What's really at stake in the Edition Wars

[Ourph]

If you have a particular play style, and a rule set more closely approximates the play style you prefer, then as a gamer who wants to maximize their enjoyment of RPGs--by having the broadest available products, by having the widest range of potential game groups--then we ABSOLUTELY have a stake in the edition war, because we want a product that meets that desire.

If your goal is to prevent your potential player group from shrinking, why would it be productive to argue about editions on the internet with people who may not even live in the same country as you, let alone the same state or town? Even ignoring geographical limitations, have you ever found that regaling someone about all the faults you perceive in a game they are playing and enjoying has convinced that person to give it up their preferred game and play yours instead?

A. We want other players to see that a particular rule set is fundamentally altering much of the play style we enjoy, so they can be aware that "their way" isn't "the only way" (and of course, we understand that "our way" isn't the "only way" either, we just want "our way" to be just as valid as "any other way").

The claim that edition warriors only want to be perceived as "just as valid" is, IMO, completely spurious. My experience with edition warriors is that they exalt their own play preferences while mocking and denigrating the portions of a game that cater to other play preferences.

Even if that were not true, why would you assume that, because someone enjoys another RPG they believe the way they play is the "only way". Do you enter into edition wars with people who play Marvel Super Heroes, RIFTS, Tunnels & Trolls or Runequest too? It seems to me that those systems support styles of play that are at least as divergent from 3e as the 4e system is, so singling out 4e or any other version of D&D as a target upon which to declare your "validity" makes very little sense. If declaring a preference for a single edition of D&D is tantamount to declaring all other styles of play invalid, then isn't someone who declares a preference for GURPS doing the same thing, but turned up to 11?

In my experience, edition wars don't start when person 1 declares a preference and person 2 then comes along and merely asks that their different preference be recognized as equally valid. Edition wars start when person 1 declares a preference and person 2 then comes along and declares that person 1's preference is illegitimate, juvenile and makes the game not D&D/not an RPG/a videogame/a munchkin's paradise/too easy for real manly gamers/too focused on combat for real roleplayers/etc. In other words, the exact opposite of declaring that all style preferences are equally valid.

B. We want the companies that produce the products to know that we will NOT purchase product we dislike, and would hope that future design and production decisions would follow closer to what we want (and if those decisions aren't made, we're not going to buy their products).

Do you really think it's necessary to inform a company that their customers won't purchase products they dislike? I think that's pretty much the first thing they teach you in business school. And if you do feel it's necessary to inform a gaming company of that piece of wisdom, is getting into arguments with fans of other editions about the minutiae of your personal dissatisfaction with the new ruleset really the best way to go about transmitting that information? I'm thinking it's not.

 

[Garthanos]

See, here's that dismissiveness stuff that I mentioned. Someone mentions how they feel about changes, maybe uses an analogy, and someone else redefines it for them into something insignificant.

It would be nice if people did take each other at face value a bit more.

Every time the word hyperbole was used in this thread is pointing out exaggerations in various ways....When somebody is playing analogy games you play with them - >Yes my son gets erked about onions (he picks them off and moves on)
When somebody says "my books are useless" - you ask why they think that? My old print of Werewolf the Apocalypse isnt useless (we will be starting up a game of it soon) etc etc.

In general I was pointing out that D&D is far more like itself (especially to people experienced with other games ... ones you might not even expect to be very different) than some people seem to realize... so ofcourse the colorful language is the important part.

 

[jdrakeh]

Re: New editions making books for old editions useless. This is BS. Look at my .sig. I've recently run a PBEM game of Basic D&D (the Holmes edit). I hope to run another one in the near future. Even more recently, I ran a short OD&D campaign using Chainmail and Outdoor Survival. If those books aren't useless, neither are anybody's 3x books.

 

[DaveMage]

It wasn't just that the game changed, it was that the game change TO SPITE ME! seemed a response I saw a number of times.

I think you may have misinterpreted.

Speaking for myself, my view was never that they changed the game to spite me, they changed the game to something I didn't like - and on top of that - changed it for a reason that I didn't agree with.

In essence, they changed parts of the game I liked without asking me if I wanted the change.

Now do they have to ask *me* personally? Of course not. But they lost my business - and apparently the business of a lot of other people that felt the same way.

I didn't feel spited, I felt ignored. After purchasing far too many "official" D&D products over the years (and the entire 3.x library of products), to not be buying "official" D&D anymore is just, well, weird. TSR/WotC had catered to my tastes for 30 years. Now...not so much.

Of course, those that loved the changes feel/felt the opposite way, so I guess it has worked for WotC. *shrug*

 

[Celtavian]

Most of what you claim is a bit spurious... but I see what you mean.

I haven't enjoyed D&D that long; in fact, I specifically quit enjoying it (because it wasn't that enjoyable to me) until 3e came out. That said, I've enjoyed 3e/3.5 for ten years now, and I'm still doing so. The release of 4e hasn't made that any more difficult for me.

Is that hypothetical, or real? Either way, wow, that's some bad group dynamics for a bunch of guys who are supposed to be friends. If there was a good split in my group between 4e and 3.5, we'd probably switch between the two of them every six months or so.

That's a valid point, but at the same time, I'm just curious; how much of the available support for 3e/3.5 have you used already? I'm hardly a completionist in my 3e/3.5 collection, but I've got stuff I can use for twenty more years easily without running out.

And, of course, technically it's still supported via the OGL, and arguably through Pathfinder.

At the end of the day, that's why I wasn't really interested in switching. I don't dislike 4e. I don't really know enough about it to dislike it, to be honest with you. I don't want to buy all over again all the stuff that I already have, though. I was quite happy with my 3e/3.5 purchases, and I don't feel like I"m anywhere close to "amortizing" or "depreciating" all that purchase yet from an accounting perspective.

That said, your old books are only useless if you never use them again. So, that's not really accurate what you say, there. I'm not an edition warrior just because I didn't change to 4e. I'm, like I said earlier, a bemused spectator. But if you don't want to change over, just don't change over. Why the warring?

That's the question that's really being asked here; what you answered was merely why you don't want to switch over.

All the more reason to not switch until you're done with the game you're in. Not a reason to edition war.

Again, reasons to not like 4e. Reasonable ones, even. Not reasons to engage in edition wars.

It looks to me like the only thing you had to lose was continued support and possibly group support if you're group was likely to embrace 4e. Most of the rest of what you claim, you wouldn't ever have actually lost.

Aren't we being a little too literal? This what you feel like you lost, not something you can prove you lost.

That's what I felt like I lost. It did cause some acrimony in my group until we settled on Pathfinder. We tried 4E for about 4 to 6 months. 4 out of 5 us came to despise it. One guy liked it, but he had to tough out going to Pathfinder. He stayed. So we got it worked out.

No one has anything to gain by edition wars if you truth.

The edition wars is all based on feeling. Alot of folks have been playing this game a long, long time across all the different editions. I don't know how big the percentage is, but WotC bitch slapped a good many of us in the face with 4E. Ripped the rug out and said "This is D&D now. Love it or leave it."

25 years I've been a loyal customer going with every new edition, spending hundreds (possible thousands) of dollars on gaming merchandise to have WotC change the game to such a huge degree I no longer want to move to their new edition and have them basically tell me "They don't care".

That doesn't exactly feel good. It makes you pretty pissed off. It's all based on feeling, not logic. It's impossible to prove one game better than another or a truer form of D&D. All it does is wake you up to the fact that D&D is corporate owned and your only recourse is to stop buying product from that company if you don't like what they're doing. That's truth.

But the edition wars isn't based on truth. It's based on feeling. It's not rational, but it's passionate. It's not all based on ego or being right. It's also based on tradition, a tradition I've been following for 25 years. And WotC tossed it all out the window this time. The current game doesn't look a damn thing like the previous games. It doesn't play like the previous games. It's not comparable to any edition. It is a complete and radical change with a different overriding philosophy driving it.

Did anyone really expect this type of radical change to happen without some acrimony? I certainly hope WotC game designers were not that naive.

And as with every radical change that a company attempts, there is another company waiting in the wings to capitalize. This time it is Paizo. I hope they prosper so I can have new material for a game I enjoy.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Re: New editions making books for old editions useless. This is BS. Look at my .sig. I've recently run a PBEM game of Basic D&D (the Holmes edit). I hope to run another one in the near future. Even more recently, I ran a short OD&D campaign using Chainmail and Outdoor Survival. If those books aren't useless, neither are anybody's 3x books.

I still use and enjoy most of my "useless" game books.

The issue for some groups isn't that the books are useless. Quite the opposite, the books are very useful but having new players obtain them gets harder and harder.

If I wanted to form a tabletop OD&D group and the players were interested in getting thier own legal copies of Men & Magic then they couldn't just drop by the local gamestore or bookstore and pick one up.
At one tme they could just buy it online and get it printed. Now the options are either hunt down a copy in a flea market or online auction or get a bootleg copy.

This problem has less to do with the merits of one edition over another than it does with corporate business practices.

In a fantasy world where all older editions could be ordered as pdf & print on demand and new material could be produced and sold likewise there would perhaps be much less fuel for the edition wars.

 

[jdrakeh]

The issue for some groups isn't that the books are useless. Quite the opposite, the books are very useful but having new players obtain them gets harder and harder.

I totally get that (it took me the better part of two years to get my BD&D/OD&D games together). It doesn't make saying that one's old game books are "useless" any less hyperbolic.

 

[Ourph]

In a fantasy world where all older editions could be ordered as pdf & print on demand and new material could be produced and sold likewise there would perhaps be much less fuel for the edition wars.

That hardly seems likely since the 1e/2e vs. 3e edition wars raged for 8 years while older edition .pdfs were available very, very cheaply from WotC and the 3e vs. 4e edition wars raged unchecked for at least a year while .pdfs of all the 3e titles were still available and most retail stores still had unsold 3.5e product in stock. Not to mention that the 1e vs. 2e edition wars still rage to this day, despite the fact that BOTH editions have been equally out of print for decades (but it's still dead easy to find core books for sale at very reasonable prices if you want them).

The edition wars are about people who are having a bad day looking for any reason to call someone else a poo-poo head on the internet. "Issues" like book availability are just excuses for bad behavior IMO.

 

[billd91]

In general I was pointing out that D&D is far more like itself (especially to people experienced with other games ... ones you might not even expect to be very different) than some people seem to realize... so ofcourse the colorful language is the important part.

Then tell them that you disagree and can't see that the changes are quite so significant. Don't redefine it for them and dismiss it. The former is getting involved in the discussion without being disrepectful, the latter is not.

 

[ExploderWizard]

That hardly seems likely since the 1e/2e vs. 3e edition wars raged for 8 years while older edition .pdfs were available very, very cheaply from WotC and the 3e vs. 4e edition wars raged unchecked for at least a year while .pdfs of all the 3e titles were still available and most retail stores still had unsold 3.5e product in stock. Not to mention that the 1e vs. 2e edition wars still rage to this day, despite the fact that BOTH editions have been equally out of print for decades (but it's still dead easy to find core books for sale at very reasonable prices if you want them).

The edition wars are about people who are having a bad day looking for any reason to call someone else a poo-poo head on the internet. "Issues" like book availability are just excuses for bad behavior IMO.

Very valid observations...................poo poo head.