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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dualazi" data-source="post: 7030076" data-attributes="member: 6855537">Eh. I think 3.5 and 4e were just accelerants on an already burning fire. I didn’t play much of 2e before 3e came out, so maybe you can correct me on this, but I was pretty certain that internet communities and resources for D&D at that point were pretty scarce, and most of the scene was driven by magazines, conventions, and local gaming groups. Even if there had been no edition change since then, the massively wider audience and communication would have highlighted cracks in 2e that many groups might have missed by happy accident or as a result of playstyle preferences. The rise of video games has also shifted focus onto balance, even in cooperative situations.“Getting more attention than it deserves” may very well be the case, but the premise of the thread was asking if these problems were self-created, and as such I think the answer is no.I think the popularity of 5e is because they answered this question correctly; design it stable enough for tourney play but freely encourage deviation on your own. This goes back to my comments about balance being the foundation. For example, the game is balanced around the assumption of no magic items, but the DMG freely states you can hand them out like candy if you want that kind of game. It warns you of course, but the fact that they built the game in this fashion is a large reason the choice flows so well. In 4e and 3.5, magic items were assumed, and even the inherent bonuses really didn’t do an amazing job of going backwards. While 4e was pretty balanced and 3.5 definitely was not, they were similarly rigid in this design. 5e succeeded in mostly keeping the balance aspect while creating greater freedom for people to have varying level of item prevalence.4e was a weird beast, in that designing things for DMs, like items and monsters, was incredibly easy. Designing things for players, like powers, classes, and feats, was stupidly hard. I don’t know that this is an indictment of balance, though, just 4e’s method of achieving it.Fair enough, though to continue the analogy my problem with the supposition of the thread is that some people might say “you can stay afloat regardless of if it’s calm or stormy” which is where the variation lies. To put it another way, saying things to the effect of “only the story/RP matters” comes dangerously close to one-true-wayism or an absolute statement, and those are usually untenable positions. We just have to decide as individuals, and to some degree as a community, how much is too much on either side.</blockquote>

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