What's really at stake in the Edition Wars

[Garthanos]

Someone can think that 4E is an awesome game and still think "it isn't D&D" because magic missles hitting is a defining truth of what makes D&D be D&D.

By the way.
They can have that in 4e now or soon after the new players handbook - there is a daily that maps directly to it. Just like gnomes are now a standard player race and barbarians a standard class. The 4e bashers handbook gets smaller all the time.

Shrug. If I had been entrenched in third edition I probably wouldn't have found 4e interesting because it wasnt done enough. My son and neice and others dont have that kind of requirements.

 

[Desdichado]

Shrug. If I had been entrenched in third edition I probably wouldn't have found 4e interesting because it wasnt done enough. My son and neice and others dont have that kind of requirements.

That was actually a significant barrier to entry for me and my group. We'd long been a bit tired of saying, "I'll play a dwarf fighter! I'll play an elven mage!" etc. We really liked the more estoric and oddball options, and it was fun to do stuff that was off the beaten path. Going from a very filled out, robust, 3.5 edition with a lot of options to the bare-bones core only 4e would have been an extremely impoverished experience for us that didn't offer us at all what we were interested in anymore.

Of course, I don't think that's true anymore... but hey. I had other barriers to entry that still stand, most significantly being the fact that I'm not dissatisfied enough with 3.5 to really even consider looking for something new and spending all that money to rebuy all the stuff I need to play all over again. The combination of intertia plus cheapskate keeps me away regardless of any attributes that 4e may or may not have. I just don't have any need for it, even if it really is the best thing since sliced bread.

Which, for my tastes and what I want in the game, I suspect it's not anyway. If I look at adopting any new system at all in the next five years, it'll probably be Savage Worlds.

 

[questing gm]

Hi, all.

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

The time spent in those wars before realizing that it was all for nothing.

 

[Garthanos]

That was actually a significant barrier to entry for me and my group. We'd long been a bit tired of saying, "I'll play a dwarf fighter! I'll play an elven mage!" etc. We really liked the more estoric and oddball options, and it was fun to do stuff that was off the beaten path. Going from a very filled out, robust, 3.5 edition with a lot of options to the bare-bones core only 4e would have been an extremely impoverished experience for us that didn't offer us at all what we were interested in anymore.

Of course, I don't think that's true anymore... but hey. I had other barriers to entry that still stand, most significantly being the fact that I'm not dissatisfied enough with 3.5 to really even consider looking for something new and spending all that money to rebuy all the stuff I need to play all over again.

The spending barrier can be pretty slim if you are really minimalist the amount you get from just a one month subscription to DDi is staggering. Need all the mechanics for all the classes and all the monsters from every book released so far and a bunch of adventures there it is... one spot and 12 dollars... and share it between 5 people. Reading the players handbook and the DMG and DMG2 for the DM, I think for me is a requirement.... but not necessarily owning them. I am a collector and a completist and I like hardbound books will cool artwork so... guess what I am more inclined to shell out the cash.

 

[MrGrenadine]

I'm assuming most went with 4E or WotC would not be continuing to put out product at the rate they are. So WotC could care less what the anti-4E splinter faction thinks.

Would someone like to write a paper about how fast a discussion about the Edition War actually becomes a front in the war? Sheesh.

This discussion has devolved exactly how all Edition War threads do--add a little dose of one-true-wayism, and let the sniping begin.

In other words, how about we don't label anyone as an anti-anything splinter faction, and just decide that its OK for people to prefer one edition or another?

Every time it happens, its like watching a car accident happening in slow motion.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I'm a 4e fan - and I consider it not to be AD&D, so I have a lot of sympathy with the 4e non-fans who don't consider it to be AD&D either. This I consider a good thing. 1e and 2e had so many arbitrary and unconnected rules they felt like chewing on tinfoil. And 3e was a rationalisation of 1 and 2 to the point I found it playable but not that great a game. 4 on the other hand is an excellent scend-based cinematic emulator that at least models some types of fantasy literature fairly well (unlike AD&D which seems to do just AD&D; even Jack Vance didn't have Vancian magic in the same way).

But I only tend to join in in response to either false assertions or statements that make me go "bwuh?" and want to understand where the hell they are coming from. And then I enjoy arguing (and someone on the internet is Wrong) But it's not serious from me.

 

[Desdichado]

The spending barrier can be pretty slim if you are really minimalist the amount you get from just a one month subscription to DDi is staggering. Need all the mechanics for all the classes and all the monsters from every book released so far and a bunch of adventures there it is... one spot and 12 dollars... and share it between 5 people. Reading the players handbook and the DMG and DMG2 for the DM, I think for me is a requirement.... but not necessarily owning them. I am a collector and a completist and I like hardbound books will cool artwork so... guess what I am more inclined to shell out the cash.

Yeah, but in economic terms, it's also not worth very much to me, so it doesn't matter how little it truly costs if I don't have any interest in it. Also, DDI is an inconvenient format for me. I don't want my game materials on the computer, really. I already struggle enough with all the products I have on pdf as it is.

Anyway, this whole thing is really neither here nor there, the only point I was hoping to make, as an offline aside at that, was that I'm not a "hatah", I just am ambivalent and disinterested in 4e for reasons that are completely external and unrelated to any qualities that 4e may or may not have as a game.

 

[Raven Crowking]

And I think you're wrong about that.

You are, of course, free to think so.

Not that there aren't cases of transference (okay, corrected - projection). Not that sometimes a bias is not created through such. But I suspect more often, transference is a way to justify pre-existing bias, rather than the root of the bias.

I am not suggesting that all cases of reader bias are caused by tranference (also okay, corrected - projection). What I am suggesting is that, charitably speaking, many such cases are caused by the inherent difficulties in communication, where a reader naturally interprets whatever is written as though he or she had written it.

Everything you wrote about rationalizing fits into "as though he or she had written it". If I have "some pre-existing notion or preference", I am naturally going to read through the filter of that notion or preference, "and then emphasize or de-emphasize" what I am reading to relate it to that notion or preference, either in support of it or to read it as an attack against it.

Post edited by Admin. You don't discuss previous moderation in threads, period. You know this. If you have a problem, discuss it with the moderators (including myself, if you like) via PM. ~ Pcat

 

[Desdichado]

Removed by Admin. See my note above. ~ PCat

 

[MrGrenadine]

We may spend hours and hours doing mathematical analysis to determine a build's average damage output, but we don't do the same for how the people who print the game are supposed to pay their mortgages.

Well, I certainly could care less about the former, and I would guess that most everyone else could care less about the latter.