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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7906687" data-attributes="member: 996">4e supported styles & character concepts that D&D hadn't in the past (including some 5e still hesitates to re-enable), it just stopped over-rewarding the few putative styles that had risen up as ways of leveraging the long-standing system-artifacts & tropes of classic D&D and the intentional rewards for system mastery 3.x had built-in.The edition war, shaking down as it did into two dramatically irreconcilable sides, sure looked like a split, but it didn't run deep.  It still damaged the brand, though.  The division was never about the game supporting one set of fans and not another, but about the game supporting one set of fans, and another objecting violently to their inclusion.  That is, it was only ever just gatekeeping.It succeeded:  5e was once again, "really D&D" - and authentic, again, just in time for a come-back.  Painful as it may have been, worked out very nicely for WotC in the end.In theory, but there's a significant stumbling block.  Not everyone accepts diversity.  If you open your game up to a broader set of fans, and that outrages even a small number of your existing fans, that can generate the kind of negativity and controversy that makes the whole even less welcoming than it was before, you lose a few old fans, potential new ones (quite possibly including the very ones you opened up to) are put off from even checking you out, and even fans you keep become less enthusiastic.Again, though, D&D seems on the right side of the phenom, this time around.</blockquote>

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