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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 5598608" data-attributes="member: 15538">That's an interesting question, and I can offer a partial answer. Sometimes bad design is interesting. If you are a game designer, bad design isn't "someone else's sandbox." In fact, the people who really don't belong in an edition comparison are people who are invested in one game, but not the other games in the discussion. To me, edition criticism is more like saying, "Uh, there's some pee in this sandbox, you might want to think twice before hopping in." Plus, if you're going to illuminate how a game works and what it does, you really can't make a division between good/bad. You can talk about what is, and what you think about it. In fact, every new game edition is an implicit criticism of every previous edition. I could certainly describe some problems I see with, say, Pathfinder, or D6, but I don't think many people would actually be interested. From what I've said, if a 4e player starts to voice criticisms of 4e-isms they don't like, the usual response is for the 4e fans to say, "No, no, no, that's not really a problem, and we'll tell you why."EN World is unfortunately uniquely posed in the Blood War between 3e and 4e, because it started as a 3e site, then had some majority or at least plurality convert over to 4e. It's neither a pure 3e site nor a pure 4e site, nor is it united by the lonely love of those who play vintage editions, nor is it (yet?) a generic vehicle for RPG discussion. It's like a club that plays rock on Fridays and disco on Saturdays. EN World is like an oldies station that just nudged their playlist forward a decade. It's like a "new rock" station that's still playing stuff from Soundgarden because their old listeners never stopped listening. Basically, real neutrality is hard to find here.On the plus side, as a fairly D&D-centric site, with a lot of crossover with various OGL games and "lite" games, there is the potential for a collegiate, congenial atmosphere. However, for that to work, people have to get used to hearing things they don't like. I think with time things have definitely improved. Certainly, you don't see the venom you used to when someone posted an example from the "wrong" edition. I mean, there is very little about the coming of 4e I liked at all, but you would be hard-pressed to get me riled up about anything edition-specific at this point... unless you decided you still had to persuade me that I believe 4e is a superior game. I'm sure it is... for someone else.</blockquote>

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