well, i guess people in general tend towards elitism in various ways, gamers are certainly not immune.
The topic comes up at my game table from time to time, and it's something of an ongoing issue. There's this weird sense of entitlement or superiority than can build up if nerds-performing-solitary-activities go too long without contact of others within their fandom. And the Internet most certainly doesn't count. I think it's probably related to the whole social-animal thing, but it's undoubtedly a complex issue.
Suffice to say, when a person spends too much time alone, their social skills suffer. And reading (rulebooks or otherwise) is largely a solitary activity.
myself, i've gamed every version of d&d except original, 4th, and 5th, though i do own a boxed set of the original books, and i was in the beta of 5th.
Right after I got started on 3e, I played in BESM and Vampire: the Masquerade games. Maybe a year later I joined a Star Wars d20 game, and in the following years I tried a whole bunch of different systems. I've played every version of D&D to some extent, and a variety of retro-clones just 'cause.
I prefer d20 system games in general because they're more structured and game-able, and
overall tend to rely less on GM fiat. My experience with more freeform games is that they tend to be dominated by the strongest personalities in a group.
D&D doesn't do
everything well, and some games do some stuff better. I have yet to see a game that does everything well -- even on a "jack of all trades" level.
Most games have really crappy skill systems. I mean the
same skill system. No, I really just mean crappy skill systems. They're mostly all just variants on, "try to explain to me what you're doing and then roll some arbitrary number of dice."
That might sound like
all roleplaying, but really... 3e/4e have pretty explicit aims with their combat system. An attack roll is an attack roll. A saving throw is a saving throw.
A skill check by comparison, is an interpretive dance.
--Dither
