Gaming Generation Gap

[Rechan]

The following is just an example of a greater point:

Um, yes. Yes you did [lose your geek card].

In the pantheon of Classic Fantasy You Darn Well Better Have Read, Lloyd Alexander is only one step below Tolkien, Howard, or Moorcock in importance. Heck, he's also the only semi-modern writer I can think of to have inspired a Disney movie. (The Black Cauldron, while neither a fantastic movie nor particularly loyal as an adaptation, at least pushed the books further into public consciousness for a time.)

Now I'm worried I can't properly play D&D. The only fantasy books I've ever read were some R.A. Salvatore stuff in middle school, The Hobbit, and the first half of the Lord of the Rings. I am now concerned that I am doing it wrong.

I tried to read Wolfe's New Sun series, but didn't get too far. I've been meaning to read Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea books (which no one has mentioned, I don't think. I have no idea how D&D they are), but have yet to get started. That's all I've got for fantasy.

Maybe I need to read more.

I didn't start getting into real RPGs until around 1998 - when I was a freshman in HS. I can count on my hand the number of 2e AD&D sessions I played. It also means that my first legitimate fantasy fiction was Forgotten Realms novels, not literature.

So, I find myself in an odd place around here, and with quite a few folks I play with: talk of starting with Box sets, growing up on Moorcock/Leiber/Tolkien/etc etc etc. It's like sitting in a room with a bunch of old timers waxing about the Good Ol' Days when you weren't born yet. You can't relate.

There is also this undercurrent of an expectation, of how the Old Ways and Old Books color the eyes of folks here. An assumption everyone's played it, or should play it, and that all the tastes of the Old Timers ruminate from the early days. So, as a youngin, I don't really know how to grasp at it; it's a generation gap.

The interesting thing is that it's a generation gap of CULTURE, not age. I'd say that most of those with fond memories of the Box Set are in their mid thirties to mid forties. I, being 25, am not too much younger than that, but it's a definitely different experience.

So for me it's almost a disconnect, having little reference beyond the second hand information of posters here saying how things were, or talking about oldschool literature.

This isn't me complaining or saying I'm feeling inadequate. I just find it an interesting dynamic.

It also makes me wonder how, as the community ages and new, younger gamers come in, what the culture will be, where the RPG Community touchstones will be, and what qualifies you for a "Geek Card". For instance, a few months ago there was a thread asking "Those 25 and under, what of this long list of D&D inspiration material (Leiber, Moorcock, Tolkein, etc) have you read?" I'd say that 90% of the respondents 25 and under had read three or less.

 

[Glyfair]

I didn't start getting into Fantasy/RPGs until around 1998 - when I was a freshman in HS. I can count on my hand the number of 2e AD&D sessions I played. It also means that my youth of fantasy fiction was more related to Forgotten Realms novels than literature.

So, I find myself in an odd place around here, and with quite a few folks I play with: talk of starting with Box sets, growing up on Moorcock/Leiber/Tolkien/etc etc etc. It's like sitting in a room with a bunch of old timers waxing about the Good Ol' Days when you weren't born yet. You can't relate.

Now, I started as a sophomore in HS, in '79. Those authors were all "old school." I mostly went to the library and used book stores to start reading them. The fantasy books at the time centered around the Shannara books, IIRC.

Now, I did love the the Gygax recommended books. What sort of books you like and influence you (even if pointed in their direction) is as much personal taste as it is generation. The generation mostly shows what sort of books to which you were exposed.

 

[ggroy]

I didn't start getting into Fantasy/RPGs until around 1998 - when I was a freshman in HS. I can count on my hand the number of 2e AD&D sessions I played. It also means that my youth of fantasy fiction was more related to Forgotten Realms novels than literature.

So, I find myself in an odd place around here, and with quite a few folks I play with: talk of starting with Box sets, growing up on Moorcock/Leiber/Tolkien/etc etc etc. It's like sitting in a room with a bunch of old timers waxing about the Good Ol' Days when you weren't born yet. You can't relate.

My "knowledge gap" (for lack of a better term) over the years, is that I have read very few fantasy books. I tried reading through the first Dragonlance novel, but stopped after reading the first few chapters and never went back to it. I also have read very few books in genres like science fiction. I don't watch many science fiction or fantasy shows on television or at the movies (for that matter).

Around the gaming table, I frequently have no clue what the other players are talking about when they're making references to books I've never read and/or to something they've seen in a movie or on television. The books I read and the stuff I watch on television or at the movies, is very different than what the other players read and watch. It's as if we're in two totally different worlds, speaking completely different "languages" (figuratively).

The only stuff I've read which has any remote relevance to fantasy rpg games like D&D, is some history of Europe from 500 years ago or more.

 

[Rechan]

Now, I started as a sophomore in HS, in '79. Those authors were all "old school." I mostly went to the library and used book stores to start reading them. The fantasy books at the time centered around the Shannara books, IIRC.

Now, I did love the the Gygax recommended books. What sort of books you like and influence you (even if pointed in their direction) is as much personal taste as it is generation. The generation mostly shows what sort of books to which you were exposed.

True, but with age and taste, what Generation deals with what Edition you started with. That effects your development, or at least experience, as a gamer.

While someone who started playing 1e when they were 8 and someone who started when they were 17 are going to be Different (and develop differently), they also have that similar experience of the same touchstones and references of how things where when they first started playing. They learned how to play in a similar manner.

 

[Mark]

For instance, a few months ago there was a thread asking "Those 25 and under, what of this long list of D&D inspiration material (Leiber, Moorcock, Tolkein, etc) have you read?" I'd say that 90% of the respondents 25 and under had read three or less.

Link?


I think the advent of the Internet makes generation gaps (and culture gaps) much less of an issue than prior to that access. Even those who choose not to read or experience the culture of another individual can at least readily find the information that allows them to understand it.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I started in the 90's as a kid. Though it was less fantasy and more just genres in general. So fantasy, sci-fi, horror, cyberpunk, etc. I think this may have attributed to me being very much a "genres shouldn't be kept separate" viewpoint. As for D&D started right in the cut-off between 2e and 3e, though also with lots of other games like Vampire at same time.

As for actual authors besides for Tolkien yeah a lot of those older authors haven't really touched. Actually in general the authors I read most and remember aren't entirely fantasy-oriented (at least traditional) stuff like Neil Gaiman, China Meville, William Gibson and such.

As for future generations, I know that from 90's and really coming to a head in 2000-present New Weird had lots of books coming out. So perhaps that is where the culture will focus somewhat. Also Steampunk continously growing in the 2000's as a general concept not just literature would effect future gaming culture I think.

 

[mach1.9pants]

Well, as a grognard (just, started in 81) I only like Tolkien and (a little bit) leiber of all the classic books. I have tried pretty much most of the others on the 'geek card' list but find most of them incredibly dull; I even don't finish them (Vance, Elric, Conan, etc are all books I found so poor that I didn't finish).

So I feel on the cusp, I feel in between (I played heaps of BECMI, ADnD, 2E, 3E and now 4E- along with tons of other systems) but I find most of the inspirational traditional books of DnD un-readable. SO maybe it is a generational cultural gap and I am just stuck in the middle (35)?

 

[Rechan]

Link?

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...estion-25-under-crowd-what-have-you-read.html

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm around your generation, Rechan. Most of my formative fantasy was Japanese fantasy from anime and videogames. A little bit of He-Man or the Thundercats meant that I was also perfectly happy with sci fi in my fantasy.

I found Tolkien exceptionally boring, and could never stomach a lot of the '80's fantasy that was present in D&D that I learned. Big hair and nude barbarians and stuff ripped from Heavy Metal was never much my fare.

I think it's true that fantasy has gotten a whole lot more diverse, too. In the early days, it was a fairly new genre, with only a few good books in it. Now, it's significantly broader and bigger, with a lot of good books (and other media).

It's kind of like TV before and after the huge expansion of cable and sattelite TV. When you had only 5 or so TV stations, who all kind of played by the same rules, you have a definition of Television that doesn't mesh with the experience of the kids nowadays.

I'm sure I'll go through it to in 10-20 years when kids who have never lived without Wikipedia are synthesizing more knowledge than I could have ever dreamt of having when my brain was at it's spongiest.

I'm kind of excited to see where the train goes.

 

[Mercutio01]

Interestingly, Rechan, I'm 30 and didn't discover any of those authors until the last 5 years or so. I too grew up reading Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms (although I had read LotR long before either D&D series--4th or 5th grade IIRC). Moorcock and Leiber, Burroughs and Howard, etc were out of print.

I had read the Prydain series and the Dark is Rising sequence by the time I got to high school, but the pulp fiction of the 20's through the 60s were all but impossible to come by. That said, I've been voraciously devouring those books I find or search out based on recommendations from boards like this or from "commonality" with another author; ie Leiber and Moorcock as inheritors of Howard and Burroughs, Bradbury as inheritor of Verne, etc. Some of those books are coming back into print (PlanetStories from Paizo has a big hand in that), and some are resurfacing through used book stores in ways I hadn't noticed before. But perhaps that latter point is just because I've now been actively looking.

I'm also kind of working through those classics in chronological order. Started with Lord Dunsany and have been working my way forward from there. I'm up to Moorcock and Leiber, mostly by way of trading entities like paperbackswap.com and used book stores (and wikipedia as a reference point for who leads to who and what is similar to which).