The Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour and What it Means for D&D
If you’re a part of the Dungeons & Dragons community and actively keep up with the content Wizards of the Coast is putting out on YouTube or Twitch, you’re probably aware of the incredibly named Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour. But if not, you really should be. On a weekly basis over on D&D’s Twitch channel, co-creator of fifth edition D&D and Franchise Creative Director Mike Mearls gets on for an hour or so and just designs stuff for the game.
A Happy Fun Hour of D&D design
If you can’t make it to the Twitch channel on Tuesdays at 1 p.m. pacific for the Happy Fun Hour, you can always catch up on YouTube where the VOD is archived. In the show, Mike Mearls shares his process of taking the D&D rules as written and combining them with a penchant for design and imagination to create new and interesting elements for the game. He’s done various homebrews for subclasses ranging from the Giant Soul sorcerous origin to the Kraken warlock patron.
Not only does Mearls do the designing live, he also gives helpful tips for prospective designers in a system agnostic way. He breaks down the tools for creating an effective homebrew piece of content to make them meaningful and applicable across various games, not just for D&D 5E. In this sense, he uses fifth edition as a foundation on which to test these methods of design. Using a little intuition, you can extrapolate those methods wherever it behooves you.
In many ways, his approach mirrors that of the Nerdarchists when they decide to sit down and craft something truly unique. As in the video below for example. Or this one. Mearls starts the creation process with a simple idea.
Wouldn’t it be cool if… What if this class could do… Why couldn’t I make this item…
From here Mearls takes the idea and applies the rules to it. He finds mechanics in the game’s systems that enable him to run with the idea and give it life. When it’s an idea, it’s just a skeleton. But the mechanical systems are there for a reason: to put the flesh on the bones of the Dungeon Master’s wild, imaginative ideas. That’s the inherent beauty of a tabletop roleplaying game. Imagination comes first and the rules inform how that imagination can be implemented.
What’s the Point?
A kraken as seen in the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rules. Who wouldn’t want this legendary entity as their warlock patron? [Image courtesy Wizards of the Coast]
But it’s not just a guy sitting down and designing stuff.
It’s bigger than that. It’s a statement for those people in the community, especially younger people or newcomers to the hobby or people who’ve never thought about designing their own content for their home games. The statement is as follows:
“It’s okay to do this. It’s within your power as a member of this community to let your imagination run wild and create. You have the ability to take the rules structure and make something unique.”
This might sound obvious. But if it sounds obvious to you, then you’re probably not the target audience for the statement. When the co-creator of a game sits down and hacks things into that game for an audience, it sends a powerful signal to people watching that this is accepted behavior. That this is encouraged behavior.
Now if it was presented differently, from an elitist standpoint with lots of jargon and very little time spent explaining the process, we might have a different signal being broadcast to the gathered throng. But it’s not. It’s in capable hands with Mike Mearls and it’s a fantastic resource for anyone remotely involved with the tabletop RPG hobby.
The show represents a shift in perspective that makes the game and the hobby more accessible to newer people, while still retaining the interest of the old guard. It validates the habits of design and homebrew that have been prevalent since the game’s inception. And it encourages people to venture into that world, however briefly, to see how easy and fulfilling it can be. And with that ease and fulfillment, comes passion and enjoyment.
And it all stems from a guy sitting down and designing stuff for D&D.
From the Nerditor’s desk
If you enjoy deep dives into D&D worldbuilding and adventure creation, check out the Tome of Adventure Design from Frog God Games.
Useful for a multitude of game systems, this book contains tried-and-true random tables to spark your imagination, help Game Masters prepare and gives creative resources to make your adventures come alive. It also comes with a clever on-brand acronym totally free!
And how about those acronym skills, huh?
Nerdarchy has an exclusive promo code for the Frog God Games store, available twice per user. STAY-NERDY-30 gives you a 30 percent discount on anything in the store.
What worldbuilding resources do you use? Do you have a method to your homebrew madness? Let us know in the comments below.
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