Mike Mearls
I spend too much thinking about TTRPGs. I sometimes publish them.
- Reposted by Mike MearlsThere are a lot of roles in game dev where someone bad in a role can do damage, but a bad producer can be so unbelievably damaging that it truly would be better to have no one in the role at all. Just as good producers are force multipliers, bad producers are like throwing sand into a gearbox.
- Caleb Williams lead blocking has pleased the football gods. Marke my words - the Bears win this game!
- Behold!
- Reposted by Mike Mearls
In Call of Cthulhu, we remember librarians are the heroes! #ttrpg - Reposted by Mike MearlsSure, maybe you don't need more dice. But these ones help protect free speech and privacy online 🎲 shop.eff.org/products/li...
- It’s so convenient that the New Years drop at the same time as new Wordle, Connections, and Strands come online, at least here in the PNW. Hat tip to whoever arranged that.
- In my Dalelands campaign, the players have a simple trend. If someone hires them to murder someone, they kill them. Regardless of how obviously the goblin bandit/orc mercenary/weirdo mage is ready to tell them their life story. Except today...
- They were hired to track down a marauding troll. They corner it and try to talk it down, nat 20 on a Charisma check before the troll can do anything, and get the entire Zhentarim secret plan to dominate the Dales. At least, the version of the plan that a troll could grok.
- (The Zhents charmed the troll and set it loose to attack caravans that were not part of the "Trade Guild", a cross-Dales trade org secretly run by the Zhents. The guy hiring the party to murder orcs and goblins "to keep trade flowing" is the local Zhent king pin.)
- (This is going to be awkward when the PCs find out who was working with the orcs.) Last week they decided to talk to a Red Wizard mummy who casually devours people's souls. They're working for him now! They fed his traitorous apprentice to him! So I think chaos is their MO. Which is typical.
- Yesterday I mentioned that the new D&D Starter Set is the best D&D product I own. Here's one of the reason why - the maps. The encounter maps have the perfect mix of utility and character. They're interesting places. I run my games on Maps, and the assets from the Starter Set are my go-to pieces.
- The maps are compact and efficient, with enough fun texture that each one suggests a lot of different ideas. For instance, I used the nothic lair as a hideout for a Red Wizard of Thay. I stocked it with some guards, and used one room as a prison for the wizard's former mentor.
- That dynamic led to a really fun adventure, with the PCs turning mentor and apprentice against each other. The mentor ended up devouring his former apprentice's soul, and the PCs are now sorta-kinda-maybe allied with a Red Wizard against an Orcus cult that has infested the Dalelands.
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View full threadBasically, the Starter Set is a teaching tool with a versatile DM kit attached. I can see someone running D&D for a long time just using this stuff and their imagination.
- Reposted by Mike MearlsThe Beautiful Mess of 5E Mike Mearls, Mike Shea, Shawn, and Teos discuss the many forms of 5E. We look at how D&D 5E was designed in a open way and how this impacts our hobby. Recorded at Gamehole Con! www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ4T... masteringdungeons.podbean.com #DnD #ttrpg
- Reposted by Mike MearlsBehold! The massive RPG Moral Panic video I've been researching and assembling for years, and why people who call the whole affair the Satanic Panic are wrong. I'm so damned happy to finally have this beast out of my system. youtu.be/OpjV-melB-c
- It's not a fight until everyone is bloodied!
- I also managed to completely overlook the berserkers' multiattack last session. So mid-fight they started attacking three times each. Things got a lot deadlier!
- Reposted by Mike MearlsNo matter how hard people try to convince us having empathy is wrong, it is right. No matter how hard people try to convince us that diversity is a weakness, it is a strength. No matter how hard people try to convince us that love is limited, it is unlimited.
- It’s been a good day. The pressure is on to deliver, but at least he’s getting the chance.
- Reposted by Mike MearlsI address the first scandal of my political life—Momgate.
- 5e has a metagame that we never talk about. The PHB provides the players with plenty of solutions to monsters. The Monster Manual... kind of ignores all of them? What if we thought about boss monsters as creatures equipped to deal with the realities of the PHB? www.patreon.com/posts/boss-m...
- Reposted by Mike MearlsA new adventure for RuneQuest! The Hunt for the Storm Calf is a stand-alone scenario that contains everything for a riveting adventure in the far east of Dragon Pass! (And featuring vivid cover art by @ossihiekkala.bsky.social!)
- Reposted by Mike MearlsWe have a number of positions open within the D&D TRPG studio, including multiple Game Designer roles! If you're interested in joining our adventuring party, apply here and elsewhere on the Hasbro jobs portal: jobs.hasbro.com/job/Renton-G... #WOTCstaff #dnd
- I don't know this for sure, but it sounds right. 4e's flaw were all of process. There was never a design document or a single person who transparently managed design changes. It was a vibes-based approach. Example: I think we had a month of design time for each of the first three adventures.
- Pyramid of Shadows looks like it does because we had to build the individual encounters and staple them together at the end. On Monday I'd do room A, Tuesday room B, etc, until we had enough rooms. Zero time or bandwidth to do anything more elaborate.
- Anyway, I know that we fixed the math in Monster Manual 3. I do know for a fact that the MM creatures had ACs that were too high. I built the math assuming that feats gave an attack bonus, but then they didn't. Somewhere someone decided feats that gave +ATK were too good and didn't say anything.
