D&D 5E (2014) 5E, The Edition Wars, and Shooting Ourselves in the Foot.

[Hassassin]

I pledge not to attack people or respond to personal attacks.

(Didn't I do this when I signed up?)

 

[Oni]

Yeah, I don't think any sort of un-enforcible pledge is going to fix anything.

It probably won't fix anything, but the purpose is to get everyone to be more self-aware about the tenor of what we post and how it could affect the success of the coming edition and subsequently the health of our hobby as a whole. It's a drop in the ocean, but enough drops can make a small difference and enough small differences can make a big difference. If we all say there isn't any point in making the effort then we shouldn't be surprised if nothing changes or if things get worse.

And part of the edition war that is ignored is, well, defense.

Intentionally, we don't have any control over how people react beyond how we present ourselves. We can't choose other people's reactions, we can only choose our actions. I didn't see any need to dwell on it.

There's a thread on the first page of this forum where the tenor is basically, if you don't like level drain you're a PC-coddling nancy that doesn't like challenging players or games where loss is possible (like 4e which is exemplary of this play), and if you Do like levely drain than... well people don't find them fun. But defending against the first stance would be edition-warry and fighting.

But what gets me is that nothing we say on this forum matters. People are acting like WotC has their eyes glued to every pixel of every thread on this forum. You know what feedback they're paying attention to? Their playtest feedback and the reactions to their specific articles. Beyond that, I'd wager 90% of what is talked about on this forum has already been decided upon. I guarantee you that WotC has heard your complaints twelve times over, especially considering how they have been looking at 5e since a year and a half after 4e came out; I'm sure they know exactly how much people hate 4e and all the myriad reasons why.

Therefore all of this speculation and arguing is for our "benefit", and it boils down to wheel spinning and fighting because we have nothing else to do.

Even if WotC is completely ignoring this forum (though I suspect it gets at least the occasional peek) the things we say here do matter. They affect the tenor of the community that surrounds the game. If we continue to polarize the community then it will affect the next edition of D&D in terms of sales and community response and depending on the extent of that it could have consequences for our hobby in general. That one less person that plays might be an empty seat any of our tables.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

The line between constructive criticism and something less useful is sometimes very thin. And I doubt that anyone here is employing a separate editor that asks them if they want to reconsider sentence #2 in paragraph #3, before they post. So mistakes are gonna happen.

Moreover, in any kind of environment where people are expressing preferences, you get a not inconsiderable subset of people that aren't in a position to make constuctive criticism--even when they try to do so. They know what they like or don't like, but not why, or how to fix it, etc.

I'm fairly certain someone got ticked at me last week because my attempt to explain why I thought 5E doing what they said it should do would not get them the preference they expressed. Probably, I could have said it better. But you know, it wasn't that important. I made a good faith effort to point out a flaw, in the time I had to do so, and moved on. If I'm correct in my assessment of the situation, then their communication wasn't terribly constructive, and my attempt to make it more so didn't accomplish a whole lot, either. All we managed to communicate to WotC, if they bothered to read that, was that there is some confusion on the topic. They probably knew that already.

Furthermore, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that "edition wars" are not about editions, but convenient proxies for other conflicts. Asking 3E and 4E fans to get along better sounds more easy than it is, as if asking some of the third world proxy conflicts during the cold war between the western developed world and the Soviet bloc was entirely local. If those two small nations in Africa would just quit shooting at each other, everything would be fine.

Fans of 3E and 4E that aren't caught up in playstyle conflicts or mad at some company or any number of such things--already get along just fine. Some of them even play both. And a great deal of the ones that seem to not get along are doing mostly ok talking about serious differences in playstyle and such, but because of the sharp disagreements find themselves drug into these proxy conflicts on a regular basis.

 

[pauljathome]

It is just as easy for us to frame our preferences in a positive manner as it is to frame them in a negative one. Instead of focusing on what we don't like and trying to explain why it is so terrible, we should be focusing on what we do like and why. .

I definitely applaud the attempt to get us all to be polite. I took the pledge .

But I think that the above is going too far. I think that the debate is improved if we point out flaws in others preferences as well as extolling the virtues of our own preferences.

Now, it is the preferences themselves that should be addressed, NOT the person having them. And we should, at all times, keep very firmly in mind the basic precept that tastes vary.

But, for example, if somebody thinks that D&D should use 3D6 roll low I think that it is quite fair to claim that this would be too great a change to be made at this time and would make the resulting game feel less like D&D than Gurps.

 

[Oni]

I definitely applaud the attempt to get us all to be polite. I took the pledge .

But I think that the above is going too far. I think that the debate is improved if we point out flaws in others preferences as well as extolling the virtues of our own preferences.

Now, it is the preferences themselves that should be addressed, NOT the person having them. And we should, at all times, keep very firmly in mind the basic precept that tastes vary.

But, for example, if somebody thinks that D&D should use 3D6 roll low I think that it is quite fair to claim that this would be too great a change to be made at this time and would make the resulting game feel less like D&D than Gurps.

But that's part of the point, what does it matter if 3d6 roll low is supported if my own preference is also supported?

 

[Dausuul]

As regards discussions on this board not mattering, I disagree. WotC folks stop by ENWorld on a regular basis, although they don't talk as much as they used to. Mike Mearls used to drop in and post every once in a while. He went silent last summer, presumably when he started active work on 5E, but he may well be lurking. There are a number of big 3PP names who are regulars here. Basically, ENWorld is where you go to see what the "gamer's gamers" are thinking, the people who spend a lot of time thinking about RPGs from a design point of view.

(You can also go to the Forge for that, of course. But the perspective there is rather different.)

To the main topic... I would say the important thing is to remember at all times that other people have different preferences, and that's okay. It is not your job to convert them, and the fact that they don't like things you like is not a personal attack on you. Likewise, when posting about things you like or don't like, focus on the thing itself and avoid making generalizations about those who feel differently.

I don't believe "stay positive at all times" is a good approach. If people don't like something, they should say so; that's the only way their concerns will ever get addressed. I prefer "stay polite and don't get personal."

 

[Rechan]

IMO the only way to change the tenor in here is to get the Mods to crack down.

Even if WotC is completely ignoring this forum (though I suspect it gets at least the occasional peek) the things we say here do matter. They affect the tenor of the community that surrounds the game. .

What I mean by "It doesn't matter" is as far as the mechanics of the next edition are concerned. If what is said here has no impact on WotC's decisions, then all it accomplishes is at best wasting time and engaging in wishful thinking/speculation; at worst it accomplishes poisoning the well. Therefore most of the discussion is pointless to begin with. If it's pointless, then there's very little to gain, but a lot of room for loss.

 

[Mengu]

I'm finding it difficult to keep negativity out of my posts. I do try though. I re-read and delete lines that would be construed as negative more often than you might think, and frequently click back without posting what I typed up due to the volume of snide comments strewn across my post. So I'm making an effort.

I largely disagree with how they are defining "what is D&D" in D&D Next, which unfortunately colors the tone of my posts regarding the next edition.

 

[Yora]

I stay civil, because I always stay civil.
I point out mistakes to have productive discussions and accept corrections when my assumptions were mistaken.

I will not make a vow to avoid confrontations when there are different oppinions.

 

[billd91]

But that's part of the point, what does it matter if 3d6 roll low is supported if my own preference is also supported?

It depends on how it is supported, to some degree. Different methods often have different implications depending on how they interact with other rule structures. You'd think that there'd be little difference between 4d6 drop low and point buy for stats in 3e. But when you add in classes dependent on a single attribute mixed with classes dependent on multiple attributes, point buy pushes toward imbalance more than 4d6 drop low. 3e was probably designed with 4d6 drop low as the primary method because it held that spot as the default method in the final rules and there's less imbalance between single attribute and multi-attribute classes. The unbalancing tendency of the point buy method escaped notice.

So, keep in mind that supporting options may be great, but not all options behave the same way and may have as-yet-undetected and bad side effects that will have a downstream impact on the game (and later revisions of the game).