Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dungeoneer" data-source="post: 5432396" data-attributes="member: 91777">So this is how I would attempt to answer the questions I originally posed.  It's not a complete answer.  If I knew the answers I wouldn't have asked the qeustions.Was the fragmentation of the community inevitable?  The problem I see is one I tried to hint at in the OP.  There are just so many little vectors within the overall game of Dungeons & Dragons - games within the game if you will - that it's really hard to get any kind of consensus on what D&D is.  I think we pretty much all agree that you sit at a table with one more friends, somebody is a dungeon master, and you roll dice.  Everything else seems to be up for grabs.Some people just like the old-school dungeon crawl - they want to kill things and take their loot.  Some people want to tell a story, and combat is incidental.  Some people want as many character options as possible, and want a system that allows them to mutliclass to the hilt.  Some people are really into Paladins that can only ever be Lawful Good.  Some people want a rule for everything and they want to roll on a table to find out what they eat for dinner.  Some people think the rules just get in the way.  Some people want Wizards to feel different from other classes.  Some people just want everyone to have a good time.  Some people want to roll for stats.  Some people want to tweak their build down to the last digit.  I could go on and on and on.It seems like 4e has only added to this list (some people really like tactical grid-based combat).  More importantly, it embraces some of these preferences and eschews others (running a combat-lite 4e game is tricky).  This is really no different from any other edition.The problem is that you can't design a well-crafted, focused set of rules that also embraces every possible way that people might want to play D&D.  Any edition is going to be good at some things and bad at others, unless it just takes a kitchen-sink approach and then it's going to be bad at everything.  Game design is as much about what you leave out as what you put in.  But after 37 years D&D has a lot of stuff that people want put in.  Sometimes these things flatly contradict each other.In the defense of 4e's designers, I think this is the first edition where someone drew a line in the sand and said "This is what this edition of D&D is about, and we're sticking to it."  They gave Fourth a razor sharp focus and built the rules and content to support that.  It's an edition with very little compromise.Of course the problem is that they pretty much left some gamers in the cold.  If you don't like a heavy combat focus, or you want more randomness in your game, or... whatever... you got shafted.  But you know, what else could they do?  They couldn't please everyone, but they could make some people REALLY happy.  And that's what they went with.I don't know if there's a way out of this dilemma for the next edition.  I think at best you could make a D&D game which doesn't flat out anger anybody, but doesn't really inspire anyone either.  Or you could make another focused game, maybe focused in a different direction, and earn the adoration of whatever people happen to like that direction and the derision of everyone else.  It's a dilemma.  I don't have an answer.</blockquote>

Verification