Jeff Grubb writes about edition wars.
Well, I wasn’t around at the time, but he appears to say that there was animosity of the old guard towards new iterations of the game and possibly fun being made of the old editions by adherents of the new iterations. From my perspective it might have been true because I didn’t like our gaming group’s switch from AD&D to AD&D 2nd ed – but I was alone, there was no forum to back me up, there was no speaking up for me, no voicing of discontent.
Thus, while we may think that many of these editions are essentially the same game and thus not worth fighting over, what matters is whether there are fans of the old and the new and enough animosity between them to qualify for the label “edition war”. Further complicating the picture is the introduction of a larger segment of the first world population the Internet in the late nineties.
Even if agree to ignore all rumored animosity, I think his anecdote of AD&D 2nd ed authors printing T-shirts poking fun at the old AD&D edition is a data point in favor of Jeff’s view.
(I think the Monopoly editions work on an entirely different level because one edition doesn’t replace the other where as AD&D 2nd edition *did* replace AD&D.)
I also remember this one dude in high school that invited our entire AD&D group to play a session in his Basic D&D campaign. We were totally confused by race-as-class and the simplicity of it all. Little did I know that I’d end up yearning for it 20+ years later…
#Old School #RPG