Let's talk about "plot", "story", and "play to find out."

[Crimson Longinus]

I am a fan of older editions of D&D. These are definitively more difficult to find players for the further they recede into the past. A lot of folks follow whatever's current. Do you deny any of this, or does it just not matter to you? If it doesn't, fine, but it matters to others.

I say the same thing than to the posters who complain about the difficulty of winding people who want to play 4e: they are harder to find because there are less people who like that playstyle. If the playstyle of an older edition was actually popular, it would not be hard to find players.

 

[Maxperson]

I certainly stopped going to one food chain (Boston Market) because they stopped carrying the thing I wanted there. You can argue that was just them deciding there was a tradeoff between maintaining that product and me (and people like me) as customers, and that's probably true, but it still effectively dismissed me as a customer.

There is a difference between dismissing you as a customer and losing you as a customer. They lost you with that change. Nobody sat there and said, "Let's get rid of this so Thomas Shey doesn't come here anymore. And then let's go out of business, because we suck at business."

Humans are really good at taking things personally that weren't aimed at them. It makes them feel like they are being excluded or dismissed, when really it's just a change that had nothing to do with you.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I say the same thing than to the posters who complain about the difficulty of winding people who want to play 4e: they are harder to find because there are less people who like that playstyle. If the playstyle of an older edition was actually popular, it would not be hard to find players.

That sounds like an argument for newer is better.

 

[Lanefan]

Then you are excluded from everything disliked. I don't like fish, because the fish game engine(taste) excludes me. It's a nonsensical position.

I think it's more a situation of a) you don't like fish flavour and then b) the main Chefs' Union deciding to take the not-fish things you liked before and flavour them all with fish. They're actively, if perhaps unintentionally, working against your preferences....

You are excluded if 1) you are refused access directly, or 2) if they design it in some way to specifically to exclude you. 4e did neither of those things.

4e's game engine was not designed to keep me, you, or @Micah Sweet from playing it.

...and then telling you right up front in their marketing of the New Fish Trend that your previous preferences are crap and that only the cool kids like fish.

The game engine itself isn't exclusionist. It can't be, any more than can a car engine or a bread box or any other tool. But the presentation of that game engine most certainly can be, or try to be, exclusionist; and that's where the problems lay.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

That sounds like an argument for newer is better.

No it is not. A lot of people seem to like the current edition of D&D, but not because it is current, but because it suits their tastes.

But that is not automatically the case. More people probably liked 3e than 4e, thus 4e being sort of a failure and Pathfinder emerging.

 

[Lanefan]

I have, in the course of events, had to actually dismiss a person as a customer, to exclude them, specifically and personally from a place of business, in front of other customers.

Let me be clear, that was nothing like, "Oh, you don't carry the McChocoBroccoli any more? I guess I'll got get the BrocoChocoKing across the street, then."

If that person was being an asshat to the point of deserving exclusion, that's one thing (I did my time and then some in storefront retail and thus know all too well of what you speak).

But that exclusion can be quickly and obviously traced back to the excluded person's own behavior. It's their own fault.

Let's take this forum as an example. You as a mod occasionally have to punt individual people off the site due to their behavior. That's their fault, in the end; and everyone more or less accepts that. But if Morrus decided tomorrow to suspend all D&D and OSR discussion in these forums and change the forum's primary focus to PbtA games and their ilk, the long-time-active D&D and OSR fans here would have a legitimate case for feeling excluded; and not for anything that could be remotely considered as being their own fault. And yet the site would still be called ENWorld.

I think that hypothetical example mirrors, if perhaps inelegantly, the 3e-to-4e changeover and how it came across to long-time D&D players-DMs-fans.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If that person was being an asshat to the point of deserving exclusion, that's one thing (I did my time and then some in storefront retail and thus know all too well of what you speak).

But that exclusion can be quickly and obviously traced back to the excluded person's own behavior. It's their own fault.

Let's take this forum as an example. You as a mod occasionally have to punt individual people off the site due to their behavior. That's their fault, in the end; and everyone more or less accepts that. But if Morrus decided tomorrow to suspend all D&D and OSR discussion in these forums and change the forum's primary focus to PbtA games and their ilk, the long-time-active D&D and OSR fans here would have a legitimate case for feeling excluded; and not for anything that could be remotely considered as being their own fault. And yet the site would still be called ENWorld.

I think that hypothetical example mirrors, if perhaps inelegantly, the 3e-to-4e changeover and how it came across to long-time D&D players-DMs-fans.

This is exactly what I'm talking about

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But what all these forum and restaurant analogies miss, is that with RPGs your old books don't vanish and you can just keep playing that. Like I was not so keen on 5.5 changes, so we just kept playing 5.0.

I get that "current edition" matters for wargames where you ideally want a large pool of opponents, but with RPGs it is quite different. You need just a handful of people who want to play the same game, and if you already had your existing group that liked the old edition, it should not be hard to just keep playing it if the new one is not to your liking.

Like @Lanefan my understanding is that you run some frankenpaleo-D&D, and that seems to have been going strong for quite a while.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, except that all your old books still exist.

Sure, but social pressue is sometimes a difficult thing to resist, and all too often that social pressure supports the New Shiny just on principle because that's what both the current marketing and long-term conditioning tell it to do.

We've been pressured all our lives to simply assume [newer = better] and [old = bad], whether or not such is true in any given case. That's what keeps the economy going.

 

[soviet]

If that person was being an asshat to the point of deserving exclusion, that's one thing (I did my time and then some in storefront retail and thus know all too well of what you speak).

But that exclusion can be quickly and obviously traced back to the excluded person's own behavior. It's their own fault.

Let's take this forum as an example. You as a mod occasionally have to punt individual people off the site due to their behavior. That's their fault, in the end; and everyone more or less accepts that. But if Morrus decided tomorrow to suspend all D&D and OSR discussion in these forums and change the forum's primary focus to PbtA games and their ilk, the long-time-active D&D and OSR fans here would have a legitimate case for feeling excluded; and not for anything that could be remotely considered as being their own fault. And yet the site would still be called ENWorld.

I think that hypothetical example mirrors, if perhaps inelegantly, the 3e-to-4e changeover and how it came across to long-time D&D players-DMs-fans.

But suspending the D&D part of the forums would stop you talking about D&D. Publishing a new edition doesn't do anything to stop you continuing to play or talk about the old edition. The equivalent situation would be if ENWorld kept all the D&D forums but added a new PbtA only forum in a prominent position, and lots of people started only posting there.