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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nisarg" data-source="post: 2060123" data-attributes="member: 19893">I remember the first time I heard the term "d20 backlash", it was sometime in late 2001. Don't ask me for the specific date because I'm no good for that, but I remember many of the details perfectly.  It must have been late 2001 because it was snowing already, George Harrison had just died, and my steady girl of two years had left my house in shame after her meth-addict side-action guy broke into the house and tried to attack me with a knife.It had been quite a scene, and I didn't tend to get into knife-fights even then, so the dying days of that whole foul year are pretty sharply inscribed in my memory.My Star Wars group had taken to running what amounted to all-nighters, leaving my house at six, seven in the morning, and it was near the end of that morning that one of my players declared to me that there was a serious D20 backlash going on, that D20 was at its end, finished, and a new diversity of games would arise. He pointed to his brand-spanking new copy of Exalted as evidence, sagely prophecying that it would be D&D's replacement.And I mean, at the time, it was hard to doubt the guy. How could you? He'd worked 8 years in a McDonalds! He was a lifer! If a man like that wasn't an expert in the economics of RPGs and gaming trends, who would be?But my initial panic at his predictions soon abated. I realized pretty fast that his wish to see D20 go down the tubes was more than overcoming his logic. He was actually one of these on-the-fence "serious" types who'd been successfully brainwashed by White Wolf into thinking that gaming has to be a "work of art", yet deep down he was a good kid. I'd see him breaking free of those constraints every week in my star wars game and learning more and more that you can have gonzo hilarity interspersed with deep plotlines, without having to go all funkiller on the sheer enjoyment of the game. In time, he would drop all that unhealthy conditioning, but not before it had given him an ulcer and caused him to lose his hair. Well, that might not have been so much White Wolf as the McDonald's, the verdict's still out on that one.But the verdict on D20 was crystal clear.  D20 had accomplished the impossible: Do you remember those "crappy" supplements that used to be put out for AD&D throughout much of the 80s and 90s, by third-party publishers? Most people don't, because if you were a third-party publisher trying to piggyback the D&D system in those decades you were either ignored or sued. Not all of them were crappy, but none could really be successful. With D20, we have seen the democratization of the dominant paradigm: now its every man for himself, sink or swim, but you CAN follow the dream of creating a book for D&D that won't be published by Wizards, but will be published by R. Bumquist SmallPress and can still become a critical, and in very rare cases even a financial, hit!  That is pretty heady stuff.Its the stuff that dreams are made of, really. Looking back now some three and a half years on that cold winter night I know that it was only the first of many times I would hear about a "d20 backlash" or the "death of D20", but I can look at it all now with a certainty and clarity of understanding, seeing that catterwauling for just what it is.  And just like there'll be a few human losers out there whose sheer rage at all that is enjoyed by the gaming public for actually being fun and playable will cause them to declare the impending doom of D20 like a gaggle of mad jeremiahs, causing unneeded fear in goodhearted gamers who worry too much; so too will that dream, and the free ability to contribute and be a part of the dream, make sure that the majority of gamers will continue to support D20.  No outside force, no pseudo-intellectual's nocturnal emissions, will change that; only D20 itself, and the people and companies who propel it forwards, could actually cause it harm.  IF D20 dies someday, it will not be from a backlash, it will be from suicide.But for now, the times are far from that, and my advice to you is to get off the computer, call up some friends, and enjoy the new golden age of gaming. Nisarg</blockquote>

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