“I can’t seem to find anywhere else to display my disgust. I have played D&D for over fifteen years. I love the game and have spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars on the books, miniatures and so on. I even went to see that horribly disappointing movie.
The worst blow to any true, hardcore fan is this 3rd Edition. Talk about dumbing down the best roleplaying game on the face of the earth. The powers that be have taken a game that built on people’s imaginations and made you work for your reward and turned it into an idiotic, child-like version of itself. You don’t work for your reward, the new spells and psionics are silly, the prestige class is a pathetic addition, and forcing the rest of the gaming world to change everything that they have learned for twenty to twenty-five years is just plain hell.
I have seen the rise of D&D and now, I’m sad to say, I have seen the beginning of the end. All of you have shot your foot and you don’t even know it. This is one devoted TSR fan and DM of thirty players that will not buy another product and does not allow any of this crud in the game. Until you start making products that reclaim the honor and glory, I say to all of you that will listen that this d20 system is the destroyer of the greatest game known to roleplaying, and those who use it are not true D&D players and masters.”
J Jackson, Kansas City, MO
Dragon magazine issue 293 dated March 2002
Reprinted here in full, and without comment. I’ll leave you guys to do that.
Enjoy.
Bravo, Mr. Jackson! Bravo!
What I’d love to see is a similar set of comments posted by edition. There has got to be someone who hated 2nd edition with the raging heat of 10,000 fiery suns.
I wonder if there were letters like this against 2nd Edition? If you had removed the 3rd edition and prestige class reference, many would have assumed it was reference to 4th edition.
Ah, hindsight… how I love thee….
i don’t recall much argument with regards to 2e vs 1e, most of the contention of the era was whether AD&D was superior at all to D&D.
I 10,000 suns hated 2ed. I saw very clearly that it was bunch of power creep splat books and endless (mostly shoddy) supplements created to extract maximun amount of money from gamers. And it pissed me off. 2ed also coincided with rise of story based / rail road style of play that I didn’t realize until much later I hated! 2ed drove me from D&D brand for years.
Everyone hates something. Big reason it doesn’t matter at all what others think.
I ARE HAYTD EVERRY EDITING TAHT DIDNAT HAV ILLOS OF HOT ELF CHAKS!!1 THNAK GAWD FOUR YUO GRAYWOLF!!1
:p
-NUNYA
Everyone’s succumbed to nerd rage at one point or another, I’m still bummed that Dragon isn’t in print, but looking back I’m a little embarrassed at the ‘10,000 suns anger’ I spat out.
Edition changes seem to be a lightning rod for this.
… Is it wrong that this cracked me up?
This was funny.
Of course this is the D&D movie we should all watch;
There was a lot of anger against 2E. And if only we had the internets and Dragon back at the beginning we could have captured the rage when OD&D clearly sold out and introduced the Greyhawk and Blackmoor supplements, or as we all know them: O&DD 0.5. Shameful. /sarcasm
But, more seriously, it is natural for any gamer to feel outrage the first time a new edition is announced. Most of us have been there. It feels like what you love is suddenly getting dumped by the very people you looked up to when they created it. It is a lot like getting dumped in a relationship. Over time (hopefully) we come to understand that it is a business necessity and also makes our games better. I’m really glad for AD&D, for Basic, for 2E, for 3E, for 4E, and for Next. All of these make my game better and make me as a gamer better. It would be a shame if all I had was Basic. I worry when I hear Wizards say they want Next to stick around for a while. I like innovation and I welcome 6E, 7E, and 128E.