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Is the D&D brand name really that important?
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<blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 5781498" data-attributes="member: 3400"><p>A lot of it comes down to identity - not any aspect of being blessed by the official brand identity - but in the self-made identification of the players. And I'm sure we'll see this in any edition wars that erupt between 4e players and 5e too. </p><p></p><p>People who join the D&D community as a hobbyist, who say "I'm a D&D player" when asked, take on an identity. Play long and enthusiastically enough and that identity will become pretty strong. Now change what that identity means on them and you'll see how pissed off they can get. Suddenly, the commonalities they had with their D&D identity are no longer so common. Different people will tolerate different amounts of this change in different ways. But you always run a significant risk tinkering with past success.</p><p></p><p>This is fundamentally different from the conflict you get between people playing different products. There may be rancor in either, but many of the worst fights tend to be <strong>within</strong> the same broad community because identity is at stake. If GURPS-identifying players square off against Hero-identifying players, neither players have their own identity at stake in the conflict, just the market success of the game they favor. In D&D edition wars, we could recognize that our identity is tied to the brand name and follow it wherever it goes or maybe we have to reassess and limit our identification to D&D 1974-2007, or maybe just AD&D. Either way, that may mean leaving a community to form another one. The psychological cost of doing so isn't always negligible. </p><p></p><p>Seriously, identity - particularly of the individual - is a huge issue. It may seem petty when the stakes are small like favored games, but it's not that psychologically different from having a political identity. And people shoot at each other over those.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="billd91, post: 5781498, member: 3400"] A lot of it comes down to identity - not any aspect of being blessed by the official brand identity - but in the self-made identification of the players. And I'm sure we'll see this in any edition wars that erupt between 4e players and 5e too. People who join the D&D community as a hobbyist, who say "I'm a D&D player" when asked, take on an identity. Play long and enthusiastically enough and that identity will become pretty strong. Now change what that identity means on them and you'll see how pissed off they can get. Suddenly, the commonalities they had with their D&D identity are no longer so common. Different people will tolerate different amounts of this change in different ways. But you always run a significant risk tinkering with past success. This is fundamentally different from the conflict you get between people playing different products. There may be rancor in either, but many of the worst fights tend to be [b]within[/b] the same broad community because identity is at stake. If GURPS-identifying players square off against Hero-identifying players, neither players have their own identity at stake in the conflict, just the market success of the game they favor. In D&D edition wars, we could recognize that our identity is tied to the brand name and follow it wherever it goes or maybe we have to reassess and limit our identification to D&D 1974-2007, or maybe just AD&D. Either way, that may mean leaving a community to form another one. The psychological cost of doing so isn't always negligible. Seriously, identity - particularly of the individual - is a huge issue. It may seem petty when the stakes are small like favored games, but it's not that psychologically different from having a political identity. And people shoot at each other over those. [/QUOTE]
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Is the D&D brand name really that important?
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