I think the root cause of the debate is a fundamental disagreement about what D&D is.
There are two visions of D&D. The original vision, which I will call Gygaxian, and the later vision, which I will call Dancian. I hesitate to call the Dancian vision Modern or Evolved, because those words carry the connotation of improvement.
The Gygaxian vision is of difficult strategic play. The players are given extremely restricted resources and they must use these resources in innovative and adaptive ways to overcome significant challenges. The world does not always give you challenges that you can handle. You have to actually retreat sometimes. This vision of play is harsh and unforgiving. If you roll 1 hit point as a Fighter, too damn bad. Fail a save? Tough, you die. The game is rewarding because it is so difficult. Reaching 2nd level is hard, so when you do it has value. Power comes slowly through accretion. You are not a super-hero, you are a real hero.
Then in the late 90's, Ryan Dancey comes along and snatches up TSR. And from this point on, we see a new vision begin to emerge. Dancey did not have an artistic vision of what the game should be, he had a vision of gold. He wanted to sell more books. And to that end, Dancey redesigned the D&D model to do so. It was no longer about slow accumulation of power, it was about being a super hero. The game was now about getting more stuff and more abilities. Magic wasn't some really rare thing anymore, it was common. Magic was everywhere. There were now guidelines for how many magic items you should expect at each level.
The design of the game changed to support additional sales. We have infinitely expanding numbers of Feats, Prestige classes, races of every kind from hobgoblins to trolls (who wants to play a heroic troll? WTF?), and on and on forever. Buy this, buy that. Distances are written in squares and rules like AoO are added to make it very hard to play without minis, adding more to the bottom line. The production schedule for D&D came to mirror that of Magic the Gathering. More stuff, better stuff, better buy the latest stuff or you will suck compared to your friends.
4e comes along and people act like it is a big change, but really it is just an extension of the logic to a new level. They changed the game even more to realize the Dancian vision. They made multiple player's handbooks! You can now choose from tons of really powerful races, classes, abilities, etc ad infinitum. Dancey's vision merely became more clear. These "cards" are merely the next incarnation, the next "improvement". Those who cling to 3rd Ed or Pathfinder are really just in the middle between these two extremes. They want to be cool, they want special powers, but they don't want it to become a video game. I can empathize with that, but let's point out what it is.
Now I have clearly thrown my hat in the Gygaxian vision. I took some of the ideas from 3rd Ed, like Feats, but I stripped the parts out that get out of control, and I made Gifts. I used some of the class ideas, spell ideas, but I didn't get sucked into the Dancian model. I like the idea of a challenging game and I tried to make a game that stuck true to the ideas, but not trapped in mechanics that need innovation. I used to have a big mixed up jumble of ideas on this subject but lately it has been crystallizing because I have been writing these games myself and I have been seeing very clearly where the two paths diverge in the wood. I see now why I have become disillusioned both with video games and later edition D&D at roughly the same time, why I really cherish strategic wargames as well, and so on.
Video games and RPGs share a lot in their experience over the years. Just take a look at the difference between modern games and their predecessors. Fallout 3 vs Fallout 1 & 2. MechAssault vs Mechwarrior 3 & 4. Video games have been simplified, harmonized, and reformatted for mass appeal. And mass appeal is not about art, or value, or substance; it is about sales.
Ultimately, that is the Dancian vision. In the same way that modern television news is flashy and appealing, but ultimately substanceless; so has D&D become. I once read an article in Wired magazine about the kind of playtesting they did on Halo 2. They took each level and they ran a random sample of people through it. And they charted out how long it took them to get through each area, located spots that gave people trouble, and then they altered their level design to make it so that the average person could go through the level within a certain amount of time. They made it just challenging enough so that the most talented gamer had to work a tiny tiny bit and just easy enough for the worst gamer to still make it through. No more "challenge". The game is designed not to be a challenge. The game is about a power trip.
Games used to be hard. Pick up some old SNES titles if you don't believe me. They are no longer that way. If they are challenging, it is because of a bug, glitch, or defect. The camera angle is bad in a certain spot or something like that. So I am not really picking on Ryan Dancey here. He isn't some mastermind of evil. He is just the guy who ended up in the hot seat at that moment in time. He has left WotC and things have continued unabated, so it isn't like he was especially central to the whole deal. However, he was there when it started. He was the first person to significantly turn away from the Gygaxian vision.
If you listen to Dancey's interview on Fear the Boot, he talks about how the TSR folks had a vision of what D&D should be and that they didn't listen to what people wanted. A big part of his involvement with D&D was paying attention to what kind of products people wanted to buy. From a business/capitalism perspective, if you produce a product that people don't want, you shouldn't move a lot of units and you should go out of business. And that is what happened to TSR. So I am not defending TSR as being some kind of glorious past that was perfect. Far from it. But you have to consider for a moment that what is commercially successful may not be the "best" product. Maybe you shouldn't always give people what they want. There is a virtue to being shown something you were not expecting. We have gotten this idea that the only things that have value are those which are commercially successful. Often the opposite is actually true.
Van Gogh is a cliche example of someone who was unappreciated in their time, but there are oh so many more. There is a virtue to doing something for the ART of it, rather than the for the sales. Struggling with limited resources has a special value, a special appeal, in a way that accumulation of resources does not. In real life, you do not infinitely progress from human to god. You don't pick up "power ups". In real life, you struggle with adversity. The Gygaxian vision is about wrestling with this fact in a fantastic and magical world. The Gygaxian vision is ART. The Dancian vision is commericalism.
So I have to ask, what is the artistic purpose of these cards? What is the value that they are adding to the game? As far as I can see, there is none. They are technically no different than any of the daily powers, encounter powers, etc bullshit of 4th edition. Mechanically, they are not unique. What they are is a way to bring more people into the hobby who want to play video games on paper. To make it easier for these people who can't bother to read a damn book, they need special cards for god knows how much per "booster pack" or whatever the hell they are using.
Sorry, but I am not interested in playing video games on paper. We have CRPGs now and they do a damn fine job at letting people run around and play Elf with a big sword, or a Jedi, or whatever they want to be. You can get as many power-ups as you want, super-powers, godlike abilities, etc. You can use magic missile to wipe your pixelated asshole if you want. But none of that has any value because it is common now. Magic missile isn't special if every Tom, Dick, and Harry has ten of them up their sleeve. Power trip yourself into oblivion for all I care.
To steal from the Incredibles, "if everyone is special, then no one is".
Maybe I am getting to be an old man here. I am turning 30 in about 5 months, after all.
If it hurts your feelings because some dude on the internet thinks that what you are doing is dumb... well.... grow a pair. We are adults. I don't have to coddle your feelings. Who are you? Fuck you. You want to play 3e or 4e and run around like a super-hero shooting lighting bolts out your arse? You want to play the pen-and-paper version of God-mode? I don't care. I really don't. Do I look down on you? Sure. But no more than I look down on people who paint their bodies with letters and go to football games. Or people who get excited because some group of jocks, who would hate them if they knew them, defeated another group of jocks, who would also hate them if they knew them. Or people who think that Marlon Wayans is a great actor. I really just don't give two stinking turds. Don't like it? Grow a pair.
As for me, I will stick with games that are actually challenging. Games that involve struggling with limited resources. Games that require smarts, and ingenuity, and perseverence. I don't care about the power trip. I don't want the biggest baddest sword. I don't care. What I want is to sit down and have a really creative artistic experience. I enjoy craftsmanship. I like things that are really well designed, clever, and require some brain power to enjoy. I like movies and stories that have complexity, like Shawshank Redemption or the Count of Monte Cristo. I like reading. I like depth. I like challenge. I like sophistication.
And that's why I consider myself OSR.
Kings to you, Fernand.
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