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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Reinhart" data-source="post: 6848933" data-attributes="member: 13080">When it comes to "liking the way things were" there are, of course, extremes. You may think people are being elitist for commenting on it, but there are definitely a very vocal constituency of role-players that can make non-<a href="http://site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/see-p-xx-the-f20-era/" target="_blank">f20 gaming</a> seem very unwelcome to the hobby. The problems aren't really from people who decide that they prefer to keep playing D&D 2e or 3e instead of buying and running D&D 4e or 5e. Those hold-outs happen with almost any transition in media. Game designers aren't bothered that you like some of your old games. That's normal for all media. I still play the 4th edition of of Gamma World from 1992 instead of the latest 3 editions. I also prefer George Romero's Dawn of the Dead over Zack Snyder's. As far as I can tell these preferences are harmless.So a little nostalgia or a desire to just do the same old thing isn't the origin of the hostilities we're talking about. What I'm talking about are partisans who claim that other modern systems like Apocalypse World, Fate, and Gumshoe aren't really role-playing games and the people who play them are somehow ruining the hobby. And when D&D, the most mainstream RPG, tries to accommodate those play-styles from the rest of the hobby? It fuels that partisan narrative that the other styles of gaming are somehow a corrupting pollution. You might say, "So those guys are jerks! Don't play with jerks!" Unfortunately, f20 has been a sort of shelter for those jerks. What's more, with the rise of OSR and 5e's focus on accommodating previous styles, those jerks seem pretty outspoken these days in forums and gaming stores. This wouldn't bother me if it weren't for the fact that D&D is almost synonymous with the rest of gaming. As a result, any barrier for adopting D&D becomes a barrier for much of the hobby. There's a lot of people I've met who are reluctant to get into role-playing because of bad experiences they've had with the D&D community. But that's really less D&D's fault, and more the fault of certain fans who wave its banner.I guess the best metaphor I can give is that it's like trends in cars. It's one thing to avoid buying a new fuel-efficient car just because you're into restoring old muscle cars. Even I think that's kinda cool. It's another thing to react to the increased presence of hybrid vehicles by deciding to start <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal" target="_blank">rolling coal</a>. One of these is a preference for a classic. The other is a very real hostility to innovation.[ATTACH]75504[/ATTACH]</blockquote>

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