The Great D&D Schism: The End of an age and the scattering of gamers

[jasper]

Are you suggesting that there aren't people out there already deciding whether or not to play D&DN based on the information that's available right now?

...

No. I saying " If it weren't, you would need to evaluate all the unpublished choices, too, since they are themselves choices, albeit ones requiring more effort" is totally silly sentence. His whole post sounds like his nose is in the air and he is talking down to adamc and dismissing adamc' argument.

 

[Sadras]

I know the guy who hosts our game is about done with Pathfinder, because he finds it too unwieldy, especially at high levels. The problem is we don't have a consensus on a substitute, and the rest of the group likes Pathfinder, so we keep on with it. I love the game, so that suits me fine. I'd be open to other systems, but not if it requires another huge investment of capital, as another D&D edition almost certainly will.

P6 seems like the best substitute for you from your description given that the majority of the group prefer Pathfinder. It is also less unwieldy on the DM and there is no investment of capital required at all - just follow some of the advice online for running such a game.

 

[Desdichado]

No. I saying " If it weren't, you would need to evaluate all the unpublished choices, too, since they are themselves choices, albeit ones requiring more effort" is totally silly sentence. His whole post sounds like his nose is in the air and he is talking down to adamc and dismissing adamc' argument.

It's a perfectly valid sentence and a perfectly valid point, and if it seems to be dismissive of adamc's argument, then that's a hint that adamc's argument is lacking in addressing this very issue. Because people evaluate upcoming releases all the time. I'm in the middle of a Star Wars game right now, and we started it before the Edge of the Empire game was released. Does that mean that we couldn't make a decision on whether or not we wanted to wait for that release before starting? People are evaluating now whether they want to stick with the D&D game they have (be it Pathfinder, 4e, or something else) as opposed to embracing the imminent release of D&DN. Our group is evaluating options for our next campaign, and the consensus seems to be that we'll play the Orient Express Cthulhu campaign that two guys in our group helped fund via kickstarter, even though it isn't actually in either of their hands yet.

Again; the point is totally valid. Unpublished games have to be evaluated as well. And it does actually make the bewildering array of options, for those who are paralyzed by too many options, more difficult.

Rather; where the argument falls flat is where you take it out of the roleplaying games sphere to others where options are already bewildering, and see if it actually holds out. Do people not watch TV shows because they can't figure out what to watch? To people not go on vacations because of all of the possible alternatives that they could choose from?

 

[Remus Lupin]

P6 seems like the best substitute for you from your description given that the majority of the group prefer Pathfinder. It is also less unwieldy on the DM and there is no investment of capital required at all - just follow some of the advice online for running such a game.

Linky?

 

[adamc]

I'm not surprised that not everyone agrees, but I think it's true that there is a cost to having more choices, and that getting more choices is not a win for everyone. If you give me more choices of coffee and I'm already totally satisfied with my current choice, I gain nothing except that the menu (or supermarket aisle) is a little harder to sort through. On the other hand, if I'm interested in having more choices, it may be a big win.

I suspect this is part of the dynamic going on wherein some folks view the era when there was only one version of D&D and relatively little else (especially given that there was no internet and, unless you lived near a strong game store, fewer ways of even discovering other options). If you loved that version of D&D, how was having more choices a win? It just introduced dissension about what to play.

All speculative, though; I probably lean toward having more choices myself. And while I was the right age to be playing D&D back then, I wasn't. (Mostly, I was in grad school.)

 

[Cadence]

Linky?

Here's an implementation I'm working on...
Download from ENWorld http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdownloads.php?do=download&downloadid=495
or a direct download from: http://p6codex.com/AbridgedP6CodexV0p2.pdf

 

[Balesir]

If I could evaluate UNPUBLISHED choices, I would not be posting here. I would hitting Vegas betting with the knowledge on the UNPUBLISHED choices. Then buying a mansion and a yacht! I find your post totally silly.

I'm not suggesting that you need to predict what will occur in the future, just that if you have the belief that you must evaluate every alternative then the commercial offerings currently available do not represent the sum total of your options. As [MENTION=2205]Hobo[/MENTION] has said, what is considering DDN now if not considering an unpublished option? At the extreme, you could even write a system of your own that might have any features in it that you chose - any system element that your current knowledge or imagination might come up with.

In the end, "evaluating every option" amounts to evaluating only those things of which you have knowledge - of which you are aware. The argument that "less choice is good" amounts to saying "not realising what is possible can help". This piece of advice seems to me to hark back to a much older aphorism than the "new" vogue purports to be, namely "ignorance is bliss".

No. I saying " If it weren't, you would need to evaluate all the unpublished choices, too, since they are themselves choices, albeit ones requiring more effort" is totally silly sentence.

If you have an actual cogent reason why it is a flawed claim, please present it. Saying "it's silly" is barely more than an ad hominem, and I object to that.

His whole post sounds like his nose is in the air and he is talking down to adamc and dismissing adamc' argument.

"Looking down" at [MENTION=6691682]adamc[/MENTION] was certainly not my intention; he was quoting an argument which, as I acknowledged in my post, is currently well regarded among the "cognoscenti". This seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do. I was, if anything, dismissing the argument made by the learned proponents of this view. That may be a contentious thing to do, but I'm quite prepared to stand by my analysis and arguments that, in this case, the King's birthday suit is, in fact, nothing more than air...

I'm not surprised that not everyone agrees, but I think it's true that there is a cost to having more choices, and that getting more choices is not a win for everyone.

Consider, though, that "having more choices" amounts to being aware that other possibilities exist. In any circumstance, this is what will circumscribe your choices, not what some other guy chooses to present before you. If some guy asks me whether I want coffee or tea, when I am perfectly well aware of the range of other possible beverages out there, my choices aren't really limited to coffee or tea. That is just what he is offering me. If I am to evaluate all my options, the list does not stop at "coffee or tea" unless I want it to; my range of evaluation is everything of which I am aware.

If I am not aware that other options exist, then my choice is limited (and simpler) - ignorance is bliss again. But, if I want a simple choice, I could generate one quite simply by arbitrarily choosing only to consider a subset of all those of which I am aware. I will always choose this second choice, if I am able to do so, since I would always prefer not to be ignorant.

I suspect this is part of the dynamic going on wherein some folks view the era when there was only one version of D&D and relatively little else (especially given that there was no internet and, unless you lived near a strong game store, fewer ways of even discovering other options). If you loved that version of D&D, how was having more choices a win? It just introduced dissension about what to play.

The very first roleplaying games I ran for my friends - and several of those they ran for me - were not D&D, despite this being circa 1975. They were systems which, inspired by D&D, we wrote for ourselves. Being in the UK, literally an ocean away from D&D's origin, getting hold of the "sacred booklets" was a fraught and lengthy process for a bunch of schoolboys with no bank accounts (and no internet, of course). There was just one shop in the UK that we knew of that stocked D&D - and it was over 100 miles away. So we improvised.

Even in those early days, the choice was not limited to "D&D or nuthin'".

Now, I'm always keen to see new games. Even if I already have games that I like to play just fine, there is always the possibility that I'll find one that's even better. What's more, as I have got older I have found that there are several distinct things that I can get out of an RPG. I thoroughly enjoy D&D 4E, but that does not mean that I no longer play HârnMaster, or that I don't also enjoy playing FATE or 13th Age, or... All those systems have something to offer; I enjoy them all. I enjoyed playing 3.x edition D&D for several years; I would happily play it again if someone was going to run it for me. The idea that you need just one system - either as a market or as an individual - is just invalid as far as I can see. What's more, there has never been only one system to choose from, and there never will be.

 

[adamc]

Consider, though, that "having more choices" amounts to being aware that other possibilities exist. In any circumstance, this is what will circumscribe your choices, not what some other guy chooses to present before you. If some guy asks me whether I want coffee or tea, when I am perfectly well aware of the range of other possible beverages out there, my choices aren't really limited to coffee or tea. That is just what he is offering me. If I am to evaluate all my options, the list does not stop at "coffee or tea" unless I want it to; my range of evaluation is everything of which I am aware.

I don't think that is correct. In the coffee or tea example, you _do_ have to evaluate the other options even to find out what is offered (read the menu, hunt through the supermarket aisle). As the number of esoteric options goes up, some of the old standards (e.g., root beer) may not be offered everywhere, and you end up having to consider second and third-favorites in order to have anything at all. Similarly, if someone asks you to a Pathfinder game and you know nothing about pathfinder, you have to make some decisions about whether to invest the time. You may regard these as easy decisions, but they do impose some burden.

If I'm a DM and half my players want to play something else, it gets worse, since I need to do enough research to decide if that's an option I'm willing to support. From what I've seen in forums, it seems like the burden grows for many as they get older -- they don't want to learn a new system and they don't want to spend more money. (Both perfectly rational, IMO.)

 

[Sadras]

Here's an implementation I'm working on...
Download from ENWorld http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdownloads.php?do=download&downloadid=495
or a direct download from: http://p6codex.com/AbridgedP6CodexV0p2.pdf

Thanks Cadence.
@Remus Lupin you should definitely google it and learn the premise behind creating such a game and see if its for you and your group - I can't sell it nearly half as well as others so I have copied a link below where you can see where P6 (Pathfinder version) originated from e6 (3.5e version).
Essentially it is simpler for the DM by a long way, the system becomes far less broken and characters essentially grow horizontally instead of vertically in power.

http://dungeons.wikia.com/wiki/E6_(3.5e_Sourcebook)

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

Now, years later we have "D&D Next", 5e that is, on the horizon. . .and it doesn't look to be mending any fences. Too dissimilar to either camp to draw the majority in, right now it looks like at most it will create a 3rd faction (or 4th if you count Pathfinder as an edition) to the Edition Wars.

I wouldn't call it a schism, I'd call it a diaspora.

I say this because (in my experience) edition warring is something you do online, not in real life, and I don't think most gamers have the patience for it in real life.

People certainly have their game and system preferences, just like they have their opinions, but a preference--even to the point of flatly refusing one system over another--is nothing new (meaning such behavior took place well before 4E came along).

I and my friends play the game to have fun, not to deal with other people's BS, and it's not unreasonable for us to expect that anyone else invited to play with us bring a positive attitude to the gaming table, which means valuing the opportunity to play the game more than the need to proselytize a particular game's faults to anyone unfortunate enough to sit next to them.

And I prefer to think most gamers feel this way.

So if the 5E doesn't draw lots of gamers into the fold, that's fine. There have always been a ton of games out there and if D&D ends up going in 3 or 4 different directions then, as far as I'm concerned, it has a better chance at a long life, because the more versions there are the better the odds that D&D survives another 40 years.