Some Wrecan Stuff

[Jester David]

Much of his posts were lost in the deletion of the D&D Next Playtest forums.
Here's where I'm archiving some Wrecan content of note.

 

[Jester David]

Originally posted by wrecan:

Daebereth,

When Third Edition came out, there was some commotion. You may want to look around rec.games.frp.dnd, which is currently archived on Google to see some of the reaction. The community was a lot smaller, but there were definitely a lot of the same fears and resentment. Here's just a few of the ones I found:

• Halaster said Third edition was for power gamers who want invicible PCs. "I think I'm staying in 2E, where the charcters at least have a CHANCE to die." (A refrain often said about 4th)
  
• Jigga4evr complains the game is being dumbed down "for five-year olds." (Another common refrain about 4th)
  
• SP began a hellacious thread in which pro- and anti-Third edition people went at each other, with many arguments that could be transplanted into the pro- and anti-4E debates on these forums.
  
• W Smith began a thread tracking Third Edition's sales on amazon, leading to an argument about whether amazon sales are indicative of commercial success. (A similrar argument erupted on this forum.)
  
• Barry Smith made the argument that he would not switch to Third because of all the money he had invested in Second. Others in the thread make the "it doesn't feel like D&D" argument often seen on these forums abotu 4th.
  
• Stephen Jaros began a thread much like yours, asking "vets" if they were switching, which led to a lot of complaints about 3E.

These are only a handful of the threads about the switch. Sadly, the rec.games.frp are not easy to search.

 

[Jester David]

Originally posted by wrecan:

Another reason why 4th is so weak and video gamey.

Thanks for reminding me. People complained about Third Edition being "video gamey" too.

jonahnynla, for example, claimed that Third Edition was based on Diablo II.

So did DrKan41267, and others in this thread.

So did Barry Smith in this thread.

Ooh! And Mars, Bringer of War in this gem from 1993, compared Second Edition to the videogame Gauntlet!! So I guess this complaint even predates Third Edition (oddly)!

 

[The Fighter-Cricket]

Who is this Wrecan? Where can I bask in his eternal wisdom?

 

[Jester David]

Who is this Wrecan? Where can I bask in his eternal wisdom?

He was the best poster at the WotC community site, prolific in posts and yet decent guy, who is sadly no longer with us. And thus, unable to save his own posts. What few remained.

 

[Greg K]

[MENTION=37579]Jester Canuck[/MENTION]
Here is a link through wayback machine to Wrecan's Unearthed Wrecana if you want to go through and pull things out
https://web.archive.org/web/2010081...25328093/Unearthed_Wrecana:_Table_of_Contents

 

[Jester David]

[MENTION=37579]Jester Canuck[/MENTION]
Here is a link through wayback machine to Wrecan's Unearthed Wrecana if you want to go through and pull things out
https://web.archive.org/web/2010081...25328093/Unearthed_Wrecana:_Table_of_Contents

Thanks. I how well it would work on the 5e playtest forums. There might be some of his thoughts in there too...

 

[SuperZero]

Who is this Wrecan? Where can I bask in his eternal wisdom?

There's also a character named Wrecan in The Order of the Stick, recently. Veldrina's bodyguard.

The reason I mention it:

I also fulfilled another promise with today's strip, if a less joyous one. Mark Monack, who went by the screen name "Wrecan," was a pillar of the message board community for many years. He was, among his other roles, the founder of one of the forum's odder traditions: counting the number of strips each character appears in, a project that continues many years after he began it. When he passed in 2013, I asked his wife Jodie if there was anything I could do to help out. She told me he would have loved nothing more than to have a walk-on character named Wrecan in OOTS. Now, there is one.

Not that I actually know much of anything about him myself.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

He really was the best of us. Not a thing to say lightly.

 

[The Fighter-Cricket]

Wow, this is terribly sad. I didn't know anything about Wrecan but he must have been a paragon of common sense in the community. All the more important to save some of his input.

[MENTION=37579]Jester Canuck[/MENTION]
Here is a link through wayback machine to Wrecan's Unearthed Wrecana if you want to go through and pull things out
https://web.archive.org/web/2010081...25328093/Unearthed_Wrecana:_Table_of_Contents

I get only the "access denied" sign from the WotC website. Am I doing something wrong?