I had to remove a comment on this blog this morning. I don’t think it was up long and with Google’s on and off again server problems today, I doubt many people saw it. Thankfully. It was a diatribe against people like me who do not support current editions of D&D. Normally, I would have left such a comment up and replied to it, but the comment was made to my post on Gary’s death, almost 10% of the words in the post were profanity, and there were insults to Gary in the comment.

However, I’d like to toss out a couple of the arguments made in the comment — stripped of their childish profanity and rude tone — for discussion. The poster’s argument was basically that those of us who refuse to “get with the program” and abandon older editions for the latest edition from the current publisher are harming the D&D hobby by:

• not buying current books which hurts the profits of WOTC and Hasbro making it less likely that they will continue to publish D&D materials.
• fragmenting the hobby. When everyone plays the same edition and plays it by all the books, it makes it easier for players to find games. The more people refuse to upgrade to the latest version every few years, the more fragmented the hobby becomes and the harder it is to find players.

The poster had a few other arguments, but they were incomprehensible to me as written (e.g. “the [profanity omitted] Coolness factor you [profanity omitted]”) or were really just attacks on Gary for not strongly supporting newer editions.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel any obligation to keep WOTC or Hasbro in the black and I feel that the second argument makes as little sense as saying that American Football fans should stop watching their favorite sport and support Soccer (Football to the rest of the world) because Soccer is the more popular game.

What do you think? Are we fans of older versions of D&D hurting the hobby by our refusal to fall in love with, buy, and play the current edition of D&D?

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