The natural question then is, "Which D&D?" All of them! "Even that one?" Yes. Even that one.
I was going through a bunch of material I need to review and Review (reading for my own benefit vs. a full review) and it got me thinking about a bunch of topics. Should I play more Castles & Crusades? What should I do with all this Pathfinder stuff? Where did my copies of Dungeoneer's and Wilderness Survival Guides go? (seriously. where are they??).
This got me thinking about the various editions and edition wars. I want to share the story of my first skirmish in the never-ending edition wars, but first I want to talk about the latest side battle in it and my point of view on this in general.
D&D Edition Wars
I am not sure if this will be a regular feature or not. Typically I avoid edition wars and find them remarkably pedantic to be of any actual use. Don't like a particular edition? Fine. Don't play it. BUT every so often something bubbles up that takes my notice and I want to comment on it. The latest one comes to us courtesy of Stranger Things.
If you have not seen the new Season 4 of Stranger Things, please do. It is back to form and good drama. Sure there are a LOT of characters now and no one is getting the spotlight for very long, but the last episode of Part 1 did a great job of tying together many of the seasonal arcs to set us up for the epic finale.
They also get to play some D&D. There is a bit where they deal with the Satanic Panic of the 80s. I would talk about that now, but I have done that already and most recently back in April. So no real need for me to do that. But in the same milieu of edition wars we are getting some nagging from older gamers like myself complaining that Erica Sinclair's character should have been a Thief and not a Rogue. Well. That is technically correct yes. It was supposed to 1986 and the Rogue does not come into play until 1989. Lots of people are claiming this is a mistake. Here is my point of view on that.
The Duffer Brothers did not make a mistake.
Look in the very next scene of their game Dustin (played by the wonderful Gaten Matarazzo; seriously this kid is going to be a hell of an actor someday) drops lines about Vecna (the focus of their game and the season) having been destroyed by Kas. They already mentioned the lack of an eye and hand. This is not deep lore to us, but to the causal viewer, it is. And that's the thing. This show has to appeal to all viewers. Those that know D&D but mostly the vast majority that do not. Here is her line.
"My name is Lady Applejack, and I'm a chaotic good, half-elf rogue, Level 14. And I will sneak behind any monster you throw my way, and stab them in the back with my poison-soaked kukri."
Remember the character is Chaotic Good (which we all understand) and supposed to be a heroic character. IF she had said "Thief" it would not have the same level of understanding to the causal viewer as "Rogue" does. Han Solo was a rogue. Robin Hood was a rogue. The normies get what a rogue is. A thief is someone who steals. Yes, yes, it has a different connotation in D&D but that is not the majority of the audience. I posit that the Duffers knew exactly what they were doing.
It reminds me of when my main character at the time was a Paladin. I'd explain to others, who I was trying to get into the game, that my character was a Lawful Good Paladin. Which would ALWAYS be followed by "what's a Paladin?" Eventually, I gave up and just started saying "Knight." This is the same thing. Also it is a nice segue into my next section.
Why CAN'T I Play a B/X Paladin?
The 80s were an amazing time for a lot of reasons. Even in my small home town there were multiple independent D&D groups and clubs happening all the time. I got invited to a game by a friend one evening. This had to have been either very late in Jr. High I am guessing summer of 82 or 83. In any case, I was going with my regular DM, he got to play for a change, and a bunch of people I never met. The DM called me ahead of time and asked if I would be willing to play a Lawful Good Paladin. I said sure! I was already playing a Lawful Cleric in my other game so this seemed like a good fit (and it was, but more on this). Now is the time to be pedantic. See I was playing a "Lawful Cleric" as in B/X D&D. My regular DM played AD&D and we ran our games as an unholy mix of the two. Not uncommon from what I know now and we had a lot of fun. My first experience with D&D was Holmes Basic and the AD&D Monster Manual. My new DM just told me to bring my Expert book.
Well...that was a mistake. I brought my Expert D&D book to an Advanced D&D game and you would have thought I had brought a D&D Coloring book instead with the reactions I got. Thankfully my DM was still cool about it, even if the other players held their noses in disgust.
Nowadays of course people talk about their B/X days with pride and fond memories. Especially me. But that was a contributing factor to me not picking up the BECMI sets when they came out soon after. I was all in on AD&D from that point on. No "kiddie" D&D for me!
That was the first salvo in what I would later come to know as "The Edition Wars." There were many skirmishes between the Basic and Advanced folks back then. Nothing major, I can recall though. The next battle was fought over the fields of "Unearthed Arcana" and then the "Proficiency Battles" connected with Dungeoneer's and Wilderness Survival Guides (seriously, where the hell are mine??)
I still have my Paladin from that game. He went on to great glory in the Bloodstone series. I would also roll up my own paladin later, he was the son of my B/X Cleric.
Now thanks to the OSR scene I have a lot of options to play a B/X Paladin.
If Johan II was my Advanced D&D Paladin and son of D&D Cleric Johan I. Then maybe I need to make a Kara Foke II as an OSE Paladin, son of Kara Foke that AD&D Paladin I played so long ago.
