It is phrases like this:

QuoteMeh, fluff sacred cows are the easiest to turn into hamburger.

QuoteD&D should evolve beyond its wargame roots and into the Roleplaying game it is.

QuoteAnd it's about 30 years late. Vancian casting is utter garbage and should have been killed years ago.

QuoteEvolve or die. Just like with everything else in the world.

QuoteSay it with me: you can't live in the past. What you look on as an abomination is an advance. You think it moves D&D away from it's roots? Very likely, and that's a good thing. It needs to be done, and should have been done a lot sooner. The style and advances in 3E are what we should have had around 1986 or so. So to my mind, D&D is still about ten years behind the door.

If it kills what D&D has been over the last thirty years -- GOOD. Should have been done a long darn time ago and moved the game into the 21st century. I want 'your' D&D to lie at the bottom of a river in a sack, feeling it's brain die as it runs out of oxygen, it's struggles heard by no-one and cared about by even fewer.

Damn, it's time to move on already.

Something isn't right about language like this. Nobody should be speaking about games and other peoples' enjoyment like this. I promised myself I wouldn't care and wouldn't get involved (4th edition will have no relevant effect on my campaign), but after reading similar statements, I discovered I still mind.

Perhaps I care because one of my demons/nightmares is how language can be turned into a weapon, how certain forms of communication can actively dismantle the social environment which makes constructive discourse possible. It is impossible not to enter discussion when phrases like this are uttered, but it is at the same time entirely useless. We can talk but our words will not mean anything to each another. Regular flame wars are different. There, people know perfectly well what is what, they just don't like each other. Here, the entire language is subverted, set up so that you can't offer counterpoints, only insults and apologies. It is weird, a state of non-communication while you are talking and talking and talking - a lot. It is the same reason I detest Lev Lafayette for. There is a certain nauseating feeling, and helplessness. The inability to get a point across because the other guy may as well be an alien. It's not fun.

Could we end it, please?

Good luck, Melan. Whilst it's a nice sentiment I suspect you're on a hiding to nothing, especially on a site that tolerates strident expression the way this one does.

As I put it to some Forge yob recently, the moment I hear the phrase "sacred cow", my pretentiousness meter goes off the charts.

It's an asinine attitude in the highest, esssentially stating that because a lot of people like it, and don't want it gone, that is in and of itself, and excuse to destroy it.

Make no mistake, these fuckers aren't just satisfied with making their own game, they want to actively destroy other people's fun.  These are usually the same assholes who say shit like "I wish Wizards would just go belly up".

And yet for some dumb fucking reason, these are the people Mearls is apparently listening to regarding 4e.

No, Melan made a pretty good observation.
ENWorld has turned into a pretty ugly place, in just two days.

It´s basically capsized.

I WILL buy 4th Edition, and I´m positive it will work. But the self hate and "Hamburger" language is awful. From the same people who were staunch defenders of the older, 3.5 concepts just days ago.

We might witness the start of a much greater conflict.

It's just new edition angst, magnified by the polarizing effects of online communication.

It'll die down soon enough. Once 4E has been out for a while and people have had a chance to digest the changes I expect we'll see a return to less hyperbolic modes of expression.

D&D DOES have "sacred cows", though, in the sense of having certain elements to it that exist in D&D for no logical reason other than the fact that its always been there.

That said, where I disagree with most people who use that term is in the idea that this means they shouldn't actually be in there.  On the contrary, I think in many cases they are what defines D&D, and makes it recognizeable AS D&D and not just "D20 Fantasy".

RPGPundit

Exactly.
The D&D magic system for example, is the cornerstone upon which the D&D experience is built.

If there are good reasons for killing the sacred cow, then you should kill it.  But killing a sacred cow for the sake of killing a sacred cow or somehow sweeping away the old is just as mistaken as arbitrarily preserving it.

I suspect consumers are looking for reasons to want to buy 4e, so they are building up justifications ahead of time.

It helps if you consider the new edition as a new game. I don't play 3.x, so I don't have a horse in that race. I have been pissed off in the past over 3E and the direction it took the game, but maybe because 4E is another step removed I can look at it as a distinct new game, without any 'what have they done to my game' angst. I'll be happy enough to check out 4E and see if it's a game I want to play, without any sense of grievance or resentment.

And if the language used by its advocates is strident and contemptuous, well I don't see much point in worrying about that either. If I did, I'd be hanging out on Dragonsfoot stewing over 3E still.

I do have to admit to a feeling of schadenfraude over the whining of 3E loyalists. After all, many of those same folks don't have any reservations about pissing all over earlier editions of D&D.

One thing about 'slaying sacred cows" -- I don't want to mess with someone else's religion.
As long as they don't want me to start worshiping their holy bovine, I don't mind if they go on doing it.

You know, i don´t have problems with change, and I´m sure Melan neither does.
But the capsize in argumentation happening at ENworld is concerning me.

They are brandishing an attitude of ultra cool Burger-making without even knowing which part of the herd is actually going to be culled.

Thusly, they show that they will accept anything, even worse, that they don´t have principles apart from trying to be hip.

That´s just a board-culture-clusterfuck.

This has basically nothing to do with the real 4th edition.

Eh.

My sig ain't changing for no man.  

Its still got classes and levels. I don't think anyone need really worry about the sacred cows.

Melan -

I know what you're saying. I'm amazed at how nasty people are already getting. I wasn't on the internet for gaming stuff until 2000 or 2001, but I'm really glad I missed the run-up to 3e - I never would have enjoyed it like I did from 1999-2003 if I had.

I don't exactly like the attitude over at DF about 3e all the time, but I'm starting to understand why they've got it, watching the posts about 4e.

I'm probably going to be doing old stuff strictly for the next year to avoid it, and staying off the big boards, since I get the brutal hate over that kind of talk, and I don't need that in my life. If any of you guys have stuff for a (much) older fantasy system you want to get published with credit but no money (though you retain repub rights to your own submissions), send them my way: I'm doing a book with a guy who recently left WotC, tentatively titled "Revenant Runes", that's going to be a parchment-covered PoD supplement.

Quote from: RPGPunditD&D DOES have "sacred cows", though, in the sense of having certain elements to it that exist in D&D for no logical reason other than the fact that its always been there.
RPGPundit

I agree with this, and I don't think it's utterly a bad thing. But I just call 'sacred cows' legacy rules, instead. (In that they're rules because that's what the game went with in the past, as opposed to design decisions conciously thought about.)

I also agree we need to cut out the hostility. There's no reason to belittle other's playing preferences.