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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4912712" data-attributes="member: 54707">I haven't had a lot of time lately, so forgive me if I reiterate what someone else has said. Due to time constraints I've read some of the responses, but not all.To me personally I've never really played a corporate version of D&D. Even when I played AD&D, my favorite version of the game, I easily incorporated and adapted anything from any other source material I liked to create the setting and game I and my players desired. I was never a stickler for rules, format, or version, in that regard. So 4E was no different in that regard. I bought the books to mine for material and things I liked (in this case mainly to make the non-human characters very different from the human characters, class or profession wise), and disregarded the rest.I don't play or use pure or absolute versions of anything. If I want to improve my car, I make modifications to it. If I want to improve my computer, or add ancillary equipment, or make personal modifications I do so. If I want to make improvements to an aircraft design, I do so. To me the point has never been about version (in this respect, in regards to the D&D game) but about performance (my same concern with practically anything I employ or enjoy).So in this sense D&D, or WOTC being the contemporary designer and seller, has never lost me entirely. Because I simply take what I consider best about any particular edition of D&D, and as El Mahdi said, of any other game or system and create my own hybrid anyways. So in that sense WOTC never had me. Nor did TSR.I do however agree with many of the other commentators that WOTC did a poor job of customer satisfaction through a certain arrogance of corporate attitude early on, though that may have improved over time. (I just don't spend a lot of time or money buying secondary material when I know I'm gonna create my own modifications to the game anyway - I just get what I think I need to set me on the right track of experimentation. And maybe, naturally enough, a cooperation doesn't wanna hear that, but I also think that with very little effort they could easily and cheaply exploit the "self-modification market" with very simple design and marketing techniques.)What personally I objected to most strenuously (if I can justifiably apply that term to gaming) was the subtle sense I got that 4E was presented not as a newer or improved version of the game, but as either a replacement for all previous versions, or was now more or less considering itself "the game itself." Which it ain't, and ain't never gonna be. It's just a version. Like a version of an operating system. An OS, especially a particular version of an OS is not computing in and of itself, it is just an operating system. Nothing more. Merely a given method at a given time of arranging operations, functions , and applications. It is not the thing itself, it is the method of employing the thing itself. 4E is just a version of D&D, good and interesting in some respects, poor and useless to me in others.  But no-one is gonna convince me it is fantasy RPGing, or even Dungeons and Dragons in and of itself. Trust me, it will be in its own turn replaced by something else. That's just the way things are.So I don't mistake cars for all forms of transportation, and I'm never confused by the idea that one car may be superior in one type of performance, and inferior in another, to any other car. Most will be good at something, and all will be less than optimal at something. (Then again, given enough time the car will be replaced as surely as the saddle-horn. It's just a matter of when and how. There is no unchanging island on the ocean of forever.)Let the best car manufacturer make the best car possible (because they have the time and resources to do that while I'm busy at something I consider more important), and if I want to improve it from there, then I will. But just because I buy a BMW or a Lexus doesn't mean I'm duty bound to be stuck with what I'm got just because that's the best the car manufacturer could, or would, do at that moment. Once I buy the BMW it isn't their car anymore, it's mine to experiment with and improve upon. So I'm not worried about any corporation or anyone else saying, "we don't do it that way, we do it this way." Well, maybe you do. It's not my problem or concern.I'm only concerned with how does the version perform, and can it be improved upon or augmented or enhanced?And if there's one thing I've never been afraid of in this world, then it's of finding that thing that cannot be improved upon.</blockquote>

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