D&D General Rant: Sometimes I Hate the D&D Community

[RuinousPowers]

There it is.

No one is censoring your opinion, but I think it's fair to understand that your opinion is not fact and that people who don't share it are wrong or bad. It's one thing to say you prefer cake to pie, it's another to say pie has no place in the game and people who like pie are wrong and should feel bad.

That's still an opinion though, so they should be able to express it.

 

[Greggy C]

I . . . I don't understand certain people in the D&D community, and it's quite frustrating. We constantly fight over nothing, write thousands of words in huge posts about why someone else's style of play is badwrongfun, and whine about minor changes in the game as if they're the end of the hobby.
playstyle" defense.

I think your first mistake is calling it a community, there is no "community". There are people who bought a game, like Monopoly or Chess and have an opinion about the game, and prefer the version they got when there were kids. Mine was London based Monopoly with Mayfair the most the expensive square.

There are people who can't imagine other people playing the game in any way except the way they play it.

Then we have the Matt Mercer effect which was to bring in the LA crowd looking for fame and fortune and profit from celebrity streams.

And then you have the people trying to make some cash selling stuff around the game. They will turn on each other as soon as they smell blood.

But it ain't a community.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Yea, I know. But you wouldn't believe how often people get offended by someone expressing their opinion on an aspect of the game. (That has nothing to do with person A telling person B that their play style is wrong)

Part of participating in a community, to me, is taking responsibility for your words. The fact is that we can never know the true emotions of people on the other side of the screen- it's incredibly difficult to correctly read emotion in a block of text. So if something you said has offended someone else, I think the responsible thing to do is, well, take responsibility for your words. Your words caused offense. It happens. Whether you intended it or not, you apologize and move on.

To me it's the difference between saying:

"People get offended by my opinion."

And

"My words caused offense."

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Note: If you have never participated in any of the acts I'm complaining about below, this post is not directed at you. Good job at not being amongst the people in this hobby that actively piss me off by making it toxic. You're cool and are not the target of this post.

I would like to think that I am not toxic... but i will settle for 'mostly not' since I am far from perfect and have been dragged into fights repeatedly.

I . . . I don't understand certain people in the D&D community, and it's quite frustrating. We constantly fight over nothing, write thousands of words in huge posts about why someone else's style of play is badwrongfun, and whine about minor changes in the game as if they're the end of the hobby.

I would agree if we didn't have multi examples of WotC listening to these complaints... hold that thought it goes with the next one.

The Edition Wars are stupid. Play whatever edition you like and stop caring if other people like an edition you don't. 1e, 2e, 3e/3.5e, 4e, 5e, or either edition of Pathfinder. Play whatever you like. I don't care, and so long as you can play what you like, you shouldn't care either. I can understand being disappointed if a specific setting, race, or class was never updated to your favorite edition of the game.

in 2000 WotC didn't really 'listen' but they had players who loved the game making the changes (I can tell you SOME common house rules from 2e made it into 3e just not many) but online people almost from the start picked up on issues (Ranger and Monk issues, Haste was way too powerful) and 3.5 tried to correct these... so those people that others tell to "just shut up and like it or play something else" (yeah sometimes they use other word but that is the jist) are not realizing 3.5 WAS becuse people complained online and on fourms.

I complain A LOT about the mememification of the hate of 4e. but even before that "Fighters after level 5 are just carrying wizards things" was a 3.5 meme that brought us the more balanced 4e. In fact I GURANTEE that somewhere in one of those meetings pitching and preping 4e had people talking about the stupid character op shenanigans of 3.5... I would NOT be surprised if Pun Pun himself was brought up.

I wont pretend 4e was perfect, but it was so far my favorite edition of the game. BUT people complaining about it being a video game and "Too Balanced" and fighters using spells... caused the backlash of 5e. Make no mistake they heard people complain. they heard the cries of 3.5 was better.


So today, when people say "Why bring it up on enworld, why not just go play 4e?" my answer is ALWAYS the same... because 3.5 was a reaction to a grass roots dislike of 3e mechanics. 4e was a reaction to a mix of grass roots and memeification of problems with 3.5. the next playtest was a reaction to both real and imagined flaws in 4e being discussed... and 5e is what came from the next playtest (and that is it's own bag of issues).

So today we know somethings are changing in 2024. We already know problematic issues with race are up on the chopping block, and that monster/CR math is being fixed. So I will gnash my teeth and complain every step of the next 2 years hopeing that others like me will chime in. When they do I hope it brings the 4e ideas (and some 2e ones) up to new players that only started in the last 5ish years... and they start talking about it too, and then THOSE voices will spread and WotC will bring back things for 5.5/6/anniversary edition.

And what ever comes in 2024, I will begin talking about again, good bad and ugly. I will do this (as I am now) here, in person on social media (what ever the facebook/twitter/youtube/tictok of 2025 looks like) because I want my voice heard.

I don't for a moment believe that 1 voice makes it to WotC and changes the game... but 1 or 2 voices can start a snowball that when it builds up enough snow riding down hill can change EVERYTHING.

 

[Dragonsbane]

So people shouldn't express their opinion on aspects of the game for fear of offending someone else?

Happens on all forums to one degree or another. I often have no malice in what I say. Doesn't translate well to text sometimes I guess. So yes, many of us self-censor now, as much as we can. Sad world. And I say this, no sarcasm, in the friendliest and most non-judgemental of ways.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I can't tell you how often I have watched (and occasionally participated in, though I try very hard to watch for the signs) arguements where both parties are essentially right (and sometimes even on the same side), but they are arguing over a matter of a degree or two.

I don't want to get political (even though that is the easiest one to point out here in states) so I will use my other hobby...

Hasbro changed the GI Joe builds. The new ones are more articulate and better designed... but for people who collected the old ones they are so out of scale it is like standing an oger mini next to a human mini and saying they are the same. So there is a not insignificant amount of push for the old scale to return (so we can make our army diorama like setups with new and old) and you would think the 3 3/4 over 5 would be easy enough BUT there is a middle ground when they were more like 4... and id you use THOSE or not is an issue... but WAIT there are MORE factions... see even in the 80's 90's there are diffrences. and I can find factions (some big some small) that have a cut off of almost every year. "Nothing after '87 fits with the astatic"

Me, I collect all of the joe stuff... but I separate my O ring from my modern... with that distinction, not 'classic' vs 'new' or 'pre 92 and post 92' just o ring and non oring... and even THAT gets me yelled at by some as 'not a true joe fan'

right before COvid lockdowns started back at the end of 2019 I went to a GI Joe Con, and I had bought almost $100 worth of O ring figures that we call army builders (generic troops with no names just to fill out ranks) but I also bought a Ninja force oring figure of a CObra Ninja with a name (slice if it matters) and I had someone read me the riot act about how the 94 Joes shouldn't be mixed with the 200X joe army builders that were throw backs to the orginal 80's line when it was a real military... and this guy and I had hours before talked about how we wished Hasbro would bring back O ring figures.

"If your not 100% with me 100% of the time you are the enemy" is WAY too common

 

[Maxperson]

You could probably swap out "D&D Community" for "Knitting Community" or "[Sport] Community" or any number of categories of so-called communities out there and little would change about everything that follows in a general sense. People are people after all and they're communicating in a medium that lacks much of the nuance that a face-to-face conversation would have, plus it's anonymous which means there's little to fear in the way of real consequences for being a jerk. There's no changing anyone other than oneself, so I just accept that's how it is, develop a thick skin, and try not to contribute too much to it. (Which is harder than it sounds, particularly when someone is obviously wrong about their preferences. That simply cannot be allowed to stand.)

 

[Maxperson]

I can't tell you how often I have watched (and occasionally participated in, though I try very hard to watch for the signs) arguements where both parties are essentially right (and sometimes even on the same side), but they are arguing over a matter of a degree or two.

I think I lot of that stems from the nature of discussion. For a lot of discussion, it's the differences that will be debated, so that degree or two is all that there really is to talk about. "I agree with you." ends the conversation right there in most instances. Not much more to say.

 

[Burnside]

I agree with OP's post, of course, but missing from the post is the equally exasperating situation where people cannot tolerate any reasonable or unreasonable criticism of a thing they like, or countenance the notion that it is possible for a thing that is largely good to also have some flaws - or worse, that a criticism of the adventure, show, class, etc that you like is somehow a personal attack on you the reader and must not be allowed to stand. Just as people ought to be allowed to like things, so too must they be allowed to find fault with them.

In short, it is not necessary for everyone to agree with your tastes.

 

[aco175]

How much of the problem is not understanding the words other people use? Words have a meaning if not a couple meanings and certain words may be what you wanted to mean, but others thought you mean something else. Does where you life affect this?

An example is when I was in England and someone said that I was pissed. He meant and thought drunk and I though he was saying I was upset/angry.