Yeah dude, Heroquest.

I can't watch two hours of this! When does he get to the Heroquest? Or is that a euphemism for 4th Edition?

Pissing around and playing make believe is a kids game. You can do that without calculating the mechanics behind if a minotaur makes a better character than a lizardman, which he evaluates somewhere in the middle of this video.

But calculating the mechanics is what *distinguishes* D&D from a kids game. That's like saying baseball shouldn't have rules, because kids throw balls all the time, and fart fart fart.

Anyway, I do agree with you, sort of, in that D&D tends to get sucked up it's own asscrack with rules and modules and new rules for modules. And which character does he think is better? The minotaur, or the lizardman? Me, I'd probably go with the lizardman, if we're making a monster PC and are judging his worth by role-playing potential, but for straight NPC monsters, either as dungeon fodder or as a higher-than-party-level Big Bad, I'd probably go with the minotaur.

I would not base these decisions on meta-game number crunching, however.

Baseball is a contest. Contests need a framework in order to quantify who has triumphed and often by how much.

D&D can be fun and a light framework works best IMO, but it all depends on the group, setting and DM. The usual suspects.

He says that lizardmen make better characters but if he played 4th Ed. he could be either (dragonborn are basically lizardmen, fuck off) without homebrewing the rules

You guys actually sat through 2 hours of this? Five stars for that...

2 hours is nothing, he has 4 hour long D&D games up there.

"Pissing around and playing make believe is a kids game."

There are a great many militaries that would probably disagree with you.

Not to mention what that says about most sports as well as anything that simulates doing just about anything.

O shit, I'd hate to offend roided up millionaire sportsmen by calling their entire profession a jumped-up kids game!

I don't really get your military angle there, the only thing I can think of is "what if" scenarios that are dreamt up then put through the ringer. Regardless I don't really care as the supposed need for a military is, in general, not in favour of the universal good of all peoples.