I honestly believe that more people would have tried 4e, and some % of them would have liked it, that the vitriol and flame wars (still there) would be less and the tribalism would have not formed so.
Maybe. But again, you seem to be minimizing the
context that allowed for Pathfinder to not simply be made, but become very popular. As I see it, Pathfinder's success largely comes from a few factors:
1) The OGL - especially being able to use the 3.5 system as its base
2) Fan dissatisfaction with 4E
3) Quality of product and strong community relations
You seem to place the emphasis on the first point, then add in the edition wars for seasoning. I think you've got it in reverse - the OGL allowed for Pathfinder to exist, but it didn't make it popular. The reason Pathfinder was so popular is because 3.5 was popular and Pathfinder was basically 3.5,
and more so because Paizo did a great job creating a product line that was attuned to the fan base.
I don't think fanning the edition wars was really a causative factor in Pathfinder's popular, more of a secondary outcome of the friction between "Paizoans" and "WotCists."
again well talking about why I and others dis like the OGL, I have found myself defending 4e... ironicly enough proveing one of my problems... the tribal and split fan base caused by an edition never going out...
So you're saying that you're being an instant of your own complaint?
I suppose the reason the edition wars never bothered me so much is that I was never really involved, I never really had a horse in the race. At most, I have occasionally been accused (wrongly, imo) of edition warring simply by saying things like "4E didn't do well" or "Pathfinder is basically a copy of 3.5." My view is that that the main cause of edition warring is human defensiveness, and that most skirmishes are started when one person accuses another of edition warring - whether or not there is actually any warring going on. So I have tended to back slowly out of such situations, because I have no interest whatsoever is fighting over editions, which to me is another variant of "my dad is stronger than your dad" - or as you put it, my Sega is better than your Nintendo.
But I can empathize with you as from what you've said you are actually experiencing some kind of PTSD from edition warring. I would only suggest that you may be being more defensive than suits the "attack" (because there might not be much of an attack going on, at least from me!).
The OGL started mostly good. It gave us a huge list of products. the problem is that there was no real way to control a huge influx of ideas. It lead to a bloat of good and bad that was hard for DMs to look into. Then as wotc started popping out more and more not srded material newer OGL products had to recreate or reimagine whole concepts(again at variable levels of success). The OGL also lead to much less innovations for years as D20 was slapped on everything (I was so glad that CoC and Deadlands learned that lesson and went back) In the end it gave a small company the ability to steal whole cloth the 3e engine and compete with 4e by egging on stupid edition wars(see this thread)
Now honestly, how are
you not "egging on stupid edition wars" by accusing Pathfinder of doing just that? I mean, you keep complaining about edition warring but then you keep throwing little grenades into the mix.
And don't forget, the first major salvo of edition warring--in the way that you are framing it--came from WotC, with their dissing of 3.5. It all went down hill from there.
Simply put...... if 4e looked more like the Saga system of Star Wars (which looked like the logical progression of 3.X to 4.0) pathfinder would have found no foot hold..
4e was such a drastic departure from 3.X it kicked 3.X fans in the face.....
4e was a larger departure from 3.x then 3.x was from 2e... that tells you something
Now look at the reaction for 5e..... less of a departure from 2e then 3.X was......... and see how players are flocking back to it...
nuff said
Yup, you're probably right. As many have said, 4E's problem wasn't that it was a bad game, but that it was too far from "what D&D is to me" to a large number of the fan-base.
I think what WotC remembered with 5E is that people play D&D because of what it specializes in over other forms of entertainment--card, board, war, video games, etc. 4E went a bit too far into trying to incorporate some of those elements and turn them into their tabletop RPG equivalent. I can see why they did it, and in some ways I'm glad they did as I enjoyed 4E for a few years, but in the end it didn't work in that 5E saw them revert back to a more traditional approach.
