D&D General On gatekeeping and the 'live-streaming edition wars'

[jayoungr]

Do you really see signs of this becoming an issue on ENworld? I know there's been some grumbling about the latest book, but frankly, there's always grumbling about the latest book (people were super-negative about the Eberron announcement too).

Maybe I'm just reading the wrong threads.

 

[Ristamar]

 

[Stormonu]

Really - calling streamer watchers “not real fans” is like saying people aren’t Star Wars fans unless they’ve acted in the actual movies.

 

[Morrus]

Really - calling streamer watchers “not real fans” is like saying people aren’t Star Wars fans unless they’ve acted in the actual movies.

I like that analogy.

There was a thing on Twitter the other day going on about how "true" Star Wars fans read the EU books and all the cartoons and .... I can't remember all the things. A list of things you had to do to be a "true" SW fan. Watching the movies wasn't enough. I'm pleased it got largely shouted down by the people I follow on Twitter.

Geekdom is so busy "othering" its own members when it should be celebrating the fact that geeks are cool now.

 

[Olrox17]

This is amazingly and stunningly... completely nonsensical.

Greyhawk. The most "traditional" setting there is... was Gygax's own game. Forgotten Realms... was Greenwood's game. The absolute, most traditional mode of RPG publishing is publishing a setting that has actually been played!

So, Critical Role played it where you could see. With Dragonlance we were able to read books and see the world presented in a fictional form before picking it up and playing in it. So even being given a presentation of a story in the world before playing it is not new!

What, exactly, is non-tradtional here - just that it wasn't a setting the made decades ago?

The answer to your question is both yes, and no. Yes, because a campaign setting made 20, 30 or 40 years ago is obviously "more traditional" than one made a few years ago, because seniority and tradition go hand in hand. Also nostalgia, I suppose.
No, because when I talked about the lack of traditional content, I wasn't just talking about missing campaign settings such as Greyhawk, Planescape, Dark Sun etc, but also about the low influx of basic content.

I'm not saying we should go back to the old days of millions of splatbooks, I'm just saying that's it's been more than 2 years since the excellent Xanathar's guide. Meanwhile, we got 5 cross-promotion products, which I have no reason to buy. Well, I suppose each of those products have some little tidbits of universal content, a few subclasses and such, that are useful for everyone, but I'm not going to buy a 300 pages book just to get 10 of those pages.

 

[Undrave]

I’ve seen this kind of toxic attitudes in other situations.

There’s this whole segment of nerds out there who are still bitter about all the times they were mocked and ostracized (if not LITERALLY demonized in the case of D&D) by the ‘cool kids’ for the things they like… and now ‘Cool Kids’, much like the ones that tormented them, are ‘invading’ their space. D&D is cool now, and those kids get to enjoy it… but to the bitter nerds it feels like they didn’t EARN it. That those new kids are just reaping the result of their continued loyalty to the fandom without ‘paying their dues’ so to speak.

To those bitter nerds, It feels like a bunch of hipster doing the equivalent of cultural appropriation who take all the goods of a fandom without the ‘bad’ that came with them… not realizing the ‘bads’ had nothing to do with being fans in the first place. Pain and prejudice are not badges of honors or medals from service in some kind of war that make your superior…If nothing else, you should endeavour to protect the little Nerdlings from the same torment!

You see it in superheroes circles since the MCU has gotten so big. You see it when ‘Real Gamers’ make fun of people who game on mobile devices. Probably see it in anime fans who didn’t grow up with streaming platforms. You even see it in immigration debates.

It’s disappointing, but not surprising.

 

[Morrus]

There’s this whole segment of nerds out there who are still bitter about all the times they were mocked and ostracized (if not LITERALLY demonized in the case of D&D) by the ‘cool kids’ for the things they like… and now ‘Cool Kids’, much like the ones that tormented them, are ‘invading’ their space.

I don't think the answer is to continue to mock and ostracise them; and I think it's also important to realize that this is happening on both sides. Toxic fandom is toxic fandom, whichever side of the 'divide' you're on, and there's a lot of "othering" going on.

 

[Undrave]

I don't think the answer is to continue to mock and ostracise them; and I think it's also important to realize that this is happening on both sides. Toxic fandom is toxic fandom, whichever side of the 'divide' you're on, and there's a lot of "othering" going on.

Oh, I'm not saying that to mock them. I’ve been in situations where I was isolated pretty badly. Sometimes I feel like I basically had no solid friends until the 9th grade! I was just trying to explain the psychology of their attitudes.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I don't think the answer is to continue to mock and ostracise them;

Doesn't really matter what you do them, trolls gonna troll.

I mean, I've been playing D&D since 1982, don't like watching streaming, have no plans to buy this book, but I don't feel any need to throw my toys out of the pram over it.

Sure, there are jerks on both sides, but that doesn't make them any less jerks.

 

[Morrus]

Doesn't really matter what you do them, trolls gonna troll.

I mean, I've been playing D&D since 1982, don't like watching streaming, have no plans to buy this book, but I don't feel any need to throw my toys out of the pram over it.

Sure, there are jerks on both sides, but that doesn't make them any less jerks.

I prefer Matt Mercer's classy approach to the issue. It's a lesson we could all take to heart.

Critical Role - Matt Mercer Speaks About The Wildemount Book

Matt Mercer posted on Reddit about the upcoming D&D setting book. "As the info seemed to leak a liiiiiiittle early yesterday, I just wanted to write something to reach out to the greater, non-critter DnD crowd regarding this book, what it means to me, and what I hope it means to you". Well...

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