What's really at stake in the Edition Wars

[ExploderWizard]

If my wife changes her hair color, it does not mean something was wrong with the prior color, it just means she felt like trying a different color. And if I go into a restaurant I've been to before and order something different from what I ordered last time, that does not imply there was something wrong with my prior meal there.

Change does not always imply something was wrong before. It often means you just feel like it's time to try something different, despite being pleased with what came before.

If the restaurant decides that what you had on your last visit will no longer be served what then?

A selection of choices for the sake of variety is a great thing. Being served what the management wants to serve isn't so hot.

 

[BryonD]

IMO a big part of the problem was that sales were out of sync with the amount of play. When 4E came along, 3E sales were in real decline. From a business point of view it was absolutely time to go to a new edition.

But, sales were not down because play was sharply down. It *was* down, as is the case for most any game of its age. But play was still pretty solid, it was just that even the most devoted players were so buried in their D20 mountain of books that they just didn't need anything else. It became a lot easier to be much more picky with what you bought. And most of the cool topics of had already been published, so it was a double whammy of reasons not to buy.

I don't think the WotC spin on 3E was nearly as bad as some people perceived. But I also don't think it was as innocent as others insist. WotC didn't intend to be abrasive. But they failed to appreciate how much a significant portion of their fan base was still deeply invested (and not just financially) in the old game.

So when they start talking about "proud nails", some people don't hear "Your wife's hair doesn't look greasy with that new color.", they hear: "I just called your wife's hair greasy.".

A lot of people were ready to move on. But a lot of people were not. WotC significantly underestimated the size of the later group, and failed to consider their point of view regarding many 4E promotions.

 

[diaglo]

Agreed. One may choose to change because something was wrong, but also for other reasons. If I go out to see a new movie, does that mean there was something "wrong" with the last movie I saw? If I pick up a new book, was there something "wrong" with the old author?

i have no problem with the change of movies, hair color, food choice at restaurants...

as long as the original choices are still available by the ones making it.

with the movie if i can still pick it up at the dollar theater or on dvd i'm happy.
with the hair color if it turns back to the original fine.
with food choice. if it stays on the menu.

all these things mean that the change wasn't an implied bad thing.

my grief is dropping the movie totally. never making a dvd available.
or taking the food off the menu.

bring back my OD&D(1974) or d02 for the those fans or 1edADnD or even 2edADnD...

heck, i want new products for OD&D(1974) not just reprints. ask Ted Stark or Kevin Kulp or Scott Rouse or Charles Ryan or whomever else has ever read a post by me.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Whether elder dragon minions exist in 4e is a factual question. If someone repeatedly creates threads, or sidetracks threads, by attacking 4e's elder red dragon minions, they are making a factual assertion that is not only incorrect, but easily shown to be incorrect.

Is that something you see a lot of in edition discussions?

"4e has elder red dragon minions, therefore, it sucks?"

More often, what I see would be closer to "4e isn't really D&D, it's just a minis combat game masquerading as a roleplaying game!" That's a pretty inflammatory assertion. When disentangled from the inflammatory rhetoric, it is also a very subjective view. The only way you could say it's factually wrong is in "the logo is on it!"/"it says it's an RPG!" kind of way, which already assumes the person who posted the assertion is too blinded with nerdrage/dumb to look at the cover of the thing.

I could just be haunting a weird corner of the interwebs, though. Possibly, the "4e has elder red dragon minions, it sucks now" is prevalent elsewhere. Even in that case, I'd be inclined to think the person was using sloppy hyperbole to make a point (something about character power? something about minions being dumb?) that is ultimately their subjective evaluation. Conversation might uncover that endpoint.

The alternative explanation, that they are dumber than rocks and incapable of recognizing that their factual assertion is completely wrong even after having chapter and verse cited to them to prove it, is not actually the charitable position you are making it out to be.

Perhaps this is the key difference. I'm not trying to explain someone else's actions. I don't try and fathom why they do what they do. I'm not here to divine motives through the arcane medium of internet message board posts. I might as well read chicken entrails, and tell you what they are thinking. That is why the assumption of authenticity is just that -- an assumption. It might not be true, but if I act as if it is true, it leads to better ends, even in the situations where it is not (part of that happens to be that you get what you expect out of people -- if you believe someone has something to contribute, they might actually contribute, even if it was their intent to troll and if you believe someone is just a troll, they might turn into one, even if it wasn't their intent).

All I know is what they say. Asking myself "How could a rational person say something like this?" usually leads me to more productive, more generative thought for myself, and for those interested, then shutting it down out of troll-paranoia ever has.

You can actually go quite further in the criticism when you begin to address people who make assertions they have no reason to believe are true, but which they hope will make others miserable.

Well, that's just it, as far as my assumptions go, that doesn't happen very often at all when a group people honestly wants to communicate about things they are passionate about.

And even when it does, talking about it calmly and without invective can diffuse that misery that others might experience, and could lead to some actual insight as to why people get miserable over the assertion that 4e has elder red dragon minions in the first place. That assertion doesn't make me particularly miserable (I can even see where it could be kind of awesome -- how EPIC BADASS would that make your character seem?). Someone else being wrong doesn't upset me very much, either.

And, ultimately, it's for my own good. I'd much rather talk with a group of peers about something we share a passion for and err on the side of assuming people are decent, then leap at shadows and shout "J'accuse!" at some sloppy poster who likes to stir the pot. Constant vigilance for the disingenuous would frazzle me, because it is sodding difficult to divine motives in person, let alone though this artificial mode of communication. I would go mad with suspicion. It would be all Kamikaze Crime And Punishment up in here.

Thankfully, there is very little risk in assuming my fellow ENWorlders are not just out to spitefully make others suffer. Even if I'm wrong, I don't actually loose anything. It's just a bunch of dorks on the internet talking about pretending to be elves, at the end of the day.

 

[Anselyn]

People in Los Angeles can endlessly argue about the Los Angeles Lakers vs. the Los Angeles Clippers. It doesn't actually matter though. We argue about it because the argument itself is fun.

Heck, people argue about the Black Sox scandal to this day - and none of them were alive when it happened. People argue about all sorts of stuff, endlessly, that doesn't really matter to them.

I would say this is really ritualised teasing rather than what I mean by an argument. However, I agree that debate, which is probably more relevant, is a synonym for argument according to online dictionaries. Does "quarrel" suggest the appropriate adrenaline level for the thing I was describing as an argument? Perhaps this is a US/UK thing. My American partner confusingly talks about couples "fighting" when no blows have been exchanged ...

 

[Desdichado]

Thankfully, there is very little risk in assuming my fellow ENWorlders are not just out to spitefully make others suffer. Even if I'm wrong, I don't actually loose anything. It's just a bunch of dorks on the internet talking about pretending to be elves, at the end of the day.

Well, there's also the other side of that coin, where of course nobody's out to make anyone suffer, because if someone's literally suffering because of an edition war, holy cow, that's pathetic.

I suspect, (and in fact I know for a fact for some folks, because they've outright confessed as much) that stirring the pot a bit with some intentional hyperbole is seen as a relatively harmless amusement.

I can see how the mods would take exception with that point of view, though.

 

[Hussar]

IMO a big part of the problem was that sales were out of sync with the amount of play. When 4E came along, 3E sales were in real decline. From a business point of view it was absolutely time to go to a new edition.

But, sales were not down because play was sharply down. It *was* down, as is the case for most any game of its age. But play was still pretty solid, it was just that even the most devoted players were so buried in their D20 mountain of books that they just didn't need anything else. It became a lot easier to be much more picky with what you bought. And most of the cool topics of had already been published, so it was a double whammy of reasons not to buy.

I don't think the WotC spin on 3E was nearly as bad as some people perceived. But I also don't think it was as innocent as others insist. WotC didn't intend to be abrasive. But they failed to appreciate how much a significant portion of their fan base was still deeply invested (and not just financially) in the old game.

So when they start talking about "proud nails", some people don't hear "Your wife's hair doesn't look greasy with that new color.", they hear: "I just called your wife's hair greasy.".

A lot of people were ready to move on. But a lot of people were not. WotC significantly underestimated the size of the later group, and failed to consider their point of view regarding many 4E promotions.

Who are you and when did you get so reasonable.

I'd posrep this if I could.

 

[Paradox]

I don't think it can be put on one single thing, but a combination of items already listed. Part ego, part trolling, part lording over others with The Rules of their choice, part identity, part investment, part armchair game design and so on.

Plenty of folks felt burned at 3.5 after purchasing 3.0, so naturally, they would be against yet another edition change. But, taking part in Edition Wars isn't going to make WotC decide not to go ahead with a newer edition. (I sometimes wonder if rather than bothering with 3.5, WotC would have been better off just going for 4e instead. Yes, there still would be edition wars, but they might not be as heated.)

Some Edition Wars come from simple misunderstandings as well. There's a thread on the WotC boards where someone says he's out of a job and now has time to play, should he resurrect his 3e game or go for 4e? So far, nobody's taking it the wrong way and starting an edition war thank goodness, but many if not most of them are saying try 4e without really grasping the main issue. I responded that his return to D&D and which edition would depend on what he meant by resurrecting his game. (If he had sold all his 3e books, he's going to have to start over anyway, might as well go for 4e. If he still has his 3e books, he should stay with that.) The part that he was out of a job seems to have gone past everyone and it looks like they all assumed he was asking which edition is better.

I have no stake in which version he plays since we're never going to be in the same game anyway. If he had asked, "I'm in a game with Paradox, which edition should I pick up?", the obvious answer would be "Find out which edition he's running...."

Another thing is system mastery. People invested a lot of time learning another edition, and now, the rules have changed. When 3e first came out, I found myself trying to play 2e withing 3e's framework, which was annoying when realizing the rules were different. I suspect the same can be applied to the change to 4e. You KNEW what the rules were inside out, and now that's not the case. Rules lawyers that have every tiny hidden advantage for their characters suddenly didn't have that.

At the heart of it, all RPGs are the same, but the game mechanics and situational resloutions are handled different. "I kick in the door and attack" is a quote that can be applied to any and ever RPG.

 

[Umbran]

So, let's say your wife changes her hair color and walks into work and a coworker might say, "You dyed your hair? What was wrong with the old color?" That would be a valid thing to ask. The fact that your wife changed it implies something was wrong with the old color.

Did the wife imply, or did the coworker infer?

To imply is to suggest, but not state explicitly. To infer is to derive by reasoning. I don't think the wife is necessarily suggesting anything - the action here is on the coworker's part.

 

[Garthanos]

Who are you and when did you get so reasonable.

I'd posrep this if I could.

I just fainted.