NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AlViking" data-source="post: 9711883" data-attributes="member: 6906980">I don't really buy into the generational talk, especially since it's primarily centered on D&D versions.  But even if I were to lump D&D editions together into generations I'd do it differently.I'll skip over TSR era because I'm okay with how Mearls grouped those together.  I just disagree on what happened after WOTC took over.  With 3e they tried to clean up the rules of the game to be more consistent but also to lock down a specific style of play.  The goal with 3e was to define everything to say that if you have a brick wall the climb DC is X and under this specific situation this is the correct rule.  It was well meaning in the sense that people were always asking why the rules didn't cover how to handle things in enough detail. Then with 4e they went even further down that road, giving you almost board game-like powers with very limited and specific requirements and results.Then with 5e they went "rulings not rules" and abandoned trying to standardize every table playing the game. Now we had the era of every DM and group making the game their own.  It's not so much a focus on house rules, although those are also encouraged and easier to implement, but simply giving the group a fair amount of slack on how to implement the rules.  There is no longer a push for one true way of playing the game.  Throw in the impact and influence of third party materials to use the same core rules while changing the nature of play*. This of course has it's own issues and pushback from some people because game design will always be a compromise.  So that would be my generational grouping, no better and likely worse than some other groupings.  I still don't think my grouping or any other grouping is particularly informative for the broader TTRPG market.  If you really wanted to discuss that you'd have to start, I don't know, with the growth of groups like the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronisms) or discuss the Empire of the Petal Throne (also published in 1974) or the Traveller game and the rise of the metaplot.  But that would require broader knowledge than what I have.  Even then it would just be people trying to put the messy, always changing marketplace of ideas into neat little buckets.  It's common to want to organize all sorts of things, not convinced it's particularly useful.*I think the impact of the OGL mistake is likely exaggerated, in large part by people like Mearls wanting to sell games not associated to D&D. Most people who play the game know nothing about it or consider it water under the bridge.  Even if that water was a burning pile of poo.</blockquote>

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