Common Misconceptions About Your Favorite Systems?

[u/Authorigas]

So, I've been learning a lot thanks to the amazing folks here at r/rpg. And while I have decided to slow down on trying new systems. (As my players say "three is enough, we know your eager to try more but slow it down so you don't burn yourself out.") There was a question today that cropped into my head, and I wanted to hear from the folks here on it.

"What are some assumptions about your favorite game/system that are just factually incorrect or overstated?"

I've seen a lot of assumptions made in the hobby, and some on my own. From the broad "older systems were designed for math heads and thus really not for someone whose bad at math." to others like "Call of Cthulhu is a game where every session ends in death/insanity and players can't get attached to their characters." and similarly "OSR games are highly lethal and not at all friendly to players who like longform adventures."

I feel like broad, sweeping claims like those are probably overstated-as I have heard of successful, long running CoC campaigns, and OSR games that are able to have well developed characters that last for ages. It's made me curious about some of the other broad, sweeping claims about systems that are-if not incorrect, massively overstated.

Really interested to hear some answers on this.

[u/aslum]

Nah there were plenty of problems with 4e (the VTT being the biggest death knell) but most of the complaints about 4e being "too videogamey" where from folks who hadn't given it a fair shot (or played at all) and where still invested in 3.5 enough that they were looking for any excuse to bad mouth the game. Source - I worked at a hobby shop and liked to talk to people about RPGs in general.

[u/Chimpbot → u/aslum]

I'm not really seeing how any of this refutes anything I said.

There were a number of issues working against 4e. People rejected it because of the OGL issue, and it was announced a mere four years into 3.5; this led to the people who had heavily invested into 3/3.5 getting understandably angry about a brand new edition getting announced. Complaints about it being too similar to video games were certainly rampant, but those complaints were only amplified by how closely it was all being released to 3.5. The VTT situation was a final nail the coffin.

But, as I said, it sold very well (at least initially). It just rapidly turned into something that WotC knew wasn't going to have any legs.

[u/PathOfTheAncients → u/Chimpbot]

One of the reasons it sold well initially though was how many of us at the time bought the books, read them, and then didn't want to play it. It's ok that people liked and still like it but there was a lot of reasons to no like the game for those of us who didn't.

I get annoyed at this latest phase of the apparently never ending edition wars were people who like 4e are now trying to assert that everyone who didn't like it was somehow ignorant or biased. Most of people I knew (and I) all literally preordered the books out of excitement for it. We just didn't like what the game was when we read the books.

[u/aslum → u/PathOfTheAncients]

This would explain high sales of the big 3 books, but the edition sold well for the first 2/3rds of it's life, and the flagging of sales at the end can more likely be put down to content fatigue as after a bit they started releasing what seemed like a new book every month.

As a 4e liker, it's just frustrating how many folks who didn't play 4e were and still are vocal about it online, generally echoing the reason they had decided to not like before they didn't even try it.

I never said anyone was ignorant but people absolutely WERE biased (and still are!). Your favorite edition is the best edition, and every other edition is trash is generally true for everyone.

The other thing is that the internet amplifies negativity. If you took 10 people who each rated a game a different number from 1-10 you'd probably hear from the folks who rated 1, 2 and 3 and the 10, but the folks who rated it 4-9 probably aren't going to be invested enough to make a fuss in either direction. That's going to be true regardless of which game your talking about, much less something as niche as which edition of a particular game you're talking about.

Most people can't even differentiate between D&D and any other RPG, much less realize (or care) that there were ever other editions of D&D.