Fandom Rivalry / Tabletop Games

• Any edition change for a popular game is liable to create a rift in the playerbase. Some well-known examples are D&D 2nd Ed vs 3rd Ed, Vampire: The Masquerade vs Vampire: The Requiem, D&D 3rd Ed vs D&D 4th Ed.
• Pretty much every setting for Dungeons & Dragons has its rivals. Forgotten Realms is the darling of old-school roleplayers while Eberron is liked by those wanting innovation. Fans of Greyhawk tend to grumble at Forgotten Realms for displacing Greyhawk as the "generic" setting, fans of Spelljammer and Planescape bicker with fans of more down-to-Earth settings, and fans of Dragonlance tend to be rivals with just about everyone else (primarily because Dragonlance fans have always been fans of the novels first).
  • Above and across the settings, you have fans of martial classes (Fighter, Barbarian, Paladin) vs. fans of magic classes (Wizard, Bard, Druid). Mike Mearls (pro-martial) and Monte Cook (pro-spellcaster) encouraged this until Cook left the design team.
  • Even between caster classes: Wizards^note gains magic through hard work and learning vs. Sorcerers^note casts magic intuitively from an inherent gift. Fans of Sorcerers prefer the themes of inherent magic power and the CHA spellcasting that lets Sorcerers double as The Face; fans of Wizards prefer the concept of an ordinary muggle gaining power through hard work and the sheer spellcasting versatility from a wider selection of spells. 5th Edition makes things worse by tearing Metamagic out of the Wizards' hands and making it a Sorcerer exclusive, and also introduces Warlocks: casters who gain power through a Deal with the Devil and use a more limited but simpler magic system with focus on cantrips and other abilities.
  • And also rolling dice for stats vs. point buy. Point buy fans argue for better balance between players (either one player rolls well and everyone else is Overshadowed by Awesome or one player rolls worse and Can't Catch Up) and more creative freedom. Fans of rolling cite the "ritual" novelty of rolling for stats and suggest that point buy lends itself to a degree of Munchkinism and players creating "builds" rather than organic-feeling characters.
• Dungeons & Dragons fans and The World of Darkness fans dislike each other. The former see the latter as a bunch of mopey goth LARPers, and the latter see the former as a bunch of ignorant fanboys that can't grasp complex characters.
• Dungeons & Dragons vs. Exalted, largely because of the infamous advertising campaign used by White Wolf. "Graduate your game from third edition!" indeed. Also because many of Exalted's veteran fans started in The World of Darkness and brought their hate to the table.
• Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition versus Pathfinder.
  • For that matter, 3.x fans and Pathfinder fans often find themselves arguing, mostly over whether Pathfinder is a straight upgrade that plugged 3.x's holes or if it's a knockoff version that broke more things than it fixed.
  • D&D 5th edition and the playtest material for D&D One have all corresponded with Pathfinder's own 2.0 release. A common response to complaints of D&D One playtest material is for fans to say "I'll go try Pathfinder 2.0 instead." It doesn't help that Pathfinder fans note the wildly popular Critical Role started as a home Pathfinder game, but was transferred to D&D 5th Edition for its public web series. Even going years on from its Pathfinder origins, some of Critical Role's early Pathfinder quirks such as Percy's gunslinger class and Pike's devotion to Sarenrae (or "Everlight") are still visible in adaptations such as The Legend of Vox Machina.
    • In fact, given 5E's dominance of the role-playing scene, the rivalry can probably be said to be D&D vs Every other Tabletop RPG, with fans of other RPGs growing resentful of D&D's dominance and the fact that many players are unwilling to try anything else.
• In Germany, Dungeons & Dragons (being the most popular RPG worldwide) vs. The Dark Eye (being Germany's most popular RPG). Though there is some overlap to be expected (plenty of D&D players started with TDE), the fundamental gamestyle and setting differences lead to a lot of discussions which system is actually better. Whether it's the one of the other is mostly down to one's preferences.
• Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000. Fantasy fans tend to look down on 40k fans because they consider 40k to be be "dumbed down", while the 40k fans consider fantasy to be duller than 40k and having some needlessly complex rules. Occasionally they join forces to bash the players of Games Workshop's third game, Lord of the Rings, as playing a game for children. Much of the fanbase plays both, many of the parts and models are interchangeable, but that doesn't stop anyone.
  • Just about any time a new codex comes out. Those who like it may be seen as wanting to exploit new untested rules, those who dislike it look like curmudgeons who can't take change.
  • Matt Ward's work on the Ultramarines, Grey Knights and Necrons tends to be very divisive.
• When it comes to different companies, it can get even worse. One of the relatively notable cases is the War Machine games vs. the Warhammer games. Expect to see "Page 5" and "GRIMDARK" thrown around if the two groups have "discussions".
• Whilst there are plenty of people who enjoy both, fans of Diplomacy versus fans of Risk. Risk fans say Diplomacy is boring, Diplomacy fans say Risk is "Diplomacy for idiots."
• Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh! players tend to regard each other with disdain, with the latter having been the former's biggest (and longest-lasting) rival. Yu-Gi-Oh fans often call Magic out on new players being Locked Out of the Loop and the various Loophole Abuse by players, while Magic The Gathering fans tend to criticize Yu-Gi-Oh for how severely broken and unbalanced the game of Yu-Gi-Oh is in general and that Yu-Gi-Oh players often only have the option between a few very expensive leading Game-Breaker decks to fight on championship levels or to not play competitively at all, making sure that there will be no original decks in tournaments. There are fans of both games, but they are few and far between.
  • Though some tend to skip over the fact that the latter was inspired by the former. For that matter, Yu-Gi-Oh! wouldn't even exist if a certain opponent of the week and his game hadn't caught the eye of the audience.
• Cardfight!! Vanguard and Yu-Gi-Oh. Vanguard players criticize Yugioh for pretty similar reasons that Magic players do as listed above. Yu-Gi-Oh players tend to criticize Vanguard for being overly simplistic and having a heavy luck factor even by card game standards. Not helping matters is that many Vanguard players are ex-Yu-Gi-Oh! players who decided they didn't like Yu-Gi-Oh anymore for one reason or another.
• Older Than They Think: Chess vs. Checkers. Both are immensely old and popular board games, but both have always been compared to one another in terms of quality. It has been documented ever since the 19th century. For a long time Checkers was considered the winner due to being considered to be harder and more modern than Chess was when it comes to warfare, with various Chess players then back again saying that players of Checkers were biased and that Chess can be quite hard to play as well.
• An In-Universe example in Transhuman Space with fans of the cancelled 2060s InVid shows The Golden Jihad and Starburst Station. The Jihadis are deeply into making fanvids, many of which take huge liberties with the source material, and are rather contemptous of the Starburst fans for insisting their cosplay/LARP space habitat has to be "canonical", even though they're also involved in fanvids. Starburst fans also have a growing rivalry with Imperial Legion, since they're the most prominent of several other fandoms to have a presence on the "real" Starburst Station, and the disconnect between the Free Star League's idealism and the warrior culture of the Legion has caused friction.