Tags
A to Z Challenge, Editorial, postaday2011, ROLPUNK, RPG, STFU
I’m an old-schooler, thus I run into edition war crap a lot, unfortunately in real life at least, it seems to come doubly from other old-schoolers.
You see, my favourite game is classic 1981 Moldvay/Cook Basic/Expert D&D. But that’s it, it is a preference. I could tell you why I prefer it and why I dislike AD&D1e. But it’s not something I get into when I can avoid it. Because I love gaming in general. I also play in a Pathfinder campaign and love it. I recently played in a 3.0 PHB-only campaign (no Monster Manual, no DMG), it rocked on fucking toast. Not just on toast, but on fucking toast. Hell, I play those new-fangled indie RPGs also because once again, the toast, it ROCKS.
The problem is that so many people feel that they can’t say good things about their game of choice without saying bad things about other games of choice. I prefer basic D&D because… I prefer basic D&D. That’s really what it comes down to. I had bad experiences with AD&D1e (and with a few other games) and those remain on my “meh list”, but I’ll only talk about it if someone ASKS me to, and I still understand that some people actually prefer to play using rules and systems that I don’t enjoy.
Nothing turns me off Game X more than a description of how it is better than Game Y. Well, except for deadEarth – the whole back cover of that damn rule book is it belittling other RPGs.
Game Fans need to learn to promote their games without dissing everyone else’s. If you dislike an edition, a rule, or whatever, why spend your energy attacking it when you could spend your energy doing something awesome instead? Why are you wasting your energy on negativity? Attacking how someone else is having fun does nothing to make them think your fun is better, it becomes a case of you being an cockmongler and trying to ruin someone else’s fun. Seriously. Read that again. When you are being an edition or system warrior, you are trying to ruin someone else’s fun.
SHOW ME THE AWESOME OF YOUR GAME, SHOW ME THE FUN, DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME TRYING TO RUIN SOMEONE ELSE’S FUN.
Oh, and if you actually are one of those cockmonglers who go up to people who are playing a game you don’t like, or who are buying books for a game you don’t like and start telling them that their game sucks? Yeah, get the fuck out of the gene pool already.
This is post #23 of the A to Z Blogging Challenge – W is for Edition Warriors
Dyson's Dodecahedron 
While I COULD write simply about my love for one game over another, I’m usually one that throws in a little bad mouthing as well…generally to emphasize the contrast. ALSO, I often have SOME good things to say about other editions (since I’ve played them them), but I have to (or feel I have to) also include why, in the end, they don’t work for me.
However, I never badmouth others’ game choices at the game shop or when I see folks playing Pathfinder (or 4E) around the gaming table, because A) I don’t want to hurt ANY potential business for the shop (I want the shop to STAY in business!), and B) If they’ve already purchased the game, why piss all over their fun? I’d still rather see poor table-top role-playing than NO table-top role-playing!
So sorry for the first part…I feel your pain, and will strive to be more positive, less negative in the future.
: )
1 Corinthians 12
14 Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.
15 Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?…
Can we agree that we are a body of role players? Bad-mouthing each other accomplishes nothing, didn’t we all get enough of that in high school (come on, we’re all nerds here).
I thousand amens. I couldn’t agree more.
Some old schoolers are really defensive because 3rd and especially 4th ed D&D were marketed as “fixed” versions of the *lame, broken versions.* I say this not to justify but to explain. I have been told to my face at the FLGS that race-as-class and XP for gold are retarded, or words to that effect, but from what I see online the old schoolers are really condescending about new editions; I don’t think we’re on the radar for 90% of 4e players and they have very little to say about old eds.
I fall into badmouthing later editions sometimes myself but I *hope* I am understood to mean “I think they suckle a shitty teat” not “They objectively suckle a shitty teat” or “Their players are shitty teat sucklers.” I know, two wrongs don’t make aright. I know, the anger should be aimed at the marketing, not the game itself which even I admit has a lot of good points.
I would under no circumstances go up to a group of players enjoying a game and tell them it sucks, if that mitigates things; I just make fun of 4e on the blog once in while.
I’ve run into the same things, but overall I hear it from my fellow old-schoolers belittling the new school games and gamers a lot more than the other way around. I’m not talking on-line, I’m talking real life pretty much – people ragging on each other for the games they choose to play or just to buy. I just can’t believe that anyone would waste their time being negative about someone else’s harmless fun. The internet dickwad theory explains the bullshit edition wars we see all the time, but taking it to real life boggles me.
Pingback: EFF YOUR EDITION WAR!! | The Action Point
Amen brother!
A-fuckin-men, brother! There are too many d-bags out there who are giving nerds a bad name by being uber-nerds who take this shit way too seriously! It’s a GAME, Poindexter! Get over it, and yourself! Seriously, the ironic thing is, these turdburglers keep whining about “oh, RPGs are dying out!” but they don’t realize that they are part of the reason that RPGs are dying! They need to stop being forces for division and use their energy to help save the fucking RPG species! I’ve written about some nerd turds that can’t tell the difference between their opinion and fact. Take a look if interested:
http://unto-the-breach.blogspot.com/2011/02/opinion-fact-and-rpgs-part-1.html
Not to name names, but someone needs to tell some guy named Alexis at Tao of D&D to get over himself. Every time I look at his blog, hoping against hope he’s stopped being an elitist fuck, I’m continually disappointed. I don’t care how well he can write (and it pains me to say that I think he’s pretty good) or how articulate he is or how profound he can be…his delivery fucking stinks. Just because you hand me a gold nugget wrapped in pigshit doesn’t mean I’m going to be grateful!
Alexis, take note: you’re being a know-it-all about a pastime that can, on it’s most basic level, be described as “playing pretend.” Now I don’t say that to belittle the hobby. Read my blog and you’ll see I am in love with RPGs. No, I’m being critical of the killjoys who need to, as the kids say these days, “get all meta” about the hobby. Dude, I don’t care how much you know. If you keep talking to people like we’re fucktards, you will reap nothing but disdain.
Sorry, rant over. BTW, Dyson, great blog, got it featured prominently on mine!
Pingback: Mon jeu est meilleur que le tien ! | imaginos
“cockmongler?”
huh.
Cockmongler is an old 4chan meme.
Pingback: Why your game sucks! (via A character for every game) | Dr. Checkmate presents
I would just like to be able to say “I don’t like game X because of Y” without people hearing “anyone who has ever played that game is worse than Hitler”. At least wait until I’ve insulted your mother before jumping to defend her honor.
Oh, and I would be happy if game edition N+1 didn’t mean I had to throw out all my old edition N books because N+1 replaced a few rule systems with different systems and now they’re not going to publish anything that makes sense with the old system. Honestly, supplements that are less rules-heavy and more plot-heavy (and not just “even more rules”) simply don’t need to be tied so tightly to a game system, yet alone a particular edition. A good adventure can be sold to the entire RPG market, not just the subset that likes one edition of one set of rules.
Each edition of D&D may be equally valid and just as much fun as the day it was written, but the game companies keep treating editions as “upgrades” that only crazy people don’t rush to buy.
“Oh, and I would be happy if game edition N+1 didn’t mean I had to throw out all my old edition N books because N+1 replaced a few rule systems with different systems and now they’re not going to publish anything that makes sense with the old system.”
This has never made sense to me.
They stopped publishing B/X D&D stuff ages ago. I never had to “throw out all my old edition books” because of it. Hell, if anything, the end of a publication cycle makes me MORE inclined to run a game because I know there won’t be a supplement treadmill to jump on to.
In fact, the vast majority of the games I love are not being “supported” by their publishers anymore. That’s a major bonus, not a reason to throw out my games.
Not to mention…I like having the books. When Diablo III comes out, I won’t throw away my Diablo II disks; when a new edition of a game comes out, I usually retain older edition materials. Not only do they have the nostalgia element, but there’s almost assuredly elements of the old system (a neat spell, a handy way of adjudicating something out of combat, some favorite monsters) that won’t be available–immediately or possibly ever–in the new edition. So having the old materials makes it easier for me to bridge that gap.
Hear, hear. And yeah, Dying Earth toast does rock.
ROLPUNK. EFF YEAH.
After you published your ROLPUNK manifesto, I had the link and graphic as a sticky post on my blog for a couple of months.
ROLPUNK is a state of the union address to gamers. Be awesome, not douchebags.
Yes.
It’s funny that I can remember triumphantly tracking down both an original Red Box (even more of a coup since that product is about a year older than I am) as well as all of the hardcover core ADnD books in high school, and spending a fair penny for the privilege. This was despite the fact that I ran a 2e group, with 2e players. Back then, owning the earlier editions was something magical.
Now there’s this dramatic schism between proponents of different editions that I simply don’t grok. I’ll admit that I was adamantly against 3rd when it premiered, partially because it was my first edition change, but mostly because we didn’t understand the CR system. Try telling the 10th level cleric that, at his level of amassed xp, he would be off the 3rd ed chart! At the time it seemed as though they’d viciously torn the challenge out of the game, because we didn’t comprehend how the new model functioned.
But I eventually picked up all of the 3e stuff, and loved some of the changes they made (anyone can be any class? Great! No level limits? Amazing!). I did the same with the switch to 3.5, which added several new ways to get my character sheet to match up with the concepts in my head…and frankly, that’s all the rules are for.
I’m VERY happy with 4th, because, again, it addresses things that make the game more satisfying for me as both a player and DM. Most significantly, I like having players who won’t die if a goblin gets lucky with his short sword strike. I think the greater robustness of the players is true to the spirit of the game, and I state that as someone who read the entire explanation of hp with Rasputin example from back in the day. Resilience and a greater focus on non-combat challenges still granting rewards are two of the things that keep me in 4e, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still have a folder of 3e characters and a few worn, beaten notebooks full of my campaign notes and creations for 2e.
Because, by dammit, I love gaming. And that’s the thing that matters.
Putting down other games is a matter of trying to condition people to like the things you like, and stop liking things you don’t, because in the long run it may affect what gets produced. It’s also the way human nature works, to keep your fellow man in line and prevent strange, aberrant or harmful behavior from popping up and becoming accepted. It’s why we don’t condone deviant behavior in regular real life, and although it may seem twisted, people who play D&D “the wrong way” can also be seen as deviant behavior to diehard gamers. So we try to correct it. Simple as that. If you care enough about what you’re doing, you will want to defend it and put down threats to it, as those threats have a way of ruining your preferred way of life (in the case of the RPG hobby, witness how the old school sensibilities were drowned out, perverted, ridiculed, etc., and the way gaming product quality and usability went down the toilet from the perspective of the old school gamer.) That’s why certain types of gaming are railed against… as a way of fighting back against unwanted changes in the hobby, the industry and the player base at large.
And all that by being a douchebag by stepping in to ruin someone else’s fun. Brilliant. Even with cogent expressions like this, the end result is someone walking up to someone else and telling them that they can’t actually be having fun – or worse, that their fun is bad fun like some deviant sexual behaviour.
If you like a game go ahead and play it don’t worry about what people say. The edition wars needs to end. Why? because there are people out there who want role playing games to disappear. Our local Library and Community centers are actively working to do so with a disinformation campaign worse than anything the Satanic Panic of the 80’s could muster. And do not doubt for a minute that it is a local problem the anti gaming army is on the march nation wide. Once again it is time to unite for the greater good of the hobby.
Pingback: When you are being an edition or system warrior, you are trying to ruin someone else’s fun | imaginos