Edition Wars: Threat or Menace?

Editor's note: And ... we're back. Thanks for being a bit patient with us over at OnTheDie. A mixture of work and illness kept me from these updates for a bit. It definitely had nothing to do with a bit too much celebration for my Sith Anniversary (AKA my birthday) or having to fight off some angry Jedi. The important thing is that WE'RE BACK!

Welcome back to 20OnTheDie’s opinion column where we ask and answer the questions of the day in an angry and argumentative fashion.

Fresh from this year’s Gamehole Con, there are a number of important topics to discuss, so let's get to them.


The first topic is why weren't you at the con? Gamehole Con is in its second year, and had over 600 people attending it this year. If you’re looking for a chance to play with the people who created the game, this is the place to be.

He's got a flaming sword and there are skulls...who would miss that?

Okay, with the commercial out of the way, let’s get into the argument.

Editor's note: this article uses a lot of metaphors and mixed pop culture references. If you like, and don’t have to drive anywhere, play the 20OnTheDie drinking game where you take a drink for each one! However, be careful with this if you have to be anywhere the next day.

First, lets get some context for the argument. We can do more damage that way.

The Context AKA the Fight Warm up

As I was at Gamehole Con, I had the chance to play three different editions of Dungeons and Dragons: first, second and third. I was also able to watch … whatever edition you might call what the Dungeon Bastard runs. Playing all of those editions in such a short time gave me a perfect context to view the development of the game over the last few decades.

As I’m sure everyone knows, D&D is currently in edition flux: the latest edition of the game (5th  for those of you not keeping score) is in the process of being released. This has led to the inevitable: a new round of Edition Wars.

Edition Wars are nothing new, and have existed since the very first days of the game, when the Original Edition became Advanced. The first edition I ever really noticed this with was when Advanced Dungeons and Dragons went to second edition.

This guy is old enough to remember
the first Edition War in 232 BC.

In those days (soooooo looooonnnnnggg agooooo) there was no real Internet, so the rage was blunted, but I recall reading an angry letter in Dragon Magazine (yes, an actual letter was sent to an actual printed magazine) that talked about the new edition being “dumbed down,” “made for video games,” and “not really D&D anymore.” It was an angry letter, full of nerd rage, only we didn't call it that because it was 1989. Yes, there were Edition Wars in the era of parachute pants and leg warmers.

The point is: Edition Wars were going on long before the convenience of the Internet, even when people had to put pen to paper to start them.

Round about in these parts (that is, Wisconsin) we were caught up in this pretty bad. Maybe some of you are too young to remember, but TSR was located right down the road in Lake Geneva, so a lot of the people I was gaming with were in the same circles as the designers of the game. There was a lot of anger at what had happened (Tanar'ri, I remember you, and none too fondly). People stopped playing with those who were playing the “wrong edition.”

Sound familiar?

So what I’m telling you is that the idea of the Edition Wars is nothing new, and as we all know: 

War never changes.

Thank YOU Ron Perlman!

See what I mean? --Editor

With little exception, each edition of the game brought about the same complaints: the game was not staying true to its roots, it was “dumbed down,” it was too “video-gamey,” there was too much emphasis on combat, and it wasn't really Dungeons and Dragons.

But there was one Edition War that put them all to shame: the Fourth Edition.

When WotC brought out Fourth Edition, they apparently testified against against other cops gone bad. I played and enjoyed this edition more than any other, so I guess that makes me ...

(in addition to being a Sith Lord. Oddly, this makes sense).

This was the ultimate Edition War, because it finally split the gaming base. It brought out Pathfinder, which was a variant on WotC’s own system, and fractured the gaming community.

In all my years of pretending to be an elf, I had never really seen the depths of badwrongfun that you were having if you played Fourth Edition. Of course the problems were the same: it wasn’t D&D, it was designed as an MMO (the new video game boogeyman), it was dumbed down, there was no roleplay… All the same cards were being dealt out, all that was changing was who was holding which one.

Now exactly how and why this all happened is a long story. In fact, several stories that I’d love to talk about, but it’s outside of the scope of this rant. If you’re saying “there hasn't been much ranting going on yet,” well just you wait.

Let the Rant Begin

So the table’s been set, that’s what the Edition Wars are all about, what do I have to say about it?

Glad you asked.

It’s pretty simple: what the @%$@*%$@ is the point to it all?

At this point, I've been on both sides of the conflict multiple times, and for the life of me I can’t tell you what the point of any of it is.

Playing at Gamehole Con brought this all home to me: each edition of Dungeons and Dragons is different. It emphasizes different things, but it’s basically the same game. The premise is the same.

The basic premise works like this: 

a bunch of friends get together to pretend to be elves, dwarves and the occasional halfling. They meet at a tavern (or some other questionably logical fashion) and go into dark places of the earth to kill things and take their stuff. Along the way they get cool items and level up so that they can battle more and more powerful foes, and do more and more impressive things… that still involve going into a hole in the ground to kill things and take their stuff.

That’s it.

Really.

Now I understand that some of you will be saying, “that’s not how it is in my campaign: I spend a lot of time on why the characters are together, or we don’t go on dungeon crawls, we’re all about politics and social maneuvering … heck, we don’t even have treasure.”

And in response I say “good for you!”

What you've discovered is that D&D is a big tent, and can accommodate a lot of play styles. You can do a lot with it, things that the designers never imagined or intended.

And that’s great.

What you’re missing is that the basic premise of Dungeons and Dragons absolutely hasn't changed since 1975. A lot of people disagree with that, and if you do, riddle me this: why is there a version of Keep on the Borderlands, the quintessential D&D adventure, for every. Single. Edition. Every one.

If you’re not familiar with it (and you should be, if not, lose 20 Quatloos): the premise is that there’s a keep on the border of the human lands, and beyond it is a hole, in this case called the Caves of Chaos where there be monsters. The monsters have treasure, and you like treasure, so … you go off and kill them. End of story. Don't believe me? Well ...

Here are the Caves in First Edition.
Ugly pink covers make Sith Lords angry!

Apparently 4th Edition can support dungeon crawls, just with less pink.

So is There a Point to This?

The point is that every edition starts at the Caves of Chaos. Where it ends up is wherever you choose to take it. The table has been set, the ingredients are in the kitchen, but the kind of meal you make of it is up to you. Your players get to decided if you have to pack your knives and go.

Whether you choose to make a meal of any particular edition is hardly the point: you’re still pretending to be an elf who goes into bad places in search of the Macguffins or other riches.

It can be argued that pretty much every role-playing game ever made was done in response to what Gygax and company did with D&D. I’d agree with that for the most part (there are some notable exceptions, but it’s really mostly true). The interesting thing for the different editions of D&D is that they follow this same path: each edition is a response to what was going on in the gaming world at that time.

Take Second Edition, for example. Way back in the 80s, there was a concern from different parents groups (remember BADD: Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons?) that D&D was somehow satanic. When Second Edition came around, they changed names so that there were no more demons and devils and removed evil classes like the assassin from the game. That happened in response to critics and I’d say it’s the origin of the “dumbed down,” complaints about the edition. I guess evil is smart and not video-gamey?

Each subsequent edition has been about making changes to the game to reflect where the hobby was at that time, and to address problems with the one that came before it. Even Fourth Edition, and certainly in Fifth Edition.

The problem with this is, of course, that each time the game changed there were plenty of folks who liked how things were. They were happy with their edition and their binder of house rules, and who were the people at TSR or WotC to make them do things any differently?

Who indeed.

Only the owners and creators of the game that’s who. People who used Dungeons and Dragons to pay the rent, that’s who. You might not like it, heck I don’t like it all the time, but the folks who work over at WotC get to publish and print what they like and yeah, that makes it D&D.

And the thing is, these people are gamers. They’re just like us. Heck, they are us. Before they came to work at WotC Mike Mearls and Rodney Thompson were just fans of the game. Just like you and me. One of us. One of us!

So with this said, Edition Wars are largely pointless. They’re complaints about how the meal is presented and how the ingredients work together, but the pantry they come from is the same as it’s ever been. The D&D pantry is sort of like Taco Bell: it has about five ingredients and the only difference is how they’re put together.

Yeah, D&D is the same as it ever was.

Man, these snappy comments are a once in a lifetime opportunity.
And yeah, I know this is not from that video.

Some Conclusions

Playing different editions in such a short time brought home all of this to me: the game is largely the same, it just chooses to emphasize slightly different things from edition to edition. That’s it.

That’s all fine, you might say: but I absolutely hate Edition X! I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate it. And the people who play it, what jerks! The jerkiest jerks that ever were.

Hey, that’s fine: to each it’s own.

Actually that’s wrong, it’s not really fine. The world is full of terrible, horrible things. People are hungry. People are being killed right now for the gods they do or don’t worship. People are sick and dying from entirely preventable causes that their governments are keeping from them. If you want to hate something, hate on that. Heck, drop me a line and I’ll give you something new to legitimately be outraged about every day of the year. I won’t have to struggle at all to not repeat myself. But hate an edition of a role-playing game? Really?

Okay, that last paragraph was not really fair. It was pretty much a Half-Godwin, which is pretty bad. At least I didn't go Full-Godwin on you. The point is that I've heard conversations just like that last paragraph, but they were entirely about gaming. I've actually heard people seriously arguing that playing a particular edition (or not) is akin to the scourge of human trafficking. I. Am. Not. Making. That. Up.

When you’re about to start hating a game, you need to step back and check yourself before you wreck… uh, you get where I’m going with this don’t you?

What I Believe

I’m going to leave you with two things to think about. I doubt I have the power to change anyone’s mind, Sith powers notwithstanding.

First, each edition of D&D is amazingly similar as to what you do by default. The mechanics you use to do those things have changed over time, so consider each edition as another tool in the "toolbox of fun" with your friends. First edition’s hammer might work just fine, but not every game idea is a nail. Sometimes you might want a Fourth Edition spanner or a third edition multitool.

Second, the people who are playing those other editions aren't your enemies. They’re you, perhaps the you that’s tilted one degree either way. The you that can't get enough avocados from the gaming pantry. They don’t have to be told what’s the “right” way to pretend to be an elf, and certainly won’t change their ways when you school them on what’s what. They’re you.

We can all come together at an event like Gamehole Con and have a good time together in fellowship, even if we prefer one brand of Mountain Dew over another.

At least we’re not like those Magic players, don’t get me started about those guys.

Of course that’s just my opinion and I could be wrong, let’s go have pie…

Until next time, Make Mine 20!