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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GregoryOatmeal" data-source="post: 5709884" data-attributes="member: 6667661">Impressive? You're quite deep in the rabbit hole.I don't recall any strong divisions from 1998 until the 3.5/PF/4E split besides the very occaisonal 1E/2E holdout and Vampire game. Maybe that was just the people I knew.I definitely don't want to play the game I played when I was 14,  although I don't see any reason why 2E would stop me from playing that  game, albeit in a slightly clunky manner. I suspect what you said about gamers tastes changing may be true about the people on this forum and the core gamers (who are probably the most profitable customers), but distinctly untrue of lapsed gamers.Here's the thing. You are talking about gamers that play D&D for years and decades. For these people the rules are really easy and become stale. I don't think for most gamers any edition has ever become stale.While your mileage may vary, I have never had the luxury of playing with a group in which every player owned a PHB for the game they were playing. I've never seen a game where more than half of the gamers understood cleric domains, flanking rules and grabbing rules (and that includes many 4E games). Every game we have to pause and explain rules to a player who comes from a slightly different gaming background how the backstabbing or death rules or whatever are different in this game than the game he plays. I've only played past level 10 once (which is fairly typical when gaming in a college town). Even when DMing I've never felt like I had much more than an elementary grasp of any gaming system, what my players could handle or how they should be rewarded. And in the last year as I've been gaming more and switching between 4E, 3.5, PF, and C&C to accommodate various players and situations I feel like mastering any system just feels more and more unlikely.Rules innovations do streamline the game but you have to balance players the speed in which players integrate new rules with how much value they provide.I haven't played those games but I think on an elementary level players can grasp any edition of D&D with a proper introduction. The problem is that most folks are unable to accept radical changes to their game  as they get older. D&D is never too complex when you're 14 if you have a friend to walk you through itThe board game with RPing elements is still an interesting idea for different reasons</blockquote>

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