploding that I think it's changing fast fast no it's not gonna be a generation it's gonna be you know three years and if the landscape of people playing the game won't be recognizable to somebody from the 70s it already isn't it already isn't ya know and I think that's the advantage we have with streaming and with role-playing games now you don't need to go to the game store you don't need to have like one of those gatekeepers and Duck to you you can do it yourself and I think that's and well I was talking about before the stream about how we didn't we just have some survey data I can't go into the details it's like proprietary and vote a lottery but but there is a really interesting divide in attitude towards the game between people who started playing in the past three years and people who were playing before that like you can just see it across the board like it's just the the mechanics are very similar like the two groups like the number of players they have how often they need to play how long they play those are all the same but then the actual attitudes toward the game are vastly different and I said I don't see I don't see that changing I think that that divides me is going to continue to grow and I think it's something that's interesting to thinking role-playing games overall like where the hobby might go because I feel a lot of designs a lot of the design space is still kind of more toward that mechanical end and I'm curious to see if like the new generation of designers coming in like what a grueling game designed by someone who came in after 5th edition might look like the because I think that could be it could be very interesting to see how that plays out yeah I never even saw that those paragraphs I never saw any discussion about them online none of my friends made any known other people I knew said anything about that stuff I didn't see anybody arguing about it I don't I don't know where were those discussions were happening I don't go to the thing that blew my mind was that great amazing piece of that full-page piece of art or the fighter it with like I think it's like a ranger right and he's like a he's like a Turk or something he's like a North African more or something and I'm like this guy's amazing this is a amazing piece of art and I was aware when I saw it yeah there's some semiotics happening here there's there's a flag being planted in a statement being made about what kind of characters exist in this world but at the same time regardless of whether or not that that was transmitting anything to you it's a amazing piece of art and really inspiring I think well and that's yeah and I think that's absolutely the thing right is that these these paragraphs in D&D are as much fluff as a piece of art right there's no mechanical thing in the game thankfully anymore that defines your characters stats based on these sorts of things they're about just saying like hey take a second and think about this right you can just keep on playing this game the exact same way you want to this is not a rule but it's text in the book in the same way that a picture of a black woman to portray the fighter is a big deal we've come a long way since oriental adventures but there's there's I mean there's obviously still still places to go and I think that it speaks to the idea of D&D as a culture and the idea that fundamentally the more people you can get interested in your game through whatever venues the more copies you will sell and the more successful it will be like fundamentally is a product that needs to sell copies to continue to exist and so this makes sense and I think that like Mikey said the the hobby is starting to develop in that direction and figure that out I think it's always gonna be saddled though with like I mean work can be done to fix this I don't know if I'm seeing that work being done that it's European fantasy right and that comes with a lot of baggage and I think you could drag that flag closer toward the Mediterranean right the kind of Conan's about example for this but that kind of Pulp storytelling where there's people from all over the world converging that kind of you know jason and the argonauts like they go all over the place right you know even though I Vikings they went all over the place right the Calif had the van Gary and guard a bunch of Viking guards in the middle of Turkey and that kind of setting that kind of fantasy I think would be more inclusive than the default European medieval knights in shining armor white guys yeah yeah and it's a it's a case of again making those things a part of the game by way of putting them in the core material right rather than saying like this is the this is cart or it's where all the special ninjas and samurais come from but instead just being like this is what anyone from any campaign setting can look like yeah and I think that's I think that's a big deal and it's a it's a cool first it's a cool first step certainly um yeah I just wanted to call that out as a specific thing because I think that you know they're there that if you look at a show like this if you look at this this roundtable on the cast that's on it we're this structure is sort of the last of a dying breed right that this this will change as people who are experts about Dungeons & Dragons also change and that it's our our job to continue to work at that and as we understand the game to share it with people which ultimately and I think you'll all agree that's the fun thing about playing a role-playing game is sharing something fun yeah with other people you like right it's a great band yeah yeah it's heartbreaking to think there are people out there who you know they would love this game but they don't feel like they're represented in it and that if you know that kills me sometimes because it's a great game I want everybody to play it well and that again and then that goes to the whole the whole sort of point of all of this is that we we know about the game because we care about it because it's fun and because it creates positive experiences for us and then we share those with our groups and for some of us we share those with 40,000 people at a time and they're gonna see that and draw from that both that D and E is a fun thing you can do yourself right it's it's incredibly easy to get into playing a role-playing game versus say like learning to play hockey right you don't to buy a bunch of hockey pads to play I mean depends on how hard you play D&D maybe the hockey pads are a good idea but you can you can download a PDF you can find some people and even if none of you have ever played before five years specially is a really accessible point into the hobby and you may not stick with 5e you may end up somewhere else but it's it's a great place to enter that game space but also the the cultural space so we're we're coming up on the end of our a lot of time together my friends but I wanted to give you an opportunity to anybody have any parting thoughts any last things they want to they want to talk about about 5e I feel like we've gone pretty pretty deep into it but yeah alright well Matt good no I was just gonna say as a culture as a role-playing game culture like D and E being definitely forerunner but it role-playing games in general we all viewers guys in this panel streamers games at home we have we have a responsibility to try to continue to make this a safe space for people to build stories and in a time especially in the world where conflict and selfishness and a lot of misunderstandings and dissonance is ever-growing I think it's experiences like tabletop role-playing games one of many that I think can help Forge understanding and cut through all that I know it's just a game but it's not anymore we can see that we're having this discussion because it's not it's a cultural movement on a small scale but it's affecting a lot of people's lives largely for the better it's helping people learn social skills helping people reconnect with family and friends is something people find solace in times of darkness there's so much more that you can experience out of these silly stories you build with your friends and I think each of us needs to to move forward taking that responsibility to ourselves to make it as safe as comfortable and mockingly welcoming a space but he's interested in jumping in well sir yeah absolutely great yeah fantastic fantastic closing point thank you thank you Matt thank you everybody for for coming and participating in our little 5e discussion these kinds of things are always really fun I could I could carry on another four hours we're gonna let everybody go and take a break but thank you so much for coming audience thank you for for being here if you if you haven't already feel free to follow all these fine people on their various social medias next time I screw up a rule tweet it Mike and tell him it's his fault but thanks JP for setting this up and for producing and and I think that'll be that'll be it for us for tonight and thanks for coming watching everyone see you later okay

Channel: itmeJP

Views: 445,284

Rating: 4.8360233 out of 5

Keywords: matthew mercer, mercer, critical role, matthew colville, colville, mike mearls, mearls, skinnyghost, adam koebel, 5th edition, 5E, D&D, Dungeons & Dragons, roundtable, discussion

Id: yqjLO6YNKV0

Length: 118min 32sec (7112 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 09 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/ronfrazier]

I would like to see a discussion between Adam Koebel (Co-designer of Dungeon World), and Matt Colville. Adam designed a game to emulate D&D because he was not satisfied with D&D, and Matt C. will probably not DM anything other than D&D because he can tell any kind of story he wants. Plus, they disagree in this discussion A LOT but get along great.

It would be a really interesting discussion.

[u/GodDM]

15:58 both Matt's sip a drink at the exact same time. My theory that they are a separated single entity is becoming even more reasonable...

[u/ReggTheSecond]

I loved Mikes point about why they did not include how difficult a class is to play and how including that increased toxicity.

[u/xaanzir]

Just finished watching.......

Watch this! It's insightful, informative & properly entertaining.

[u/[deleted]]

Consider me sold. I'll watch this tell the end of time

[u/Mirgoroth]

I would have liked more time for the guests to talk and hear what they have to say instead of the host.

[u/AdelKoenig]

That moment when Mike Mearls said Fireball at 3rd level isn't balanced and it wasn't design to be is wonderful to hear. I can now rest easy continuing to throw balance out the window and just focus on making things fun.

[u/TheRams9DM]

I recommend this discussion highly. There are some pretty deep concepts included within.

[u/KenMcGraw]

I detected some simmering tension between DungeonWorld and Colville... so delicious! Way to stand your ground, Sir!