Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Maggan" data-source="post: 4592964" data-attributes="member: 6616">I've been thinking about this for while, and it was also prompted by me reading (un)reasons excellent thread where he reads through Dragon.The conclusion I have come to is that since the Internet is such a wellspring of opinions, I have tended to assign multiple viewpoints to persons who disagree with me, thus creating in my mind a collective that's furthering the same ideas.This has created the bogeyman of &quot;they&quot;.&quot;They&quot; think that everything was better in the heyday of AD&amp;D.&quot;They&quot; think that everything Gary Gygax wrote is gospel.&quot;They&quot; hate 3rd and 4th edition because it's not D&amp;D.&quot;They&quot; are convinced WotC are lying to them.&quot;They&quot; claim that there are no multiclassing rules in D&amp;D4.&quot;They&quot; claim that Castles&amp;Crusades is the only true D&amp;D published.&quot;They&quot; hate WotC for moving Dragon and Dungeon to digital.&quot;They&quot; don't trust the WotC game designers.The crux is that &quot;they&quot; don't exist. Individuals might hold the opinions I've written as examples above, but there is no nefarious collective mind that hold each and every one of these in a pure undistilled perfect storm of opinions.So, the answer to your question (paraphrased here) &quot;when did we go from just doing our thing to spewing our guts out&quot; is &quot;we've never done that. Some individuals have done that forever and ever. But it's only today you get the opportunity to listen to so many of them, that you risk conflating many people's opinions into one huge meta-opinion that doesn't exist.&quot;On the specific point of dictating fun, which has been a hot topic where WotC have drawn flack and past similar messages from e.g. Gary Gygax have been ignored, I think that it is basically a situation where most of us not having read everything that's been written about D&amp;D.So when someone is saying &quot;WotC are dictating our fun and I hate it&quot;, I take it to read &quot;someone is dictating our fun and I hate it!&quot;. The person would hate it if it was TSR who said it, and in all probability did hate it if they read the words in Dragon you are referring to*. But there are few left now who have the knowledge of D&amp;D to remember all the things that have happened on the way to today, and thus the ire is projected on the latest active publisher.Anyhow, that's my take on it. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin&nbsp; &nbsp; :D"&nbsp; data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />/M* Of course there are some who will think it stellar advice coming from Gary Gygax, and spiteful bile coming from WotC, but hey that's human nature. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin&nbsp; &nbsp; :D"&nbsp; data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="Maggan, post: 4592964, member: 6616"] I've been thinking about this for while, and it was also prompted by me reading (un)reasons excellent thread where he reads through Dragon. The conclusion I have come to is that since the Internet is such a wellspring of opinions, I have tended to assign multiple viewpoints to persons who disagree with me, thus creating in my mind a collective that's furthering the same ideas. This has created the bogeyman of "they". "They" think that everything was better in the heyday of AD&D. "They" think that everything Gary Gygax wrote is gospel. "They" hate 3rd and 4th edition because it's not D&D. "They" are convinced WotC are lying to them. "They" claim that there are no multiclassing rules in D&D4. "They" claim that Castles&Crusades is the only true D&D published. "They" hate WotC for moving Dragon and Dungeon to digital. "They" don't trust the WotC game designers. The crux is that "they" don't exist. Individuals might hold the opinions I've written as examples above, but there is no nefarious collective mind that hold each and every one of these in a pure undistilled perfect storm of opinions. So, the answer to your question (paraphrased here) "when did we go from just doing our thing to spewing our guts out" is "we've never done that. Some individuals have done that forever and ever. But it's only today you get the opportunity to listen to so many of them, that you risk conflating many people's opinions into one huge meta-opinion that doesn't exist." On the specific point of dictating fun, which has been a hot topic where WotC have drawn flack and past similar messages from e.g. Gary Gygax have been ignored, I think that it is basically a situation where most of us not having read everything that's been written about D&D. So when someone is saying "WotC are dictating our fun and I hate it", I take it to read "someone is dictating our fun and I hate it!". The person would hate it if it was TSR who said it, and in all probability did hate it if they read the words in Dragon you are referring to*. But there are few left now who have the knowledge of D&D to remember all the things that have happened on the way to today, and thus the ire is projected on the latest active publisher. Anyhow, that's my take on it. :D /M * Of course there are some who will think it stellar advice coming from Gary Gygax, and spiteful bile coming from WotC, but hey that's human nature. :D [/QUOTE]

Verification