I'm getting Edition War fatigue

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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.
Sadly agree.

In some cases, I'd say this is a result of oversensitivity thanks to the actual edition warring. In others, I'd say it's a poor attempt to win an argument by hoping to invalidate the opposing viewpoint.

Unfortunately, I don't expect either to become any less frequent until the actual edition warring dies down.
 

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I do disagree with the assessment.
That's the fascinating part in this, quite frankly. I can't see how you can view his post as non-inflammatory with comments about "what they were smoking" in it. I simply don't understand. And this is precisely what fuels such wars. One side making such snide, rude, and inflammatory comments without even realizing it. Moreover and perhaps more importantly, since I can't fathom how you don't realize it I'm left with the presumption that you must have intended it as inflammatory. This makes it extraordinarily difficult to just "let it go." To let it go, I essentially have to ignore what amounts to a virtual slap in the face. Sure, I could ignore the thread, but why does one side get to slap the other side in the face?

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 don't agree with the first sentence here. He's not degenerating, he's calling out the problems in the referenced post. To degenerate, he would have to (IMO) make statements like, "You ask 'what they were smoking', well I say you're a poopy head!" But, he doesn't. TurtleJay is snarky, I admit, but I also think he was quite well restrained. Nowhere did he make a personal attack. He simply explained what he saw as 'bad' in the referenced post. On an unmoderated board I personally would've had a LOT stronger reaction so I can actually appreciate and notice the restraint (though I would hope that I would not actually respond). Since you and I (and the others) don't even come close to seeing eye-to-eye on this, I can understand however how you don't even notice the amount of restraint TurtleJay is showing.

On the other hand, I DO agree with your remaining sentences. They are absolutely good advice.

As another side note, I'm disappointed that the mod decided to interject comments in TurtleJay's post, but not ScottS. Such one-sided admonishments can only fuel edition warring (and other kinds of warring). If a snarky post like TurtleJay's is edited, then I think it's fair to take a few moments to actually read it and try to understand his point with the expectation of reviewing the originating post for the same reason. I.e. I'm fine with the mod's comments in TurtleJay's post, but I think it would really help to put similar one's in ScottS's. Otherwise, the message is "It's okay to take the mod's side in an edition war and troll against the 4E adherents." Obviously, this is not the mod's intent and the reaction should be equal.
 

Regarding "unfair comparisons": part of the problem for me is that even if you give 4e the benefit of the doubt, and assume that all it's trying to be is an "exciting fantasy-themed combat engine", it completely fails at the "exciting" part... It's obviously well-put-together and coherent (due in no small part to bringing over the 3e combat system mostly unchanged), but none of the playtesters or designers seemed to have put the game to a "WoW stopwatch test". One- to three-hour combats, that fail to threaten the PCs in any meaningful/dramatic way (i.e. what the DMG calls a level-appropriate encounter), aren't enjoyable. You can point to other design priorities that led to this state of affairs (e.g. making everyone a "spellcaster" to give everyone at the table "cool" stuff to do, inflating monster HP and nerfing monster damage to remove any chance of one-shot/round kills and to allow more time for "tactical opportunities" to develop), but regardless of how it came about, the result is suspect.

(In fact, I tend to do the "unfavorable comparing" in the other direction: I think 4e partially turned out this way because 3e was an "evil seed"; it also had time issues and 4e didn't do anything to fix them. My leading theory is that individual initiative/"I-go-everyone-else-goes" is a bad way of doing things unless you can guarantee that each unit's turn time is minimal.)

I'm not really an edition warrior, but my own vote is in favor of keeping the "vigorous debate" going in some fashion (ideally without people taking it personally, getting bummed out by the negative vibes etc., although "you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs" generally). Beyond the abstract/impractical goal of getting WOTC to stop selling this product, my immediate interest in the discussion is to a) figure out how to "fix" 4e (so I can run a better game without having to tell my players to go buy another set of rulebooks), and to b) get some understanding of "what they were smoking" in the design process (e.g. to what extent this was the product of pure "ganz falsch" design ideology, or whether it was really the result of large numbers of potential customers clamoring for grindfest combats).

Many people may disagree with these comments, and perhaps they are a bit inflammatory, but there is a lot of truth in these statements. I have played enough LFR to realize that 4E combat is an absolute grindfest almost 100% of the time. Why do you think that they are introducing D&D Encounters (a session that is just one combat encounter) into RPGA play? It must be that even WotC realizes that not many people can devote 6 plus hours (mainly because of insanely long combats) to play an LFR mod, especially when it's supposed to take only 4 hours. If there are constructive ways to reduce the grindiness of 4E, 4E fans and game designers need to hear it.
 
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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.
An edition war gets declared as soon as one side or the other starts up with snarky, inflammatory, or pejorative comments. For example, as soon as someone says "I don't like rule X in version Y. What were they smoking?" It's an edition war. The phrase "what were they smoking" in no way, shape, or form is constructive. It's only purpose is to elicit a negative or even hostile reaction from people holding the opposite view point. This is just an example phrase and there are probably hundreds of similar ones that have been used, all to the same effect. But, it's really hard to make such comments very neutral. I've seen a lot of attempts with most, if not all, of them failing. What's even more difficult is keeping others from chiming in with similar comments like, "Yeah, that new rule is really stupid."

What's worse is what I call the obtuse attitude. Someone makes a rhetorical, negative comment about a particular version and then refuses to see the value in any explanation. This type of reaction only causes the thread to grow with absolutely zero chance of a end game, and thus lead to eventual non-conducive debating tactics (logical fallacies of one form or another).
 

Many people may disagree with these comments, and perhaps they are a bit inflammatory, but there is a lot of truth in these statements. I have played enough LFR to realize that 4E combat is an absolute grindfest almost 100% of the time. Why do you think that they are introducing D&D Encounters (a session that is just one combat encounter) into RPGA play? It must be that even WotC realizes that not many people can devote 6 plus hours (mainly because of insanely long combats) to play an LFR mod, especially when it's supposed to take only 4 hours. If there are constructive ways to reduce the grindiness of 4E, 4E fans and game designers need to hear it.
Okay, that's cool. Can this be moved into a forked thread? It's vastly off-topic and would be better served in a separate discussion.
 

Many people may disagree with these comments, and perhaps they are a bit inflammatory, but there is a lot of truth in these statements. I have played enough LFR to realize that 4E combat is an absolute grindfest almost 100% of the time.
Not surprisingly, I completely disagree. ALL of my grind DISAPPEARED with 4E. Our combats are rip-roaring fast, exciting, and grind-free.

Why do you think that they are introducing D&D Encounters (a session that is just one combat encounter) into RPGA play? It must be that even WotC realizes that not many people can devote 6 plus hours (mainly because of insanely long combats) to play an LFR mod, especially when it's supposed to take only 4 hours.
This is totally circumstantial evidence at best. I know jack about the RPGA and frankly couldn't care less about it or any rules in it, but would point out that your "it must be..." is an example of a attempt to elicit a negative reaction (although I'm sure you didn't intend it as such). You proscribe a motive on WotC that doesn't equate with my version of reality (i.e. insanely long combats, which is from my perspective an falsified exaggeration).

See how differently people can think about these things?
 

That's the fascinating part in this, quite frankly. I can't see how you can view his post as non-inflammatory with comments about "what they were smoking" in it. I simply don't understand.

The valid criticism he made is what made it impossible for me to agree that it was nothing but 100% inflammatory. I simply couldn't agree with that assessment that it was "absolutely incendiary" whether I thought parts of the rest of his post were overly impolite or not.


Moreover and perhaps more importantly, since I can't fathom how you don't realize it I'm left with the presumption that you must have intended it as inflammatory. This makes it extraordinarily difficult to just "let it go." To let it go, I essentially have to ignore what amounts to a virtual slap in the face. Sure, I could ignore the thread, but why does one side get to slap the other side in the face?

I think there's a lot of binary thinking here. If someone can't see how their post may have been incendiary, then they must have intended it? How about they just aren't very good at putting themselves in someone else's shoes? We sure see a lot of that in edition wars threads as well as other heated discussions. 4e defenders can't see how 3e fans felt slighted by WotC's marketing. 4e critics can't see how using the term video-gamey might raise hackles among 4e fans. Badwrongfun declarations (and accusations, baseless or not) get flung around because few readers seem to want to really understand, acknowledge, and accept what someone else is saying at face value.

Message boards are fun to participate in and I get lots of good information from them about how people are playing, what I may use to make my games better, what sorts of games are out there, and so on. But there's also a LOT of dysfunctional communication.
 

Not surprisingly, I completely disagree. ALL of my grind DISAPPEARED with 4E. Our combats are rip-roaring fast, exciting, and grind-free.

This is totally circumstantial evidence at best. I know jack about the RPGA and frankly couldn't care less about it or any rules in it, but would point out that your "it must be..." is an example of a attempt to elicit a negative reaction (although I'm sure you didn't intend it as such). You proscribe a motive on WotC that doesn't equate with my version of reality (i.e. insanely long combats, which is from my perspective an falsified exaggeration).

See how differently people can think about these things?

I've forked the thread. I admit that I don't know for the sure the motives behind D&D Encounters, I was just speculating. I have seen the grind in about every 4E session except one which was mostly skill challenges, so it is real in my expereince and in the expereince of many others that have said as much. I don't know why some groups don't experience it, beacuse 4E seems to be desinged to "grind" to avoid "swingyness".
 

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.

In my opinion, a large part of the reason the bans on religion and politics work is because the board directs people (with a direct link) to CircvsMaximvs to discuss such topics. There is an outlet available to discuss those issues, and they do.

There is no similar Edition Wars forum here or at CircvsMaximvs. Upthread some of us were suggesting that moving the edition wars to CircvsMaximvs would be helpful. I stand by that (though I fully expect the idea to be dismissed). Give people a place where they CAN vent about edition wars, and they are less likely to vent in the general forum about it.

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.

The board will continue to deteriorate, with users going to RPG.net for example (where they actively succeed in enforcing an edition war ban, despite more users and more posts these days than EnWorld) until SOME means of addressing the issue is found. It does not have to be a ban, but it also cannot continue to be a throwing up of the hands and blaming the users. I'd rather that means were found, rather than continue to see the bleed-out of good posters to other boards while the trolls continue to skirt the edge of moderation here.
 

Edition war: A strange game. The only way to win is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?

You sir have won the thread. :D


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Really does it matter if you hate it or not. If you hate it, don't play it, don't berate others for playing it.

Most of the hate to WotC stems from all their actions leading up to it.
aka the 'Nerdrage' that built up was released with "I told you so's" and all that good jazz.

I perused the 4e books, decided it wasn't for me. I've perused the Pathfinder stuff, like some but not all of it.

Yet somehow I still manage to get on with my life and continue playing a version of D&D. If the group I'm in pursues 4e, I may or may not play. If I do I do.

If D&D to you is all about a version number I think (IMHO) that you are missing the first rule of the game itself. 1. Enjoyment

Personally I'm just as happy playing a Beer & Pretzels game as I'm playing in a Min/Max nightmare one. To me it's more about enjoying the game I'm playing, what edition it is doesn't effect the enjoyment of a good group.

I think the proof in that is when you have a noglistic night and play a 1E or Red Box game for laughs or just to have something different.

Life is too short to worry about picking apart editions you have no intention of playing.
 

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