I'm getting Edition War fatigue

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I disagree that the distinction isn't subtle. You will see some people complaining about a thread being an edition war and other people disagreeing that it is.

But, ultimately, what's the difference? The behavior of the participants in the thread. All it takes is a couple of fools to turn a thread that's a decent debate and tilt it into an edition war.
Well, let's use ScottS's previous post as an example. He says that he's not an edition warrior, which I would infer as meaning he didn't intend his post as an "edition war" post.

Yet, I for one, and TurtleJay for two, see it as nothing but 100% inflammatory, trolling, baiting, edition warring. 100% no ifs, ands, or buts about it. ScottS can then try and rebut his comments as constructive or not, but it's irrelevant. It's already out of the bag that I take his previous post as absolutely incendiary. I cannot even possible come up with a constructive response to his points, because his points are 100% non-constructive.

Do you not agree with this assessment? Because ScottS and TurtleJay/me as a given example don't see eye-to-eye on this then Edition Wars will always exist. Moreover, they are guaranteed to not be productive debates or discussions.
 

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If they are harmful in any way, then something needs to be done.

I don't agree with that, as stated. The "in any way" is problematic.

Here's the thing - people have said that the ban we had on Edition Wars earlier was a success. i disagree. It was pretty much a failure. Here's why:

People post on the internet to have others see, consider, and respond to their statements. The base form of reward you can give someone for posting is attention. So long as someone is given attention for saying something, they're being given a small reward for saying it.

Our bans on religion and politics work not because we police, remove all such references, and punish those who break the rules. They work because the community as a whole agrees with the idea that those areas are off-topic, and likely to bring up arguments that don't serve anyone. If someone does go over the line, someone else reports it, and nobody engages - pretty much everyone ignores it, and we mods sweep up to reinforce the idea.

This doesn't happen with Edition Wars. During the ban, the community failed to follow our lead, and continued to give attention to the warriors, rewarding their bad behavior with attention. The ban did nothing to alter the basic pattern. The warriors shifted a bit to using what is often (but somewhat incorrectly) called "passive aggressive" modes, but the arguing remained. The ban failed to change the behavior patterns.

Basically - so long as you folks are feeding the trolls, they'll reproduce despite our enforcement. What, then, is the point of banning it?


Umbran, if you ever need any help or advice, let me know.

These weren't complaints or requests for a support group or something. They were merely some clarifications, because some of what is being discussed reaches a little deeper into the functioning of this community than folks may realize. Some problems can be "pitched over the fence" for the mods to handle. This isn't one of them.
 

Since the 4E announcement at GenCon 2007, I've run the gamut of emotions re: the new edition.

Today, in early March 2010, I run a Friday night 4E game and a biweekly Saturday 3.5/3.PF game. I find that I can hold both systems in my head in their own mechanical brain-space. I find that each edition emphasizes slightly different aspects of the game. For my tables, 3.5 is a bit more story-heavy, but we still hack-n-slay with the best of them. My 4E game is a combat fest! But, let me be clear, that is NOT because it's "what 4E does best" or any such thing. It's just that my players wanted a hardcore, tactical killfest of a campaign and simultaneously wanted to really stress test 4E up into the Epic levels. 4E rocks, and 3.5/Pathfinder rocks.

I will admit that I am blessed with more free time to prep & run 2 regular campaigns than many DMs out there. So I didn't really have to make the "edition choice" that others have made. I get to have my 3.5/3.PF cake and eat 4E too. For myself, this situation dissipated my stress. Nothing is at stake, because I can run & enjoy both systems.

But I think I understand the fundamental stress that underlies our Edition Wars:

Those who love D&D and are passionate about playing and/or running it (mostly running it, here on ENWorld) want to have a large pool of fellow gamers to choose from, when the times comes to play.

If one's edition of choice becomes marginalized, the available pool of players and GMs shrinks... potentially cutting a gamer off from her or his favorite pastime.

When this possibility becomes reality, anger and fear responses are pretty normal: "I used to be able to play this game that I loved, and now I fear that I can't find other people to play anymore! I'm angry! And I blame (X edition) which took my players or my GM away."

When a community of gamers splits along edition lines, some are faced with the very real possibility of losing access to a hobby which they may have invested YEARS of their lives in. That's not a trivial matter. However, coming onto the intertubes and starting edition war threads doesn't really fix the problem.

I'm not sure there IS a fix to the problem, except for those who have lost their games and/or gaming groups to exercise their social energy and get lucky finding a new game in the system or edition they enjoy. Again, this is not always possible... and certainly the gaming hobby (not just D&D, 4E, etc... but all system and edition changes to various face-to-face TTRPGs over they years) have left some people behind in this exact situation. Perhaps it is just part of the "churn" of this hobby. I wish it were not the case.
 

Yet, I for one, and TurtleJay for two, see it as nothing but 100% inflammatory, trolling, baiting, edition warring. 100% no ifs, ands, or buts about it. ScottS can then try and rebut his comments as constructive or not, but it's irrelevant. It's already out of the bag that I take his previous post as absolutely incendiary. I cannot even possible come up with a constructive response to his points, because his points are 100% non-constructive.

Do you not agree with this assessment? Because ScottS and TurtleJay/me as a given example don't see eye-to-eye on this then Edition Wars will always exist. Moreover, they are guaranteed to not be productive debates or discussions.

I do disagree with the assessment. I believe his comment about the stop-watch test is a perfectly valid criticism of 4e, and one I largely share given my experiences. By comparison, I nearly reported TurtleJay's response as needlessly degenerating toward edition warring. If you think someone's trolling, report the post, don't feed the troll. Don't make the situation, as bad as you think it is, worse. That's the surest road to edition warring that I've seen here on ENWorld.
 

I'm not sure there IS a fix to the problem...
The fix is implied by what Umbran said above about feeding the trolls. Every person here bothered by an edition wars thread needs to take the personal responsibility to not take part in the war.
  • If someone posts a good reply in a thread that has elements of edition warring, repsond to the good parts and ignore the inflammatory parts.
  • If an edition warrior shows up in a non-edition war thread in order to threadcrap and inflame the discussion into a war, don't respond.
  • If you see someone who is a serial warmonger, repeatedly trying to incite in multiple threads, use the Report Post button and let the mods handle it while you continue to ignore the poster.

I am not saying it is easy to do; I have taken the bait a few times, and have discarded more than one reply when I realize I'm succumbing to the incitement, but it can be done.
 

I do disagree with the assessment. I believe his comment about the stop-watch test is a perfectly valid criticism of 4e, and one I largely share given my experiences. By comparison, I nearly reported TurtleJay's response as needlessly degenerating toward edition warring. If you think someone's trolling, report the post, don't feed the troll. Don't make the situation, as bad as you think it is, worse. That's the surest road to edition warring that I've seen here on ENWorld.

Valid criticism, sure.

On topic? Not exactly.

It's hard not to look at that post as edition war baiting because the content has little to nothing to do with edition war fatigue, but has everything to do with something the poster doesn't like about 4th edition.

If someone wants to talk about something they don't like, by all means do so. I've yet to see anything backing up an opposite take on this. But find the right thread to talk about it. Or start a new one. Dropping it into a conversation like this, which is not a conversation about "tell me what you like or don't like about edition X, Y, or Z", is just asking for trouble.
 

Most funny thing is:

you opened an edition war thread here...

also i believe some threads are no edition war threads by default:

the freaking mule thread: can´t you complain about something missing without beeing called a troll? You could rename the thread to: Help me stat up a "mule" to make it more politically correct.

Usually there are single persons which use every thread to get in a snarky comment. And actually there is truth in those comments, but usually it has to do with a combination of playstyle and unfitting rules.

There will be 5th edition and it will be different. And it is important to voice your opinion about 4th and older editions. But to have your voice have an effect on the development you should think about the way you present your opinions...
 

Thornir, you definitely make good points about posting etiquette and ways to (hopefully) lessen edition war threads.

To clarify, what I meant about there probably being no solution was specifically directed at the stress gamers feel when they (appropriately or not) feel their game-space is being compromised by community fracturing and edition/game changes. People's fear of losing access to their preferred social pastime should be honored and respected. I'm just uncertain of how to stop the cycle of "new edition = fear & stress = anger = edition warring post." This isn't a 3.5 vs. 4E issue, it's an overall issue with gaming in general (tabletop, MMO, etc... heck, even those insipid Facebook games, really any social-networking-based community of gamers has the same stress when new games are introduced and old games/editions fade away).
 

By comparison, I nearly reported TurtleJay's response as needlessly degenerating toward edition warring.
I would have agreed with that. See my notes above.

Folks, it's good to remember that there are a cubic crap-tons of ways to express your opinion; taking the time to do so in a way that helps the discussion, instead of hindering it, usually pays off.
 

Completely disagree. Not like it hasn't been said before, but edition wars are bad, edition debates are just fine.

The distinction there isn't exactly subtle.

I'd offer that the distinction becomes less than subtle with reasonable debate being declared "edition war" on a regular basis. It becomes a back door to ignoring the point.

does this happen every time? not at all. But it does happen frequently enough that the meaning of "edition war" becomes diluted. We don't talk about "edition debate" and "edition war". We talk about calm "edition war" and unacceptable "edition war". The same nom gets applied.
 

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