I gotta grumble briefly since a particular articulation just clicked into place for me.
> D&D as marketed: Tell awesome stories about extraordinary fantasy heroes! D&D to players: You can't do the extraordinary awesome stuff because it's OP. Pick two things from this list of mediocre things instead. You'll get the extraordinary or awesome stuff at level 15 where it's not extraordinary or awesome anymore and just mediocre. D&D to DMs: The player's mediocre thing is breaking your ability to present challenge. Fix this by avoiding letting them make that thing relevant to success.
Most modern games I have had contact with: You get to do the awesome thing. Players, pick some awesome things you can and will do. GMs, celebrate their awesomeness by giving them all kinds of things to be awesome at.
It's kind of heartbreaking seeing so many D&D questions that exist because a player being awesome at something broke the game. (Like "the paladin in my game is actually strong and tough" or "the player who can spot things is too good at spotting things" or "the person who can handle animals fixes too many things via handling animals, how do i nerf it")
The text appears to largely lack guidance on the matter and doesn't suggest how those awesomenesses can be made a fun and compelling central feature of the game, and the staff tend to present it as that if the game is broken then the DM/players should fix it -- instead of themselves ensuring their game can robustly celebrate successfully awesome characters.
@trogdor There's a story here (a little more than halfway down, "Towards unity, youth lead the way,") about using a football game to start bringing two fighting groups together.
eg, it's hard for some men to see Rey's journey in TLJ as the one which celebrates positive fan participation because we've spent our entire lives immersed in media that tells men stories about women aren't important to us.
Our experiences with films tell us that Ren is probably the person we're supposed to be getting our message from, but Ren's message of "kill the past" is actively and deliberately toxic. So it's very confusing to think that's the message we're supposed to accept--and it leads to people thinking TLJ is saying it wants to ignore and overwrite the earlier films.
