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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 6429536" data-attributes="member: 59082">Maybe. But again, you seem to be minimizing the context that allowed for Pathfinder to not simply be made, but become very popular. As I see it, Pathfinder's success largely comes from a few factors:1) The OGL - especially being able to use the 3.5 system as its base2) Fan dissatisfaction with 4E3) Quality of product and strong community relationsYou seem to place the emphasis on the first point, then add in the edition wars for seasoning. I think you've got it in reverse - the OGL allowed for Pathfinder to exist, but it didn't make it popular. The reason Pathfinder was so popular is because 3.5 was popular and Pathfinder was basically 3.5, and more so because Paizo did a great job creating a product line that was attuned to the fan base.I don't think fanning the edition wars was really a causative factor in Pathfinder's popular, more of a secondary outcome of the friction between "Paizoans" and "WotCists."So you're saying that you're being an instant of your own complaint? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I suppose the reason the edition wars never bothered me so much is that I was never really involved, I never really had a horse in the race. At most, I have occasionally been accused (wrongly, imo) of edition warring simply by saying things like "4E didn't do well" or "Pathfinder is basically a copy of 3.5." My view is that that the main cause of edition warring is human defensiveness, and that most skirmishes are started when one person accuses another of edition warring - whether or not there is actually any warring going on. So I have tended to back slowly out of such situations, because I have no interest whatsoever is fighting over editions, which to me is another variant of "my dad is stronger than your dad" - or as you put it, my Sega is better than your Nintendo.But I can empathize with you as from what you've said you are actually experiencing some kind of PTSD from edition warring. I would only suggest that you may be being more defensive than suits the "attack" (because there might not be much of an attack going on, at least from me!).Now honestly, how are you not "egging on stupid edition wars" by accusing Pathfinder of doing just that? I mean, you keep complaining about edition warring but then you keep throwing little grenades into the mix. And don't forget, the first major salvo of edition warring--in the way that you are framing it--came from WotC, with their dissing of 3.5. It all went down hill from there.Yup, you're probably right. As many have said, 4E's problem wasn't that it was a bad game, but that it was too far from "what D&D is to me" to a large number of the fan-base.I think what WotC remembered with 5E is that people play D&D because of what it specializes in over other forms of entertainment--card, board, war, video games, etc. 4E went a bit too far into trying to incorporate some of those elements and turn them into their tabletop RPG equivalent. I can see why they did it, and in some ways I'm glad they did as I enjoyed 4E for a few years, but in the end it didn't work in that 5E saw them revert back to a more traditional approach.</blockquote>

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