Mostly because it has had me thinking about D&D a lot for the last few days and finally consolidated my feelings on the matter: whatever D&D in its current form is, and what it looks like its future form will be, it is not the D&D I prefer.
I have had a love hate relationship with the game since 3e came out. Battlemats and minis, too many options, too much emphasis on the player, too much taken out of the hands of the DM, the consistent slide toward dumbed down action adventure fantasy, the death of exploration and dungeon delving. All of these things have vexed me at one time or another. Times when they have all vexed me simultaneously, I have dropped campaigns I have been running and almost quit altogether.
I realize a lot of people came back to D&D with 3rd edition -- though it is questionable how many of them stayed -- but the fact is that the game changed dramatically in tone and intention. But I love D&D and have fond memories of great campaigns, so I tried. Again and again, with different groups and different houserules and throwing out these rules and those. in the end, though, the "new" D&D was a different animal and not conducive to my definition of D&D.
Now, with 4th imminent, I can finally relax and just go back to running 1st or 2nd edition, knowing that there's no reson for me to keep going with the game heading even farther down a path away from "my D&D".
I have had a love hate relationship with the game since 3e came out. Battlemats and minis, too many options, too much emphasis on the player, too much taken out of the hands of the DM, the consistent slide toward dumbed down action adventure fantasy, the death of exploration and dungeon delving. All of these things have vexed me at one time or another. Times when they have all vexed me simultaneously, I have dropped campaigns I have been running and almost quit altogether.
I realize a lot of people came back to D&D with 3rd edition -- though it is questionable how many of them stayed -- but the fact is that the game changed dramatically in tone and intention. But I love D&D and have fond memories of great campaigns, so I tried. Again and again, with different groups and different houserules and throwing out these rules and those. in the end, though, the "new" D&D was a different animal and not conducive to my definition of D&D.
Now, with 4th imminent, I can finally relax and just go back to running 1st or 2nd edition, knowing that there's no reson for me to keep going with the game heading even farther down a path away from "my D&D".
