gaming thoughts

• I love 4e and think that a lot of why people don't like 4e is mostly psychological. By leaving roleplaying largely un-ruled while lovingly detailing combat (not an unreasonable choice), 4e gives the impression of a game which is nothing but fighting. Mandating the use of miniatures doesn't really mess up the flow of the game and is useful, but I think at some level people saw it and felt they were being fleeced for official miniatures and map pieces (not really true).
  
  I discovered my own psychological thing that way yesterday. Having big maps of the dungeon overall "feels" more imaginative to me. The tendency of official 4e products is to link chunks of maps to specific encounters and while those can be tweaked and reskinned in theory, they "feel" inextricably linked to me. If you show me a big sprawling dungeon map, it feels like a real place to explore or an idea I could eagerly adapt into a completely different encounter. But if you show me those little 4e battlemap areas, my mind will always parse it as "that fight with the ogres."
  
  
• I think there's a generational issue coming into play in the 1970s which affects how people see non-human races in D&D.
  
  D&D (or AD&D) reflects Gygax's experience as a wargamer and as a fan. AD&D's Monster Manual is pretty obviously a reflection of wargaming - are you playing Evil? Then your forces can include kobolds, goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, gnolls, bugbear troops at varying cost with a few special monsters as individuals. But Gygax also grew up on the powerful pulp fiction of the 20s-40s - which was pretty xenophobic. Burroughs' Africans or Howard's Picts are usually disposable adversaries who can be mowed down with remarkably few twinges of conscience. Then there's radio, serials, the whole slew of things Gygax would've really loved as a kid. It doesn't help that Tolkien added the idea of the non-human adversary as two-dimensional (I think an intentional choice, as he wanted to focus ethical complexity elsewhere). And hence, from the depths of the earth and the MM stomp a supply of pop-up, irredeemable monsters who can be butchered in complete moral rectitude, and whose money can then be used on shopping sprees. The good guys in this scenario are of course the people who look normal - and even there, the weirdos with the beards or pointy ears are intended for sidekick status; the equivalent of the white American hero having an Indian companion or a Chinese driver.
  
  About the same time Gygax launches his creation informed by this "old guard" attitude towards race in fiction, Star Wars hits and Star Trek reruns haunt the TV channels. I'm sure other things - Disney, luridly anthropomorphizing Mutual of Omaha specials, Sea World shows, whatever - hit home about the same time. People growing up with both Wars and Trek are informed, at some level, that the alien isn't a faceless adversary. I think at some level gamers saw Chewbacca, Spock and Sarek and started asking themselves "well, why can't my dwarf be a bard? Why isn't my elf as good at being a cleric as a human?" and from there "why can't I play a gnoll? What would I need to do to play a minotaur?"
  
  This is all just theory, mind.