Mike Mearls will be calling into Desert Bus on November 19 at 9:00pm PST.
Mike Mearls is the Senior Manager for D&D Research and Design at Wizards of the Coast. He has worked on the Castle Ravenloft board game along with a number of supplements for the D&D RPG.
Rumour has it that he may also be calling in from his personal D&D game so there may be another surprise guest or two…
If you have a question for Mike, you can post it below in the comments.
What is the craziest, or most overly detailed, character you can remember?
How many ukuleles do you own?
Mike: You’ve written about having simple options for the classes in Next. It still seems difficult for my players to pick up casters for the first time because of the lengthy spell lists. How would you make it easier for a new player to have fun playing a caster without necessarily remembering (or even reading) all of the spell options.
Bonus for Rodney: Would you do another 25 hour DnD marathon?
What is your message for all the players who bought into 4th edition and felt it was lacking in comparison to 3.5 edition to get them to try out D&D Next(5th edition)?
From what I’ve seen so far, Next is an attempt to take the 3.5e engine, simplify it, and make it a little more flexible. Yet in so doing, you’ve lost much of the “dynamic” nature that made 4e interesting.
That said, can you convince me why D&D Next is better than its predecessors, and more worthy of my time and money than sticking with the existing, solid frameworks of 3.5e and 4e? Why should I play Next when I can play other systems that have also tried to reinvent previous versions of D&D to varying degrees of success (C&C, Pathfinder, 13th Age, etc.)?
Do you own any dice you consider lucky (or otherwise special)?
Mike!
Could you tell us about which classes from 4E are making the cut for Next so far, and which ones will be expressed as kits?
I have never played D&D before and I was wondering just how difficult it is to learn to play and get started. Also, do you recommend any places that I can obtain more information about D&D and possibly find others to play with?
Dear Dr Mearls, Why does the invisible stalker in the monster manuals have a picture now, its supposed to be invisible.
http://i.imgur.com/TGM8Gle.jpg
When designing a game, what is the number one thing you WOULD do and the number one thing you would NOT do?
do you know when the most recent DnD pax game will be uploaded to the podcast?
second question: best animal combination?
Do you ever fudge rolls?
with so many people who work on the actual system at the table, how many rule arguments do you get into?
Hi Mike! I’m curious if you have RPG campaigns that have been going on for years, have you switched game systems (e.g. AD&D to 3.0), and as a follow-up, what’s the longest campaign you’ve been in?
While I don’t play it myself, I’m interested in the development of Kaijudo and am curious how well the game is doing compared to some of the other products Wizards puts out.
First of all I have to say Lords of Waterdeep is my favorite board game that I own. I have been loving the expansion, Scoundrels of Skullport. I have only played the Undermount module once, and that is because the one time we played it we had The Hall of Many Pillars building and it was rather broken. It kinda ruined that Mod for me. How do y’all feel about that particular module?
Hall of Many Pillars reads Play 3 intrigue cards. Owner gets 1intrigue card.
Re: Lords of Waterdeep
As someone who runs tabletop gaming at a 6,000+ person geek convention, and has a love of euro-style games and worker placement games, can you give any suggestions for creating some sort of competitive format like a tournament for the game? Huge fan, thanks guys!
What edition are you currently playing?
LOVE the way the Dungon Command sets fit in to the Big box games.
Touching on what you were saying on modifiability and accessibility. Going forward do you plan to release adventures with stats for multiple editions (3.5, 4th, Next) like you have with the sundering adventure series? My group is loving the story rich, open ended roleplaying available in murder in baldurs gate and being able to use whichever ruleset we wanted for a given adventure is great as different editions have different strengths and weaknesses.
As much as it may be blasphemy, what other tabletop RPG systems do you find interesting or entertaining?
Will some of the less traditional classes from 4e, like assassin or avenger, be making a reappearance in Next/5e (or at least classes outside of the traditional hunter/rogue/warrior/paladin/wizard/etc.)?
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