Why Complain About 4.0?

While composing my previous blog post, I started thinking, why bother? Fact is, it is highly probable that no-one that matters will read it.. and even if someone did, what could it possibly result in? For better or worse, Wizards of the Coast has set the course for D&D, and no matter how much I or someone else points out areas of improvements and gives suggestions, it's not like that course will change. Dungeons & Dragons is a brand with significant weight behind it, and even if 4.0 turns out to have been a singularly bad move (and I'm not saying it will), nothing will stop that juggernaut. The PR machinery will not allow any suggestions of 4.0 having been a bad move, and that includes changing direction mid-flight.

I think there are many different kinds of people. One of the things that differentiate us is how we take to changes. Some people will have a natural predisposition to like changes, while others will dislike changes, and some are somewhere in the middle. At one of the extreme ends of the spectrum, there are people that will like anything, although typically under specific circumstances, such as anything from a particular author, band or company. Some choose to call such people fan-boys. On the other end, there are people that will hate everything. They are usually called trolls. Neither label may always be entirely appropriate, but there it is, anyway.

Another thing that differentiates us is how we react to those changes. Someone might want to let the whole world know how good/bad they think something is, others may just let it pass by without fanfare. I think just about all of us can point to at least one thing that they think really, really sucks but still just accept it, because it isn't going to do any good no matter how much you complain. Similarly, most of us will also have something that they feel very happy about and would not mind sharing with anyone that is ready to listen.

Me, I'm a grumbler. I'm something of a perfectionist, and I can almost always find something that I think could have been done better. I'd like to think, however, that this is more a consequence of wanting to improve things than bring them down. Rather than just blah blah blah this sucks blah blah, I try to isolate things, argue why I think they don't work as well as they could, and suggest improvements. (Or at least, I hope that I do.) I have a rather optimistic (one could probably even say naive) side, and prefer to believe that people actually want to improve things. And the way to continuously improve, I think, is by remaining vigilant and bringing up flaws. I think that excessive coddling is a bad thing, and that attempting to help someone improve will turn out to be more beneficial in the long run, as long as it is made in a constructive manner.

On the other hand, I realize that I'm a dreamer. It seems far more probable that Joe Average is more interested in just getting through the day than actually attempting to improve anything, at least not for anyone else than himself. What's in it for him, after all? People's sense of entitlement seems to grow all the time, with less and less respect for whoever helps them out. You used to be a nice and respected guy if you helped your friends; now, you're just a moron. You just have to read a few news articles to realize that we're no better now than we were 500 years ago, except now we have computers, so we can abuse each other from the comfort of our living rooms. People die in droves every day, and not from old age, either. In the face of that, it feels pretty stupid to write whiny blog posts about D&D 4.0.

But who knows? We're good at not seeing what we don't want to see, and write and talk about the things that happen near us and to us that we can deal with, regardless of whether they are important or not. We avoid the big questions because they are big, and limit ourselves to scopes that we feel comfortable with. But even with the small things, maybe once in a while, the right person listens and it will matter, if only a little bit.