The Gaming Era
I started playing D&D in 1983 after being previously exposed to an AD&D Monster Manual at a church camp. I saw the Elmore and Easley illustrations and was instantly hooked. Despite some inconsistent formative epxeriences with DMs, I went on to become a lifelong gamer. Apart from a brief period of time around 1997 in which I started to wonder if tabletop games had a point and spent much of my time drinking margaritas and attending dance clubs instead, I have been pretty steady at it.
Thinking about games in the mid 1980s is a trip on a time machine. The world has changed. I have changed. The kind of person I was then could not exist now. The 1980s were a time when you could stick Dervishes into a fantasy game and make vague references to grim desert gods without people thinking too much about the possible offense to Muslims (and history teachers... dervishes???). The Cold War was still going on. A computer program was a fragile, exotic creature that lived on a "floppy disk" and had to be zealously protected. Characters in fantasy art looked like characters in fantasy movies, who curiously resembled rock bands. The US could still reliably depend on other countries to exploit for a product as cheap as you could possibly imagine. It was the general wisdom that female gamers were both rare and aberrant; even people who approved of the notion might be uncertain where you would find them, apart from colleges.
There is no question that classic games suffered from low production values. They were poorly written, poorly edited, and poorly produced, and that remained the case until about 1982. In 1982, however, RPGs invaded Toys R Us. I used to beg my parents to take me a to mythical gaming store in town, since Toys R Us would not carry lead-based miniature figures. I blithely ignored the fact that virtually all gaming products were recommend for people much older than me.
The modern world is very different. Self-publishing skills, the computer, political and historical awareness, and so on are all considered basic skills for a game designer, which has become an actual (part-time) vocation. I think in the modern era, a "dervish," that is, desert nomad of the Bedouin type, would not see the light of day, due to the religious insensitivity and cultural ignorance rolled up into that one concept. It might occur to people to research devishes, and it might occur to a writer that their readers might Google or Wikipedia them. Clumsy text manipulation is no excuse in an era where Microsoft Word can lay out passable two-column pages. Artwork can be easily obtained from semi-professional artists posting their work on the Internet, for hire, cheap.
In many ways, the gaudy old boxed set, with its "fantasy" cover fonts and its product the loving labor of a few overworked hobbyists, is the Vaudeville of modern gaming. People will no longer pay for skilled but creaky and ultimately provincial acts when they can see modern theater, music shows broadcast on cable, TV, and DVDs (now, Blu-Ray). The most successful Vaudeville acts were able to translate their skills into mass entertainment. Now mass entertainers must translate their skills into a world of customized media content.
I can see a place for a $60 boxed set in today's world: in the hands of the discerning connoiseur. The new D&D basic sets, with their glossy rulebooks and their prepackaged, prepainted minis, are not destined to be successful. The successful gateway drug, like a successful collectible card trading game, should begin with a thoughtless $15 purchase and should be accessible to a young teenager and a friend. The feathered hair of a rock star is no longer the standard in fantasy art, replaced by the bulky shoulder plates of the MMORPG avatar. Nonetheless, fantasy games should be unafraid to be what they are.
Thinking about games in the mid 1980s is a trip on a time machine. The world has changed. I have changed. The kind of person I was then could not exist now. The 1980s were a time when you could stick Dervishes into a fantasy game and make vague references to grim desert gods without people thinking too much about the possible offense to Muslims (and history teachers... dervishes???). The Cold War was still going on. A computer program was a fragile, exotic creature that lived on a "floppy disk" and had to be zealously protected. Characters in fantasy art looked like characters in fantasy movies, who curiously resembled rock bands. The US could still reliably depend on other countries to exploit for a product as cheap as you could possibly imagine. It was the general wisdom that female gamers were both rare and aberrant; even people who approved of the notion might be uncertain where you would find them, apart from colleges.
There is no question that classic games suffered from low production values. They were poorly written, poorly edited, and poorly produced, and that remained the case until about 1982. In 1982, however, RPGs invaded Toys R Us. I used to beg my parents to take me a to mythical gaming store in town, since Toys R Us would not carry lead-based miniature figures. I blithely ignored the fact that virtually all gaming products were recommend for people much older than me.
The modern world is very different. Self-publishing skills, the computer, political and historical awareness, and so on are all considered basic skills for a game designer, which has become an actual (part-time) vocation. I think in the modern era, a "dervish," that is, desert nomad of the Bedouin type, would not see the light of day, due to the religious insensitivity and cultural ignorance rolled up into that one concept. It might occur to people to research devishes, and it might occur to a writer that their readers might Google or Wikipedia them. Clumsy text manipulation is no excuse in an era where Microsoft Word can lay out passable two-column pages. Artwork can be easily obtained from semi-professional artists posting their work on the Internet, for hire, cheap.
In many ways, the gaudy old boxed set, with its "fantasy" cover fonts and its product the loving labor of a few overworked hobbyists, is the Vaudeville of modern gaming. People will no longer pay for skilled but creaky and ultimately provincial acts when they can see modern theater, music shows broadcast on cable, TV, and DVDs (now, Blu-Ray). The most successful Vaudeville acts were able to translate their skills into mass entertainment. Now mass entertainers must translate their skills into a world of customized media content.
I can see a place for a $60 boxed set in today's world: in the hands of the discerning connoiseur. The new D&D basic sets, with their glossy rulebooks and their prepackaged, prepainted minis, are not destined to be successful. The successful gateway drug, like a successful collectible card trading game, should begin with a thoughtless $15 purchase and should be accessible to a young teenager and a friend. The feathered hair of a rock star is no longer the standard in fantasy art, replaced by the bulky shoulder plates of the MMORPG avatar. Nonetheless, fantasy games should be unafraid to be what they are.
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