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Message: <blockquote data-quote="NoOneofConsequence" data-source="post: 373022" data-attributes="member: 5400">First: I was going to wade in against Silverthrone but then I realised that he was just in this to wind everyone up, so...to hell with that.Second: I'm one of those who came back to D&D because of 3e. I hadn't played D&D for over ten years but the new edition seemed to have made all of the changes that I felt should have been made when 2e came out. In fact, if ever there was a bald faced marketing ploy, it was 2e. (NB. - I'm not talking about the player's options stuff here, I have no experience of that. Frankly it sounds even less like D&D to me than 3e, IMHO.) 2e hardly changed the rules of D&D at all and most of the arcane leftovers from early seventies wargaming were left in place. I just walked away in disgust.There's only one thing that possibly constitutes dumbing down in 3e and that's the re-introduction of "Gygax worship". Of the entire of D&D 3e culture, it's the adoration of Gary that I can't stand. I cut my teeth in gaming on pre-GW White Dwarf and the now defunct Different Worlds magazines. When I began playing the industry was full of experiment and creativity and even then, twenty years ago, Gary didn't get it. If it wasn't a dungeon, he didn't want to know. Reading his column in Dragon, nothing much seems to have changed. He's giving out gaming advice based on his experience in the the mid 70's - surely he is aware of things that have happened since. Surely he's gamed since then? A lot of good things have happened in this hobby since he ran Tenser and Mordenkainnen et al through the dungeons of Greyhawk Castle.I wouldn't kneel before Gary then, I won't kneel now. My heroes in this industry are names that the majority probably wouldn't recognise - Steve Perrin, who designed some of the best gaming materials across rules systems and genres. Sandy Peterson, who wrote the first classless rpg. People like this should be remembered. They took the hobby further than Gary even imagined was possible.To use a metaphor: sure, Gary Gygax (along with his friends) found a giant gold nugget called roleplaying, and we're all thankful. But so many others deserve credit for taking that gold and making some genuinely beautiful jewellery with it.Edit inserted: <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":eek:" title="Eek!    :eek:"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":eek:" /> Boy I really foamed at the mouth there...this is all IMHO, truly.</blockquote>

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