Today's D&D session summarized.
Me: The Cloakwood is an Underdark forest that burst through the surface of the world.
Players: Let's visit it!
<60 minutes later>
Players: We are never going to the Cloakwood ever again.

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) September 14, 2018

Krogark has an irrational fear of all mists now.

— 🎄🏕Adam Lee🎄🏔 (@adamofadventure) September 14, 2018

It’s not irrational if the mist and the monsters in it tried to kill him. https://t.co/PSRVKRstfk

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) September 14, 2018

No, unfortunate parallel names for FR and Nentir Vale

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) September 14, 2018

New spin on the FR’s Cloakwood or your own design sharing the name? Nentir Vale homebrew

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) September 14, 2018

I wanna know what happened in cloakwood… Any chance the #HawfDwagon could visit lol Yes! Let’s do it!

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) September 14, 2018

@ChrisPerkinsDnD @mikemearls @JeremyECrawford Hello!

[WATERDEEP SPOILERS]

Does Waterdeep’s Dragon Ward make it hard/impossible for Dragonborn characters to live in the city? If so, I shall come up with a reason my player’s Dragonborn Rogue is able to be there. Thanks! 😀 pic.twitter.com/DOHF9zHWsj

— Marcian Tobay (@MarcianTobay) September 7, 2018

no, they are humanoids so safe

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) September 7, 2018

Today in D&D – wrapped up the Sunless Citadel with the party teaching Meepo the meaning and execution of the word “regicide.”Aw! Meepo just met his unfortunate end today in my game! Eaten by his own dragon wyrmling. #dnd #meepo4eva

— Eugene Marshall (@eugenemarshall) August 10, 2018

I had him roll a Charisma check to see the dragon’s reaction. He got really lucky!

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) August 10, 2018

hi mike do magic boots allow a monk to kick and bypass resistance to non magic weapon damage?? Not normally, since they are not magic weapons, but I’d allow it.

— Mike Mearls, but Spooky (@mikemearls) September 23, 2018

Indie RPGs have a much better design culture than trad RPGs – I should probably make that a disclaimer on everything I post.

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) September 11, 2018

What do you mean by that? Indie design started from a place of questioning assumptions and focusing on technique, not just end results. Trad games lag behind in those regards.

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) September 11, 2018

The only question in game design that really matters is, “Why does a player care about this?” Yet, it’s something I rarely see designers bring up. Most RPGs never answer it.

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) September 10, 2018

D&D 5 aims to make you care about your character as something that is your personal creation, and the ties between your creation and everyone else’s (DM or player).

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) September 10, 2018

Probably the biggest shift from 5 and both 3 and 4 – we stopped caring about consistency from table to table. That ran counter to what we saw as the fundamental strength of tabletop roleplay vs. MMOs.

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) September 10, 2018

3 and 4 used a TCG design pattern and wanted you to care about your character as a bundle of mechanics that you designed and tested, much like a TCG player might have a favorite deck. It’s a change I haven’t seen many people talk about, but to me it defines the game.

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) September 10, 2018

I don’t think a game ever needs to be explicit about this stuff. It would be like a novelist describing a thing as foreshadowing, or underlining every word that drives home a theme, but a designer needs to know it.

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) September 10, 2018

In practical terms, it’s why having a strong, clear, compelling vision is important. That’s probably been the biggest thing I’ve learned in the past few years.

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) September 10, 2018

I still see people play 5E in this mode. Especially in AL, which does try to impose some consistency from table to table. How would you address that, if at all? It’s tricky, because I think that the idea of organzied play for RPGs has to be reinvented from the ground up.

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) September 10, 2018

This is an interesting thing to playtest. To watch silently waiting to see the thing you know is there but cannot speak about. It’s super cool when you can get it. The 5e process was crazy, because I genuinely did not think people would want the direction we went, and when they liked it I almost felt we were cheating. It’s like I will never trust our success, which I guess is healthy?

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) September 10, 2018

This is a bit I’m not so sure about. It’s always better to give DMs and players a open toolbox, but rely too much on DM input can lead to issues where a good DM is required to make a basic play experience fun (Favored Terrain, for instance). This is where the ranger falls apart – ideally, in this approach the mechanics for characters give everyone a toy they can use regardless of what the DM or other players do. It’s the most harmonious path.

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) September 10, 2018

That’s easy. Chess and go offer a pure logic/intuition challenge, which their players enjoy. LoL offers … something, presumably, which I don’t pretend to know or understand, but its players clearly dig it. What D&D offers is the ultimate in bounded creativity. yeah, those games typically offer skill advancement through PVP tiering, seasonal rewards, and so on. The reward is the growth in skill and mastery you experience, both your own and with your teammates.

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) September 10, 2018

I think you made recent efforts to address this with your UA regarding three pillar experience. http://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/UA-ThreePillarXP.pdf …

But as long as systems like these or milestone XP are alternatives and not the default, D&D will continue to be a game primarily about combat. Perhaps in a prescriptive game form, but with RPGs being descriptive the game is whatever the players make it about. The rules have at most a marginal impact on how people act.

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) September 10, 2018

Plop the PHB, MM, and DMG in front of a new player and ask them how they are rewarded in game, and the answer they will come up with us combat. If they come to the game 100% new, they don't give that answer after reading the DMG text on awarding XP.

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) September 11, 2018