How long have you been gaming?

[Deset Gled]

I got my Red Box sometime around 1993. Yes, that's old for the red box. Apparently my mom bought it for me a few years earlier when a toy store was going out of business with plans to give it to me for [holiday], but for various reasons it got left in the basement and was rediscovered years later.

I found D+D mildly interesting at the time, but only played about three times before it was put on a shelf and forgotten about. A few years later I got much more into gaming with the Star Wars WEG game, and then got into D+D again when 3e came out.

 

[Morrus]

Well, without survey data, it's entirely anecdotal. But when I wandered through the Pathfinder and WOTC areas of Origins, it looked much grayer than the Indie Games on Demand areas. the Savage Worlds and Pelgrane groups seemed intermediate in age, but the difference between D&D and Indie games was pretty strong.

Sure, and I went to UKGE and saw no Americans; my conclusion is that Americans don’t play D&D.

As you say, our anecdotes are worth about as much as the paper they’re written on. Conventions in particular are very self-selecting (how many 20 yr old new gamers have even heard of Origins, let alone travelled there?)

An alternative view might be to look at all those people playing on Twitch and Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds. A lot of youth and fresh blood there. A lot of people who have never played at an actual table and for whom online gaming is the norm. And a lot of people, like me, who wouldn’t even know how to begin using those things.

 

[robus]

A school friend had the books and I remember playing once. For some reason the book titles stuck with me through the years so I must have spent more time than I remember soaking it up.

I finally decided to take the plunge with the advent of 5e. All the press put it on my radar and I decided I'd find a game and take it up as a hobby. That was roughly two years ago. I'm now a novice DM and my group has been meeting for almost the entire time.

I enjoy it but always feel I could do it better... the players seem to be having a good time for the most part and that's the main thing.

 

[robus]

I would expect the exact opposite. WotC's player acquisition outreach over the last 3 years has been strongly targeted at new, young gamers (as it should be if they want to keep going for another 40 years). They're using Twitch, young Hollywood types, an aggressive worldwide Organised Play program, and large social media outreach all designed to that end. While EN World itself would skew older (for other reasons), I don't think that D&D as a whole does these days. At local gaming clubs and the like, the new youngsters are all playing D&D 5E.

Somebody really needs to do another of those massive market surveys to find out for sure, but that's my sense.

It would be interesting to see how the Reddit DnD sub forum would breakdown. I think that skews to a younger crowd (and given its wide ranging topics, perhaps easier for people to stumble upon)?

 

[Wednesday Boy]

I found D+D mildly interesting at the time, but only played about three times before it was put on a shelf and forgotten about. A few years later I got much more into gaming with the Star Wars WEG game, and then got into D+D again when 3e came out.

Soon after getting into D&D we found a copy of WEG's Star Wars rpg and we played it endlessly.

 

[S'mon]

70% 31-40 years. Wow, not a lot of diversity there! Really shows how different forum posters are to the general mass of players I think. My groups are rarely more than 1/3 grognard, even though I am one.

 

[Morrus]

Of course a lot of those 30-40 year olds were teenagers when this forum started.


Sent from my iPhone using EN World

 

[The_Gunslinger658]

Hi ya-

I am both a Wargamer and an RPG'er (though my players do complain that my DnD encounters are wargame like lol). Before DnD I used to play Squad Leader but have since been playing Advanced Squad Leader. When I was sent to the Marines as medical support that is where I started playing AD&D in 1985. The first group I played were all Marines, two of which went to Wisconsin during leave and tried to rob a bank. Well both of them went to the pokey for a very long time. So my first experience with DnD was a very interesting one.


Scott

 

[MrsFickleGM]

December of 1993, Fickle was looking through his 2nd edition stuff. I volunteered to create a character - who died in the first session. Stupid wolves.

 

[Mercule]

At >20 years I didn't expect to be a rookie...

Yeah. I expected to be "old man" not "normal".