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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 5399914" data-attributes="member: 59082">I generally agree with what he said although the tactical/wargamey feel of 4E has grown on me. He also makes the point which a lot of folks seem to overlook or deny in the so-called "Edition War," that he likes 1E because that is what he grew up on. Sure, there are conscious reasons why one can like one edition more than another, but chances are that I--at age 37, having started playing with 1E in the early 80s--feel more nostalgia for 1E than, say, a 17-year old would. In other words, we can't separate the affective/emotional/sentimental from our preferences and I think it is disingenuous to deny the "I like it because I grew up on it" factor. We can, however, separate it from our discussion of the game mechanics and the way the game plays at the table. If we were able to recognize and come to terms with our subjective likes, and recognize that it is all good from that perspective, and there are no "badwrongpreferences" then I think we could have some rather interesting discussions about the various strengths and weaknesses of the different editions, as they play at the table (not as we prefer them, which is subjective).As for Mr. Do'Urden, I read the original two series as they came out but couldn't finish what I think was the seventh book, Legacy. By that point the uber-kewl factor of Drizzt had just gone through the roof and his badass-factor (BAF?) was out of control. I got tired of reading an endless stream of neverending battle scenes that described just how amazing Drizzt was. This came out around the same time I quit reading comic books; I was in my late teens and I guess wasn't as into the comic hero wish-fulfillment of a 12-year old boy anymore (and it was also at the height of the politically correct craze and I was much-inspired by my Mary Daly-reading feminist girlfriend, and I learned to find the comic book depictions of females objectionable). Now there is nothing wrong with 12-year old boy wish fulfillment, even at later ages, but I have since preferred it as a secondary element whereas in the Drizzt books it was always front-and-center. It is a very different experience from reading, say, Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun series, or Wizard Knight (which consciously subverts and explores that wish fulfillment theme). Again, it isn't about what is "better" but how many "nested dolls" a story includes, and the older one gets the more one tends to want greater depth and subtlety. Now of course some "shallow" stories are actually more entertaining than so-called "deep" stories, and it is a rarity that an author is able to do both - write a rip-roaring story with lots of fun kewl nuggets, but that also has great depth and subtlety.But I've strayed a bit...</blockquote>

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