So just recently I made my yearly pilgrimage to Dragon Con. While I'm not a big con gamer normally, I decided this year to try out a few events.
We all talk about the edition war, and we even like to talk about how we shouldn't talk about the edition war. But for me until now the edition war was simply post and chats on Enworld. As much as I love online posting, its not always the best representation of the gaming group at large.
During Dragon Con gaming events, I got to see the schism 1st hand.
There were 20 or more different DND type adventures going on throughout the con, but guess how many 4e ones there were?
That's right, a big zero.
Now I had checked the roster last year and hadn't seen 4e games then either. But I chalked that up to the fact that the game was new. The game now had another year under its belt, but once again I could still see it being the new kid on the block.
Except that Pathfinder, the game that had literally just released its finished rules, had 4 adventures going on at the Con.
All that said, there could be a number of reasons behind it, so I still might not have thought too much about it.
However, there was one 4e event going on (though not a true adventure), and that was the Cheese Grinder. I'm a big fan of the Grinder, its a few hours where I throw off the roleplaying side of my soul and just dive into pure mechanical powergaming goodness.
Every year the grinder had seen more and more people enter. This year was the worst turnout they had ever had. In fact while I was making characters, people were actively coming up to the people running, telling them how much they hated 4e, and that they didn't want to play because it was 4e.
Frankly, 4e is not a good system for the cheese grinder. It is after all supposed to eliminate much of the cheese the grinder explores. But the numbers and the passionate anger of many of the people was telling.
For good or ill, it seems to me that the edition war is alive and well, and will continue for a good while longer.
We all talk about the edition war, and we even like to talk about how we shouldn't talk about the edition war. But for me until now the edition war was simply post and chats on Enworld. As much as I love online posting, its not always the best representation of the gaming group at large.
During Dragon Con gaming events, I got to see the schism 1st hand.
There were 20 or more different DND type adventures going on throughout the con, but guess how many 4e ones there were?
That's right, a big zero.
Now I had checked the roster last year and hadn't seen 4e games then either. But I chalked that up to the fact that the game was new. The game now had another year under its belt, but once again I could still see it being the new kid on the block.
Except that Pathfinder, the game that had literally just released its finished rules, had 4 adventures going on at the Con.
All that said, there could be a number of reasons behind it, so I still might not have thought too much about it.
However, there was one 4e event going on (though not a true adventure), and that was the Cheese Grinder. I'm a big fan of the Grinder, its a few hours where I throw off the roleplaying side of my soul and just dive into pure mechanical powergaming goodness.
Every year the grinder had seen more and more people enter. This year was the worst turnout they had ever had. In fact while I was making characters, people were actively coming up to the people running, telling them how much they hated 4e, and that they didn't want to play because it was 4e.
Frankly, 4e is not a good system for the cheese grinder. It is after all supposed to eliminate much of the cheese the grinder explores. But the numbers and the passionate anger of many of the people was telling.
For good or ill, it seems to me that the edition war is alive and well, and will continue for a good while longer.