"How 'Dungeons' Changed the World" (Boston Globe Editorial)

Interesting editorial in yesterday's Boston Globe:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ed.../2004/11/15/dungeons_and_dragons_we_love_you/

Very interesting article. However, i fear that a moderator will have to close it, because although the whole article is about D&D, the last line is clearly political in nature.

Surely we can discuss the article without the final sentence. I think the rest of the article stands just fine on its own.

The impression the article left me with was how important all the blank spaces were in D&D. I'm all for new rules for particular environments but the article reminds me of when your choices were Greyhawk or homebrew, when world creation was part of what it meant to be DM.

And it reminds me that if the product continues in the direction it is going, we may keep the form of D&D but stamp out its original spirit.

There's plenty to discuss without bringing anything political into the forum. We trust you all; there's no reason to close a thread if there's no reason to close it IN there.

Carry on.

I think there's no question the direction of the basic game has changed; we veterans craft the tool to our will, however, so it makes no difference to us. This very thing was a table topic for our group last weekend, in fact.

But I certainly enjoy the thought that D&D is a return to the "stick ball & corn husk doll" approach to recreational play. In one sense, it is; in another, I remember QUITE a few transformers and GI Joe I had in my room next to my D&D books.

...Ya know, I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and only very rarely did I actually PLAY D&D. I had all the books, I subscribed to Dragon magazine (thanks, Mom!), I painted figures, I stated characters and critters and magic items... but the time I spent actually playing the game is very, very small.

I was hooked on fantasy and scifi (I spent a lot of time reading Top Secret and MechWarrior rulebooks, too) at a very young age, and the games, while I didn't play them, still allowed me to see how such worlds might fit together and what my place might be within them.

So the rules and the books and the magazines were all read cover to cover many times, just adding fuel to the fires of my imagination. I certainly can identify with the author's point that so much of today's video games/movies/etc. are products of imagniative minds nurtured and developed by roleplaying in fantastial worlds.

I think its one of the reasons we, as net savvy gamers, attach a kind of "gamer celebrity" status to those of us who "make it big" in the world of mainstream entertainment, putting that imagination to use. People like Vin Diesel or Peter Jackson or any number of authors... gamers first, big name mainstream entertainers second! Its nice to know some of them still remember their roots

-Reddist

I remember first seeing my cousin's DnD books when i was probably 8 or so. The early early 1st edition stuff back in the late 70's. I was enamoured by the game at first glance. Chock full of monsters, magic and mystery, it got me reading all sorts of fantasy, and even though i couldn't afford the game books as a youngster, i would try to remember rules/page layout i had seen and recreate them in my own books. Yeah, i was a pretty introvertive little kid writing reams of stuff that no one but me and my little brother ever saw. But i agree with the article's author, that those early years have never quite gone away. The game and genre doesn't have the visceral NEWNESS it once did, and i miss that, but now i can afford craploads of books!

And the political tag-on was just embarrassing, no matter who you support...

Nice article to see in a mainstream publication.

It may be that I am just noticing it more, but it would seem that in the last two years or so, there have been a significant amount of articles and other news items related to D&D.

I think this is a good trend. Sure, we do have the share of articels bashing it (though I haven't seen one in a long time) but it's nice to see that the game seems to be getting some more recognition.

The game can only benifit from more exposure. The few negatives that can come from a rush of new players are heavily outweighed by what that group can also add to the hobby.

It's weird, but I've also noticed significantly less snickering when I mention D&D to people I know who don't play it. I've never felt the need to be quiet about my gaming. I wouldn't do something I was ashamed of. But people have been less surprised about D&D than they used to be. Especially parents, who mention that their kids are interested in it (which usually means they play a RPG console game, but nonetheless, at least the recognition is there).

I know we hear a lot about how small gaming companies close down all the time, and hardly make 5% on their profits. There have been countless threads predicting the end of RPGs somewhere down the line. I don't see that, though. Sure, it isn't the Pokemon CCG industry, but there's power here. I really think the game will live on, not just in some open-source sense of players' personal creations, but really, as an industry (not to diminish open-source world and rule creation... they're very important to the future of gaming).

I'm excited about the future.

JesterPoet said:

It may be that I am just noticing it more, but it would seem that in the last two years or so, there have been a significant amount of articles and other news items related to D&D.

I think this is a good trend. Sure, we do have the share of articels bashing it (though I haven't seen one in a long time) but it's nice to see that the game seems to be getting some more recognition.

Click to expand...

I'm wondering how actively WotC/Hasbro is trying to build up good publicity about the game. There've been several articles like this in the last few weeks by people how've played the game "back in the day", and a lot of them seem to mention that it's a good activity for kids to get into. And then there's "D&D for Dummies" coming out. A far cry from 20 years ago, when TSR let the whole Satanism angle explode because it generated free publicity for them. I think most people have pretty much forgotten about that, and WotC/Hasbro is trying to build up positive publicity to help popularize the game more.