Re: The discussion of whether 3e has gotten a little too soft, with too much encouragement of level appropriate dungeons, etc. . . .
WOTC has gone way too far in this little bit on their site.
Basically, they say players should AUDIT their characters sheets for the value of their total against what WOTC says they OUGHT to have, and complain if their DM is "putting them in the poorhouse".
They are also encouraged to argue or quit if they don't like the DM's rules on core classes, and the WOTC writer says this, about the idea of not buying all WOTC's supplemental books, and just using the core books instead:
<<A "purist" is the most obnoxious brand of anything, because that label carries with it an implicit (or explicit) snootiness that declares that any other way of doing things is not only impure but also substandard and unworthy. There's a pretentiousness involved in declaring yourself a purist, and it seems as if you see this as a point of friction between yourself (and the other players perhaps) and the DM.>>
- Jason Nelson-Brown
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sg/20060623a
Clearly, WOTC has made a philosophical/marketing decision on what D&D ought to be like, and has moved away from the most basic rule: the DM decides.
I guess it makes sense from a short term sales point of view to maximize their sales of crunch books to players, but they don't seem to get that stats-crazed munchkins aren't running the games, and if nobody is running the game, nobody is buying books. In all my 25 years of playing and 20 years of DMing, I've never been so insulted.
Actually, I just don't care what they have to say . . . but they are being jerks in a brazenly odd way.
