D&D General Rant: Sometimes I Hate the D&D Community

[Snarf Zagyg]

A vast majority of people who play 5e like the system. It's the longest-lived version of D&D in history, and is the version that brought D&D back to being a popular brand rather than a niche hobby. The fact that there are more people playing D&D than there have been in 3-4 decades means you get not only the most happy customers, but also the most complainers. And the internet means that you hear the loudest voices.

I agree with everything you wrote, but I might quibble with the bolded part.

5e is from 2014 through today (2022). That's nine years.

AD&D (1e) existed was published from 197x - 1989. If we go by the date of the PHB, it's 1978-89. That's twelve (12) years. Even if we use the DMG date, that's 11 years.

So 1e is still the longest. It's an interesting question, to me, how people count editions, as well. I tend to think of all the TSR-era D&D as approximately the same edition, even though we divide it into 1e and 2e.

 

[Deset Gled]

I agree with everything you wrote, but I might quibble with the bolded part.

5e is from 2014 through today (2022). That's nine years.

AD&D (1e) existed was published from 197x - 1989. If we go by the date of the PHB, it's 1978-89. That's twelve (12) years. Even if we use the DMG date, that's 11 years.

So 1e is still the longest. It's an interesting question, to me, how people count editions, as well. I tend to think of all the TSR-era D&D as approximately the same edition, even though we divide it into 1e and 2e.

That's very fair. In my defense, I did absolutely no research before making that statement. For some reason I had it in my head that 5e overtook 1e this year. How we count exact age of editions is definitely up for debate.

I always had in my head that AD&D 1e had a run of less than 10 years. I think this belief comes from the publication of the PHB in 1978 and then running until Drangonlance Adventures, being the last exclusive AD&D 1e rulebook, published in 1987. It's definitely a slippery definition, though. I was also thinking 5e was a decade old this year, but I was probably counting D&D Next from 2012, which really isn't a fair measurement.

 

[carmachu]

That’s every community. Wargaming 40k community was brutal back in the day when I played

Just ignore the community when it gets crazy. It’s what I do nowadays

 

[Thomas Shey]

I wonder if part of the reason people with such different rules likings "pinch their nose and go with it" as you say is the all-pervasive presence of 5e in the gaming community. In short, almost everybody wants to play "the world's greatest role-playing game", and very few comparatively want to play anything else. You make it work because everyone wants to play 5e.

Well, and the people who aren't willing to do that may well be outside the whole D&D ecosystem (as for the most part I am) so they're irrelevant.

 

[Thomas Shey]

A vast majority of people who play 5e like the system.

I think this is one of those statements that not only reaches beyond the available data, it reaches beyond any possible data.

 

[Deset Gled]

deleted

 

[DrunkonDuty]

There are certainly games that are more focused. For example D&D probably isn't the best game for eldritch or Gothic horror. On the other hand you can do those and several other genres reasonably well (at least in small bites) while many other games are very focused on specific niches. There's pluses and minuses to both approaches. D&D works for me because in a single campaign I may bounce between styles of play depending on what direction we take. That, and I sometimes prefer tailoring what I'm doing to the situation instead of having to follow a strict set of rules. YMMV of course.

My mileage does indeed vary. I think DnD, all editions, pretty much only does DnD well. But I get that many people happily mod it to make it do other things. And that's cool. I'm all for tinkering to get a system to do exactly what you want.

 

[overgeeked]

Going all the way back...

The Edition Wars are stupid.

Agreed.

Play whatever edition you like and stop caring if other people like an edition you don't.

It's really hard to listen to people crap on things you like. It's also, apparently, really hard to simply ignore things you don't like.

I don't care, and so long as you can play what you like, you shouldn't care either.

That's part of the problem. The current edition will (almost) always be the most popular. So if you don't like the current edition, you ability to play the game you like is limited.

The same applies to settings, races, classes, and so on.

Paradoxically, to me, where this comes from is people wanting to not have to fight about things. If a race or class is in the game by default, I have to fight to exclude it. Because inevitably someone will want to play that thing and I'll have to say no, argue about why, and be put in a position to decide if I want to keep this thing out of the game more than I want to bring a given player into the game. A lot of people are adverse to conflict in meatspace. They seem to be more conflict seeking in webspace.

If something changes in a new printing of the thing I like or a setting is updated in a way I don't like, I can ignore it and use the older version.

Same as above. The current edition is (almost always) the favorite and anything that's default is expected, so using an older edition reduces the player pool and changing things from the default expectations is a fight. It's much easier to have a fight in webspace than meatspace, so people bizarrely think that hashing things out online will somehow make their meatspace arguments go away, or they'll be so convincing that the devs will see and make a change. It hasn't worked yet.

I like optimizing the characters that I play. I like finding mechanical quirks that go together in interesting/unique ways and play a character competently built for combat. That doesn't mean I dislike roleplay, I love roleplay, but I also enjoy the "game" parts of the hobby as well as the other parts. My playstyle might be different from yours, and we might not be able to play at the same table because of that, but my version isn't badwrongfun and neither is yours*.

I think that's the bit that a lot of people forget. Some playstyles are simply incompatible. There's nothing wrong with any given non-abusive or non-bigoted style of play, but it's wrong to pretend that all styles or compatible. Some styles simply decrease the fun of other players who don't enjoy that style at their table. It's still not wrong, it's just wrong for a group, or wrong for a given table. Not everyone is a good fit at every table. We need to normalize that.

I'm certainly not going to demand that a setting/race/class never gets published again, or say that the game is ruined forever because of one minor change, or say that playing the game in a different way from me is objectively badwrongfun. I'm just going to continue enjoying the hobby and playing how I want to play.

What's minor to one is a fundamental and unacceptable setting alteration to another. People who are not fans of a setting have a different POV than casual fans of a setting who have a different POV than obsessive fans on that same setting. It's not about who's spent more or who has bigger...credentials, but acknowledging one's stance on the setting might be a good idea. But then, this being the internet, everyone is likely to claim being an obsessive fan of everything just to have more perceived credentials.

I'm just a guy that likes gnomes, artificers, Eberron, optimizing, and playing 5th Edition. And there's nothing wrong with that, just like there's nothing wrong with liking Kobolds, Bards, Dragonlance, prioritizing roleplay, and playing 3.5e.

I'm just the referee who loves Al-Qadim, Dark Sun, Mystara, Ravenloft, and Spelljammer...the player who loves playing dwarfs and so-callled monstrous races...and the gamer who finds hard-core optimization so off putting that I'd rather not game than have it at my table.

And the people in this hobby that non-jokingly tell people that they're wrong for liking any of that can mind their own goddamn business.

That's the trouble with an internet discussion forum. There's other people who have differing opinions.

 

[edosan]

I’ve never understood why people can’t just play the game they like and let other people (and in the age of the Internet, the other people are often people they will never even encounter IRL, much less play with) play the games they like. Unfortunately there are all sorts of groups online dedicated to telling each other why everyone that plays differently than they do are Dumb And Wrong. Some people want to hate on things that are popular and some people get angry at newcomers to their beloved hobby and even others get angry at any perceived “dumbing down.”

No one is coming to confiscate your Rules Cyclopedia or copy of OSE. Live and let live. If everyone at your table is having fun, it doesn’t detract from my or anyone else’s fun.

 

[cbwjm]

I’ve never understood why people can’t just play the game they like and let other people (and in the age of the Internet, the other people are often people they will never even encounter IRL, much less play with) play the games they like. Unfortunately there are all sorts of groups online dedicated to telling each other why everyone that plays differently than they do are Dumb And Wrong. Some people want to hate on things that are popular and some people get angry at newcomers to their beloved hobby and even others get angry at any perceived “dumbing down.”

No one is coming to confiscate your Rules Cyclopedia or copy of OSE. Live and let live. If everyone at your table is having fun, it doesn’t detract from my or anyone else’s fun.

Sometimes though, it isn't so much a question of "play the game you like" it's a query about a specific edition that brings out the toxicity. There's a thread right now which asks what people think is wrong with 5e. I've participated in a thread about 4e and, while it's true that there are many that seem vehemently against anything 4e, there are also those who take any criticism of the edition as a personal attack.

These aren't threads saying that you're wrong to play that edition either, people just get overly worked up about their favourite edition or about the edition that they dislike. Thankfully, I've only experienced these sorts of players online.