A Geek History of Time - Episode 98 - Edition Wars Part IV

Episode Date: March 20, 2021

I'm not here to poke holes and suspended this belief. Anyway, they see some weird shit. They decide to make a baby. Now, Muckin' Merchant. Who gives a fuck? Oh, Muckin' which is a trickle, you know, baby. You know what I mean? Well, you know, I really like it here. It's kind of nice and it's not as cold as Muckin'

and I'm a bit sore, but I'm better. So yeah, sure, I think we're gonna settle. If I'm a peasant boy who grabs sword out of a stone, yeah, I'm able to open people up. You will, yeah. Anytime I hit them with it, right? Yeah. So my cleave landing will make me a cavalier.

Good day, Spree. If Sysclothon it was empty-headed, plubian trash, being trash is really good. Really good grue. Because cannibalism and murder, we'll back just a little bit, build walls to keep out the rat heads. And it's a little bit of a ground tool.

A thorough intent doesn't exist. Some people stand up quite a bit, some people stay seeing the rat heads, but it just... This is a geek history of time. Where we connect Mercury to the real world. My name is Ed Blalock. I'm a world history teacher and Rabbit, Densions and Dragons nerd here in Northern California. Where I am currently teaching world history and one section of

remedial reading over the internet and in some personal news I just managed to achieve a childhood goal for myself. The other night I ordered Velcro shoes. Nice. Yes. Nice. No. No. I am a child of the 80s, but no. I I managed to order for the first time for myself rather than waiting for it as a present from somebody else. I ordered a lightsaber. I'm sorry, time out. That distinction is hilarious unto itself. Your childhood goal was that you spent with your own money to buy a lightsaber because you had previously lived in a world where other people would buy it for you as a gift. Well, so it was not specifically the ownership of said lightsaber. That was the child would go any more. I already have a couple, but yeah, no, I'm getting I'm getting one.

This one is entirely on in that way. I'm a griffin door. This is a big freaking deal. It sure, sure. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's rebel sabers who have not yet paid me any money, but after I received it I may be willing to you know throw some more airtime their way Mm-hmm first sponsorship Uh, but it's a rebel sabers just a car Uh, it's it's way too pretty

Mm-hmm way too pretty it is not going to be here in time for my birthday Okay, but it is my birthday gift to myself. Nice, nice. And I am, and I am very excited. Additionally, I had a, I had a fatherhood moment earlier this evening, where I was, I was moving stuff around on a bookshelf because there's a hole on a pole on a clutter lot of clutter on the bookshelf

in our living room and I was busy moving stuff around. And in the process of doing that, I went on the sitting on the floor, moving stuff into boxes. And my little boy came over and he was looking at the very large cardboard box that I was taking stuff out of and breaking stuff down from. And he picked up a piece of paper out of it.

He said, Daddy, who is that? And I told him who that was. And he said, OK, who's this guy? And I told him who that guy was. And we had kind of a conversation back and forth. And a moment later, my wife mentioned, from from the kitchen on the other side of our bar or Living our open plan kind of apartment. She said you do realize you're sitting on the floor With your son in your lap talking about warhammer 40,000 right nice

And I said yeah, I've totally yeah No, I did I did totally know what I was doing and I am having my own internal glow moment. Thank you. Because I got to explain to him who a space marine was and how he was fighting against a Necron who was an evil undead robot. And I'm not going to lie that gave me quite the warm fuzzy there getting to explain that to my little boy. A little earlier kind of in the same chain of events, he had noticed one of the books that I had taken off the shelf and he said, Daddy, who's this guy? I said, he's a space wolf. Nice. Space wolves? Yes. I've never seen space wolves. Well, you have, because that has been painting his army on the table, but you've never seen one that looks like that. No.

So yeah, I'm introducing my son to the culture of the route and To to Warhammer 40k and on top of that I'm waiting for my lightsaber to get shipped. So like as a geek It's a good week. It's good geek week. It really doesn't get very much better than that. Yeah, you're doing Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I'm a Latin teacher up here in Northern California. I'm doing just fine. My son asked me last week. Very, very worried, very concerned. William was, he says, I just... And I've, and I've, and I need everybody to understand, I can so clearly picture the look that I know is on his face. Oh, yeah, I've seen this. Oh, yeah. So he says. I'm I'm feeling stressed out. I was like, okay, learning new phrases is good. I said, what's up? He says, I'm stressed out about voting.

about voting. Okay, what's stressing you out? Well, how how many elections are there? I was like, do you mean how much time is between elections? Yeah. Well, it depends on the election. Sun. I mean, there are local elections or their district elections or statewide elections. As Hesher is like, to vote in all of them? I said, well, democracy is kind of a sacred duty that we have and it is only as strong as people participating. So yes, you do. You need to participate in all the democracy and use it all as strong as you can. And he's like, okay, but I'm really stressed out

about voting. I'm like, you know, that's fair. So what you want to do is make sure you're an informed voter, um, research the issues, cast your vote, and then you have to let it go. Can you do that? Yeah. Okay. All right. Cool. I get an email from his teacher yesterday. William wants to run for class president. He's giving his speech today. Oh! And he had not told me any of this. And so then it all kind of clicked into place. So that was yesterday.

So yesterday at lunch I called him because he was at his mom's that day. And I called him and I said, dude, you're running for class president? Yeah. Wow, that's incredibly brave. Why, I have never done that. He says, I know, I'm really hoping that I get it.

And me being the very quick thinker that I am, all the possibilities exploded into my head as to what could happen. And only one of them ends with him winning. Most of them end with him being very disappointed. And he wears his heart on his sleeve. So I told him, I said, have you ever heard of Abraham Lincoln?

He's like, yeah, I said, do you remember what he did? He's like, no, I kind of forgot. Okay, fair enough. I said, he was president. He was a very important president. I said, do you know what he did in the beginning of his career? No, he lost.

Oh, I said, yeah, he lost badly. I said, you know what happened the next time? What, he lost again. I said, actually, he only ever won twice in his whole career. All the other times, he kept losing, but he never let that stop him from pushing forward and trying to do good. So I want you to remember that,

if tomorrow the election doesn't go your way, that you get to be disappointed, you get to be upset, but it's absolutely your job to support whoever wins, and it's absolutely your job to run again if you think that you were the better candidate. But you have to accept the results of the election. And he's okay, I will. Okay, cool. And so I called him last night, how did it go? He's like, would you like to hear my speech?

Absolutely, he read me his speech. I am 90% sure that my daughter Julia helped him write that speech. But it was a wonderful speech. And I told him, I said, you have to bring that home because we have to frame that. So then I found out tonight that he did not win. That in fact, he was very disappointed and somewhat tearful. And I was like, I didn't get to talk to him. This is just reported to me.

And so I was like, okay, well, I will handle that tomorrow. I will absolutely bolster that and very much validate the feelings of disappointment, but also push forward as like we knew this was a likely possibility. There were four of you running, mathematically your odds are low, but also the fact is that you exercise democracy by participating at a very, very important level. So I'm super proud of my son. He's also making dinner next, or tomorrow, because I do this thing now where my kids have to cook

out of a cookbook every Saturday. My daughter cooks out of the Dungeons & Dragons Heroes Feast cookbook. My son cooks out of the Wookie Cookie cookbook. So he's making hand burgers and wookie cookies because we're having the Falcons feast I guess. Okay, but he also asked he's like, is there a Marvel cookbook? So the Marvel cookbook arrived yesterday as well. So I think that that's gonna help him soothe the fact that he

lost this time and we can we can work toward the you know the the Nova nuggets or something. All right. So I like it. Yeah. So that was a long way around, but it's it's democracy baby and it's working. So very cool. Yeah.

Yeah. So I'm also having a pretty cool week as far as that kind of stuff goes. I'd say that's a pretty major parenting when you know, I I'll take it. I absolutely take it. I'll take it. Yeah, like I'm happy that my kid is just sleeping all the way through the night. Oh, son. Coming, we're not coming into our room until you know, 531 is when the color of his of his nightlight changes. I had a friend who had a stoplight basically, a stoplight nightlight. So at yellow, you can get off your bed and play in your room.

And at green, you could come get mom and dad. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, ours is just, ours is just blue and green. Blue, you need to, you need to stay in bed. Green, you can come into mommy and daddy. Right. Cause we're not, we're not quite to that level of, of, uh,

BDS and M training. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Teaching young man, those are rules of consent dude. That's that's that's not a bad thing It's just you don't want to think in those contexts yet. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I get you So yeah, but yeah, so no, we're having we're having a pretty good week Well, why don't we get into fourth Ed? Yes, and and spoil it all. Yes, so destroy our faith in humanity. I'm ready. It's not going to be it's not going to be that bad. It's genuinely not going to be that bad. Okay. not going to be that bad. Okay. It is. It's not going to be that bad. Okay. So we're when I left off, we were kind of talking about, you know, what the, what the, what the onus was or what the, what the, what the reason was behind kind of the emotional reaction that folks had between 3rd and 4th.

Right. At the beginning of the episode, you had kind of already kind of struck the chord with it. There was a very big part of it that was the time in which it was happening. And I don't want to make too much out of like, well, you know, it was Obama running for president, but rather it was that there was a generational shift underway in the hobby. Yeah. A demographic shift, if you want. A significant demographic shift in the hobby. The folks who were moving into the prime wage

earner category were a younger generation than the ones who had grown up with first edition through third. And so there was, I'm convinced there was a significant generational difference in response I Believe it There was a really really big mechanical difference between the games Which I want to go into some more detail on I think it's Important to talk about as we go then into looking at

fourth edition into fifth edition. But there was a big mechanical shift between between everything that came before in fourth edition. And it was rooted in a philosophical change in the way the game was being presented. One of the things that came up in one of the two source books, racist, glasses, and monsters, and you gotta look it up again. Magic? magic. Well, the world's end monsters. Okay. One of the things that came up in world's end monsters was this idea that, okay, in fourth edition, the world is going to be a different place.

Everybody who had played first edition, second edition, and into third was very, very familiar with settings like Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms, which by this time had developed a whole lot of their own lore, and there had been a lot of storyline development in the plotline. In second edition A&D, there was a whole plotline about a devastating, like essentially world war in Greyhawk, her for two of the Greyhawk Wars, in which the evil demigod I use worked with, you know, manipulated

a bunch of powers into fighting against each other and, you know, conquered a whole huge swath of the territory. Okay. And, and I mean, at the time it was done as a way to kind of shake things up in the gray hawk setting, but it wound up as time went on and then became part of the can and it became part of the lore for the whole setting. And, you know, similarly, when first edition changed, the second edition in the Forgotten Realms, there was a whole huge lore development called the Time of Troubles

that explained how the whole cosmos, the whole multiverse, had changed between first edition, second edition, and the nature of the way God's interacted with their followers changed between first and second edition. So there were these huge changes in the forgotten realms between the two game editions. So real quick though, this game had graduated quite a bit from being, here's how you pretend to be the wizard on the Miniatures board,

to here is the fiction that underlies this world. And instead of just treating it as, oh, well, if I want to, I can add this lore to it and it now has become quite frankly iconic. And I mean that in the Eastern Orthodox kind of way. Oh, you just made my Catholic heart so happy. Eastern Orthodox kind of way. You just made my Catholic heart happy. But like it's it from coming from from from from a heathen non believer like that means so much to hear.

And you know, I say that with of course all the respect and affection. Of course, of course, I myself from you know calling you an asshole. So yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I. I love you. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, mine out both, but but okay, so but in honesty like It's like you have people had to go out of their way to get upset about shit because I Could play that game and homebrew my own world and never touch any of the back of that book I could I could play in someone else's game and never touch the of the back of that book. I could play in someone else's game and never touch the planar realms

and what actually happened cosmologically because I'm playing an urchin in a city that's nowhere near Greyhawk, you know, and on and on and on. Like it's such a big world that you could absolutely ignore all that stuff and people are now getting really upset that they've upset the cosmology there. Well, okay, here's where I was kind of going with that.

And then you're not entirely wrong. You're totally on point. Yeah, no, this is lived experience. I've talked to people who were very passionate, which to me it's kind of similar to people who are like really passionate about them as damn Baptists. You know, I'm like, oh, okay, cool. You're it's kind of similar to people who are like really impassionate about them as damn baptists You know, I'm like, oh, okay cool your made-up gods are you know at least there's stats on these Like at least I know how many hit points this guy had right, you know, I'm like this is a dog mic and understand, you know

But you know, so so oh your spell goes off at Vespers, you know, it's like that kind of. Yeah, yeah, it's the first Sunday after the first new moon, right? Spring. Yeah. Oh, it's not per encounter. Oh, okay. As opposed to as opposed to those guys, it's, you know, right, right.

To go to one of the most, you know, famous examples in in Christianity. Like when's Easter? Oh, don't get us started. Right. To go to one of the most famous examples in in Christianity. Like when Zester, oh, don't get us started. Right. Speaking speaking specifically as a Roman Catholic, I beg you, please, please, don't get my fellow Christians going on that. Yeah. Well, no, the answer is really easy. All of the reverence I can summon for it, which is a great deal. Please, please, please, I also have a sense of humor. So I'm going to say, please, don't get him started. The answer is easy. You just say Easter Sunday. Well, there you go. Yes, it should be. Yes. So perfect world. Yeah, there you go. Anyway, so people are really upset about these made-up gods.

Well, yeah, so but the whole thing is, the whole reason I bring that up is because those were incidents and and like the issue with the forgotten realms. I do remember in in junior high school, I was never really attached to the forgotten realms as a setting. It was not one that really lit me up very much, but it was one that a lot of people get very passionate about. And the change from first edition to second edition, a lot of people felt like fans of any franchise can tend to feel when there's a huge change in the franchise, people can get butter.

Yeah, and that's fair and valid because it speaks to their connection to those characters that world, that thing. Like, I get that, I do. Yeah. So the forgotten realms had this huge shift between first and second edition, and there were a bunch of people between first and second who were like, I, as this whole time of troubles,

this whole introducing smoke powder and guts into the setting because in second edition we get introduced something new and you know just Kind of a ruffled feathers noises and there were a lot of people who were who were miffed but then In in worlds and monsters Pre-V uniformed edition in worlds and monsters, it's pre-V uniformed edition. The designers for Wizards, who were working on fourth edition, said,

we're going to be portraying a world, the baseline assumption for playing Dungeons and Dragons is that you're living in a world where civilization is made up of bright spots in the middle of a darkened wilderness. When is this? Uh, this was 2007 into 2008. Well, that's Jesus. Yeah, I mean, think of all the gritty TV. Oh, yeah. Well, that Jesus yeah, I mean think of all the gritty TV. Oh Yeah, like it yeah And the way they were and the way they were portraying this didn't make it sound like you know a 90s comic book series like you know All the grit you know post-apocalyptic

They never I mean like for example they never use the phrase post-apocalypse right? You could kind of look at it and see how, well, you know, you're living in a world where the world is, because they hold on, I'm cat in the way. Sorry. They talked about how, you know, you're going to be an adventurer in a world that is very, very ancient, but simultaneously very young. And I remember that kind of phrasing. And it was, you know, and civilization is made up of these bright points surrounded by this kind of wilderness. And, you know, I mean, essentially, when you put the pieces together, that's kind of post-apocalyptic. It's not like Mad Max, post-apocalyptic, but you can kind of see where that vibe is.

Well, it's in. In 2006, Superman came out, Superman Returns, specifically a darker, grittier Superman where he is a flawed Boy Scout. He's both, you know, older and younger, you know, and he's a single dad. Or yeah, I mean, he's he's found that he's got a son. Um, you know, there's there's a lot of Brandon Routh got did dirty. Well, yeah, but like, like, he did an amazing job.

Like, like, yeah. I guess my point, my larger point though is that culturally, this is where we were like a grittier, grittier world. You know, it was there. Yeah, it was there. Yeah, yeah. And so they said this about this, this kind of overarching philosophy of world design. And then when the game came out and they, they before they released the fourth edition version of the Frickan realms. They released the cyclopedia of the realms, which was kind of a combination lore book and an art book that included a bunch of like retcon new material that basically created a way for them to turn the forgotten realms into

this kind of setting that they talked about. And as a player, I'll say that personally, my own opinion was I felt that there were problems with the realms as a setting, because it was already so settled. It was already, you know, there already was a dynasty that had lasted for, you know, 12, 13 generations in, in Kormir, which was kind of the, the, you know, now we have our Arthurian fantasy kingdom right here. And that was, you know, and that was Kormir. And then next to them was the,

do you want to play an Italian city state? Then here you are in Serbia. And that was all like built out and developed and defined. And you know, every detail was already kind of figured out because these settings had been around since the 80s. You know, and just with adventures being published and novels being put out, there had already been so much stuff written that it was like to me as a player, I was like, so okay, I'm either going to get to be a usurper someplace or my DM is going to have to introduce some, you know, Dimonicus X Machina.

Right. So, you know, fuck things up for me to wind up coming in and being the hero, like, yeah. Right. And so that was, I mean, that was my attitude, but I clearly was kind of in minority, because Wizards released this cyclopedia of the realms, and there were a whole lot of really angry fans, because they had taken a setting, and a

whole lot of people had a lot of time and energy and emotional investment in right and They wound up they wound up doing some very fundamental things to the cosmology and they and and more I think I think even bigger than that They wound up with retconning some things from the very earliest earliest beginnings of the proto history of the universe in order to come up with a way to get a result that they wanted to get to have the setting B, what they needed it to be to be the official setting for fourth edition. Well, you do also see that in Marvel Comics with you getting toward the century, Bob Reynolds, I think the character's name was, where he, I mean, he's basically Superman on steroids, and he's a Gorgobick, he's a flawed person and all this, and everybody's treating him like he's

been around forever, and I'm sitting there going like, don't remember this dude at all and then they absolutely wrecked him as someone cast a spell on the whole world so they mostly forgot him and that's why we all forgot him to the point where they even published like four color comics versions of the century which was kind of cool is a a cool approach, you know, like, and it looks like the four color comics. It was interesting. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah. I also see how it made some people really, really, really angry. Oh, I don't doubt it. Because there's a level of scrappy do kind of going on there. In that particular case, there's levels of scrapy due going on. So then they wound up releasing the setting for the foregone realms.

And there was a whole new set of continents that they introduced on the other side of the planet from the flaneas, sorry, flaneas is Greyhawk from the rest of the heartlands of the Fregon Realms. There's a whole other continent that didn't work the same way that operated like I want to go so far as to say under a different kind of fantasy aesthetic. And you know, the thing is, as its own setting, I think it could have been awesome. I think there were some really interesting ideas. There were some fun stuff going on. And the differences in everything were tied to the changes that they had made in the cosmology of the universe. And, and I mean, as a piece of writing, I think it was really good, but I think the problem was

there were a whole bunch of players who were already all set to dislike anything with this new addition because of the way the new addition was working because of the radical way they were changing everything and then they did this and this beloved setting. And this was just like pouring gasoline on these people's hate fire. Like, you know, on top of everything else, look at what they've done to the forgotten realms. Right. right and and it really fell flat like there are a small number of people within within the D&D community who are fans of fourth edition. I'm going to go so first to say I'm one of them I I like it. Like I genuinely like a Lot of things fourth edition. I'm gonna say this fourth edition is the one edition of D&D that I actually looked forward to being the DM

Okay, because there were a lot of things in the way they designed fourth edition that made running a game a lot of things in the way they designed for the edition that made running a game a lot easier. There was a very simple way to design and encounter to be at the right level. Nice. Multiple to the 3.5 campaigns that I've played in. There has been more than one occasion on which an experienced DM has thrown together an encounter that turned out to be either way too easy, which as a player I didn't really ever have too much of a problem with. Although, you know, on one

occasion it was a little bit of a lead down like really, I've been waiting for this to be a thing for weeks and this is what it turns out to be. But then on the other side, one of them very notably turned into a situation that was like a narrowly averted T.P.K. because the DM figured out he was about to have a TPL on his hands like mid-end counter and went okay I got to change some stuff and he was and he was savvy enough and creative enough and cared enough about all of us having fun to make those changes on the fly so that that didn't wind up happening. And that only wound up with half the party in negative hit points.

Wow. OK. And we're talking about it. And we had a very large party playing. We had something like eight characters in our party. So in a smaller group, it would have been a T.B.K. Sure, sure. In round two.

Right. You know, and so, you know, that that that so having that ability to to design encounters more easily mathematically and the and the amount of effort that went into you know, figuring out how we're going to make it. So this is easy to do. that went into figuring out how we're going to make it. So this is easy to do. Made it a game where being the DM was something I kind of looked forward to doing. I had a game that I ran that sadly because of scheduling issues only lasted a few sessions, but like some of my fondest memories of ever being being a DM are are from that very short lived campaign. Sure.

Uh, one of the mechanics that they introduced in fourth edition that I think is amazing is the idea of MOOCs. They have they have monsters who are who are minions. Mm hmm. Uh, any idea is, uh, a minion monster does a fixed amount of damage with each attack. So like a minion hobgoblin is gonna do five points of damage every time it attacks. So to a first level character, a minion hobgoblin is a meaningful threat. Right.

But if you hit that minion, hobgoblin once and do one hit point of damage, it dies down. Right. Yeah. I love that about for that. Which is great. Oh, yeah. Because because it number one, it can make combats go, you have to worry about, okay, now I'm going to take these guys out, but I don't have to spend an hour Out of a combat encounter if I've only got four hours to play right don't have to spend an hour dealing with a

bunch of low-level mooks When when the drama is supposed to be about our paladin going up against their leader the drama is supposed to be about our paladin going up against their leader. You know, we don't we don't have to spend forever just just hacking our way through the hit points of all of the followers. Mm-hmm. And you don't have to worry about rolling low and this cool spell, like not working on anybody. Yeah, turn it out to be a complete disappointment. Mm-hmm.

It was it was great. Yeah, turn it out to be a complete disappointment. It was great. And then as a DM and as a player, I really liked the idea that they codified a way to earn experience points for skill use. Like one of my fondest memories of being a DM is I came up with a skill challenge, kind of on the fly. I only had three characters in the party. We had a cleric, we had a, no, I did have four characters. I had a warlock, we had a cleric, we had a dwarf fighter, and we had a thief. And the characters were having their downtime in a tavern, and I had all of them I rolled for them behind the screen.

They all made perception checks. And several of them noticed that there was this weird oily sheen on the surface of their drinks. drinks and and you know one of them like totally did not notice it and and I got to run an entire encounter that was there was built around the the three of them who figured it out trying to figure out who had poisoned them without giving away the fact that they were trying to figure out who had poisoned them. And like they got to earn experience points for doing that. That's cool. Because in the Dungeon Master's Guide, it said, here's how you do this thing.

Right. You know, they have to rack up so many successes before they rack up so many failures. rack up so many successes before they rack up so many failures. And, you know, using this skill and succeeding here can then open them up to use this other skill to do this thing. And like, oh my god, like, there's actually a meaningful reason to have to have spent skill points on stuff. Like, holy crap, that's amazing. And this is the beginning of the skill challenge. holy crap, that's amazing. And this is the beginning of the skill challenge. Yes, yeah, precisely. And so, you know, and so there were these things about the

mechanic for it that were amazing, but for a lot of people that wasn't D&D. Right. And, you know, the emotional response to that for a lot of those folks was one of I Feel invalidated. I feel attacked. I feel threatened. I feel like you're telling me my choice of game is not as good It's like well, okay I mean I can argue about the virtues of this system versus that system, but I'm not saying like you're a bad person for like wanting to just go murder

hobo. Right. If that's what you have fun doing, then go do that, but I'm going to go over here where I can actually tell a narrative. You know, this is kind of what I want to do. Yeah. Well, I think we're seeing a difference again between people who wanted to win.

I mean, that's, I remember what happens whatever after you get to level 20. Like, and that to me was not that different than the episode that we did on what happens when you get past level nine as a fighter. You know, like, like they want genuine rewards in this imaginary world. And, and then you have a new generation of players who want to play in a very different way. And so there are rules to adjudicate any number of things, including combat, of course, but also all these other things that involve cleverness and stuff like that.

So again, I get that like people are, you know, it reminds me of whenever people get upset at they're being a new Star Trek movie. Like in fairness, you know, most of the Star Trek movies are garbage. Like rewatch them. They're hard to bear. And I have thoughts and ideas as to why that is. But ultimately, like if you look at the fan response to Star Trek movies when they come out, it's always frustrated, it's always aggrieved. And one of the reasons why is because you took the thing that they've invested all their time and love and energy into. And you've changed it, and thereby told them on some level that their love for it was not valid enough to keep it the same. Yeah.

So yeah, there's a lot overlap there. Yeah, yeah, no, I think there's a lot to that. So, you know, and, and so this turned into a genuine schism, like between second and third edition, there were a great many players who said, you know what, this is this, I don't like this. As you mentioned, the proprietor of the FLGS saying, you know, this isn't D&D or your actual answer is your DM at second to third saying, you know, it's not D&D anymore. It's a great system, but it's not D&D anymore. And between 3.5 and 4th, there was this real schism. I mean, you know, you need to talk about iconic things in the Eastern Orthodox sense. Oh, yeah, that's really kind of the way it was.

And I think part of what added fuel to the fire was the fact that by the time this happened, the landscape of tabletop RPG publishing was a very different place. And a company like Peizo could say, well, you know what, we've been publishing all these adventures for 3.5. We know the 3.5 rules really well under the open gaming license, and so you know what, we're going to take the D20 system and we're going to change a couple of things and under the OGL and under the D20 system we're going to do Pathfinder. And if you don't like the way fourth edition is going, you are going to still have this other source that's going to continue. We're going to continue putting out adventure pads. We're going to continue putting out new new split books. And

you're going to get new feet and you're going to get all this stuff essentially utilizing the 3.5 system and I know that they're going to be path fighter players who are like path fighter is not 3.5. Okay, no, you're right. There are, there are some differences, but I mean, seriously, mechanically, it's almost one for one. 3.75.75. It's, yeah, it's like 3.5.2. Right. You know, now interestingly in the last year and a half, maybe two years at this point, they have actually come out with a second edition of Pathfinder, which is a much bigger change because they legitimately looked at it, because 3.5 had basically the same,

Pathfinder had basically the same problems as 3.5. It's still relied on the Christmas tree issues. It still had, you know, did difficulty classes when you got up, when you got up to high levels, meant, you know, skills were still just proficiencies with makeup on them. And combat was still way too complicated. And so they made some very significant changes

to a number of parts of the rules, and they released Pathfinder 2.0. And interestingly, my own understanding being very much in an arm's length removed from it is that most everybody who's a Pathfinder player looks at Pathfinder 2.0 and goes, yeah, yeah, it needed to be simplified. And they fixed a lot of stuff.

Which I look at and I'm like, okay, but like changing things to fourth edition was like a bridge too far. Right. You know, well, yeah, because at that point, it's there's a branding. Yeah, well, yes. Number one. Yeah. And then I think also there is legitimately there is the issue that fourth edition was Like there there are so many mechanical differences

Like you know you still have six stats. He still use a d20 You still add modifiers to a d20 role, but like saving throws were changed very dramatically You know there were a lot of things that were very different and those were changed very dramatically. You know, there were a lot of things that were very different. And it was not, it was an evolution rather than a simplification. Right. Okay. This still reminds me of there was an article I read in the onion after the first Chris Pine Star Trek came out.

And I didn't like it because it was the mid 2000s. I could probably look up when, it was like 2007 to 2009. They're about, and it came out. And I didn't like it because there was the screeching metal sound. And that seemed to permeate a lot of sci-fi movies at that point. They're all doing screeching metal sound like and and that seemed to permeate a lot of sci-fi movies at that point They're all doing screeching metal like this sucks Um, and it takes me out of things Um, but I remember an article being written in the onion and it said um

Star Trek fans angry that Star Trek that new Star Trek movie is a watchable enjoyable movie And this totally echoes that. Okay, so, so building off of that, there's a webcomic entitled Hygiene's ensue. And I don't know if it's still running, but I know it was when, when the first of the new Trek movies came out. And the any author of the web web comic is a massive, massive trekkie, like huge trekkner, NASBEN forever. And so the new Chris by movie came out.

And any published a comic. And the first two panels were a couple of guys sitting in the audience of the new movie going, oh this is this is unholy, this is terrible, this is what would what a rotten Mary say, oh god, this is oh my god, this is this terrible such a desecration of the franchise. And you know, you're reading this and you're like, oh, yeah, okay, yeah, I know he's a typical trek he hated it. And the last frame of the comic is the main character of the comic who is this dude in comic form, uh, uh, standing at the front of the movie theater, like clutching the screen and

like, humping humming screen. Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe and this movie was. Right. And yeah, so, you know, and I gotta say, I'm, I'm, the way, you know, anybody asks me, you know what kind of nerd are you? I say, well, you know, I'm trekkajasant. Right. Like I have, I have a lot of friends who are very, very, very passionate trekkies. You're one of them.

Mm-hmm. You know, you're a DS9 guy mostly. Yes, right? You know, I have I have other friends who are very very emotionally attached to the original series who You know will will argue passionately about you know TNG being some of the best sides fiction television ever done. Like, you know, and I mean, people who absolutely are madly in love with the franchise. And like, I'm a nerd, so I'm around these people, so I know Star Trek. Right.

You know, but I'm, I never invested emotionally into the same way that I did other things, Tolkien, Natch, you know, Star Wars, and that kind of stuff. And so I went and saw that film, the beginning of New Trek. And I went and saw it and I left the theater going like, okay, you know what, I might actually become a Trekkie. Like, I genuinely came out of it going, I want to see more of this because that was

genuinely entertaining. Oh yeah. So you know yeah and and and so you know they're they're within within a fandom of any kind you're gonna have people who are like no no no what you've done is awesome. I love this. I want more. And then you're going to have the people who are, you know, I don't like change. I'm a grognar. I've invested so much in this like this is threatening to me. Right.

Reactionaries. Yeah. Yeah. And the thing is, I think for the addition, sadly, in my opinion, alienated far more people into the hobby, because it lasted a very, very short period of time. And there was a lot of crowing when it looked like fourth edition had turned into a bust. There was an awful lot of crowing by a lot of those same grognards about, yeah, see, see it's dying.

It's because they killed it. It sucks. It deserves to go away. You know, kind of stuff. And, you know, and, all right, whatever. So then in 2012, wizards, so five years later, and even shorter period of time,

the 3.5 existed. Five years after fourth came out, wizards announced that they were coming out with another edition of the game. Initially, they referred to it as D&D next. The project was D&D next. We figured out there's some limitations to fourth edition. There's people who don't like what we've done. So we're we're working on trying to figure out what we're going to do with with D&D as a game. Uh-huh. And I heard about this and because

you know in writing this episode I kind of figured out that you know what every time there's been a new addition of this game I have responded with a mixture of, oh man what are they going to do? Combined with an awful lot of dude, dude, whatever this is, I want it, I want it now. Because I don't know how to describe what that is, but it's like, no, no, no, what's the new hotness? I must have this. I want to see what they're going to do. Like, it's going to be awesome. And like, I mean, I've been disappointed a couple of times, but usually I've just been like, yes, yes, this is amazing. This is the next big thing. This I got to do this. And fifth edition was no different. As a

matter of fact, with fifth edition, I was like, you know what, they're saying they're having an open play test. Right. I got to sign up for this shit. Like, how do I get to do this? So I actually wanted to participate in my DMs. I ran several sessions of the Fifth Edition rules set as it was being developed. And then in 2013, they, well, over between 2012 and over the course of 2013, they released a series of packets of, okay, here's the latest iteration of what we're doing with

the rules. Play this, figure out how it's working, respond to, Let us know what's working. What's not right. And in one of the playtest packets, I most I most clearly remember all of my players agreeing including the guy who is playing the wizard character agreeing that fire bolt is way too powerful a spell like as a first level ray of fire. Ray fire is way too powerful a spell like as a first level ray of fire. Ray of fire is way too powerful. A spell bolt bolt of flame. Thank you. Yeah. Bolt of flame should not be doing this much damage as a first level spell. I should not be able to do this.

Like, you know, and then this was part of the feedback. And I was really excited to get to do that. And so in 2014, they released the official fifth edition rule set for D&D. So now again, just like, just like since 3.5, they're not referring to it as a 18 to India anymore. So now it's fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons. And now you and I actually have experience playing together in this rules set. Yes. And I think it's safe to say that we both like this rules set. Yes, it's, it's, there's a clear line from, um, I would say third ed all the way up

through this, like in terms of them wanting to make it easier to play and in here's the part that really matters to me, that kind of points to the generation gap. It is easier for us to make a cooperative storyline, a collaborative storytelling session. Yes, very collaborative storytelling session. Yes. Very much. Yeah.

Yeah. And there is a, they have, they have chosen in fifth edition, you know, a balance point somewhere between granularity and simplicity. And between lore and iconoclasm. Okay, explain what you mean by iconoclasm in that text, in that sense. Sure, so in the previous one, the gods have done something totally different. All the things you thought you knew

or different Superman is back and he's a single dad. You know, it's, everything's different. It's different kind of for the sake of being different because it's been the same for so long that we need to shake things up. That seems to be it. And people react badly when you shake things up purely for the sake of shaking things up. You don't just turn a good guy into a bad guy unless you're trying to kill off that character. You give the bad guy a reason to be a bad guy,

you know, in wrestling. You can't just shake it up, right? Yeah, he'll face he'll turn, has to be explained. Exactly. There has to be a logic to it. Macho man had a reason to attack Hulk Hogan Stuff like that, you know so you know you You you had in four in Pathfinder you had the All the gods that you thought were cool or all the gods that you really got to know and you memorized what each of them was, you know, what their sphere of influence was and on and on and on. Look, we've changed it all. Scrappy do.

And now... I love how we keep going back to that example. Yeah. Yeah, and and now in 5e it seems to have settled back in toward what people knew a bit like in terms of the lore with all the stuff that they've released and things like that There are some new twists. There are some redefinitions of things. There are definitely inclusions were previously they had not been thought of which I I rather enjoy but more importantly it is in many ways, like, we're going back to Coke classic, but we're calling it Coke classic. And so five weeks, I think strikes the balance between, oh, we're going to, we're going to change some stuff

up here, folks, but we're not going to, we're not going to change it up so that it's unrecognizable and you have to learn a whole new set of cosmology. Yeah. You know? Yeah, no, I think that's a meaningful point. Fifth also, very, very importantly, reintroduced or I should say reintroduced because fourth fourth edition included feats, but feats were almost kind of vestigial. They felt kind of tacked on and they provided the ability to do kind of different stuff, but they didn't have the same flash that they had had in 3.5.

And with 4th, feats can be a very important part of your character, but there's a limited set of them. Right. And they said, okay, no, look, here's what they are, and we're not going to go introducing hundreds of new ones just to introduce hundreds of new ones. And the way the mechanics of spells and abilities and everything feel a lot more like 3-5 or feel a lot more like second edition. like three five or feel a lot more like second edition. But at the same time, they've kept the idea that everybody in the party has something special they can do. Most turns, which

was one of the really big deals in fourth edition was we want to give everybody something they can do every round. We don't ever want to have a situation where the wizard is like, well, you know, that's it, I'm spent, right? You know, or where the fighter just says, I hit him over the head again. You know, we want to give everybody something kind of flash, she's something kind of cool. They can do every time they have a turn. And in fourth that wound up turning into,

well, you know, okay, this time I'm using this every round, this time I'm using this one, you know, you switch back and forth between powers that were kind of scripted, right, which turned into a limitation. Yeah. But with this one, you know, fighters like, okay, well, you know, what are what fighter archetype are you doing? What fighting style have you chosen? you know, what arch what fighter archetype are you doing? What fighting style have you chosen? And you can still have a character who it's like, no, no, I look different from that other fighter over there and I fight differently from that other character over there. And you still have that ability to customize things

and there's that level of granularity, but at the same time, very importantly, they introduced advantage and disadvantage. Which I'd love because if there's one word that I would use to describe 5e, it's streamlined. Yes. Yeah. Yes. And so it's, okay, Well, here's the deal. All of these conditions give you advantage. Mm-hmm. All of these conditions give the other guy disadvantage. But what happened to me

stacking things up and like having a plus 20 to my role? Like, over fuck's egg. Just roll two dice and pick the biggest one. Right. You know, and it still feels like, oh man, I have advantage. And that's a big deal. It is. Yeah. I mean, like, statistically, look at the way, look at the way those rolls go. And no, that's a big deal. But also, it manages to be a big deal without everybody having to to keep track of you know a dozen different modifiers at once right

And so so what's interesting is I don't know To what extent fifth edition has brought people back from Pathfinder. I genuinely don't know from Pathfinder. I genuinely don't know. But I do know that fifth edition has been a very big success at bringing new people into the hobby. Yes. Sales figures for fifth edition are way better than fourth. And it's since the advent of fifth that in part of this is technology advancing, but you know critical role at all of the podcasts and you know the major gaming gaming group real-play podcasts that we see and those those media, nearly all of that, is post-fifth edition. Yeah, it's like we hit a critical mass.

Yeah, and the brand of Dungeons & Dragons, I think, has now become... It's still not mainstream. You're still, if you play D&D, you're still a nerd. You're still getting around that. But their fifth has lowered the threshold of entry for people. Yes. And you no longer need to be an obsessive nerd.

Like, you need to pay attention to some math, but you don't need to be like a math lead. Yeah, and well, because you're not strategizing how to win. Yes. You're not coming up with, like, well, if I stack this over here, and then on this level, I, if I stack this over here and then on this level I get this thing and if I do this on this level, like you're not doing that, which is nice, which by the way, you know,

35 More I think than than the others Enabled you to create the most specific character you could Oh my god, yeah. So there is literally not another fighter that is like this character, right? Well, in 5e, they're going to be because there's only nine or ten different, you know, subclasses for fighter. So you're going to have similarities and overlap, you know, and stuff like that.

And there's nothing wrong with that, by the way, because the real thing about that is that, you know, you're into the cooperative, the collaborative storytelling, whereas in 3.5, it was still a remnant of the, I wanna go hit monsters and take their stuff so that I can win. Yes. So, which was interesting, because you would think the one that allows you the

greater creativity when it comes to creating characters would be the one that allows more cooperative storytelling, but in fact it was the opposite. So again, another reason why they nerd-raged against a 40 and Pathfinder. Yeah, well, yeah, and that's that's that's part of it. And again, the the nerd rage against fourth edition was was I think exacerbated, accelerated, in the sense of somebody using an accelerant to pour to pour fuel on a fire, it was accelerated by pathfinder existing. So the nerd rage was directed at fourth. Right. And it was aided and abetted by the fact that now there had been this, you know, Lutherian schism.

And if you didn't wanna go along with the church and stick with fourth or go to fourth, you could instead, you know, go to three five or go to go to path instead you know go to three five or go to go to Pathfinder which was still three five and you know you could you know talk about how Wizard of the Coast was swimming and shit which by the way is one of my favorite quotes from Martin Luther about the Pope. I love telling my students when we get to talking about their information. I love telling them that no Martin Luther had a potty mouth. Like if I directly quoted Martin Luther in front of you guys, I would get in trouble.

So anyway, but you know, it was it was it was because there had been that split, that I think the anger could remain at the fee for pitch that it did. Because between first and second edition, there were people who were like, as it doesn't feel like my game anymore, and they just kept playing using the first edition rules.

Between second and third edition, they were like, well, it doesn't feel like day and day anymore, but it's a pretty good system. We're gonna keep going. Between third and fourth, it was like, you have insulted my ancestors. Oh, yeah. And I will never make peace.

And like, and like, now we're into fifth edition. And like, within the last seven days, I've seen people throwing shit at each other online. Right. Just somebody had the temerity to say that, well, you know, I really liked fourth. Mm-hmm. Well, like you like cancer then. It's like, no, broccoli.

No, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no broccoli like fuck off. Yeah, now I did find it heartening the guy who who through that Toxicity was immediately bet by like half a dozen people in the forum going dude Mm-hmm. Where where did the bad man touch you walk away Which was nice to see because you know five years ago, that wasn't there. Right. You know, there would have been five or eight other guys joining him to pile it on the guy who's setting like fourth. Right.

You know, so that was a nice change. The level of, no, no, man, walk it off was nice to see. And the thing is, this is now what I want to kind of add a coda to it. Now that we're living in the fifth edition world, we're also now living in the world where Black Lives Matter. We're also living in a world where Black Panther was a major, major important motion picture that made a huge amount of money at the box office. Over a billion. Yeah, we're living in a world where we've had a mainstream Marvel comic character be a Muslim teenage girl. And where that same character name has now been portrayed on screen by a woman in a movie that ended without that woman choosing to fight her, her evil mentor. Mm-hmm. Where at the end of it she just said, you know what, I don't need

to fight you. Yeah, I don't, well she specifically said, I don't have anything to prove to you. I don't have anything to prove to you. Yes, yes. Which, that's a very like, you pass the test. You've graduated from him begging the question that you need to fight him, you know, instead of like, well, yes, I could kick your ass. It's, I don't have to prove myself to you. Yeah.

Like, that is a really important line in terms of, yeah, that kind of stuff and many people have said that Brie Larson's depiction of cat Marvel. She is coded as gay and The haircut in endgame certainly helped that So, you know, you're you're you're're speaking to one aspect of it, but there is a second aspect, and that is absolutely alive and vibrant in the 5E stuff as well.

Oh, you know, representation, not just of color and gender, but also gender fluidity as well as sexuality. Yeah, and there's a meme that went around, or is going around, that I was very disappointed by, because I'm a huge fan of the Dragon Lance setting, World of Ancelon, from Dragon Lance, is my

happy place in terms of like you know fantasy fiction comfort food. That's my thing and I have identified To a possibly unhealthy degree with with stern bright blade from the time I was about 12 years old Okay, the the night of salamnia who you know with with Sturm Breitblade from the time I was about 12 years old. Okay. The the night of salamnia who, you know, never feels like he lives up to the ideals of the order, consistently, you know,

winds up actually having the epiphany that's a very important moment kind of in the series. Spoiler alert for a book, you know, that's practically 40 years old now. He dies in a moment of self sacrifice, but he realizes that the order he, he desperately, desperately desperately wants to be part of. He realizes that order has become ossified and is more concerned with the letter of its own rules than the spirit of its own honor. It pulls law of iron bureaucracy, writ, medieval.

Yeah. Yeah. And his whole like the core of his character is the oath of the night to slam down. S. Salara, I saw with my thus my honor is my life. And that this so this character and the setting are literally part of my own moral compass. And I love the setting so desperately. And I was I was so disappointed to see this meme. There was an image from, I don't know, we're related to some more recent D&D fifth edition or one of the podcasts that I

mentioned, one of those campaigns that was a whole bunch of you know, characters from a very modern dnd party So you know as you mentioned looking very gender fluid Multiple tieflings in the party. So you know horns and kind of you know bat wings kind of going on and you know Purple skin tones and and pale and natural like chalk white skin tones, like all this kind of stuff in between, all of which is subconsciously coded

for gender fluidity, as racial difference, all this kind of stuff. Mm-hmm. And it was this party of, you know racial difference all this kind of stuff. You know, and it was, and it was this party of, you know, 2019, you know, 2010s, you know, into 2020s, you know, concept of this is the D&D party, right? And, and, you know, with all that, all of that kind of, you know, subconvist kind of being going on with it. And that was the top image. And it was a pretty badass image. It was not an aesthetic, I'm wrong with it. It's not that it lights me in that ass. That's valid. So,

with image on top, and the famous paint of the companions from dragglands, kind of the iconic figures from that from that setting, including Stormriplay, on the bottom and the top picture said reject modernity, the bottom pad embrace tradition. Wow. And I saw that and I was so fucking disappointed. Like just like okay, no. Because every single thing, maybe not every single face, one of the characters in the companions is a is a barren character who is who is coded in the setting is essentially being a planes Indian. So technically he's not technically he's not white guy. Technically one of the characters is half elf. He's got Melerdys and Reddish hair.

One of them is a dwarf, so not human. This is a tender, so basically halfling, so okay, not human. But basically they're all white. Right. Several of them are female, but the female characters in the group, one of them is the cleric, so the woman is into into into a healing caretaking position. One of them is a fighter who in the novels is on of the main fighter of the party. And then the third one is the in love with the half-el dude. And like, okay, for 1985.

I mean, you basically just listed gauntlet. Pretty much. Yeah. Not wrong, yeah. But we're living in an era now where many more people who are playing our game identify as queer. Yes. We are able to freely identify as queer. We are living in an era where more and more non-white people, you know, black indigenous people of color, the IP of playing our game.

We are living in the player's handbook. Multiple characters are shown as being non-white. Yes. And as you've all recounts are shown as being gender queer, like are they are they but I and Eric maybe not. Like you know they're shown in ways that are representative of these that people exist in the world openly now. And you want to take all of that

and you wanna run back to your fucking tree house with all of the other white boys in your mom's basement back in 1986. Like, and of mine who took it down after I that's costically pointed these things out and another friend and a mutual friends pointed the same things out. Mm-hmm.

Uh, and any took it and I don't and like I know I Know it's not the kind of person to like exclude anybody from the game group He's not the kind of person to be like against anybody's identity But the thing is We operate in a hobby for the first 30 plus years of its existence was overwhelmingly Right, sis head white guy And a lot of us are of an age where we grew up with all of our heroes being sis head white guys like stern bright

Well, it is this is a white guy. I'm not gonna lie about that like, you know, that's a thing but you know we we You know, that's a thing. But, you know, we need to be aware of the ways in which we consciously or unconsciously make our hobby welcoming or not welcoming to people who fucking look like us who don't have our same life experiences. And, you know, what I want to bring this around to is last year, wizards added material. If you go online and you buy a PDF copy of Oriental Adventures from First Edition AD&D. There's gonna be a page in that PDF that you're buying that's going to say this was published in an earlier era and it includes the things that are stereotypes

that may be offensive to people now. that may be offensive to people now. And the fact that wizards went in and added that page to those books had a great many guys your age and mine. Oh yeah. Older than us. Absolutely shrieking. About how wizards of the coast was giving into PC pressure and they were turning into social justice worries. And my God, why can't you just let us have our hobbies?

Well, here's the deal, motherfucker. There are other people who are joining us in our hobbies now who might look at that. Who might actually want to try playing in a first edition game, but we'd look at that book and go, oh, my fucking God, what, what are you saying about my people? Right. Like, like, no man, this is this is literally, this is literally the country my ancestors came from. And you're depicting this how? Yeah. Like, you know, I look at some of the stuff in in Oriental Adventures as a historian of East Asia, and I'm like, well, okay, that's kind of a massive oversimplification, but okay.

Right. I'm saying that as a white guy. Like if I were Chinese or Korean, or to a lesser extent, it got me some stuff about Japan fairly accurately, but like, dude, yeah, you know, there's there's stuff that like I can't even begin to talk about it because I'm not I'm not from one of those cultures, but like looking at that, I can totally see some of the generalizations and some of the some of the myths that are perpetuated in it could be really offensive to somebody. Like acknowledging that that's the case is the absolute bare minimum. Yeah. And people get real upset that that's happening.

And, and the thing is, and the thing is, I think also this is part of what happened with 3.5 and, and, and into fourth is There's this recognition that there are more people joining the hobby those people don't all look like us and oh my god You're invading my tree house. Mm-hmm. Yeah and and this is where I act is this is where I actually turn into an addition warrior This is the point in which I actually get really angry about this because at the time between second edition and 3.5, it didn't really matter to me. At the time between third and fourth,

it didn't really matter to me. Now, after George Floyd, now in a world where Black Lives Matter, now in a world where I've started actually paying attention to this shit, it really makes me mad. Because I was raised to believe that I should be doing everything I can to not be the guy who's an asshole. Right. And if I'm saying, well, you know, why are you making me do this thing to acknowledge that this might be offensive like anybody? This isn't offensive. I don't think this is offensive. We know what? If you don't, that doesn't mean somebody else

might not. Right. And if you refuse to acknowledge that there's even the chance of it being offensive or worse yet, worse yet, if you say, well, you know, you shouldn't be offended by this. Right. Erasing their experience. Yeah. No, fuck you. Well, I would even fuck you. I don't want you at my gaming table. Like, like, what I'm going to think I've come around to is like if you have a problem with this, if you're going to perpetuate this, you know, reject modernity, you know, uh, uh, you know, stick with tradition kind of shit, you know what, I don't need you in my gaming group. Because there are a whole lot of younger, queer players of color who are going to come up with

way cooler character concepts and are going to have a lot more fun actually fucking role-playing You so you get the fuck out of my gaming store Like you said you said earlier in our last episode talking about being a reverse gatekeeper. That's what fully where I am with this like I don't need you in my hobby Yeah, I mean there's you know, I want to go back to the, the, I kind of lost the thread there, the, the, the offensive part. Um, they're, they are seeing inclusion as invasion. They are seeing, um, like you said, you know, that you've come to my treehouse, they're, they house. They're seeing dehumanization as merely offensive. They're seeing, like, there is a muting of another person's experience.

And what I get a kick out of is that in these games, you never have a party of nothing but fighters. You never have a party of nothing but fighters. You never have a party of nothing but any single class. You absolutely have to have diversity in your party. The way to win at D&D is having a diverse party. And yet, when it comes to actually having different folks with different perspectives and different goals, suddenly there's a reticence, you know, a discomfort. Yeah.

And yeah, I mean, that's basically it. Like, they, you know, they're more than just gatekeeping. They're excluding. Yeah. And that's, and that's really what it is. Like what you think was offensive to people and therefore it's not that big a deal, was dehumanizing and therefore exclusionary.

And it did its job, it made it so that you had a safe space for yourself to never be challenged. But frankly, those are challenges you should have like moved past quite a while ago. You know, and they shouldn't have been challenges. But like that's, you know, that's in many ways what's going on there is that D&D has ceased to be as exclusive. I'm not going to say it's perfect. I'm not going to say that it's done a perfect job, you know, very often progress happens and fits and starts

and there are steps backward before you step forward. And I think there have been half steps and errors along the way. but the overall arch is leading toward inclusion of other people and validation of their experiences and their their fantasy wants. And I think that's a very very good thing because in the beginning it was fetishization of other people's fantasy wants. And now it's the inclusion of other people's fantasy wants. And it's the inclusion of other people instead of the fetishization of other people.

And I think that that's always good to a game. Yeah, well, you know, if you don't bring new people into a hobby, a hobby dies. Yeah. Like it's really as simple as that. You don't bring new people into a hobby. It does. The hobby dies. Yeah. Like it's really as simple as that. And, you know, I mean, I'm not going to fib. I'm not going to lie here.

I am perfectly happy playing in a campaign setting that is very clearly, hey man, this is like a really, really, really Western Europe in the 1400s. Like, I would totally do that. I'm totally comfortable doing that. Like, okay, we're gonna just basically port everything from Tolkien into this. And like those are all the tropes we're using

and it's gonna be totally trop horrific and we're fine with that. Oh yeah. Okay, and I'd play the hell out of that. And I'd have a lot of fun doing it. But there are a lot of people who'd look at that and go, okay, but this thing is problematic here. Mm-hmm.

Can we talk about the idea that an entire race of people is evil? Like, as a person, like, no, can we talk about that? Like, this makes me uncomfortable. And if you have somebody confront you with that, the response should be, okay, let's talk about that. You know, and okay, yeah, maybe that's a thing. Maybe we should look into that.

You know, let's figure out how to work that out. And you know, if somebody says, well, you know, if I want to play this character, who does this? Okay, like, as you know, I personally don't like the idea of playing evil, aligned characters, just because my adventure fantasy's don't involve being a dick, but, you know, anything else, I'm totally, you know, like, let's talk about that. Let's turn this into a collaboration. Right. And,

you know, so that nobody who I know is listening is thinking I'm attacking anybody, I know that my friends who are, you know, massive addition warriors from earlier editions are not the kind of people to exclude anybody from their table at all and are not and are are committed to being, you know, open-minded and accepting of people in the real world. But there are some conversations that we've had about the underlying kind of tropes and assumptions that are involved and some of the stuff they want to have in the games that they run and play. And they get uncomfortable with that. And you know, with all of the love and respect, I have for them like guys, because you are

guys, you're probably thinking I'm only talking to one of you right now, because I've had these conversations with each of you separately, but no, I'm talking to more than one of you right now with all of the love and respect and admiration I have for you. You know, let's think about broadening our horizons a bit. And let's think about the level of emotional reaction we're having to steps that are being taken to make the hop be more inclusive to other people who don't look like us and haven't had our life experiences. And let's try to remember that that isn't actually a threat to our ability to have fun. Yeah.

And like in the middle of us, recording these sessions between recording sessions, you know, we talked about, we need to talk about the, you know, issues, the racial issues, the kind of white, the systemic white supremacy that kind of is involved in tabletop hobbies. And I don't know if we, I don't know if there's enough statistically kind of stuff, if there's enough scholarly, anything to really spend a whole episode on it. But I think kind of touching on it here is necessary. And so this is kind of my effort to try to do that here at the end is because of these things that have happened recently with publishers and the response that I've seen from too many guys my age who look like me,

that the hobby is being ruined and wizards has just gone away of caving a PC pressure and now orcs are people too. And I mean, we had a whole episode about me starting out kind of bitching about the idea of orcs being people too. And then eventually having to come around too. No, if we're being intellectually honest starting out kind of bitching about the idea of works being people to and then eventually having to come around to know. Yeah. You know, if we're being intellectually honest and we don't want to be jerks about it,

they kind of have to be. Yes. You know, you know, and yeah, that's basically kind of it is, is we need to, we need to recognize that having a more inclusive hobby, having a set of rules, and a set of settings, and aesthetics that make people feel represented, and make people feel welcome is a good thing for all of us. Yeah. I would say the setting thing is especially important. Yeah. Having a picture of your fighter be, you know,

Carthaginian and Numidian. That's cool, but you know, it's really cool having an entire setting that's not central Europe. Yeah. Yeah. Oh heck, if they even not central Europe. Yeah. Oh heck if they even did central Europe that it be kind of a kind of a big change. That's true. I think I think you were looking for Eurocentric, but if they actually had a game system it was in the Balkans that it be huge. I was just thinking of like where a huge forest was that the Romans were afraid of. So in that sense, yes. Yeah. But you say Central Europe and I go actually farther east than

Germany. I think Czechoslovakia. Yeah. And over into the Balkans, which is I guess technically Eastern Europe, but anyway. Mm-hmm. You know, so yeah, no, like we used my buddies and I in high school. We whined and complained so much about how none of the girls in our high school were weren't nerds. And I mean, we were wrong because they were. We just weren't paying attention and didn't like, we had our own issues that we weren't, you know, looking in the right places or, you know, recognizing the right things, which was sexist of us, like hugely, and I know that, you know, juvenile, but you guys are literally juveniles. We literally were juveniles, so, you know, I'm going to have a little bit of compassion for my old self. You know, like, you know, if we ever have him on the show, a friend of the show, Bishop O'Connell, is going to corroborate for me that like, no, no, we had extended bitching sessions about like, you know, not having any girls in

our circle of friends. And, you know, and now the hobby is getting progressively more and more female friendly, along with more LGBTQ friendly and ethnically, racially friendly to other people, and there's more and more representation there. And it's like so many guys my own age are all of a sudden like getting pissed off about this stuff. And I'm like, guys, do you not remember? And I mean, in some cases, they don't. But because, you know, let's be honest, that was 30 years ago. But yeah, come on now. So anyway, that's, I don't know, that's, that's

kind of where, where I'm, I'm ready to leave it. At this point is just, you know, the roots of the edition wars include some generational and representational issues that I think anybody who's angry about it needs to really reflect on. And that's my money shot. There we go. Yeah. No, I see no reason to disagree. I would point out that, you know, as, here's what I've gleaned over the last several episodes, as the additions have gone on in time, we as a society have evolved as a society does.

As a culture we have evolved. We have allowed more people at the table. As a culture, that is good. It is only fitting that the art and the games that we play reflect that. To think otherwise is to think that culture is a static thing, and that's simply untrue. And also, evolution of a game system is never going to be perfect because it grows semi-organically and semi-planned by people who are immeshed in their culture. So, I mean, this is a game that started in the 1970s. You know, Hank Aaron broke the home run record in the 1970s. He was getting death threats.

Oh, yeah. That was in 70s. That was only a couple of years before our beloved game got started. Oh, yeah. So the world is immensely different place. Yeah, it's changed by leaps and bounds. Our population is exploded. We have, again, I guess at more representation,

we have, that was what two generations ago. Oh, fuck you. And then some, so. Yeah, I know you're right. It's true though. And it's, so all of that, you know, a game is reflective, a game is art, and art is reflective of the culture

and shapes the culture, because it reinforces the stories and it tells the stories. And so I think that that's one of the reasons that like why is it getting more inclusive because our society is, why is it getting more collaborative? Because our society is starting to realize that that's the way out. So yeah, it makes sense that that would be the fantasy.

So you know, you can tell a lot about a culture, by how it fantasizes, and how dearly people hold on to those fantasies, I think. And I think this is starting to show that. Yeah, that's that's that's very deep for for another way, very frivolous kind of topic. Yeah. Well, you know, all right. So what are you reading anything reading watching seeing listening to? Watching I have recently had the chance to Get back into watching a long-mire On Netflix which I recommend very highly Because it has I, one of the best representations of an adult male of a

very deep adult male friendship that I've seen. The protagonist and his best friend, the titular longmeyer is the sheriff of the town in Wyoming. And his best friend is a Native American owner of a bar in the town. And the two of them have a friendship that goes back to Vietnam because they're both old guys. And yeah, no, it's amazingly well-written and Lou Diamond Phillips plays the best friend and he's amazing. Speaking of representation, I just heard a quote from him the other day, he said, if I only played my bloodline, I never would have gotten work.

There you go. Yeah, so cool. Yeah. All right. So that's my recommendation. I'm not not reading anything right now. I want to try to fix that. Yeah. How about you? I'm going to recommend. So there's a fellow that I'm friends with and he doesn't know that I'm plugging this on this podcast. I don't even know if he listens. His name's Theo Morgan, and before the plague times, he had a game that he kind of homebrewed up. It was kind of D&D, but it ended up not being D&D.

Anyway, it was called diversity and dragons, and he used to do it down at the comedy spot, and he and I were always talking about like, when he could get me on, you know I play d&d I'm a big nerd and I don't know Never actually happened and he had a really cool regular cast But he also I know put a few of them on the YouTube's so if it's still out there I'm recommending people check out diversity and dragons.

And he's an interesting cat. Look up Theo Morgan, TEO Morgan. Probably find him on all the social medias. He has a lot of interesting things to say about diversity in these role-playing games. All, yeah, so that's what I would recommend. All right, yeah. I'm going to have to, I'm now, you know, after recording all this, I'm fired up to go look that up. Cool, let me know how it goes.

So, working people find you if they want to tell you why they're not going to fuck off out of your hobby. They can find me at eHBlaylock on Twitter and also the same initials on TikTok, although you won't find very much at that address. And on Instagram, you can find me at Mr. Playlock. And of course, if you want to shout at both of us at the same time, you can find us at Geek History Time on the Twitter machine. And where can they find you? Find me at Da Harmony on Twitter and Instagram. Find me every Tuesday night on Twitch.tv, forward slash capital puns Tuesday nights at 8.30 p.m. Those are a few good places to find me. So yeah, oh, and also anytime there's a door that needs to be held open, I'm your guy.

There you go. So, that's what monks do. That's what monks do. Well, for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock, and until next time, I'm Damien Harmony.