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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6355245" data-attributes="member: 996">You say 'upstart.'  I say 'innovative.'  Obviously, I think my loaded term is closer to the truth than your loaded term.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Maybe 'new?'  Then again, maybe all three terms miss the mark.  It's not like anything 4e did was that innovative for the industry, just new to D&D. It's true that D&D stagnated for a long time before 2000 when 3.0 finally shook things up and adopted a coherent 'core system' (d20), like Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying, GURPS, Hero, d6, Interlock and so forth had in 80s.  But, if you loved the game, knew it really well, and were always tinkering with it, that stagnation was far from intolerable.   Interesting conspiracy theory.  Who were these upstart hijackers?  4e was created by WotC (not an 'upstart' unless 3.0 was created by upstarts, as well) developed by Rob Heinsoo (who had been playing D&D since 1974 - one of that cohort of gamers you asserted, upthread, 'own' D&D), James Wyatt (also a gamer since the 70s, starting with D&D and getting into writing for D&D starting in '94), and Andy Collins (also starting his gaming career with 0D&D at an early age, and working for WotC since '96).   Nobody hijacked D&D.  They tried to improve on it, using the feedback provided by the community at the time (the 3.5 era).  It's hardly surprising they focused on balancing the game, reining in casters and finally giving the fighter some nice things - you weren't on the old Gleemax boards paging through "Fighter SUX!" threads, so maybe you don't realize what that feedback must have been like.Then, as now, they were trying to deliver a game that would, hopefully, be successful.  The bar for success, thanks to certain WotC/Hasbro politics might have been a /lot/ higher, but they were aiming to make the game better and more successful in both cases.Still, I can see how that change (even if technically for the better in many ways) was not what a lot of folks wanted.  The 'happy solution' to that divergence still could have been to live-and-let live, with 3.5 fans continuing to enjoy ongoing support for their favorite game, and 4e fans able to enjoy the somewhat more modernized version of the same game unmolested.No, WotC keeps the D&D name, because they own it.  D&D 3.5 remains D&D 3.5 - Pathfinder is just among the 3pp product lines offering ongoing support for it.  AD&D is still D&D too.  Playing Pathfinder is no less playing D&D than playing AD&D with lots of house rules.  Even 4e is still D&D, in spite of the edition war and being superseded by 5e  - it's just D&D that can't be legally cloned & supported going forward the Paizo is doing for 3.5 with Pathfinder.Sure for the sake of hypothetical amity, let's pretend the war really was 'started' by the defenders.  My answer to your 'happy solution' question still stands:  adopt a live-and-let-live attitude in 2008.  So, imagine that the defenders in the edition war weren't impolite in pointing out the hyperbole and inaccuracy in the attacks on 4e, and the attackers, therefor, stated their case and let it lie rather than escalating, and instead went back to enjoying 3.5 and all it's 3pp products.Wouldn't that have been a solution?  Both sides have what they want:  a game that matches their preferences.  Neither side claims imagined 'ownership' of D&D - it's legally WotC IP, afterall.  How would that not have been a positive outcome? If you want to talk philosophy, there were not a lot of philosophical changes from 3e to 4e.  Both were fairly player-focused and rule-focused - one reason you had the unlikely alliance of 3.5 fanatics and grognards who hated 3.5 on the same side of the edition war.  The main tweak was abandoning the idea of 'rewarding system mastery' in favor of more consistent balance. Not one I really noticed in 3e, actually.  It consolidated a bunch of rules into the d20 core mechanic, which was a great idea, making the system more approachable, clear & consistent - a trend 4e continued and which even 5e hasn't entirely abandoned (just more sorta started over as if it were 2000 again). Seriously, I don't claim anything as 'my way.'  I don't play in just one style, so I don't feel threatened when one style is no longer 'supported' (over-rewareded) at the expense of another.   I appreciate the things 3e and 4e did well - and the things D&D has always done well in all editions.  I'm not advocating for a style of philosophy, I'm just a hobbyist who's more than a little analytical and pedantic, and who dives into the minutia of the system, including looking critically at it's quality.  That often puts me at odds with people who use other criteria for judgement - even to the point that I find myself arguing against both those criticizing a version of D&D (for unsupportable or invalid or questionable reasons), and those boosting it (using similarly flawed reasoning or just out of unquestioning enthusiasm).  I do have an affection for that first RPG that brought me into the hobby, so yeah, I spend more of my time on it rather than other, more innovative or more diligently designed systems that might be more deserving.  I'm not immune to a little emotionalism, either.   Jumping ship remained the choice of that faction, nothing 4e did could force anyone to do anything.  5e has reversed a lot of the progress made by D&D in the last 14 years, and has only a few bright spots here and there to give us cause to hope that it'll ever get back on track.  From my PoV, that's a larger and more negative change than anything you could find, or even imagine, between 3e and 4e.  I'm not jumping ship.  Next week we do character generation for the new Encounters season and my table will be 5e, thankyouverymuch, and I hope my running it and trying to create the best first experience for the players I get helps my FLGS sell some PHs and maybe even ushers some new folks into the hobby.   Even though, thanks to the reactionary fallout of the edition war, that system may be making it /harder/ to deliver that experience in some ways -  I've run successful sessions with far worse rulesets.</blockquote>

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