D&D General Why grognards still matter

[jasper]

As master we may buy all the stuff. but even if all our players just buy the phb they have nearly outspend us. 1 person buy 4 books = 4 persons buy 1. And wotc love the 4 because they have more friends that the one.

 

[AnotherGuy]

No it isn't. All three components of that statement are factual. I suppose you could say that claiming the first Iron Man Movie was good could be considered merely an opinion (backed up by audience reviews to show that it was the prevailing opinion) but it certainly isn't a strawman.

Factual doesn't make your argument less of a strawman.

None of this really addresses the point? I am completely unaware of any spider-man movie before the Ramey films. Looking it up, there were some films back in the 80's, which I have literally never heard anyone talk about before.

Just because you're not aware of it doesn't mean it never existed. There was no internet back then.

But, let's look at the actual point I was making. The Raimi films were good. Brought Spider-Man to the big screen. Then they made the Amazing Spider-Man movies as a reboot which... didn't do as good. Then they told Spider-Man's story as part of the MCU, which did quite a bit better. Neither of those two can touch how impactful Spiderverse has been though.

So what makes MCU Spider-Man and Spiderverse different from Amazing Spider-Man? You can just say "better writing" and dismiss it as unimportant, but the MCU Spider-Man was not telling the origin story of Spider-Man. It wasn't just Peter Parker dealing with criminals in New York. It was Peter Parker dealing with the fallout of Civil War, informed by the Invasion from Avengers, and navigating a relationship with Tony Stark. It was a Spider-Man most people had never seen before. And Spider-Verse? Also dealing with a version of Spider-Man most people have not seen before.

Are you REALLY suggesting that hardcore fans want only origin stories?!!!!!!!!!!
Is this really the thrust of your argument in relation to Spiderman?

The pattern is that hardcore fans largely don't advocate for the changes that are actually good. They advocate for extending the status quo. Because they are fans of the status quo.

Yeah, I agree painting them as a monolith helps your case.
I guess nothing has ever happened in the last 50 years in comics....who knew that those silly silly hardcore fans just don't want new stories.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I can only see the reasonable side of this conversation, but as an aside I am a huge fan of how the Toho live action kaiju Spiderman TV show, where Spiderman has a sentient alien Leopard mecha companion named Leopardon, directly inspired Super Sentai and thus ultimately Power Rangers.

That does sound amazing. I think I might have heard about Spider-Man inspiring Sentai before, but not much beyond that.

 

[Clint_L]

 

[Chaosmancer]

Factual doesn't make your argument less of a strawman.

And just calling something a strawman doesn't make it a bad opening point in a discussion. I don't even know what your issue with the example of the Iron Man movie is, all you've done is point and say "STRAWMAN!!!" like that is in anyway meaningful. Unless you are showcasing the Fallacy Fallacy you don't really have a counter-point here.

Just because you're not aware of it doesn't mean it never existed. There was no internet back then.

Well gosh golly, no internet?! Why that must have been something. Completely meaningless as a point though. I've listened to an awful lot of comic book and movie criticisms and critiques. I've listened to people talk about the Superman Radio Play and that happened before the internet. So did the original release of Watchmen. The original Nosferatu movie. Lot of things before the internet.

So.... what? I can't say that the Raimi films were good movies made when spider-man movies weren't in the culture zeitgeist because 20 years prior someone, somewhere, made a spider-man movie that didn't do nearly as well? That's a really poor and bad argument to make.

Are you REALLY suggesting that hardcore fans want only origin stories?!!!!!!!!!!
Is this really the thrust of your argument in relation to Spiderman?

Yeah, I agree painting them as a monolith helps your case.
I guess nothing has ever happened in the last 50 years in comics....who knew that those silly silly hardcore fans just don't want new stories.

Well lookie there. A Strawman argument!

See, I said the PATTERN is that hardcore fans, as fans of the Status Quo, LARGELY do not argue for good changes.

Does that make them a monolith? Not in the slightest.
Does that mean they ONLY want origin stories? Not in the slightest.
Does that mean nothing has ever happened in any medium with hardcore fans? Not in the slightest.
Does that mean new stories don't exist? Not in the slightest.

So.... every single critique you have of my argument is factually wrong and has nothing at all to do with what I said, except to take it to an extreme position that cannot be defended, so you can easily knock it down. You know.. like a straw man.

Hardcore fans of Star Wars recently (I don't know how recently) lost their minds, because a character in the new Acolyte show, who was a minor character in the prequel movies, had his birthday "changed". And by changed, I mean that his birth year was mentioned once in material that is no longer canon, and was recently re-established in canon, for this show, for the purposes of having him as a character in the show. These are the same hardcore fans who propose ideas for Star Wars that are just taking established characters and placing them in established conflicts. The same people who wanted to see how Han Solo stole the Millenium Falcon.

They are not the people who came up with the ideas in Andor, which took a completely different tone, to my knowledge only had like one or two previously known about characters, and completely lacks Jedi. And is also wildly popular and successful.

Did one person who claims to be a hardcore fan, at one point, suggest a new idea that was actually good? Sure, yeah, I bet they did. But as a PATTERN, a TREND, a GENERAL RULE OF THUMB NOT UNIVERSALLY TRUE, hardcore fans don't suggest the weird and interesting takes, they don't suggest breaking the established story. Which is why you need fresh takes. New Perspectives.

And to turn this to DnD again... it wasn't hardcore, self-identified grognards who came up with Humblewood, Grim Hollow or Wandering Tavern. They were the ones suggesting Mystara, Birthright, Darksun, established IPs that are already part DnD.

 

[AnotherGuy]

And just calling something a strawman doesn't make it a bad opening point in a discussion. I don't even know what your issue with the example of the Iron Man movie is, all you've done is point and say "STRAWMAN!!!" like that is in anyway meaningful. Unless you are showcasing the Fallacy Fallacy you don't really have a counter-point here.



Well gosh golly, no internet?! Why that must have been something. Completely meaningless as a point though. I've listened to an awful lot of comic book and movie criticisms and critiques. I've listened to people talk about the Superman Radio Play and that happened before the internet. So did the original release of Watchmen. The original Nosferatu movie. Lot of things before the internet.

So.... what? I can't say that the Raimi films were good movies made when spider-man movies weren't in the culture zeitgeist because 20 years prior someone, somewhere, made a spider-man movie that didn't do nearly as well? That's a really poor and bad argument to make.



Well lookie there. A Strawman argument!

See, I said the PATTERN is that hardcore fans, as fans of the Status Quo, LARGELY do not argue for good changes.

Does that make them a monolith? Not in the slightest.
Does that mean they ONLY want origin stories? Not in the slightest.
Does that mean nothing has ever happened in any medium with hardcore fans? Not in the slightest.
Does that mean new stories don't exist? Not in the slightest.

So.... every single critique you have of my argument is factually wrong and has nothing at all to do with what I said, except to take it to an extreme position that cannot be defended, so you can easily knock it down. You know.. like a straw man.

Hardcore fans of Star Wars recently (I don't know how recently) lost their minds, because a character in the new Acolyte show, who was a minor character in the prequel movies, had his birthday "changed". And by changed, I mean that his birth year was mentioned once in material that is no longer canon, and was recently re-established in canon, for this show, for the purposes of having him as a character in the show. These are the same hardcore fans who propose ideas for Star Wars that are just taking established characters and placing them in established conflicts. The same people who wanted to see how Han Solo stole the Millenium Falcon.

They are not the people who came up with the ideas in Andor, which took a completely different tone, to my knowledge only had like one or two previously known about characters, and completely lacks Jedi. And is also wildly popular and successful.

Did one person who claims to be a hardcore fan, at one point, suggest a new idea that was actually good? Sure, yeah, I bet they did. But as a PATTERN, a TREND, a GENERAL RULE OF THUMB NOT UNIVERSALLY TRUE, hardcore fans don't suggest the weird and interesting takes, they don't suggest breaking the established story. Which is why you need fresh takes. New Perspectives.

And to turn this to DnD again... it wasn't hardcore, self-identified grognards who came up with Humblewood, Grim Hollow or Wandering Tavern. They were the ones suggesting Mystara, Birthright, Darksun, established IPs that are already part DnD.

You mention Ironman who you said was not top tier and that they made a movie about him as if Hardcore fans would take an issue at making a movie about Ironman.
You mentioned the fact that the 2nd Spidey movie series did poorly but the 3rd did well because of a different intro on the hero. As if hardcore fans would have an issue with that.

You seem to equate in those examples that innovativeness does not exist with hardcore fans. Or that change is unacceptable.

No one cares of what the 5% on either side of the spectrum seek (Absolutists and the Change 4 the sake of Change - which sound like Planescape ideologies).

I'm not gonna speak about SW because I'm not a fan and have not followed the many series Disney has made.

With regards to D&D if you actually care to do a real comparison and not represent new settings as something Hardcore fans are supposedly opposed to (in the same vein you used Ironman) - why don't you use the example of 4e Forgotten Realms? Or Pathfinder?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yes, I would agree that old timers have tried more games. We are a market for D&D though and if D&D is our primary game then we will spend a lot on it.

I'm just noting that the assumption that older gamers will be automatically spending their game dollars on D&D seems a bit overextended. I'm nearly as old a gamer as it gets, and while I probably spend more money on games than I should, I haven't spent any on D&D proper since the 3e days.

I can't say for how many this is true, but just the maths of market growth suggests its more true of older gamers than younger.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'm just noting that the assumption that older gamers will be automatically spending their game dollars on D&D seems a bit overextended. I'm nearly as old a gamer as it gets, and while I probably spend more money on games than I should, I haven't spent any on D&D proper since the 3e days.

I can't say for how many this is true, but just the maths of market growth suggests its more true of older gamers than younger.

I think a lot of those people who don’t go back quite so far don’t realise that there where a lot of other RPGs around in those early days, and a lot of people who were not TSR making D&D stuff.

Similarly, there was very little of this “lore” stuff around.

A lot of the “lore” and “setting” type products that were around were not coming from TSR.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think a lot of those people who don’t go back quite so far don’t realise that there where a lot of other RPGs around in those early days, and a lot of people who were not TSR making D&D stuff.

Though it took a couple of years, but once it started rolling in, a pretty fair lot rolled in (not to mention a few other games from TSR themselves like Metamorphosis Alpha or EPT). By about '78 if you weren't a big fan of D&D, there were a number of other options, some of which are still pretty going concerns (RuneQuest and Traveler come to mind).

 

[Chaosmancer]

You mention Ironman who you said was not top tier and that they made a movie about him as if Hardcore fans would take an issue at making a movie about Ironman.
You mentioned the fact that the 2nd Spidey movie series did poorly but the 3rd did well because of a different intro on the hero. As if hardcore fans would have an issue with that.

No. You are completely and utterly missing my point. It is not that they would take issue with those things. It is that they would not have ADVOCATED for those things. Those things would not have been their ideas. You are taking a position that says "these are not the sort of ideas those people would clamor to see before they were created" and twisting it into "So you are saying they would hate those ideas?!" No. No. And again, NO.

You seem to equate in those examples that innovativeness does not exist with hardcore fans. Or that change is unacceptable.

No one cares of what the 5% on either side of the spectrum seek (Absolutists and the Change 4 the sake of Change - which sound like Planescape ideologies).

That 5%? They are the ones calling themselves Hardcore fans. And give it whatever percentage you want, but you cannot deny their existence when they are the ones we are largely talking about. Someone who just likes something a lot would not self-identify as a "Hardcore fan". There may be a thin line between a Super Fan and a Hardcore Fan, but for those who self-identify as hardcore? They may SAY that they have innovative ideas, but they rarely do. Often they want the changes to make something closer to the original, idealized version. They may SAY they are fine with change, but they are the strongest voice pushing back against change when it is proposed. They are the ones claiming something is bad BECAUSE it was a change, without really examining if it was bad in and of itself.

And again, before you strawman me, this is not ab absolute. People are not a monolith. But people do follow patterns.

With regards to D&D if you actually care to do a real comparison and not represent new settings as something Hardcore fans are supposedly opposed to (in the same vein you used Ironman) - why don't you use the example of 4e Forgotten Realms? Or Pathfinder?

Because I have never seen a self-identified DnD Grognard state that they want WoTC to bring Glorantha into the fold. Or to bring back the Nentir Vale. Do you think I pulled the examples of Mystara, Birthright and Darksun out of the Aether? Those are real things, really proposed, by real people, on this forum. Does that mean they spit upon other settings before grinding them into the mud with disdain? No. I never said that, that you projecting your biases onto me. However, none of the self-identified Grognards proposed DnD should make a new setting featuring cutesy animal people in a forest. None of them proposed a Miyazaki inspired setting. Once exposed to them, they may like the ideas, but they did not COME UP with the ideas.