Quote from: Exploderwizard;729445Yes it is normal for a company to try and generate sales, but if in the process of doing so, they promote the very sort of tribalism that bends over and buttfucks their sales, then they shouldn't look to blame the fans.

I think that is the key here. I don't carry any grudges toward WOTC or feel they owe me anything. But I also don't feel particularly bad for them at the moment, since this seems to be a situation of their own making in some respects.

Also, the complete obliviousness in saying that "companies are in it for a buck, RPGs are shit shoveled out to be sold like everything else, so you should just play RPGs like bingo or checkers and shut the fuck up, you nerds (and I'm not a nerd ranting on the same forum as you guys day in day out, because I'm the cool superior guy pointing the finger here, I'll have you know with my smug posts!)", without even thinking for a moment that one of the defining elements of role playing games is that they empower their users to make the game their own and fuel it with their own imagination, to then turn around and wonder why gamers feel emotional and invested about their games, is kind of amusing.

Quote from: J Arcane;729309Seriously, read this piece: http://gawker.com/on-smarm-1476594977

To put it bluntly, you nail on the nose the same thing Scocca did in his editorial: it's all about marketing, masked in the air of morality.

They want criticism when it supports their bottom line, and suddenly want everyone to be 'nice' when the tables turn and their pet target might be cost sales as a result.

So I was right all along with being a mean sarcastic bastard, not clapping hands to the whole Positive Months?

D&D edition tribalism reminds me of the tribalism between Mac and PC users.  Only in D&D, it's like the same company owned both Mac OS and Windows, and kept switching which one they are vocally supporting.

Quote from: Benoist;729451". . .  (and I'm not a nerd ranting on the same forum as you guys day in day out, because I'm the cool superior guy pointing the finger here, I'll have you know with my smug posts!)" . . .

Jesus, yes.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;729456D&D edition tribalism reminds me of the tribalism between Mac and PC users.  Only in D&D, it's like the same company owned both Mac OS and Windows, and kept switching which one they are vocally supporting.

Or Jim Fisk owning both the NYC and Erie railroads and diddling around with them so that he could continuously be selling expensive stock in one railroad and buying cheap stock in the other and then flipflop which was which and sell ...

Quote from: Gizmoduck5000;729136Why do some people like it that way? What does descending AC offer them that ascending AC doesn't, other than being a part of the whole AD&D package?

I've got to thank Gizmoduck for providing a fine example of what derailing a thread just to be a jackass looks like. His point was to get people talking about HIM and not about the topic of the thread.

I suppose I should also thank Zak, for getting a little crazy while trying to promote the idea that we should shun crazy people. Fortunately, I'm not going to take his advice and shun him, because I know that he says things of value most of the time, so I can forgive his off-topic ranting. We *all* cross the city limits into Crazyville every once in a while.

Quote from: Windjammer;729308People have argued over the comparative merits of D&D editions eons before that culture of debate was smeared as "edition warring".

I'd be interested in someone doing some actual research on the origin of that term, because my distinct impression is that it was introduced by the very actors that indulged in the worst form of it, meaning Enworld and Wizards of the Coast.

Thanks! This is *completely* what I'm talking about.  The charges of "edition warring"  aren't legitimate concerns about real problems, but are derailing tactics, often practiced by the same people who are happy to "edition war" themselves when it supports their cause. And yes, it may even have been a deliberate marketing tactic right from the start. WotC's actions were poisonous to the community; not the game designing actions, but the press releases and the recruitment of "evangelists" to spread the word of why whatever-WotC-is-doing is good, and anything anyone else did before isn't.

Someone said upthread that we shouldn't give a crap what a company does for marketing reasons, because hey, they're just making money. But if, in the course of promoting their product, they disrupt communities and try to destroy support for tthe competition? Or support for older products, or for do-it-yourself approaches? Then we *should* care about that company's marketing methods, because it is directly interfering with communities.

I especially like how, when the end result of the "edition war" campaigns was entrenched opposition far more bitter and negative about WotC's product than they would have if they'd left everything along, someone (was it WotC?) came up with the idea of "I play All Editions" to try to counteract that, and just incidentally provide an argument against people who say "but I don't want to play WotC D&D." Because refusing to play WotC D&D is "edition warring", you see? There's no way you can refuse to play 4e just because you don't like that version and want to play something else: you are suppose to play ANY D&D that is offered to you, even if the only thing being offered is one edition.

Quote from: Benoist;729451Also, the complete obliviousness in saying that "companies are in it for a buck, RPGs are shit shoveled out to be sold like everything else, so you should just play RPGs like bingo or checkers and shut the fuck up, you nerds (and I'm not a nerd ranting on the same forum as you guys day in day out, because I'm the cool superior guy pointing the finger here, I'll have you know with my smug posts!)", without even thinking for a moment that one of the defining elements of role playing games is that they empower their users to make the game their own and fuel it with their own imagination, to then turn around and wonder why gamers feel emotional and invested about their games, is kind of amusing.

This is what's even more baffling - the gamers who like to boast that they make all their own game material and don't stoop to buying published adventures and the like are often the most passionate in their hatred of WotC. If you don't need WotC to play your game, why in fuck do you give one microgram of a shit what WotC does?

Your game is your game. Your game is not WotC's game. Your game is not the game of anyone else on these forums. That's the great thing about D&D and other RPGs. So why do the announcements, decisions, and products released by a company you don't need matter at all?

Quote from: Haffrung;729498This is what's even more baffling - the gamers who like to boast that they make all their own game material and don't stoop to buying published adventures and the like are often the most passionate in their hatred of WotC. If you don't need WotC to play your game, why in fuck do you give one microgram of a shit what WotC does?

This, is called an excluded-middle argument: "either you do all your own campaign stuff so you don't buy WotC's [/insert company name of your choice] shit so why are you bitching at WotC in the first place, OR you're using WotC's stuff so your games obviously aren't your own and don't need your imagination to power them so why do you feel involved here?"

Have you ever played role playing games before? At this point, I think asking the question is fair, unless you want to tell me that your argument was made for rhetoric purposes only and you actually don't believe a word of what you're saying, in which case your posts are shit.

Which is it, so I know where I'm standing here?

Quote from: Benoist;729507This, is called an excluded-middle argument: "either you do all your own campaign stuff so you don't buy WotC's [/insert company name of your choice] shit so why are you bitching at WotC in the first place, OR you're using WotC's stuff so your games obviously aren't your own and don't need your imagination to power them so why do you feel involved here?"

Have you ever played role playing games before? At this point, I think asking the question is fair, unless you want to tell me that your argument was made for rhetoric purposes only and you actually don't believe a word of what you're saying, in which case your posts are shit.

Which is it, so I know where I'm standing here?

I don't think that's what he's getting at.  I think he's saying that the people who bitch the most against WoTC don't even play the game anyway, or at the very least don't buy any of WoTC's stuff.  It would be like me bitching about WotC putting out an Immortals set for Next, when I don't ever play D&D at those levels anyway.

It's like the usual suspects at TBP who have done nothing but spew vitriol for Next, despite never actually playing D&D.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;729509I don't think that's what he's getting at.  I think he's saying that the people who bitch the most against WoTC don't even play the game anyway, or at the very least don't buy any of WoTC's stuff.  It would be like me bitching about WotC putting out an Immortals set for Next, when I don't ever play D&D at those levels anyway.

It's like the usual suspects at TBP who have done nothing but spew vitriol for Next, despite never actually playing D&D.

Might be, I guess he'll precise his thought, but since he was answering my post directly, I wasn't reading that way at all.

Quote from: talysman;729494I suppose I should also thank Zak, for getting a little crazy while trying to promote the idea that we should shun crazy people.

If you think I did that, quote me doing that. Otherwise, you're talking smack without evidence which makes you...guess what?

If you bring up a subject, don't whale on people for talking to you about what they think about it. And really really don't call it "off-topic". If what you said is on-topic then people disagreeing with you is, by definition on-topic.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;729509I don't think that's what he's getting at.  I think he's saying that the people who bitch the most against WoTC don't even play the game anyway, or at the very least don't buy any of WoTC's stuff.  It would be like me bitching about WotC putting out an Immortals set for Next, when I don't ever play D&D at those levels anyway.

It's like the usual suspects at TBP who have done nothing but spew vitriol for Next, despite never actually playing D&D.

Pretty much. Someone who plays AD&D and uses his own adventures should be about as concerned about WotC and its marketing plans as I - someone who doesn't play Warhammer Fantasy Battles - should be concerned about Games Workshop.

But yeah, a lot of the bitching about WotC seems to come from people playing OOP editions of D&D, and people who have never even liked D&D to begin with. They labour under the delusion that the reason more people don't like what they themselves like is because those other people are tricked into playing something else by a big, bad company. I guess some people just need villains.

Quote from: Haffrung;729498This is what's even more baffling - the gamers who like to boast that they make all their own game material and don't stoop to buying published adventures and the like are often the most passionate in their hatred of WotC. If you don't need WotC to play your game, why in fuck do you give one microgram of a shit what WotC does?

Your game is your game. Your game is not WotC's game. Your game is not the game of anyone else on these forums. That's the great thing about D&D and other RPGs. So why do the announcements, decisions, and products released by a company you don't need matter at all?

Well, I TRY not to.  I haven't bought a D&D product since the 1st Ed AD&D DMG.  So I try not to.

Until somebody, either WOTC or a fan, tells me that what I'm playing is bad, wrong, inferior, stupid, or "badwrongfun" in some other way, in which case they can tongue the brown crust off my shit hole.

Live and let live, or die horribly cut into a thousand pieces.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;729212Because some people like it better.

Personally. It reduces the complexity of one of the other steps. You are stating it adds complexity, but I find it can actually reduce complexity.



The number of comparisons isn't what slows me down, it is the difficulty if each one. I would rather have two steps with small numbers than one step with a big number. And cross referencing on a chart is not at all difficult for me. I much prefer that to adding BAB to the die roll against AC.



I play both 2E as well as 3E (and 1E). There are mechanics I consider bad, but not going to answer this question because you are an SA poster and I do not believe it is asked in good faith.

I should add, I did consider Thac0 bad for years, until I sat down and actually used it again. Until then I would have agreed with your points. But sitting down and returning to the 2e system I found thac0 easier than BAB from 3E. I also liked the tighter numbers which are harder to achieve without something like thac0 or matrices (unless you mess with the scale----interested to see how next handles that though, since BAB with tighter numbers would interest me).

I don't believe that descending AC does decrease complexity at all.

With descending AC, you are operating on both sides of the equation (the roll and the target number), whereas with descending AC you are operating on only one side. A very large part of algebra is simplifying equations by moving everything left of the = sign, so d20+126 vs AC 16 is still less complex than d20 + 5 vs Thac0-AC.

I have a different theory.

There are Christians who believe that because the bible is supposedly divinely inspired, if you were to discredit a single passage you invalidate the entire book. Therefore, they argue vehemently that every part of the bible must be taken literally.

I think that you think I'm trying to trick you into admitting that there is one objectively better rule in WotC D&D, that it somehow makes it not okay that you prefer AD&D 1st or 2nd edition over 3rd or 4th edition. Again, I'm not arguing that you shouldn't like classic D&D, nor am I arguing that modern D&D is an all around better game, merely that one rule out of many is better than another.