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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pedantic" data-source="post: 9225210" data-attributes="member: 6690965">That's a chain of primacy that leads back to games neither of us want to play, but...yes? That isn't exactly a novel criticism, we see "4e resolved this problem in X way" all the time, and you don't ever get "you simply don't understand 5e" as the response. Instead the argument tends to be that 4e's underlying design philosophy isn't desirable making the solution untenable, and then there's a proxy discussion about the assorted games' book sales/popularity.You can't have both. Either it's different enough it requires engagement on its own terms, or it is similar enough it can be judged for failing to meet the existing audience's expectation. If we're going to treat all the versions of D&D as distinct games, that's certainly one thing, but if we're holding them in conversation with each other, then it isn't incumbent on existing D&D players, either now or in 2008 to evaluate 4e without their preexisting norms.That's sort of exactly backwards. It's not on me to be sold on the new game that was replacing the thing I liked, it was on the thing to sell itself. Plus, there's nothing "reflexive" about the judgements in question, especially 15 years on. 4e certainly sharpened my tastes to a finer point, in that I had to spend a lot of time articulating and trying to grasp at what precisely about this new thing undermined the experience I was going for, and certainly broadened my horizons in realizing a great many things I'd taken as background norms for the D&D experience were no such thing.</blockquote>

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