What's really at stake in the Edition Wars

[Aberzanzorax]

Hobo...

...ENworld is one of THE BEST moderated sites.

Check out WotC's site or RPG.net.

UGH!




This is T.A.M.E in terms of edition wars.



The moderators here do an excellent job compared to those at WotC...which is somewhat understandable...WotC's sorta have their hands tied (if they moderate substantially, they can be seen as shutting down the opposition to their product...and result in a backlash). Here it's about building a solid commuinity for reasonable expression.

I've been temporarily banned/suspended here.

I was a News guide on the WOTC forums (even when I hated them). Wotc has to put up with more hate, and hate speech. Here, there is a luxury of stopping that without the perception that "THEY'RE TRYING TO SHUT US UP CAUSE THEIR PRODUCT SUKKS!!!!!!"

Just saying....While I don't like wotc...and I've been tempo-banned here... Wotc's more gentle and ENworld's more firm...as they can be, as they should be, and I respect them both for those particular stances.

 

[AngryMojo]

There's been quite a bit of mentioning of why the edition war happens, any of which or all may be correct, there's been a lot of insightful comments. What about the second half though, what's at stake?
What worries me about the edition wars is what they've done to the hobby as a whole. Some sort of edition war breaks out at just about every new edition of a game, look at World of Darkness, WFRP, even Shadowrun and you'll see this. Most of us will just live and let live and not have a problem if people like a different game. We are, after all, gamers. The true problem lies when new blood enters the world, and without new blood the hobby will die.
Picture this; you're a new gamer in late 2008 who's interested in the hobby, so you decide to research a bit on the internet. You find a giant cesspool of angry fighting with no real discussion that you can understand happening. If you even post that you're new to the hobby and you'd like to know more about the game you're interested in, a fight breaks out over which edition to play. Many people at this point would be turned off completely, and not look back for a long time, if they ever do.
In a hobby that already has enough negative stereotypes, throwing fuel on the fire by creating such an environment isn't any definition of good. It's not something I lose much sleep over, because I know when the wars die down, new people come about and fall in love with the game just like I did when I was twelve, but it would be nice if we didn't have a year or two out of every eight where the environment was so darn hostile.
So, in my humble opinion, that's what's at stake with the edition war. The entrance of new people to continue the hobby we all love.

 

[BryonD]

No they don't.

Yes they do!

 

[Aberzanzorax]

Yes they do!

I think SOMEONE is about to talk to the HAND...Because YOUR edition is clearly WORSE than MINE!!!!!!one11111!!1!

 

[AngryMojo]

I think SOMEONE is about to talk to the HAND...Because YOUR edition is clearly WORSE than MINE!!!!!!one11111!!1!

Well, my edition is like rubber and your edition is like glue!!

Doody head!

 

[Lanefan]

I think the only way you can find out what edition warriors really are thinking is to talk specifically to edition warriors, not merely observers of edition wars. Several edition warriors I've seen are, for example, RPGA players, or otherwise play with on-the-fly groups in gaming stores, rather than with more firmly established groups of pre-existing friends. So, to them, what goes on in the greater gaming environment is important, whereas to me, it's just something about which I'm academically curious.

Talk to me, then: I'm one, but I don't fit Hobo's profile at all.

I've been fighting the edition wars here at home for slightly under 10 years now. I have a few long-time friends who are passionate in their support for 3e-3.5e and have been since it came out; I and a few others are just as passionate in supporting (and all too often defending) the 1e-based game we've spent so long in building. And it's not like I don't know 3e - I gave it a 6-year run as a player before bailing on it to start my latest campaign - and while I freely admit it has some good ideas and did much to rejeuvenate the franchise, I long ago became tired of hearing "this is how the game is played now - adapt or die". I sympathize with the 3e types now getting the same from the hard-core 4e-ers.

Beyond the home front, the root cause of the overall edition wars is blindingly obvious but very few seem willing to stand up and say it: what should be a hobby has long ago turned into an industry. Industry by its very nature has an insatiable thirst for money, leading to unnecessary bloat in edition x requiring the release of edition x+1 to clean up the mess...until the cycle starts again; and with every new edition comes another army into the war.

As an edition warrior, what am I thinking? That I've long ago been left behind by the "official" game, so I might as well do my own thing anyway. That the industry doesn't care about me as a player or consumer, evidenced by ongoing refusal to support editions earlier than the current one at any given time. That institutions like the RPGA, Living --- games, etc. might as well not exist for me. And that in communities like this I have to seek out and cherish such common ground as I can find and look at people as more than just supporters of edition x or edition y.

Which is largely why I don't throw down in here more often. I mean, I'll argue editions with anyone - hell, it's not like I haven't had lots of practice - but I'd rather find the common ground and share the fun regardless of edition.

Lan-"why is the word 'edition' so hard to type?"-efan

 

[jdrakeh]

I dunno; maybe I'm being naive, but in my experience, edition wars, and the reaction to them as well, are a specifically ENW phenomena. Other places, they tend not to rage nearly as hotly nor as long, nor do they simmer in a "cold war" state like they do here.

Based on that statement, I honestly have to wonder how many other RP forums you frequent. The phenomena of edition wars certainly isn't isolated to ENWorld nor, IME, do they burn as brightly here as they do elsewhere. I visit a lot of RP forums on a regular basis and, frankly, edition warring as it exists here is incredibly tame by comparison.

 

[Umbran]

Quite possibly. I do think that edition wars are an unintended side effect of the way ENW is moderated, though.

Well, I've spoken with people who spend no time on ENW talking about edition wars (by the definition I use), so I don't believe it is a local phenomenon.

That being said, I will say that I think we (the ENW moderating staff) were not exactly prepared for how things turned out. We simply lacked experience with such things. If we knew then what we knew now, we would probably have handled the time from 4e's announcement through... perhaps the a year from the release... a bit differently.

But other forums that are more self-moderated in style tend to have little patience for the worst aspects of edition warriors, and tend to eliminate them (not literally!) through more naturalistic social cues.

I can understand what you mean. That is great for smaller places - kind of the equivalent of the small town, where everyone knows everyone. Peer and social pressures work well there, where you probably have a personal relationship with (or at least know the reputation of) whoever chastises you. Or, in fairly homogeneous communities, where those who disagree can just be expected to leave. But such systems tend to fail pretty dramatically for larger communities that want to support multiple views at once.

So, we weren't perfect about it, but I don't think the moderation style you're talking about would have worked here.

 

[howandwhy99]

So...

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

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

The hobby started out when a man put a simulation game behind a screen and the players tried to guess the rules as they played. At the time this was recognized as a roleplaying game because it focused on acting as a human being strategically, while allowing any possible action by the participants. Crafting strategy == roleplaying after all.

The current divide lies in the failure or success of the new philosophy of roleplaying and the embarrassment of pre-"modern" games, new games not being pattern finding games at all, but games where everyone is an improvising participant at the table. These games and theory remove mystery, strategy, and reasoning for narrative quality and the addition of non-role authorship.

It isn't that one game form or category is better than another. It is one is trying very hard to define the other game form (entire category of game) out of existence so to speak. The vocabulary of gaming has been rewritten and a number of terms are attributed to old games (3.x, d20, and all pre-2000 games), terms like abashed, dysfunctional, and deluded to gamers in order to deride non-conformers still desiring the feeling engendered by these old games and their game designs.

Gamers who want their games to be fiction stories, wanna-be authors, and those who enjoy in depth character studies are probably enjoying this turn of events. Hard core strategists, mystery solvers, explorers of the unknown, and lovers of logic and reasoning (like me) are left out in the cold.

The "Edition Wars" aren't a war really. They are simply about a game form that is highly misunderstood even by its' patrons which is currently being swept aside by zealous followers of a philosophy you shouldn't have difficulty finding repeated vociferously.

 

[Mark]

One can avoid edition wars but not necessarily edition warriors.


As someone who plays all editions and hundreds of other games besides, I feel less invested in any particular game and that can sometimes lead to discussions about the flaws of a game that make others uncomfortable. Once that starts, it is difficult to remain unpainted with the broad brush of involvement (it's +5!). I think there are far fewer edition warriors than one might surmise at first glance.