Whitey said:
There is one way they say, fun or not fun, to do it. And that is the harshest limitation of all.
And you're saying this is a new phenomenon? It's not, by decades.
Who is doing all this limiting and saying this or that is fun/not fun? It's more a perception of the individual, not something inherent in the game. EDIT: I'm going to expand upon this a tad, so as to ask Gary a question related to this.
Way back when, I was very obsessive-compulsive about buying game books, especially for D&D. For whatever reason, I just
had to have every book that came out, and every book's new gewgaws for the game
had to have a place in my game. I was the completist's completist. Anyway, as I got older, and especially with the advent of the 3e/d20 era, I finally had an epiphany - I didn't
have to buy anything. I didn't
have to use everything that TSR/WotC published. The implications which I thought were in those books - implications that one's game was not complete or cool or fun without the books in question - were, in all fairness, just my own perceptions of how things were, rather than something actually present in the books.
Now, for a question to Gary. I think this has been addressed in the past, but hey, I'll ask it again - there is and was a perception that you took on a very, hmm, how shall I put this....
authoritarian air in the 1e books. That is, many have said that you were proclaiming that when it came to playing D&D - or, maybe more correctly in this case, AD&D - it was either your way or no way. The HackMaster game actually bases much of its tone in the Players Handbook and Game Masters Guide upon this very notion. In my opinion, much of your tone was definitely tongue-in-cheek, which I think HackMaster's designers picked up on. Was that your intention? Another possibility that I've mulled is that you were basically stressing that the game had to have commonly agreed-upon foundations in order for tournament play to be feasible, and this assertion was taken, by the more sensitive, to be commandments issued by you for any game, whether played at home or a con. After getting acquainted with your online persona, I'm much more inclined to believe the former rather than the latter. Any thoughts?