Design Work, Orcus I:June through September 2005
Team: James Wyatt, Andy Collins, and Rob Heinsoo.
Mission: Our instructions were to push the mechanicsdown interesting avenues, not to stick too close to the safehome base of D&D v.3.5. As an R&D department, we under-stood 3.5; our mission was to experiment with something new.
Outcome: We delivered a document that included eightclasses we thought might appear in the first Player’s Handbook or other early supplements, powers for all the classes, monsters,and rules.
First Development Team:October 2005 through February 2006
Team: Robert Gutschera (lead), Mike Donais, Rich Baker,Mike Mearls, and Rob Heinsoo.
Mission: Determine whether the Orcus I design (as wenamed it) was headed in the right direction. Make recommen-dations for the next step.
Outcome:The first development team tore everythingdown and then rebuilt it. In the end, it recommended that wecontinue in the new direction Orcus I had established.This recommendation accompanied a rather difficult stuntaccomplished in the middle of the development process: Baker,Donais, and Mearls translated current versions of the Orcus Imechanics into a last-minute revision of Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords. It was a natural fit, since Rich Baker had already been treating the Book of Nine Swords as a “powers for fighters”project. The effort required to splice the mechanics into 3rdEdition were a bit extreme, but the experiment was worth it.
Second Orcus (Orcus II) Design Phase:February to March 2006
Team:Rob Heinsoo (lead), Bruce Cordell, James Wyatt.
Mission: Finish monsters and other areas that were weakin the first draft. Follow some new design directions suggestedby the development team.
Outcome: After the design phase ended, several weeks of playtesting left most of us unconvinced with where we weregoing. The system wasn’t working the way we wanted it to work.
One Development Week: Mid-April 2006
Team: Robert Gutschera, Mike Donais, Rich Baker, MikeMearls, and Rob Heinsoo.
Mission:Recommend a way forward.
Outcome: In what I’d judge as the most productive weekof the process to date, not that anyone would have guessed that beforehand, Mearls and Baker figured out what was going wrong with the design. We’d concentrated too much on the new approach without properly accounting for what 3.5handled well. We’d provided player characters with constantlyrenewing powers, but hadn’t successfully parsed the necessarydistinctions between powers that were always available andpowers that had limited uses.
Flywheel Team: May 2006 to September 2006
Team: Rob Heinsoo (lead), Andy Collins, Mike Mearls,David Noonan, and Jesse Decker.
Mission: Move closer to 3.5 by dealing properly withpowers and resources that could be used at-will, once perencounter, or once per day.
Outcome: A playable draft that went over to the teams that would actually write the Player’s Handbook and the Monster Manual.
Scramjet Team; Same Timing as Flywheel
Team: Rich Baker (lead), James Wyatt, Matt Sernett, EdStark, Michele Carter, Stacy Longstreet, and Chris Perkins.
Mission: Draft a new vision for the world and the storybehind the D&D game.
Outcome: A first draft of the story bible, notable for its new understanding of civilized portions of the D&D world as points of light threatened by enveloping darkness filled with monstersand other threats.
Player’s Handbook Creation:October 2006 to April 2007
Designers:Rich Baker (lead), Logan Bonner, and DavidNoonan.
Developers: Andy Collins (lead), Mike Mearls, SteveSchubert, and Jesse Decker.
Mission: Achieve design and development consensus onthe direction each role and class should take; make good onthe goals with playable mechanics.
Outcome: Oodles of powers. Semisolid rules set
Writing Phase: April 2 to May 11, 2007
Story Team: James Wyatt (lead), Rich Baker, BruceCordell, and Chris Sims (with advice and general nosinessfrom Bill Slavicsek).
Mission: Write prose manuscripts in the style we want touse for the finished products.
Outcome: The team turned over a 600-plus-page workingrules set on deadline and to specifications.
Magic Item Revision: May 2007
Mechanics Design: Rob Heinsoo, Mike Mearls, DavidNoonan, and Matt Sernett.
Mission: Re-create the vision for what magic items accom-plish in the new design, carve separate space for each type of item, and design them all.
Outcome: More magic items than our initial publicationscan use!
Full-On Playtesting: June 2007
Mission: With Dave Noonan handling the reins, all designers and developers and many other WotC employees donothing but playtest D&D 4E for three solid weeks. This led to ongoing playtesting using in-house groups and the personal game groups of most of the R&D staff that continues to the endof the year.