Quote from: Phillip;455809What is "EW"?

EnWorld? Oh on Dragonsfoot. I have no idea, wait.
EDIT - yeah, no. Looking at DF, I don't have a clue.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;455798For example, this discussion has taught me that if the only "great" things about your game are (a) the prose and (b) the supplements, then you don't have a great game. That was good insight. Thanks.

Every post you make, you live down to the expectations that I have for someone with one-dimensional thinking.  The day you can come back to me and say you've written for editions you don't like, played editions you don't like (at length) and at least tried to look past your own lack of imagination and tried something different then maybe your opinion will make a damned bit of difference to me.

Quote from: Phillip;455809What is "EW"?

Eldritch Wizardry (D & D Supplement III) seems unlikely.

Forgive me if I seem lazy for asking. I'm tired and curious.

Edition War.

Back in 2001/2002, there was a bonafide pit-fight forum at dragonsfoot.org.

The world must know how much I disapprove of Unearthed Arcana because I know people care about that a lot.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;455798For example, this discussion has taught me that if the only "great" things about your game are (a) the prose and (b) the supplements, then you don't have a great game. That was good insight. Thanks.

If one is interested in great prose, wouldn't it be easier to find some in a fiction novel?

Rpg books aren't the first place I look for great prose.

Quote from: Insufficient Metal;455831The world must know how much I disapprove of Unearthed Arcana because I know people care about that a lot.

Quiet, you.

Quote from: thedungeondelverEdition War.

D'oh!

My brain is tired, alright.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;455829Edition War.

Back in 2001/2002, there was a bonafide pit-fight forum at dragonsfoot.org.

Was there? I did not know that!

Quote from: Benoist;455839Was there? I did not know that!

Yeah; they rolled it up pretty tight; I think they had the robots.txt set up to avoid google and so forth so it's not archived anywhere.

It was concentrated stupidity for all concerned.

I passionately believe that old games should be published the way old books are published.  I've lived to see comics and movies and even television shows become permanently available regardless of age, and RPGs should receive the same sort of treatment.  This has little to do with a fondness for any particular edition of any particular game, but it does occasionally form the basis for an alliance with those who, for example, want 4e clearly labeled with a name other than simply "Dungeons & Dragons".

My vision is never about the acknowledged supremacy of any one system, nor the defeat of any other, so ultimately I suppose I'm a noncombatant in the wars as they are currently fought...

Quote from: thedungeondelver;455614I ask because most of my introduction to D&D forums on the web was the EW forum at dragonsfoot.org (the actual address was dfforum.org back them).

I'm not on any high horse here - I get sucked in by LOLOLOLOLOL GYGAX SUXXORZ THANK NOT-EXISTENT GOD FOR 4E IT IS BETTER THAN ANYTHING EVAR every once in a great blue moon (depending on my mood).

But man I used to start trouble where there was none...

Regardless of your perspective, whether you're a fan of Original D&D, 1e, 2e, 3e, 4e, Basic/BECMI/RC, or whatever, what do you get out of it?

I used to see 3e (and early on 4e) as being roadblocks to fun and stepping stones to people who were denigrating the great things about D&D (to wit: Gary's prose, and his modules and the modules of guys like Al Hammack, RJK, etc.) so I felt like I had to say something in response to that.  Also I thought, well, I don't want people coming to D&D to think that this is the only D&D there is (and I still do feel that, I'm just not an evangelist any more) so I gotta say something.  But ultimately, anymore, I just don't care.  The guys I game with aren't going to suddenly go play 3e or 4e*, the people I don't game with aren't going to come to my house to get some of that Olde-School Goodness** - and, again, no matter how reasoned or light-hearted or well thought out anything I might say to promote AD&D might be, there's gonna be haters.  Haters gonna hate.

So, as I've said before "I will fight no more forever".  If I'm asked, sure, I'll flat out tell you six ways to Sunday why I just don't like and won't play 3e or 4e (and I've got my eye on those sneaky 2e and Basic jerks, too) and it isn't just rules, but company management and what they obviously don't know about D&D's history...but honestly, (for example) Justin Alexander is never going to lighten up and go "Oh, okay, no I'm cool with that.  I'd play that." - why bother talking about it any more?  I'm not gonna play a D&D with a unified XP chart - I'm never going to lighten up about that or a great many other problems I see with later D&Ds...

I guess maybe it's rah rah sports fandom for nerds?  Well, anyway I'm not going to jump somebody and leave them comatose over the matter***.


...

*=a couple of my players do but it's not A Thing at the table.
**=not since I quit running games at Conventions - there, I'd have to turn people away I'd get so many sign ups...
***=I'd like to but I quit bothering with usenet years ago so the temptation has subsided.

I don't know what I get out of the edition wars, honestly. They're inevitably a train wreck, and yet I find them difficult to avoid reading. I'll be honest though. You and others like you (Axemental, for example) irritated me so monumentally over the years with your foaming-at-the-mouth pro-Gygaxian, anti-3e zealotry..."back in the day", that it was enough to almost completely drive me away from AD&D for eight years. I'd open my 1e DMG, and then quickly close it again, because I'd be thinking of some asshat on the Internet, and so my joy for the game would be quickly poisoned. As a result, my gaming group quit AD&D for years, and only started playing it again recently...

I've "evolved" a little bit, in that I try not to let people on the Internet poison my love of a game now. That still doesn't change the fact that when I'm a fan of a game, I want to be part of that game's community, yet much of the 1e community makes that very difficult. I'd visit sites like Dragonsfoot, Knights 'n Knaves, and whatnot....and would loathe the echo chambers that preside there. It's frustrating. I'm still a 1e fan, so people from those sites speak a language I understand, but I hate narrow-minded, suffocating zealotry masquerading as "moral authority" in the hobby of Dungeons & Dragons. That shit gets old and tired.

The good news is that you aren't quite as bad as you used to be, and neither are the other grogs. The Gygaxian asshattery has toned down over the past few years. Maybe middle age has softened you guys out a bit; I don't know...but I'm almost thankful for 4e, because it means the uber-grognards are less likely to get uber-cranky about 2e and 3e.

P.S. For the record, I'm a fan of 1e...but I often feel uncomfortable with the narrow-minded overzealousness that's prevalent in the 1e online community, even though I often visit 1e websites...

Oh, and 2e rocks....so suck it.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;455798Discussions concerning differences between editions occasionally teach me some valuable stuff about how RPGs are put together, how they function, and how they can address various player desires and goals.

This.

To give a serious answer -- for the most part, I'm not invested in edition wars, but I don't follow sports, so it's fun to read other people argue passionately about minutiae I can actually understand.

But I don't care what other people play as long as they're having fun, and I'm a GURPS fan, so I'm used to everyone hating what I play.

Quote from: JADiscussions concerning differences between editions occasionally teach me some valuable stuff about how RPGs are put together, how they function, and how they can address various player desires and goals.

I rarely get involved with wars over editions.  I tailk about certain mechanics and what these mechanics are best used for, and the type of game they create.
I play two rulesets, and I wrote both of them; different editions are merely different rulesets for me.

The 3E/4E edition war was the first time I ever rationalized such an event. Any other topic I might laugh at someone's opinion but I didn't otherwise care. But I was invested in 3E in a way that I have never been invested in anything before or since. I *hated* the very concept of 4E. If I had had the ability I would have erased it from reality. So, what did I get out of that edition war? Stress and anger. Neither of which I wanted or needed.