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

[MichaelSomething]

Summon Tweet Nojitsu!

 

[Azuresun]

I didn't understand + threads for like months after they started up. Then I thought them crazy ways to just stifle conversations, but more and more I like them. I don't want an echo chamber, but sometimes I just want some negativity removed.

I was kind of soured on the idea from when I was on another forum, where a + thread was generally code for "here we can take pot-shots at the 'haters' and they're not allowed to respond".

But in general, yes, it would be nice to have respite from a subset of posters who hate D&D, hate WOTC, and will remind you of that opinion every goddamn chance they get. Really, we get it. Your opinion has been expressed, understood, and properly processed. Nobody reading has any doubt what your opinion is. You can move on, really.

 

[Scott Christian]

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.

Can I offer a different perspective?

Your entire argument comes from the framework that this is a game with one person. Like they are able to turn the sliders on/off as if in a single player video game. But this is a group game. So what rolls out can bleed into other people's games. Here are a few examples:

• ASI being removed, so two players at the table want to use it as their build style. This influences the other players' decisions while they build their characters. And even if they don't like, there is a psychological cog wheel on the table that doesn't allow them to forget it.
• One player in the group really likes 4e. The DM hates it. The others don't care. Who wins? (And you could say that the 4e person could go elsewhere, but have some sympathy. These are his/her friends. They want to play together.
• One player is an optimizer to the maximizer's limit. By fifth level their damage now triples the other PCs. Some players don't care. One really does. It bothers this player, and even though they like to play their character with a theme, which often forces them to not optimize, they feel the need to.

The reason people debate changes, editions, playstyles, etc. is because there is a very good chance those things will bleed into their game, whether they want them to or not. So once someone insists on playing a lizardman that is lawful good, then that sets the precedence for others to do something equally absurd (in this case, absurd for this table).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I was kind of soured on the idea from when I was on another forum, where a + thread was generally code for "here we can take pot-shots at the 'haters' and they're not allowed to respond".

But in general, yes, it would be nice to have respite from a subset of posters who hate D&D, hate WOTC, and will remind you of that opinion every goddamn chance they get. Really, we get it. Your opinion has been expressed, understood, and properly processed. Nobody reading has any doubt what your opinion is. You can move on, really.

I have to admit there was a period when I was actively hostile to D&D, but at one point sat up and went "You know what, yeah there a lot of structural things in it you dislike, and its occasionally annoying that people will automatically assume its the only game in town, but is that really a reason to harsh on people buzz when there's clearly a lot of people who still get a lot of fun out of it?" Which then allowed me to be able to accept that there were still virtues to the general approach, even amidst all the stuff I thought was dumb and annoying.
I suspect it made me a lot easier to take in these kinds of spaces than I used to be.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Can I offer a different perspective?

Your entire argument comes from the framework that this is a game with one person. Like they are able to turn the sliders on/off as if in a single player video game. But this is a group game. So what rolls out can bleed into other people's games. Here are a few examples:

• ASI being removed, so two players at the table want to use it as their build style. This influences the other players' decisions while they build their characters. And even if they don't like, there is a psychological cog wheel on the table that doesn't allow them to forget it.

Yeah, these things aren't as separate as some people will want to suggest in most groups.

• One player in the group really likes 4e. The DM hates it. The others don't care. Who wins? (And you could say that the 4e person could go elsewhere, but have some sympathy. These are his/her friends. They want to play together.

Not only that, especially if online play is off the table, finding someone else to run a game of a past edition that is not the current one but on top of that is not in the OSR sphere can be a non-trivial exercise (I'm not even sure how terribly easy it is online).

• One player is an optimizer to the maximizer's limit. By fifth level their damage now triples the other PCs. Some players don't care. One really does. It bothers this player, and even though they like to play their character with a theme, which often forces them to not optimize, they feel the need to.

Often because they don't want to feel like the first player's sidekick, and that can be how it comes across in those circumstances.

The reason people debate changes, editions, playstyles, etc. is because there is a very good chance those things will bleed into their game, whether they want them to or not. So once someone insists on playing a lizardman that is lawful good, then that sets the precedence for others to do something equally absurd (in this case, absurd for this table).

Though that can always come back to "Why is it absurd for that table?" and the legitimacy of those reasons is always subject to debate; some reasons can seem more valid than others, and which side of that line they're on is in the eye of the beholder.