D&D 5E Toxicity in the Fandom

[billd91]

Consider failing IP's like 'Wheel of Time' which seems to be heading to an early doom because most people I talk to did exactly what I did which was watch the 1st episode, shrug and find no reason to watch more of it. I'm not at huge Wheel of Time fan. I never made it past the 6th book. It's obvious that there are huge problems with the text. But as the writers flail about in the realization that they are failing in the marketplace there are increasingly excuses coming out about why they are failing, and it all seems to have to do with how stupid they thought the books were in the first place, how stupid the customers are for wanting the shows to have the major events and plot points of the books, and so forth.

Is it failing? It's got an 82% from critics on Rotton Tomatoes. Season 3 just got green lit and season 2 hasn't even been released yet. Someone thinks it's doing OK.

In short, whenever I hear about "toxicity" I just shrug and assume someone has too much ego to imagine that someone else who created a well beloved product maybe has more talent than they have and ought to be respected for the quality portions of their creation.

Nothing you've said precludes the actual presence of toxicity among fans, yet here you are also throwing up your hands which seems tantamount to an assumption that any such claim is bogus. And yet, hounding people on social media is clearly toxic behavior.

 

[Celebrim]

Let me follow up the above broad post with a specific example particular to EnWorld. The biggest "toxic fandom" fight in EnWorld history I'm aware of was the 4e rollout "edition wars".

I am probably the original EnWorld "edition warrior" in as much as I am almost certainly the first person that began expressing misgivings about the direction of 4e on the boards before it came out. If you go back and read those posts, I was often very tentative in my opinions and would say something like, "You know, I feel like this is a solving a problem I didn't have at my table, and so the solution may create more problems for me than it solves." Or I would say something like, "It feels like they are borrowing mechanics from World of Warcraft, and that's pretty cool. I think it's cool that video game design can inform table top design." And defenders of 4e would go ballistic on me. People would start saying that mentally deranged or functionally insane for not being excited about 4e, and that if I liked prior editions of D&D that I must be a bad person. And I'm not exaggerating that at all.

And if you look at that in context, it goes back to the marketing of 4e. Someone earlier in the thread offered the that fandom becomes toxic when it can't tell you why it likes something without saying why something else is bad. Well if you look back at the articles WotC was releasing about the super secret 4e, they weren't focused on why 4e was good. Those articles focused on why 3e was so bad. The marketing on 4e was unrelenting with respect to the idea that prior editions of D&D were just bad, and finally the team working on 4e had gotten it all figured out and they were going to give you the D&D the presumably less talented, less knowledgeable people from prior editions should have given you all along. People excited about 4e were jumping down my throat for saying I had fun playing 3e and calling me a bad person for enjoying it. And this is a guy who famously had to write a 500+ page house rule document to make 3.X work the way I wanted to, who had hated 3.5 and at the time wasn't sure whether or not I was going to adopt 4e and said so, and who legitimately did try to convert KotB to 4e the way I converted Pyramid to 3e as exercise in seeing of the rules worked for me.

EnWorld went so far as to formally ban criticism of 4e as a topic. You weren't allowed to say anything negative about it.

Can we not acknowledge toxicity by the brand owners? Is it only fans that can be arrogant and hold arrogant opinions? Is it only fans that go wrong and never brand owners that take the brand in directions that are a mistake? Like can we say of the fans they always have the worst intentions in their criticism but brand owners can be excused of whatever crap they produce because they say they had good intentions? I don't think so.

 

[Micah Sweet]

the sequel trilogy was too rushed and took some of the wrong lessons from the original and prequel trilogy and had incompatible criteria that should have been sorted out in pre-production, the lack of a singular director did not help.
but given some of the hate is just utter bigotry I would rather side with the people who like it as the other side is infested with people who make Orcus look fun at parties and Orcus can never be fun at parties.

I'm not going to change my opinion about something because of some bad actors who kinda share it. I'd rather clarify where I stand and distance myself from that garbage that way.

 

[mythago]

The bigotry re: people are different is a bit novel, I will admit. It's not entirely new - if you look again at a lot of early '90s and before stuff there's often some outright misogyny, racial stereotyping (or even outright racism on occasions), thinking gay or trans people are inherently funny/laughable as a concept (not always like, Cyberpunk 2020 never did, for example). What's a problem now is that we have this "culture war" rhetoric which is basically being pushed for political reasons to try and stir up division and hate, which brings a lot of people out of the woodwork.

Those people were never IN the woodwork. The bigotry was always there. It's just angrier now because bigots no longer have the warm fuzzy feeling of thinking everybody agrees with them and their hobby caters to them, so they're throwing tantrums.

Social media also amplifies this nonsense because Bob Catpiss can now rant on your friend's Facebook wall instead of just to his local gaming group. Of course, the flip side of that is that Bob Catpiss will out himself in public as a jerk well before you unwittingly invite him into your social circle. If only real life had a hard block function.

 

[Micah Sweet]

As I get older, I find a lot of the things I grew up and enjoyed are getting a reboot - into something I find myself recoiling from. Words like "improved" and "retcon" abound and there's folks both standing up to defend the original and "what it stood for" and the new who "want the property to get with the times". I don't find it usually works, and after a few years it settles back down a bit to become an acceptable compromise after the revolution has died down.

I find myself so often just going to my game room, turning on the 80's music and flipping through my old books and ignoring it all. The new crowd can have their fun, I'll go back to mine. Once in a while, I'll poke my head and look at something new and go "that's cool", then go back to what I was doing before.

You just described my whole philosophy. Or at least, the one I want to have.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I'm not going to change my opinion about something because of some bad actors who kinda share it. I'd rather clarify where I stand and distance myself from that garbage that way.

I never said you had to, I was describing the situation we find ourselves in, if you failed to read this before, I do share your opinion.

 

[mythago]

Can we not acknowledge toxicity by the brand owners? Is it only fans that can be arrogant and hold arrogant opinions? Is it only fans that go wrong and never brand owners that take the brand in directions that are a mistake? Like can we say of the fans they always have the worst intentions in their criticism but brand owners can be excused of whatever crap they produce because they say they had good intentions? I don't think so.

I'm confused by this. In TTRPGs, there is not a hard division between fans and creators at all the way there is for, say, Hollywood movies; there has been plenty of calling-out of bad behavior by 'brand owners', even of the big name companies.

 

[Celebrim]

Nothing you've said precludes the actual presence of toxicity among fans, yet here you are also throwing up your hands which seems tantamount to an assumption that any such claim is bogus. And yet, hounding people on social media is clearly toxic behavior.

I'm not sure what your point is. Nothing I said was intended to preclude the presence of actual "toxicity" among fans.

I have been stalked on social media. I'm a USMNT fan with opinions that don't reflect those of a particular subcommunity of the fans. I start getting a particular "fan" who recognized me across multiple social media posts and would make a point of responding to my posts in a particularly angry manner. I consider his behavior "toxic" though less because he was stalking me across social media, than the subcommunity he belongs to has a passionate hatred for the USMNT and everything in American soccer while presenting itself as a fan and as such makes the rest of us look bad.

I don't have a problem with fans that are critical of the USMNT program of the USSF or who believe that there are problems in the American soccer landscape. I do have a problem with people who seem to lack a sense of proportionately about it and whose opinions appear to be reflexive and not thoughtful (stereotypically they propose that if we did everything like European soccer all our problems would go away as if the two sporting cultures were identical and ideas from one could just be easily exported to the other).

But I don't think there is a "growing toxicity". That's always been a small vocal portion of the community going back to the 1990s or something, that loves never to be happy about things and enjoys criticizing more than they enjoy celebrating. You can tell because they are always unhappy when the team wins.

And you know, I don't think there is a problem with deciding that if there is more to criticize than celebrate just leave the community for a time or an indefinite time. Star Trek lost me as a fan long ago. I know longer have any passion for Kirk vs. Picard debates much less any of the "new Trek". I just smile when someone says that I'm an idiot for not like "new Trek" because "old Trek was never any good anyway", because I think that if you are saying something like "Star Trek was never smart" you've outed yourself as the toxic one in the discussion.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm confused by this. In TTRPGs, there is not a hard division between fans and creators at all the way there is for, say, Hollywood movies; there has been plenty of calling-out of bad behavior by 'brand owners', even of the big name companies.

Is that toxic or not?

 

[mythago]

Is that toxic or not?

Is what toxic or not?

I was expressing confusion as to what I took to be your point that bad behavior is present among content creators as well as fans, given that TTRPGs have enormous overlap between those two groups.