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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 5902350" data-attributes="member: 8835">In the software business, I've seen that behavior.  We call it the Cranky Old Guy.  It's not always an old guy, and not all old guys are cranky.  But more often than not, the cranky person is an older guy.For developers, it expresses itself as the guy on the project who constantly fights against the project.  We shouldn't do it this way, we don't need to be doing this project anyway, etc.  While they see it as lending the wisdom of their experience, what tends to be going on is that they had mastery of the old system, are closer to retirement, and don't want to relearn and go back to beginning of the knowledge curve where they aren't so valuable.If you don't convert of get rid of these people, you project has an uphill battle and will likely fail, proving them right.  If you get rid of them, your project will run more smoothly and will be more likely to suceed because any of the challenges the cranky person rightly pointed out will be overcome by motivated individuals.When implementing software for business change, you'll see the Cranky Old Guy effect among users as well.  They don't see the value of the new system over the old.  And they will rile up the user base because of it.   Once again, you need to identify them, and eject them if they can't be converted.the similarities with software and D&D editions continues.  I've found that most process transformations don't make things faster for the workers.  In fact, it will feel harder to fill out screens than to scribble on paper.  What usually improves is information capture, tracking and reporting.  Upstream management concerns.  The other impetus for change is technology retirement. New stuff comes out and you can't get developers to work on the old stuff.  A business needs to rewrite its software JUST to get off the old stuff so they can find talent to continue maintaining their stuff.  Try finding a VB6 programmer or mainframe guy.If you were Monte Cook, would you really want to keep writing 2e stuff?  It's a smaller market, and the new stuff has better tools.If you were WotC, would you really want to support the old platforms, or just one current edition?If you were a player, do you really need to buy a new PH, when the one you have works fine?</blockquote>

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