Mike Mearls Interview at Kobold Quarterly

Over at Kobold Quarterly, there's an interview with Mike Mearls. He specifically addresses some of the questions I've seen floating around the OSR blogs and it's just generally an interesting interview.

My First Reaction to D&D Next

I've had very, very little time looking at the D&D Next public playtest materials I downloaded yesterday. What with all the downloading problems WotC had most of the day, helping my sister move out of her dorm and my dad borrowing my computer to burn DVDs of his fishing trip, I didn't even get to download it until late last night, and then I spent today helping my sister and her friends move out of their dorms some more.

Not that I'm complaining – really. Contrary to what I've heard other truck-owners say, one of my favorite things about owning a truck is being able to help other people move stuff; probably something about feeling needed.

Anyway, this isn't a truck blog; it's an RPG blog.

I've had a chance to very, very briefly scan the materials and see that stat blocks are longer than most non-Advanced forms of D&D, but not by much. I haven't taken the time to suss out what they all mean and how that will impact anything, but I'm a fan of short stat blocks any day, so that's nice.

That's all overshadowed, however, by this simple fact: Yesterday WotC allowed me to download Module B2 – The Caves of Chaos. For free.

Wow.

See, you need to remember that I'm a grognardling. I've been looking forward to BUYING the DMG next month. I still haven't ever handled any core books from before Type III D&D, let alone the kind of D&D I like to play, that the retroclones introduced me to. I've read over and over the nostalgic reminiscing of my fellow OSR bloggers who cut their teeth on B2, and resigned myself to probably never getting my hands on it; really, if I was going to buy TSR-era D&D stuff, I'd probably buy rules sets before modules, so I chalked it up as something I'd probably never encounter, let alone get to run.

 (By the way, WotC, I still would very much appreciate you making the PDFs of OD&D and other older versions available again, preferably for free; we in the OSR haven't given up on that.)

So, yeah. As soon as I can wrangle a group together, I'll be running the Caves of Chaos. It's very exciting, and even a little shocking, that I'll be now sharing in something at least very close to the experiences I've only read about until now.

For this little gesture, WotC, thank you. May we continue to show good faith to each other.

I'd Call This Progress

So, this is totally old news, but WotC is going to be publishing the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, Player Handbook and Monster Manual. This is the kind of good faith steps I'm hoping the OSR and WotC can continue making until we're on decent terms with each other. This is definitely a big step in the right direction. Personally, I don't play AD&D so I won't be buying all of them, but I hear that the DMG is definitely worth getting, so I'll most likely be doing that.

I wouldn't say that this is a full and complete vindication of my attitude about Type V- not yet- but I do think it's a very strong piece of evidence that the hope that is intrinsic to my attitude is not foolish.

Why I Hope Type V Succeeds

I'm an Old Schooler. I'm immensely uninterested in most new-style games. I like quickly generated characters,  sandboxes, the possibility of failure and having to be creative to survive. As a referee, I also place great value on games I run being rules lite.

My players have been swayed in some areas by the Old School gospel I keep preaching to them, but, at heart, there's a part of them that will always be New School. I accept that. I'm willing to play New School, rules heavy games but I am not willing to run them. My players accept that and still play in my games because we're all friends and they have a good time.

Wouldn't it be great if we could all have our way? Wouldn't it be great if I could run an Old School game, more or less, while they played a New School game, more or less? That would be worth buying.

That's the goal I hear WotC setting for itself. Frankly, even having read the Legends and Lore columns that foreshadowed this particular goal, I'm not sure how they're going pull it off, or if they'll be able to. I do know that that's a worthy goal and that I hope they succeed.

Despite my promise to give 5e an honest shot at becoming my go-to game if WotC releases the PDFs for free, I do doubt that 5e, or any one game, honestly, will be able to unseat what I'm running now. If WotC is successful, however, in achieving this goal (but not with becoming my exclusive version of D&D), that will merit adding generous doses of it to the mix of Swords & Wizardry, LotFP, Arduin, Delos, Carcosa, Majestic Wilderlands, ACKS (when it comes out, I've already decided to include it), systems taken from the blogosphere and systems of my own making that I run (or will be running when I get ACKS, to be more precise). And that, by the way, will probably make it worth buying some 5e books.

(I will have serious reservations about buying WotC books if they don't at least make the PDFs for sale and if the license for 5e is closer to the GSL than the OGL, but that's another matter.)

So here's hoping that 5e is a success, because that will make my game better.

Three Important Points on Type V

1. Contrary to popular opinion in the OSR, I don't think it's impossible for WotC to release the PDFs. Avalon Hill, owned by Wizards of the Coast and also familiar to many in the OSR, has had the PDFs for Diplomacy available for free download for years. This isn't even a question of an older game competing with a newer edition; it's the same game available at the same time. If one WotC game catering to gamers can do it, so can another.

2. WotC isn't a person you can hold a grudge against. People are people you can hold a grudge against, and people employed by WotC change. Type V D&D is being headed by Mike "I build my adventures using OD&D and play OSRIC with Delta's Target 20 system" Mearls and Monte "I left WotC and wrote my own megadungeon following quite a few principles held by the OSR and then got blessed by the OSR Pope for being such a good guy" Cook. My interpretation of what's happening is that WotC has them in charge because they want to make right what they've messed up; the complication is that WotC has made so many different groups mad that it's going to be difficult to make up to all of them. My understanding is that the people who made the decisions to do a lot of the crumby things WotC did with 4e aren't in charge anymore. It makes sense not to hold the team working on Type V responsible for what other people did.

3. Even if you still want to hold WotC as a company responsible for the decisions that some of their employees made, giving second chances is fair-minded and "three strikes and you're out" is a good rule to live by. I'm not saying that we should mindlessly commit to becoming WotC customers, but I am advocating giving WotC a chance to prove itself. If it can deliver on things like making PDFs of older editions available, its promise to make products compatible with whatever edition of the game you invested in and if it uses something more like the OGL than the GSL, WotC will have corrected its mis-steps. That, just as a moral act by the people making decisions over there, is worth some recognition; that kind of behavior is rare and we should give them a chance to succeed. Why would we want to discourage that kind of behavior in our hobby?

"We both gain a lot of ground if we meet in the middle"

So Jeff has put forward what I think is the best response to Wizards of the Coast's announcement that they are working on Type V.

Here's how I think we can help: We all link to Jeff's response from blog posts of our own declaring what we're willing to do to meet WotC half-way so we can have the PDFs of older editions. Link to his post with links that say "Fifth Edition" so that his post will rise to the front page when people google "Fifth Edition." That way people, hopefully people that make decisions in WotC, will see it. Here's my message to WotC:

I got into roleplaying only a few years ago. I played in a 3.5 campaign, but started getting interested in older editions right around the time that WotC pulled the PDFs of 0e. In the years since, I haven't obtained an electronic copy of 0e, because that would be illegal and, even though I don't like intellectual property law, I respect that that's the way intellectual property works here in the US. I would really like to own my own, legal copy of 0e, even if it's only a PDF.

I've been following the Legends and Lore column for a few months now and I've been encouraged by what I see. It's been great to read references to the game I like to play that are respectful and understanding; at the same time, I realize that you've got people who like to play Basic, 1e, 2e, 3e (surely), 3.5e and 4e that all feel just as strongly, or morso, than I do about their preferred flavor of D&D, so I don't expect 5e to look exactly like- or, if I'm understanding what you plan to do correctly, be able to be made exactly like- 0e. If you did that, well, you could just re-publish 0e, but you'd lose all the players of the various AD&Ds. As a member of the OSR, I also know that I can homebrew the finished 5e just as much as I need to to make it fit me; please don't take this to mean that I don't appreciate you making 5e flexible, however! I just think that you'll find that fans like me can be more forgiving when you write, for example, a Magic Missile spell that isn't to our liking. After you've published the final 5e, if there's something I don't like, I won't write in and complain until you change it; I'll happily fix it myself, and I think you'll find that attitude among many of the followers of the Old Ways. If I've been reading your columns right, you've got that basic attitude yourselves.

But that brings me to what I'm willing to do to meet you in the middle on this issue of 5e and the older edition PDFs. As of this posting, I've already signed up to playtest 5e as my good faith gesture. I don't know exactly when you'll need me to start playtesting, but I'll be ready to when you need me. I also promise not to do any homebrewing that you don't want me to; I understand that that's important to the process of playtesting.

If you, WotC, will make the PDFs available for purchase at a reasonable price, I'll buy them. I'll also be sure to see my playtesting all the way through until either the end of playtesting or my players revolt, hopefully the former. If you make the PDFs available for purchase at a reasonable price, I'll see my playtesting through as far as is up to me, even if I can't stand it. I'll put in a good faith effort to improve your game in exchange for the improvement having a legal copy of 0e will make in mine. As part of my playtesting, I'll regularly blog, as much as I'm allowed to, about my experiences; 5e will have at least one good faith, supportive voice in the OSR at least until it's finally published, if not longer.

What's more, if WotC makes the PDFs available for free download, I will buy at least $100 of 5e merchandise- core books, supplements, whatever I find helpful, but at least $100 worth. So far as I'm concerned, you'll turn me into a customer if you make the PDFs free. I'll also give Type V an honest shot at becoming my edition of choice; if it's built for homebrewing the way it sounds like it's meant to be, it'll have a pretty good chance of making it too.

So this is me, and hopefully the rest of the OSR, reaching out our hands and trying to meet you in the middle. With the flexibility you've talked about and your "Sign Up!" sign on your website, we think we see some signs that you're willing to meet us half-way too. This is me asking you to win us back as your fans; I think you'll find that we'll be forgiving of small stuff if you treat us right in the big ways that really matter.

-Christopher "Staples" O'Dell
author of the Grognardling blog