D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[TiQuinn]

Well frost free refrigerators has been a thing since at least the 50s. If yours wasn't, perhaps it was older or perhaps it needed to change the thermostat. Changing the thermostat on an old fridge is easy and not very costly while if this where to happen to a new system you would most likely need to change the circuit board at a cost close to a new fridge all together.

I've been living with a standard freezer for about sex years now (not frost free, older model) and i have had to defrost it twice during that time.

And to answer your question I worked with Electrolux, Husqvarna, and sometimes BOSCH.

Which again, underscores his point. Things improve over time. I haven’t had to change a thermostat in a new refrigerator that I’ve owned…ever. My refrigerator is much larger than one my parents had back in their cabin.

But where this comparison breaks down is that TTRPGs are not going to break from lack of use or overuse. The improvements in play over time are usually for our convenience but they don’t make the game unplayable. Obviously people are still playing 1e AD&D or the 1974 box set and enjoying their games. So if that’s you, you do you, and let other people enjoy their games - that’s all the OP meant.

 

[TiQuinn]

Oooh ohhh I know, I know!

Because the OSR is obsessed with a specific period of D&D history (1977 - 1983) and the game play style Gary and his colleagues exposited before Hickman and Weiss polluted the game with narrative and storylines. 2nd edition is the redheaded stepchild: mechanically similar to the old editions (Basic and 1e) to be rejected by modernists but too Hickman influenced for the OS movement. Hence it's persona non grata and only loved for the settings it inspired (which get ported to the edition of choice) but never for the rules or tone.

Except by me.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The whole thing seems very simple to me.

Your preferred version of D&D sucks.
His preferred version of D&D sucks.
My preferred version of D&D sucks.
Her preferred version of D&D sucks.
Their preferred version of D&D sucks.
All our preferred versions of D&D suck.

Every version of D&D sucks.

But so what? Who cares? We will play what we want and buy what we want, regardless of whether it sucks. Just because it sucks, doesn't mean it's still not fun. And we'll happily complain about how our preferred version and their preferred version sucks too.

And if one doesn't want to hear how their preferred version of D&D sucks? Don't come into places where people are free to comment how much their version of D&D sucks. And yeah... this includes all your alternatives to D&D as well-- your OSRICs, your Pathfinders, your Bunnies & Burrows, your Level Ups, your Shadowdarks, your Dungeon Crawl Classics, your Draw Steels, your Adventurer Conquerer Kings, your Tales of the Valiant... they all suck too. But we'll still happily play them even if other people get mad about how much they suck.

 

[mamba]

I don't see how that isn't forcing them to dance to the tune.

what ‘forced’ them to was lack of sales, not some grognards being upset in a forum, and even then WotC mostly followed their own ideas with some input from the community rather than the game being forced onto WotC by the community.

As Mearls said recently, if not for Pathfinder, 5e would have been closer to 3e, but due to PF they could not really go back and had to move forward instead. So PF had at least as much influence on 5e as the community, simply by existing.

And this group has always been much more vocal than their size warrants.

no idea, I doubt it though, it’s certainly not like that community is not complaining about 5e now either. If you always complain unless you get a cleaned up 1e, then why should WotC listen to you in the first place.

Sales talk, forums not so much

 

[EzekielRaiden]

no idea, I doubt it though, it’s certainly not like that community is not complaining about 5e now either. If you always complain unless you get a cleaned up 1e, then why should WotC listen to you in the first place.

They stopped complaining for about 4-5 years, a period during which they did almost nothing but gush and gush and gush and gush about 5e.

Believe me, I would know. It took until at the very least 2019 before we had a year where more than a month would go by without someone posting a new thread with little more content than "Wow, 5e is just the absolute best thing ever created by human beings, isn't it?!?!" The cloying, heaped-ever-higher praise got very grating for those of us who weren't that keen on it.

 

[Staffan]

It was during the 3E/4E transition 17 (!) years ago. The 3E core books got some deluxe cover treatments and the internal contents were updated to the latest errata. I regret now not buying those for my archives, even though I was well and truly done with 3E by that point.

The 1E and 2E books were quite good. The 1E Slavers compendium even has a new intro adventure, numbered A0, added to it as a prelude.

I figured "What, can't have been that long ago?", and looked it up. You have the wrong transition. The 1e books were released in 2012, at about the same time they stopped publishing 4e stuff and started public work on 5e. So 13 years ago, not 17. Still a bit longer than I thought, but not that bad. I believe the 2e books came somewhat later.

And of course, that timing made perfect sense. You really, really, really don't want multiple different books in stores that say "Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook" on them, even if some say "Advanced" first. But doing a nostalgia rerelease to fill the gap before the new edition, without having to spend any significant resources other than designing a new cover? That's perfect.

While I don't disagree with this, too often the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater. Sure, some elements of TSR-era design weren't that great and needed to be overhauled, changed, or stripped out...but some elements of TSR design were great, and we've largely lost those too.

I think very few people would argue either that TSR-era D&D was perfect or that it was absolutely useless. The problem is that people can't agree on what elements were good and what were bad.

 

[Remathilis]

Except by me.

Gun to head, if I had to play a TSR edition of D&D, it would probably be 2e. I find the actual core rules easier to understand and use than 1e and with the right selection of supplements I can put most everything I would want back into 2e. That said, I don't think I could do it for long as the AD&Disms like level limits and race/class restrictions would chafe on me, but of all the older editions, it's the one I could tolerate the longest.

 

[mamba]

Again, so much of this is how it's framed. After all, 2e saw the release of a metric buttload of material. Was that "planned obsolecence"?

I assume it was a desperate attempt to keep sales going as all books dropped off fast

That's why 3e, when it rolled out, insisted on the notion of "Core Books". Previously, you didn't have anything like a core.

we always had the core three, starting with 1e, now the others are entirely independent of everything but them however

 

[The Soloist]

D&D conservatism started when the Holmes D&D Basic set came out. If you search you will find a forum dedicared to Original D&D only. Any thing else after that is not true D&D. You will even find within that forum those who say the introduction of the thief with percentile skills, in OD&D, was a mistake, that it ruined the game.

D&D is a tumbling bush that moves in the direction the fashionable wind blows. There is a saying about fashion. The second time a style you wore comes around, it was not design for you, it's for the younger generation. Your time has passed, accept it.

 

[mamba]

I don’t necessarily see an edition change as a treadmill, particularly when it’s so compatible. Periodic cleanup and consolidation can be a good thing.

then the same thing should apply to 2024 imo, and that was considered a treadmill by the post I responded to