Re: edition wars

On 10/22/2024 5:27 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

 But I still hold that most of the complaints about 2E have less to do
with the system itself than with the meta surrounding it: with Gygax's
departure, with TSR's financial shenanigans, with the changing culture
around tabletop RPGs, etc.
 

I think the main issue was that a lot of stuff became much more sophisticated in writing and production, but that most of the stuff also felt incredibly generic. And of course it doesn't help that the whole idea of roleplaying went away from previous habits into the more railroady aspects the Hickmans did so successfully. Roleplaying became playing a role in a prewritten story, a development that still is happening, to the point that it's not even really possible to play a more freeform game of 5e in my opinion.
(I also think that it's a valid expression of roleplaying as an artform, it's just not what DND started with and did best)