Mearls has formally ended Legends & Lore and announced a number of new and/or returning articles for next year:
*Unearthed Arcana will cover design philosophy and rules variants (most likely including material cut from the DMG).
*Sage Advice will return with Jeremy Crawford, one of the lead designers for 5e, at the helm.
*A series of "campaign notebook" articles - some of which will be written by 'DM to the Stars', Christopher Perkins - will also be published. (I wonder if CP's will feature Valoreign or something new?)
They will also be starting up the errata survey next year. 
This is good to hear: "The launch of fifth edition has exceeded our wildest hopes. Thank you so much for helping make the game a runaway success."
I thought Mike Mearls was lead designer for 5E. Monte Cook said he was. Mike Mearls said he was.
They both are, although Jeremy is the go-to guy when it comes to the rules themselves.
Credits (PHB p2)
- D&D Lead Designers: Mike Mearles, Jeremy Crawford
- Player's Handbook Lead: Jeremy Crawford
Credits (DMG p2)
- Dungeon Master's Guide Leads: Jeremy Crawford, Christopher Perkins, James Wyatt
Credits (MM p2)
- Monster Manual Lead: Christopher Perkins
So I am right, and Mearls is the lead designer for 5E as a whole ruleset. Crawford is accredited in/for specific books only.
Chakravant wrote:
pukunui wrote:
I'll have to do some digging. Off the top of my head, an anecotal source would be the time I asked Greg a rules question on Twitter and he referred me to Jeremy rather than Mike.
EDIT: Interestingly enough, while Jeremy Crawford's Twitter account says he is "Codesigner and Managing Editor" of D&D, Mike's just says he is the "main dude" on the R&D team.
I think philosophically Jeremy Crawford and I do not agree and that is probably why a lot of decisions didn't go my way on 5e. The tree top strategic goals likely came down from Mike Mearls but the implementation is likely more Crawfords.
I'm basing this on comments Crawford has made at varoius panels over the year. I attended one of the sessions at Gen Con and he practically endorsed LFQW thinking with some of his comments. I should have ran right then.
The semantics over if Jeremey is or is/isn't a/the lead/secondary designer....etc, doesn't really get us very far.
He's heading up the Sage Advice column, this is fact. Opinion, I find this a great idea. I am also very well pleased with the articles mentioned.
I sincerely hope they regularly update these columns. I used to LOVE reading the old columns, to the point that my wife would jokingly point out I wouldn't get out of bed until I read about dragons. This was actually true on days with an article. Some of us get a lot of entertainment out of these articles and I for one hope they come back at a regular pace.
I for one am more excited about the topic of this thread than the Mearls/Crawford yawn of a debate.
I fully expect Perkins' Valoriegn campaign to be the topic of his "campaign notebook" articles. I'm looking forward to that one. After he released the rough draft, I used it during a one shot game where my group and I wanted to play and had nothing planned in advance. It was a cool way to utilize the play test rules at the time. Ultimately I really enjoyed the evolving concepts of this campaign that rooted it in true medieval culture, returning to many ideas that birthed D&D like: knights in shining armor, priests in abbeys, and things reminiscent of Arthurian legend. It also gave me something to consider while building my own campaign and was a lot of fun for that. I can't wait to see Valoreign in its final form and the game in action. I hope we get to see a campaign wiki for that!
As for Unearthed Arcana, not only do I expect to see things that they ran out of time or room to put in the core books, but I'm guessinh this will be one of the ways tgat 5th edition will maintain a "living" element. I can see the developers using it to drop in some cool optional rules, new monsters, magic items, sub races, sub classes and hey maybe even stuff on how to build your own class. I also hope to see Mass warfare, and I hope it's a little bit better than what we saw them developing in L&L. The mass warfare from L&L was too simplistic for me. I'm not hoping for a mega complicated system, but I am hoping for one that will consider that intricacies of large scale battle to the point that it can lend to great tactical battles and allow for points in the game where the system can inspire good story. I say all this because I've seen that they have done this in the DMG and I'm impressed. So im hoping the keep the great direction they've established for the core books while they unleash all this new optional content. I don't think we as fans will be disappointed. 
.
I do think the articles will be interesting. I don't care about Perkins campaign notebook but I would be interested in their thoughts on game design.
Doesn't really say that much but oveall its a good article I thought. Makes sense having Jeremy do sage advicealthough I miss Skip Williams in that role;).
Emerikol wrote:
LFQW= linear fighter, quadratic wiard usually used in reference to 3E. It applied more to 3.0 IMHO than 3.5 and 3.5 was more CoDzilla.
pukunui wrote:
Sands666 wrote:
Emerikol wrote:
bawylie wrote:
I must say that after months of silence I was expecting a little more then....waves hands indicating whole article....this.
Or to put it another way, where is the beef? 
I'll be looking forward to reading articles from Chris Perkins. He's my favorite person working at WotC and his campaign articles will be very insightful on how he runs a D&D campaign with 5th.
pukunui wrote:
Kalani wrote:
bawylie wrote:
I do recal JC being very surprised that people wanted to play a simple fighter. As for the rules, it's largely RT and JC that worked on them. Of course, design team was bias the moment Cook and Steve Winter left.
I'm saying I think he did not take the 4E position nearly enough, if at all. I thought he was pushing back to caster supremacy.
Was there any mention of Dungeon or Dragon magazine coming back? It would be nice to have some one shot adventures to look over.
bawylie wrote:
Exceptions-based design is?
edit: NVM, it's another meaningless waffle-term.
I think it is interesting to see Bawylie and Emerikol each having the sense that Jeremy Crawford was on a particular side of the edition divide, and both sensing that side being "the other side."
I haven't met the fellow in person, nor have I read much that I know him to have taken part in beyond the 5e rule books and a series of tweets responding to rules questions, but there is pretty much nothing he has said that I didn't think for myself - including that I am surprised there are so many people that want to play a simple fighter, as I had come to believe that it was pretty much just me that wanted that.
bawylie wrote:
bawylie wrote:
And I'm sick of our community gilding our truncheons.
Richard:
"And thus I clothe my naked villany
With odd old ends stol'n out of holy writ,
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil."
King Richard III (I, iii, 336-338)
Under this ridiculous tautology, each spell is an exception, each creature, each immunity. Literally any game with greater complexity than Rock Paper Scissors is "exceptions-based."
but more than that, it doesn't describe anything. Rules for your RPG must cover the possible and the impossible (whether to ban or permit in each case).
If we can't use natural language to articulate our points of view, if we have to rely on waffle speak to make a point seem intelligent and nuanced, then we have nothing of value to say. And that's aside from our community's tendency to invent official sounding theories and terms just to beat on each other with.
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
bawylie wrote:
dmgorgon wrote:
dmgorgon wrote:
bawylie wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
Kind of. It's combined several very good features. And it's pretty streamlined. As I've said, it's not my favorite but it is maybe my 2nd or 3rd. And for that, it's not bad. Avoiding the things I dislike isn't as sexy as including what I wanted, but it's still a powerful little game engine with a lot of possibilities.
Lawolf wrote:
Sad to see Legends & Lore go as i liked this column, but i'm happy to see Unarthed Arcana, Sage Advice and the Campaign Notebooks columns to discuss rules or concepts and introduce new ones. Looking forward to it...
dmgorgon wrote:
I don't think I can answer that.
I'm going to have to break long-term silence on this one.
I've long been annoyed at Wizards running down of the content provided via this site and particulary angry about the complete travesty that is D&D Insider. I see this announcements (the new articles) as very welcome indeed and look forward to them and will be very sad to see Legends and Lore disappear.
I still don't quite understand why, with such a huge following with many voices lamenting the loss of things like Dragon magazine and the content that filtered to this site after it's printed demise, WotC aren't making more of an effort to provide content here for players beyond advertising new products and redirecting us to facebook every five minutes (something I freaking HATE, by the way and far too many websites are using 'Crack'book as their catch-all for logins and news distibution - we don't all use it, guys!). They have a large pool of talent (and access to more in the community than pretty much any other game system), a ready made platform to distribute content, and templates for the sorts of materials a large portion of their fanbase want to see. Surely producing (ir)regular continued content is a relatively inexpensive way to further promote the 5E productline and keep things supported and evolving? Or am I missing something here?
The public playtest of 5E was brilliant (despite the distribution problems at first) so WotC must understand the value that the online space has to 5E. I suppose I just feel that it hasn't been capitalised on in the way it was promised for 4E or even hinted at for 5E. Still, I'll be patient and hopeful things will develop over the next year.
Top and bottom of it, YAAAAY! More good content (can we please have more soon?) BOOOO! Legends and lore was ace, please don't kill it permanently
Hmmm....guess I need some Chamomile or something this morning. Sorry.
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
The people most upset about 5e, are those who most strongly liked 4e. And yet, somehow, Emerikol, a 3e fan, thinks 5e is too much like 4e. And then he totally misunderstands exceptions based design, thinking it was more something about 4e than 3e, even though 3e is when the concept was most touted as a design philosophy (it was the entire point of feats as a concept, for example). It basically comes down to what it always comes down to - whatever your biases are, that's what you see everywhere you want to look for it.
Mistwell wrote:
LupusRegalis wrote:
dlwraith wrote:
dlwraith wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
bawylie wrote:
Emerikol wrote:
LupusRegalis wrote:
Mistwell wrote:
Azzy1974 wrote:
Emerikol wrote:
Azzy1974 wrote:
LupusRegalis wrote:
Emerikol wrote:
Emerikol wrote:
bawylie wrote:
Rottle wrote:
Mistwell wrote:
It's a mismatch of expectations and what's actually there.
We heard a lot of things that were slated to be in the DMG and didn't make it in. We heard about Basic, Standard, and Advanced D&D and that didn't really get spelled out. We heard about dials (present) and big rules that change the whole game (mostly not present). Alternate casting options (present, spell points, but missing AED).
There are a number of good options in there. But (strictly IMO) a lot of wasted pages on cosmology and a conspicuous absence of things we had discussed in development that I would've preferred to cosmology.
So it's frankly less of a rumor and more of an opinion/perspective.
bawylie wrote:
I think folks are conflating the usage of "Lead Designer", meaning the formal job title, and "lead designer", meaning the person who provided the most creative input. Mearls is clearly the former; we'll never have perfect clarity on the latter, and therefore it's not worth arguing.
bawylie wrote:
Proficiency dice.
Emerikol wrote:
Yeah, it seems many were expecting the DMG to be: Chapter X: Healing Module, Chapter X: Tactical Module, Chapter X: Mass Combat module, etc, etc.
Brock_Landers wrote:
dafrca wrote:
Has anyone actually gone through the book and compiled a list of all the optional and variant rules in it?
Also, if I have one complaint about the 5e core rulebooks, it's the way in which they've been organized (or not, as the case may be).
pukunui wrote:
They make for poor manuals (in terms of org).
I'd like to break em down and reorder them then print em up like the digest sized essentials books.
bawylie wrote:
Brock_Landers wrote:
pukunui wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
Yeah, we need to distinguish between optional rules that are in addition to existing rules, and optional rules that replace existing rules. Firearms are an example of the former, the two variants for longer/shorter rests are an example of the latter.
pukunui wrote:
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AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
pukunui wrote:
Fair enough. To be honest, I was just fishing for a list as my DMG still hasn't arrived in the mail yet ... 
Gnarl wrote:
Listen folks. It is a fact that 4e was touted as being a departure from prior editions because it was embracing exceptions based designed. The success of magic the gathering was thought to be inspiration for their thinking at the time.
Just think about how you guys are thinking. You have a term which if defined the way you define it means practically nothing. It applies to every game ever made. Not a useful term at all. Your big mistake is the same one you make when you think the S in GNS is about simulation as it's defined in the dictionary. It is not and never has been but you can't get past the word.
The way I've used the term it actually means something and can be used in discusions about game design. It happens to be the way the devs use it as well.
Exceptions based design was touted as an advantage when 4e was coming out. It's nothing more than a description of a design approach. Whether you like more or less of it is entirely a matter of taste. For me I felt 4e had too much and was not as systemic as I'd like. Now I will admit that the term systemic is my own and it may not be a perfect way of expressing the difference. Still I know the difference.
If you object to every word I use then the conversation dies. Terms are invented to describe something. They are more often than not definitional. Just a tool for communciating an complex idea. Otherwise you are inserting these lengthy paragraphs every time you have a conversation.
Emerikol wrote:
A few minutes with google found me an enormous pile of posts of people talking about how 4E uses exception-based design and how the developers talked about how it was this new and great thing for D&D.
Unfortunately, since all of the links to old Wizards articles are broken, I cannot actually confirm it with a direct developer quote.
For what it's worth, I distinctly remember them talking about it myself; although I also remember thinking that this wasn't really a new thing in 4E, they were just codifying it and using it in a more front-and-center role.
ankiyavon wrote:
pukunui wrote:
ankiyavon wrote:
Whatever -- I don't remember any of this, so it obviously didn't happen. Fact.
Emerikol wrote:
pukunui wrote:
Emerikol wrote:
pukunui wrote:
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Diffan wrote:
Samrin wrote:
Emerikol wrote:
Emerikol wrote:
Shock of shocks, I'll agree with Emrikol on this one, and say, yeah, 4e does meet the definition of an exception based system. 3e basically does too, so I'm not sure why they touted THAT as a departure, but there you go.
The big thing is that 4e moved a bit closer to D&D being an effect-based system- they balanced abilities across different types of PCs by their effect, monsters are built on their output to the party (damage, AC, HP, etc.) rather than their inherent "qualities" (3e's monster generation had you start based on creature type), etc. But it wasn't quite FULLY that since there was some protection of various sources. (The Warlord isn't as good a healer as the Cleric.)
Emerikol wrote:
Criswell wrote:
It's one thing to have exceptions within the rules, and another entirely to have the system designed around exceptions. 3e and 4e are basically designed around exceptions.
I'm getting the distinct impression that you guys are just arguing for the sake of arguing. You all need to go in a timeout! 
Azzy1974 wrote:
Samrin wrote:
Emerikol wrote:
Reius wrote:
Emerikol wrote:
Mistwell wrote:
The "problem" with 4e was that it was systemic with it's exceptions. All of the powers were exceptions, but they all followed the same system.
So the problem is you guys are arguing what 4e was when it was a systemic exception based design. Everything was extremely based on a core system, and then the exceptions were built straight off of the core system instead of being deviant to that system.
3e and 5e are deviant exception based. You have your core rules and then the class features and feats let you deviate in very different ways from those rules.
Emerikol wrote:
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Reius wrote:
Emerikol wrote:
bonethug0108 wrote:
I definitely explicitly remember them mentioning feats from 3e as exception based and that they were trying to do more things like that. Only problem is when every "exception" is deal 1d6 damage + stun or deal 1d6 damage + sleep it wasn't really much of an exception. The whole exception based system in 4e was extremely systemic.
Reius wrote:
bonethug0108 wrote:
Yeah it's hard to call 3e exception based. It's certainly filled with exceptions but I can't really say that the game is built off of them. I guess it could be called a bit system based and a bit exception based.
You can certainly see the difference between 3e and 5e with that approach as there is a very clear base in 5e and classes were built with exceptions to the base, whereas in 3e classes are built with the base and with exceptions.