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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 9233091" data-attributes="member: 6696971">I can't square how this response interacts with what I wrote that you're quoting.  What I wrote was an attempt to clarify (a) what your "it" was and (b) what your position was on that "it."My question about your sense of the historical record doesn't have anything to do with WotC policy (whether that policy is goal-directed or simply emergent).Also not clear to me what is happening with these three sentences.  Here is what I wrote:* TSR clearly reacted to the culture in its clean-up and areas of add-on/redesign with 2e.  These reactions were overwhelmingly a response to the very loud "GM as Stortyteller" movement (of which TSR got on board early with Dragonlance and incorporating the Hickman school of thought/play) and "1e is a pile of discrete rules that don't intersect with each other too often" refrains.* 3e was a, WotC, further reaction to that "pile of discrete rules" and to the decades-developing "Simulationist" interests/interpretations of a loud cohort of D&D players.* 4e was a lot of things.  Clearly it was a dictate from on high to achieve a huge cash number where several internal "cooks" had ideas on how to go about that in terms of design.  Beyond all that came before it (probably especially late 3.x and B/X D&D), the clear influences on 4e were (a) the indie games and movements of the time where "cut to the action", play transparently, empower players, and scene resolution techniques (including "Fail Forward") and systemization were all paramount, (b) MtG tech/formulations (which makes sense given its in-house), (c) Eurogames (which deeply engages both (a) and (b) and were absolutely crushing the TTRPG market), (d) Diablo and WoW thematically and some game-tech.* 5e was the biggest "react to the culture" edition of all time in terms of messaging, curated surveys, engagement (both what they said and who they said it to and who they engaged/courted), and design.[HR][/HR]As far as what I'm "complaining" about?What I'm pointing at is the internet and meat-space hostility and (creepy as hell imo...I've been involved in many, many technical disciplines and cultural phenomenon...I've never seen anything like this to be honest with you) "fighting over brand identity" and "safeguarding brand identity's (mis) perceived purity" (as if D&D hasn't been tons of different things over the years) that has coalesced within, around, and in front of all of this.  And its not just that its happened (and its still happening).  Its the various ways its happened.  Its the shape of the bullying/othering, the underhanded coalition-building via mobbing and misdirection and shaming and various machiavellian cultural control levers being pulled or wedged in the "off" position.  Mostly its the passive-aggressiveness and caprice inherent to all of those.  I'll take physical, direct, and in-my-face of those things all day any day.  At least I know who is hitting me and there is little underhanded about it!  Maybe that was the best part about the 4e edition wars in meatspace.  Various dudes had the temerity (and courage I guess) to actually take the initiative and be direct with their derision in meat-space!Even if I don't play any future iterations of WotC's games, I still interact with the culture-at-large routinely (either by persisting in the same spaces or running older or indie versions of D&D) and I've got young people that I've shepherded into this cultural milieu.  It would be great if the culture of D&D (and TTRPGing at large) could be like the very healthy and vigorous cultures of climbing or jiujitsu.  While there are significant disagreements within those cultures on various things both technical and cultural, there is still a very healthy brotherhood and cultural fabric where stuff that I mentioned above really just doesn't happen...and if it does on a very isolated and micro-scale, it gets pointed out and selected against very quickly (so the next cultural iteration or macro culture isn't infected by it).This is a big divergence from this thread and (despite the word count and likely what appears to be passion; I'm basically summoning myself from another time here to ghost-write this), I'm not terribly interested in writing about this here and now.  I'm not writing anything else about this.  If you'd like to respond to any of the above, have at it, but I'm done here.  Or if you'd like to PM me on the subject, that is <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f44d.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt="(y)" title="Thumbs up    (y)"  data-smilie="22"data-shortname="(y)" /></blockquote>

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