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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8940708" data-attributes="member: 18">It's wildly controversial for four reasons.1) It's trying to be basically "compatible" with material from another game system, so makes some very intentional and considered design choices to do so, which offend some PtbA purists (HP, for example). It also encourages people to use existing D&D materials, which again, massively offends certain purists (including DW purists), who feel the entire world/setting should flow from the players and the system - which DW is quite capable of doing, but doesn't require in the same way some PtbA games do.2) One of the systems it introduces is basically just a worse version of an extant PbtA system - Fronts are basically just PtbA clocks done in a messed-up way, and I don't think they're very helpful or worth the space the rulebook spends on them. Personally I'd suggest people playing DW just totally ignore Fronts.3) I'm not sure how to put this perfectly kindly but it upsets the most gentle lambs of the world, a lot of whom seem to play certain other PtbA games, because it intentionally emulates D&D, which they see as inherently pro-colonizer, pro-violence (perhaps even pro-genocide), pro-raiding and so on. I'm not kidding nor overstating here, to be clear. And they are, on a level, correct. D&D has always been quite about those things - "Kill monsters and take their stuff" - and you can see this reflected in a lot of Gygax's own comments (including his "nits make lice" approving reference, or his description in the '00s of how a Paladin should operate). But for the vast majority of D&D players, that's either not an issue, or just not how they see it, which is imho also totally valid and possibly more reasonable.I can even link (if I look hard enough) a thread from the non-controversial co-designer where he talks about what he'd change for a DW 2nd edition, and it's like, basically everything that makes it D&D-like and focuses on violent conflict.4) One of the two co-designers got in a lot of controversy for a genuinely creepy incident from his home game and sort of did a Mike Mearls and vanished from public. Like Mearls being an eejit and friends with people who aren't great, I don't think this has any real bearing on the game but it certainly influences some attitudes about it, esp. from the sort of people who also think maybe "Killing monsters and taking their stuff" isn't cool.TLDR - Only reason 1 really matters if you care about PtbA, and I don't think it matters a whole lot - indeed if anything I think it DW makes a more gentle introduction to PtbA. You're jumping a 5' gap instead of a 10' one.</blockquote>

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