What's really at stake in the Edition Wars

[SpiderMonkey]

Hi, all.

Before I begin, I'd like to stress that I do not want to fan any edition wars flames.

One of my friends lured me into a panel for my university's English Grad Student Conference (I'm at Virginia Tech). The panel is on gaming, and my particular talk is on the rhetoric surrounding the Edition Wars, specifically addressing what is at stake for the participants. I'm mostly arguing from an ontological basis, that is, the rules determine and implicitly argue for ways of being in a game world. I'll also be talking about how the rules affect the "means of production" in terms of creative control of a shared narrative/imaginary universe.

I know these discussions don't get so heated based solely on these reasons, and that's why I'm asking you for your opinions. I'd like to use fodder from this thread to let the community represent itself rather than having me talk for you.

So...

...for you, what's really at stake?

(The next post is a copy of the abstract.)

 

[SpiderMonkey]

What's in an Edition? The Stakes of the Dungeons and Dragons Edition Wars

Table-top roleplaying games began in the 1970's and became particularly prevalent in the 1980's. In particular, Dungeons & Dragons has been the standard for the roleplaying game industry. Since its inception in 1974, Dungeons & Dragons has gone through a number of iterations. Because each of these iterations introduces and revises the rules of previous editions, they do what Bolter and Grusin refer to as “remediation”--that is, each medium works to bring a more authentic experience of reality than that which preceded it. Bolter and Grusin characterize the development of media as an oscillation between immediacy and hypermediacy and between transparency and opacity: “Although each medium promises to reform its predecessors by offering a more immediate or authentic experience, the promise of reform inevitably leads us to become aware of the new medium as a medium” (20). As these editions have progressed, fans have become more aware of the role the rules play in moderating their experience in an imaginary world.

The rules in these games are particularly important because they provide a stabilizing influence and act as a sort of “social contract” between the players and referee. Further, they structure the experience of gameplay itself, acting as a sort of ontology for the game world. Subsequently, each iteration argues for certain normative assumptions about not only they ways in which players interact with their imagined environment, but about the nature of that environment itself.

The latest (4th) edition of D&D has thus engendered a number of discussions on the internet regarding these issues. The rhetoric that surrounds an edition change is limited not only to the rules themselves, but the way the new edition is marketed and how players and fans react to the change. In this talk, I describe the game and examples of its changes to argue that the reason discussions between fans/players become so heated about edition changes is not due to quibbles about rules; rather they are tied to issues regarding creative control, the means of production over a shared narrative, and how sense is made in both the game and real worlds.

 

[Crothian]

...for you, what's really at stake?

My sanity.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

- Being right on the internet
- Honor and Glory of playing "the real" D&D or "a real roleplaying game" instead of "merely" a MMORPG in tabletop form or a miniatures wargame
- Not being considered merely "nostalgic" or unable or unwilling to move with the times, not being outdated.
- Not ending up with no one to play because everyone hates your edition, not being left out or behind.
- Not being turned into a consumer slave by corporations that are only in for the money.
- Not being just seen as a consumer slave with no own opinions or decision-making capability.
- Being among the cool guys and the in-crowd.
- Ensuring that your opinion is heard and that games you like instead of games you dislike are being supported and created.

 

[Raven Crowking]

- Being right on the internet
- Honor and Glory of playing "the real" D&D or "a real roleplaying game" instead of "merely" a MMORPG in tabletop form or a miniatures wargame
- Not being considered merely "nostalgic" or unable or unwilling to move with the times, not being outdated.
- Not ending up with no one to play because everyone hates your edition, not being left out or behind.
- Not being turned into a consumer slave by corporations that are only in for the money.
- Not being just seen as a consumer slave with no own opinions or decision-making capability.
- Being among the cool guys and the in-crowd.
- Ensuring that your opinion is heard and that games you like instead of games you dislike are being supported and created.

This....with the caveat that, even by posting on the InterWeb, you know you will never be "right".

 

[ggroy]

For some individuals, there is one simple reason: ego.

 

[mudbunny]

I would say that for sopme people, Edition wars are less about showing that your point of view is right, and more about proving the other point of view wrong.

 

[Shazman]

What's at stake is the future of a person's favorite hobby or at least their continued participation in that hobby. For the most part you can continue to play whatever edition you'd like as long as you have access to the rulebooks, enough other people to play with, and enough free time. However, if you love 3.5 and only 3.5 and your regular 3.5 group breaks up because people move away or some want to play 4E or Pathfinder instead, you may have a problem on your hands. It's pretty hard to get players, or rulebooks for the players, if the rules for that edition are out of print and no future support will be given to that edition. So most likey you will have to play an edition that you don't particularly like or not play at all.

 

[Umbran]

In this talk, I describe the game and examples of its changes to argue that the reason discussions between fans/players become so heated about edition changes is not due to quibbles about rules; rather they are tied to issues regarding creative control, the means of production over a shared narrative, and how sense is made in both the game and real worlds.

Hr. The problem I have is that I don't think your thesis here is correct. In my mind, as someone who has been trying to moderate the conflicts, the reasons the discussions get heated has little to do with the content of the game, the means of production, or the like.

What is/was at stake? Well, consider - for there to be a stake, there must be something you can win, and something you can lose. In the discussions on this board, there was... nothing to be won, and nothing concerning the game to be lost. There was no reason to believe that discussion with random parties on the internet would have any measurable impact on the development of the game.

So, the question then becomes - why would a person get into a heated argument with (and lash out at) people who have no real influence on how the world around them is changing? Answer that, and you'll know the real reason for the Edition Wars.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

For me...honest discussion. I have no stake in what another gamer likes to play, but please don't use your dislike of any edition of any game to ascribe attributes to a game that are reached through ignorance, applied through malice, or are purely your opinion as if they were facts. I will defend any game against un-truths and have been dragged into too many editions wars because I can't back away.