Dungeons & Dragons Evolution With Mike Mearls

Todd Kenreck: I spoke with Mike Mearls about the evolution of D&D, from the rules, to the campaign settings, and about that what if factor that makes D&D so fun to play.

Mike Mearls: My job of building games, and building worlds, like we just now have years, decades of doing it, we know more. First edition, you go back to that time period, they were making it up as they went. They were literally building the road as they were driving down it. They were war gamers, right? Miniatures, or hex and counters, and suddenly they're playing role playing games, right? It's a huge transition.

Then, in second edition, you see now it's about world building. Let's start doing that. It's very much a product of its time, like at that time, no one had really done world building before. So, what's a sensible thing to do? Well, it's to start describing these worlds in detail. Like we need to know, answer all these questions. They didn't yet know what questions they needed to ask, so they just had to start asking all the questions.

Everything we do is built on the foundations that have come before. We now can address world building, I think, in a way that it works better for our audience, because people, the folks like Dave Cook, and stuff, Zeb Cook, back in the day, tackled those questions, right? They built Planescape, they built Dark Sun, Troy Denning and that team. Gary Gygax creating Greyhawk. Ed Greenwood building Forgotten Realms, with Jeff Grubb helping bring it to life. Dragonlance with Weis and Hickman building it. Gary and Dave, Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax, they were doing that, they were building the road as they drove down it, for game design. Then the next wave of TSR giants came along and did that for world building, right?

So, we're just kind of driving down the roads they built, and then noticing, "Oh, hey, we can now make the more fine tune adjustment." And then its also looking the more contemporary audience. What connects with the audience, today? Especially in delivery, right? Like we're recording a video right here, right? This would have been, 30 years ago, a massive undertaking. Not only would it have been much more technically complicated, how would then you get people to watch it? Well, buy time on a network? Well, good luck with that, right? Or we'll buy airtime in a local station in Iowa, and hope, you know, whatever. Right? Now, it's we'll put it online, and anyone all over the world can watch it.

What we do, so often, especially for me, because Perkins is the storyteller, he knows a lot of stuff. I'm the engineer. I like figuring how things work together, and how things can be made useful. That's what I love, and so many times for me, it's just like, "This is all great, but how do I use it in my campaign?" You know? It's not where it ends, right? I can just say, "So, this is good enough for me, so now we're done." But, I always feel like the stuff we've done, that's resonated the most, has been like, "Oh, now I want to use this in my campaign." Now I understand how to use the Feywild, I understand how to portray it. I can get my hands into it, as a storyteller, and start building things with it, rather than just like, "Oh, it can be kind of anything you want." Well, if I wanted it to be anything I want, I don't need you to give me permission to do that. I can just go do anything. Right? I can just start a blank page, but if I'm starting with D&D, I kind of want to have a foundation built, that I can start from.

That element, it's classic Dungeons & Dragons. Here is a thing, and then here is some kind of weird twist on it that now I have to try and make sense of. So much of D&D is like why do wizards have spell books? You have clerics, and they pray to gods, why don't the gods just come and solve all your problems? That's what's fun, is well now I have to come up with why. Right? Then you can end up with just a very simple, "Well, the gods are just forbidden from directly interfering in mortal affairs." Or you can have like Dragonlance, which answers it by saying, "Oh, no, the gods." The last cataclysm, well, Paladine, the lawful good god, he was the one who actually caused this massive cataclysm that killed untold numbers of people, so that's why the gods aren't around. That's why they don't interfere, because last time they interfered, they actually kind of made a mess of everything. That's D&D, right? You could have explained that in a lot of ways.

Dragonlance, it started the story, gives you this really interesting, really juicy explanation for it, and like, "Oh, that's why." Then you have, in Dragonlance, you have the Theocrats who kind of start their own religion, and the entire tension there, and all that. That's storytelling, right? It's like you take your third answer, not just the obvious one. Well, what's a more interesting nuanced answer.

That's what a good RPG campaign, or game, does, right? Its the what if. Like what if you're vikings and you sailed south to raid England, and everyone in England was dead? What's happening? Right now, there's your campaign, like, "What's the answer? What's happening? Is this a threat to us? Is there some malevolent force behind this?" You kick in the door to the monastery, to steal all the objects, and they're all undead now. They're all charging in, there are zombies traveling around, like, "Okay, now we have an adventure." Right? You just change one thing, and then let your players chase after it.