The Whackback

I read this...and really felt rather disgusted by this bastard's assault on Gary. I almost felt like he was one of the designers of 4.E., who I'm sure had similar discussions.

Gary helped make a fun game whose influence and cultural relevance is living on through other games, books, and computers games. The oddities that make up D&D in many cases sprung from him and, together, make up the D&D Experience.

Everyone knows D&D has silly and retarded elements...but those elements help make it what it is. And some people really, really like it.

The D&D 4.0 Design Team is going to strip the awful and unique parts from D&D and make a better game...making fun all the while of how quaint or inefficient or silly older versions of the game were.

Note, however, that they're still going to proudly use the Dungeons and Dragons name...without which, their "better" game wouldn't sell for shit.

I feel disenfranchised from these 4.0 folks...their marketing and message implies that the game we've been playing for so many years is stupid. The inference is that those who play it are idiots as well.

I am very leery of buying into products when the advertisements are essentially insulting me. I've been insulted and questioned for years about being involved with Dungeons and Dragons and other role playing games-why the hell would I want to be insulted by the company who wants me to buy their products?

Does anyone else get this or am I the Lone Ranger on this again?
 

I do agree with you on being felt like i was insulted. usually when I am insulted for something I do, it pushes me to do it more lol.

I don't know if the writer had a hidden agenda or not, but if he is part of the 4.0 design team, he will potentially blow a lot of sales for Wizard.
 

This guy definitely had a hard-on for blasting Gary. But I did the littlest bit of research on him and he seemed to basically make a habit of ripping on things (Wii, 10 worst gadgets of 2007, etc). I'm sure this was a lot of fun for him.

Now it's true that a person could consider the "morally reprehensible" nature of D&D, killing sleeping monsters (and their babies!) for treasure and experience... But it's easy to do that years after it was created as basically the first game of its kind. And it did inspire later spin-offs that maybe were more sophisticated in different ways. And all of that takes it out of the context of a world that was intentionally painted fairly black and white (Evil alignment, anyone?) and was born out of wargaming. Would anyone be surprised that the best way to become a better knight would be to vanquish more evil foes?

Lastly, this guy you could tell was enjoying hearing himself write, with all his descriptions of cheetos-encrusted talons, ad nauseum. He's an ass who just wanted to say "something different than everyone else was saying" to get himself heard. A shock jock of bloggers.

I don't really plan on buying more D&D products, with the possible exception of some sort of software/web enabling option. I'd consider that.

I can't really speak to what the 4.0 marketing is saying... I haven't really read that much of it other than what's getting referred off of this blog.