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The Caller and the Mapper
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<blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 6320006" data-attributes="member: 2205"><p>Seems like maybe the discussion has migrated away from the OP topic to some degree...</p><p></p><p>But I'll say that in about 35 years of play (sometimes off and on) I've never once used a caller and only very rarely a mapper. Both roles are appropriate to a very specific kind of playstyle that emphasizes large groups of characters exploring dungeons and doing little else. I think this playstyle was always very specific, never very common, and practically non-existent by 1980 or so, if not even considerably earlier. It also hearkens back to the notion of tournament play. Which, while I'm aware that it existed, it certainly didn't come very close to representing any game I ever was in.</p><p></p><p>I guess I'm saying that you must be older than me, or something <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /></p><p></p><p>But really it's not as much about age as it is about playstyle. I didn't come into the hobby during the mid-70s as a war-gaming enthusiast who was excited about this new take on my existing hobby. I came into the hobby in the very late 70s and early 80s as a fan of fantasy books who was excited about this new take on my existing hobby. And coming at it from a totally different hobbyist background than Gygax and Arneson did, or initially assumed for the first wave of D&D fans, I always did find much of the early assumptions about playstyle to be very strange and even uncouth (!) given what I wanted the hobby to provide. While I later came to understand some of the war-gaming context inherent in the early game, I never really did take to it all that well.</p><p></p><p>The "second wave" of fans, those that made D&D a household name in the early 80s in particular, seemed by and large to be more like me rather than the old grognards who made up the first wave. This is why it was probably inevitable that the so-called Hickman Revolution took place and stuff like the elimination of the caller and mapper from the basic gamer lexicon eventually happened. The game evolved to meet the demands of its player base, and with a significant sea-change in what the player base wanted, the game eventually changed to meet that. In fact, I believe that for many years, the game was caught up in a bit of an old boys network where old skool designers and writers were unaware of, or at least specifically did not cater to, this pent-up demand.</p><p></p><p>There are still a lot of lingering legacies of this first wave inherent in D&D, though. Plenty of little features here and there that are retained out of tradition or habit or inertia, but which don't really do much for the audience in many respects.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Desdichado, post: 6320006, member: 2205"] Seems like maybe the discussion has migrated away from the OP topic to some degree... But I'll say that in about 35 years of play (sometimes off and on) I've never once used a caller and only very rarely a mapper. Both roles are appropriate to a very specific kind of playstyle that emphasizes large groups of characters exploring dungeons and doing little else. I think this playstyle was always very specific, never very common, and practically non-existent by 1980 or so, if not even considerably earlier. It also hearkens back to the notion of tournament play. Which, while I'm aware that it existed, it certainly didn't come very close to representing any game I ever was in. I guess I'm saying that you must be older than me, or something ;) But really it's not as much about age as it is about playstyle. I didn't come into the hobby during the mid-70s as a war-gaming enthusiast who was excited about this new take on my existing hobby. I came into the hobby in the very late 70s and early 80s as a fan of fantasy books who was excited about this new take on my existing hobby. And coming at it from a totally different hobbyist background than Gygax and Arneson did, or initially assumed for the first wave of D&D fans, I always did find much of the early assumptions about playstyle to be very strange and even uncouth (!) given what I wanted the hobby to provide. While I later came to understand some of the war-gaming context inherent in the early game, I never really did take to it all that well. The "second wave" of fans, those that made D&D a household name in the early 80s in particular, seemed by and large to be more like me rather than the old grognards who made up the first wave. This is why it was probably inevitable that the so-called Hickman Revolution took place and stuff like the elimination of the caller and mapper from the basic gamer lexicon eventually happened. The game evolved to meet the demands of its player base, and with a significant sea-change in what the player base wanted, the game eventually changed to meet that. In fact, I believe that for many years, the game was caught up in a bit of an old boys network where old skool designers and writers were unaware of, or at least specifically did not cater to, this pent-up demand. There are still a lot of lingering legacies of this first wave inherent in D&D, though. Plenty of little features here and there that are retained out of tradition or habit or inertia, but which don't really do much for the audience in many respects. [/QUOTE]
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