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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Longspeak" data-source="post: 7891410" data-attributes="member: 7019284">Good evening, long time listener, first time caller, love the show...First of all,I can't believe no-one else called you on this nonsense. Of course RPG's are cars!That said, I agree with the general point of the thesis, that cramming more and more and more stuff until someone explodes isn't better. More stuff isn't better.But... more choices are better.I don't want Warforged in my game. I don't want most of the hundred or so different races from the various books in my game, for that matter.I don't want a couple of the classes, and a lot of the sub-classes, either.And while we're at it, I don't want a Tarrasque.But darn it, I want the option of all those things.D&D 5th would already be unsustainably bloated if everything in every book was mandatory. But there's no harm in choices, only good. I read Artificer and thought "That's what I was trying to do with this alchemist NPC!" I read Xanathar's and thought, "Celestial Warlock? YES!"I say this as someone who left D&D back in Second Edition, when the bloat got to be too much, and I discovered more rules lite play. I had all the "Complete" books, all the Forgotten Realms supplements, etc, and somewhere in my brain (I was just a kid, okay?) I thought, "I HAVE to use all this stuff, but I don't wanna!" And I started playing other stuff. Mainly Star Wars, but that's another rant.Looking back, there's obvious design issues in AD&D 2e, but at the time, it was the bloat.Flash forward to August, 2018. My wife, for her birthday, has required me to attend a D&D game with her. I'd looked at 3e and 4e in the intervening years. Didn't like it, though I did like some of the changes from 2e to 3e. So I was all ready to dislike playing 5th, anticipating a bloated, weighed-down experience. But, She Who Must Be Obeyed had decreed that I would play, so I made a Rogue, because those are my easy mode.Anyway, I had a blast and we joined the group and over the next year I leveled that character to 20 just in time for the climax of the series. He didn't stay a rogue as I multi-ed into Ranger and later into cleric. (Why? Story Arc.) Anyway, I read the PHB, and other source books, and in the intervening 30ish years I'd learned the skill of picking and choosing, and now I run my own game on Roll20 three times a week. And I love it because I have all these choices.That's also why when Paizo had those sales on humble bundle, I bought 'em all. Choices.In conclusion, RPGs are totally cars.</blockquote>

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