#edition wars

[prokopetz]

I know a lot of people didn't like it for understandable reasons but I really enjoyed 4th Ed dnds combat. Although this comes from a long time warhammer enjoyer. My current fave rpg is lancer which probabaly tells you about my proclivites

(BTW is tiny frog wizards compatible with like salamanders, newts and axolotl and other such small amphibians?)

From the perspective of pure design, Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition is probably the finest piece of work Wizards of the Coast has ever produced, and among the more accomplished examples of game design in the hobby as a whole. A certain subset of the hobby have made it a cornerstone of their personalities to performatively disapprove of what 4E does, but it does it very well.

(Also, the extent to which 4E was poorly regarded for its content is greatly exaggerated. I go into the timeline of events in some detail in this post here; the short version is that the greater part of the 4E "edition war" sprang from a marketing strategy by one of WotC's competitors, which ended up succeeding beyond their expectations due to a series of clownshoes blunders by Hasbro regarding 4E's rollout, promotion and licensing – a lot of people forget that the recent business with the OGL 1.1 isn't the first time Hasbro has attempted that particular brand of fuckery! The perception that 4E was disliked because it was badly designed is largely the product of a tiny but highly vocal core of edition-warring grognards taking advantage of the fact that most people don't remember the real reasons that 4E commercially underperformed to push a false narrative.)

[dicebound]

System Wars

So system warring in the hobby has taken a weird turn since the whole WotC debacle. I shared two different posts kind of touching on the subject, that I agree with in some manner or the other. Let me lay it out for you: No one should be shamed for their preferred system. This hobby is about fun & games and people should be allowed to enjoy what they enjoy. If you only wanna play 5e, fine. If you'd rather play anything else, also fine. If you're shaming people for their preferred system you're doing more harm than good.

A little homebrew here or there also does not mean someone needs to play something else instead. Everyone has house rules.

However, treating 5e like it's a universal system that can run any genre of game is insane. There are literally thousands of games out there that already do what your homebrew D&D 5e conversion would do and more, save yourself the energy and just play that. Additionally, Most systems you could play as an alternative to D&D are way cheaper, if not free in comparison to the massive tomes WotC puts out each year. Many of them are just as supported if not more so by their creators in the form of digital tools and add ons too. If you are affording new purchase of 5e books on the regular, you can absolutely afford to branch out into other cheaper systems. A dogmatic devotion to D&D is what contributes to WotC's stranglehold of the market share. This fear of learning new systems in the hobby is bad for players, bad for GMs, and bad for the hobby's health. If you've genuinely tried other systems and still prefer 5e, Great! Have fun! If you're a person who wants to play a genre conversion for D&D (think Pokemon D&D! One Piece D&D! Fallout D&D!) - I recommend you grab one of the numerous games specifically designed to capture that genre rather than putting a D&D square peg in a round fallout hole. If you're a player in this scenario, then shame on you for demanding your DM go through the hard work of converting an entire genre into 5e just so you don't have to learn a new system.

Some of my favorite mechanics and favorite sessions at the table have come from sessions of Pokemon Tabletop Adventures, Call of Cthulhu, City of Mist, Pathfinder 1e, etc. I've even carried minor game design back into my 5e games to make them better too. There is space for both. 5e Players and Other System Players are brothers and sisters in gaming, and we should be uplifting and challenging each other - not fighting and demeaning each other.

5e players aren't stupid, and you're not some leet gamer because you play Pathfinder or GURPS instead. 5e also isn't God's gift to gaming. Expand your horizons, but enjoy what you like. Catch flies with honey not vinegar. Telling people they have BRAIN DAMAGE FOR ENJOYING 5E is beyond the pale and insisting there's NO POSSIBLE WAY I COULD EEEEEEVER learn a new system is just laziness to the point of idiocy.

[owlbear33]

I think part of the reason why edition wars with ttrpgs can get so fierce, particularly with dnd, but not just dnd, by the end of a popular edition there's always bloat and material that wasn't super well thought out or tested, and a million hours of thousands playing a game can reveal flaws in the best of rulesets, and we can all (well most of us) agree this is true, and at least a good portions will agree the best thing to do about it is start again, rewrite the rules from scratch, make a new edition (the other option is keep playing but complain occasionally, add house rules and limit which sourcebooks to use - and plenty do that)

now here's the problem (talking fans and players, including GMs, not the game designers and creators) none of us can agree which material was a bit bloaty, which material wasn't super well thought out, which foundational rules were flawed and none of us can agree how to fix it

how much needs changing, which bits need removing, what needs adding, what even was the problem with the old ruleset

so much in game design is about taste, there is very very rarely a right answer

and whatever comes out of the redesign process some readers are going to have the aghast realisation that the game designers (or worse your friends and fellow players) do not agree with them about the details, at least to one degree or another, for some that will be fine, and for others not so much

[oldschoolfrp]

As a veteran of the earliest edition wars, as someone who once passionately tried to convert people away from whatever their favorite game was to whichever "better" game I was into at the moment, I’m glad I outgrew that attitude a long time ago.  I like a marketplace with options, but you need to sell me your game on its own merits, not merely as an alternative to something else you don’t like.

[sayruq]

likes to cast reblog to charge

[arctic-hands]

When I was a teenager and still on Neopets I was part of a pretty big Star Trek guild and eventually became part of its council, with the solemn duty of creating weekly polls. Well one day I created the poll "Which would win in a fight? Borg Cube or Death Star?". Naturally, since this was a Star Trek guild, the answer was overwhelmingly "Borg Cube", but someone did have the rationality to point out we were biased.

So I look up a pretty prominent Star Wars guild and message one of their council and ask them to poll the same question and get back to me in a week. They do, and naturally the fuckin geeks said "Death Star".

So then I look up a Stargate guild and messaged the lead council member, saying the same thing, and they get back to me almost immediately saying that the Death Star would immediately one-shot a Borg Cube but they would never be able to do it again to another Cube. And I took that wisdom back to my guild and we were mollified, and for one moment the Nerd World was peaceful.

[miraluking-respectfully]

MEAN TO HIM!!!

[autumnillustration]

"Perhaps a lesser-known gift of Kenobi's was his ability to listen."

(AU where post-banishment Ahsoka gets zapped back to TPM, strapped with a fundamental distrust of the Jedi, an apocalyptic vision of the future, and a mandate to help Anakin Skywalker. So, in all this, it's nice to have a confidant.)

edit: link to the fic

[azertyrobaz]

You're our kid, Omega.

[mcgregor]

THE CLONE WARS | 7.09 AHSOKA | 1.05

[lordvaders]

EWAN MCGREGOR | Vanity Fair | 2024

[prokopetz]

Now, to be fair to those D&D grognards regarding 4e- for which I was one, though I've softened somewhat over the years, especially because of a younger player who came in during 5e and now can't stop raving about how much he thinks 4e is better -the primary complaint was that it didn't feel like *D&D*, not that it was itself a bad game. Personally, I'm just not a fan of symmetrical design and I didn't like it wore its mechanics on its sleeves. (I don't have a question, I dunno how to Tumblr)

(With reference to this post here.)

I've never been able to take assertions that this or that edition of Dungeons & Dragons "isn't real D&D" seriously. No iteration of D&D is real D&D. Practically every major revision has represented a huge departure from its predecessor, to the extent that it hardly makes sense to talk about the game at all without specifying a particular edition – D&D’s history is functionally half-a-dozen completely different games in a trenchcoat. Like, the game's current iteration isn't identical to the one you grew up with? Welcome to the club!

(As an aside, I'm particularly entertained by 3E/Pathfinder fans making the it's-not-real-D&D argument, given that the Third Edition represents a considerably larger departure from the Second Edition than the Fourth Edition does from the Third. Indeed, the criticisms that 2E fans levelled at 3E are often nearly identical to the criticisms that 3E fans levelled at 4E, right down to the specific assertion that it too closely resembles a particular popular video game published by Blizzard Entertainment – 3E was widely dismissed as "just tabletop Diablo" in precisely the same manner that 4E was panned for being "just tabletop World of Warcraft"!)

[nyerusnova]

yeah... things are pretty yikes right now in the current batfam storyline,

but at least Tim is rocking those thigh-high boots and I just wanted to appreciate that for a sec

[hayden-christensen]

It all started with a farmboy, a scoundrel, a princess, and a dark lord...

HAPPY STAR WARS DAY STAR WARS WEEK 2024 DAY 6: MAY THE 4TH BE WITH YOU

[gamelpar]

[sayruq]

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