NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Remus Lupin" data-source="post: 6251371" data-attributes="member: 12760">Reading through the thread, two thoughts occur to me.First, with regard to the 2000-era "golden age," I certainly experienced it that way as well. It was a really pleasure to be gaming at the time. People were enthusiastic, and there was a sense that we were all pulling in the same general direction, even as the OGL spun off variants like True-20 and Arcana Unearthed. I saw those variants as part of the charm and strength of the OGL.I don't think there needs to be one and only one "golden age" of a product. I think there have been at least two in D&D -- the early 80s and the early oughts.It was unfortunate to me that 4th edition was intentionally designed not to build on that foundation, though I certainly understood the internal dynamics within WOTC that made that desirable, particularly with regard to the desire to break away from/kill the OGL. But as a result, they made changes (elf vs. Eldarin, Dragonspawn, Tieflings), that made it "not-D&D" to me. As a result, I decided not to opt in, and Pathfinder meant that I didn't have to. I've always tried to maintain the attitude that there's nothing wrong with 4th edition, it's just my preferred style of play. Also, I will freely admit that WOTC's marketing for 4th edition was huge turnoff to me.Second, with regard to the question of what constitutes a revision, from my own subjective perspective, the main issue has to do with how radical the changes are. To the degree that I really don't like the current nomenclature with regard to what counts as an "edition". To me a new edition amounts to a moderate revision of the existing product. So, I think of 3.0 vs. 3.5 as two different "editions" of the game, with Pathfinder being a different "edition" under a new publisher. I think you could argue much the same on backwards compatibility grounds between 1e and 2e (and to a lesser extent BECMI).What I've seen with 4th edition and potentially 5th edition is less of a new "edition" and more a "reboot" -- a la, say a revisioning of a movie property like Spiderman or a series like Battlestar Galactica. It's basically the same concept, but radically changed to the degree that you can't really think of it in the same terms any more.In that sense, what we've got are really three or four different "visions" of D&D, each of which has "editions" within it's sphere of influence. I'm not sure that this is necessarily a more helpful way of framing things than arguments about "revisions vs. editions" but it's a helpful way for me to think of it.</blockquote>

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