Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Isaac Chalk" data-source="post: 6045990" data-attributes="member: 96952">Earnestly, whilst growing up I played a host of RPGs that weren't D&D at all - I had the occasional 2E game mixed in with GURPS, Marvel FASERIP, Rifts (shut up, I was 12,) and Aberrant and other White Wolf games. It was only when 3E hit that I played D&D more fully, and it was less by choice and more because it was the only game in town. The OGL was, by far, the game's biggest innovation - I witnessed those "networked externialities" first hand, as I found that I had to choose between gaming in 3E D&D or not gaming at all. (Or running my own games, in which case I would get a lot of blank looks as I explained that it was not a D&D game so their wizard build wasn't going to apply.) For all the noise that 4E gets for being like an MMO, it's OGL 3E - where people can play for free, because the presence of other people is the reason why anyone plays - that looks more like an MMO nowadays.So I never had a nostalgic attachment to magic missiles that never miss or Larry Elmore on the covers of the books, and I never needed Wizards of the Coast to pander to my sense of nostalgia - I had no nostalgia. D&D wasn't my religion, it was a tool to use. Saying "But Gary Gygax said we should do it THIS way" earns a hearty "so effing what?" from me. I was never as offended as so many people were when 4E chopped up those sacred cows, since I enjoyed the tasty hamburgers that resulted and because, as an agnostic, no cows are sacred to me.So seeing D&D Next all but give up on new mechanics and instead choosing to bring back a mishmash of the old is somewhat disheartening, but I've come to see it as a blessing in disguise because finally, people around me are remembering that there are game systems other than D&D or its derivatives. My GM's next campaign isn't set in stone yet, he just knows he isn't going to be using D&D again - ANY edition. People going outside of D&D is the best news I could imagine for this hobby. People talk about "old school revivals," but they always mean "old school D&D," as if it were the only old RPG worth talking about. For me? Lots of different games and lots of different settings, IS old-school roleplaying. I'll be quite glad to get back to it.</blockquote>

Verification