D&D 5E An 18-year old's take on 5E

I'm only four years older than this student of yours, and I pretty much feel the same way as him.

The main difference is that the first version of "D&D" I played was just me and my cousins making up silly stories and pretending it was D&D. We gave our characters stats, mostly basing them off video games we'd played, but when we actually started playing we promptly forgot about them and just explored the castle I had drawn. I don't think we even used HP, even when they fought dragons. It was a lot of fun!

Eventually I began getting interested in actual D&D. I gradually formed a picture of what it was really like, and finally decided to buy the books. Problem was, everything I'd heard about the came was from people describing 3.5e, and I had unknowingly bought the books for 4e, which I didn't even know existed. I was pretty confused when I started playing; it was so different from what I'd been lead to believe. It was kinda fun, but once I realized my mistake I felt like I needed to keep playing to justify buying the books when I could've just played the game I really wanted for free. I truly tried to make it work, and like I said I got some enjoyment out of it, but the more I read about the previous edition and all the things it could do, the harder it was to be happy with it.

Then a friend of mine wanted to start a 3.5e game with me, and I leapt at the opportunity. And when we played, it was everything I'd wanted in a game. It felt like I was playing with my cousins again, but more structured and even more funny. I was older, so my capacity for stupid ideas was much greater, and literally every session had me collapse into fits of laughter at some point. We never managed to finish the game, but it was nice to see what I'd been missing.

I tried playing 4e some more after that, but I couldn't really get excited about it anymore. So when I learned a 5th edition was coming out, and that it was going to be more like 3rd, I immediately signed up as a playtester and tried it on my college friends. I liked it even more than 3.5e! It was like they took all the fun stuff from that edition and left out all the needlessly hard-to-remember rules. For me, the "rulings not rules" thing wasn't new, but I had never played an official D&D that had it, so it was great to see another thing from my freeform games as a kid return. Coming from a perspective like mine, this edition is the best of all.

I guess you could call it the "Reverse Skaff Effect" - “The overall success of the market share leader in the hobby gaming genre contributes to the marketing and sales activity of other games in the genre."

[MENTION=6785902]Fralex[/MENTION] , it sounds like your beginnings weren't unlike mine when I started Basic D&D back in 1981. My friends and I found the game at the time too complicated to figure out, so we took all the cool concepts we read about and made up stories using those cool concepts. It wasn't until two or three years later as I got older that I was able to understand the rules and actually play "for real." We played the entirety of Keep on thr Borderlands and the Isle of Dread without rolling a single die roll, slaying monsters by the hundreds.

I'm a solid decade older than your friend Mr OP, but I didn't really start playing D&D until late 3.5 and 4th was my big break into D&D. I think there's a build-in assumption that being older means you started with older editions of D&D, but this simply isn't true.

I've taught (and playtested) 5E with people who've known nothing but d20. For most it's actually a bit of a head-turner at first, but once they get used to it, they LOVE it! It's much simpler than what they're used to, and it has an element of danger that some have never experienced (i.e. combats not level based, where retreat is often a good idea). The really like that the rules don't run the game, but simply sit in the background until needed.

Iosue said:

I was recently watching the Critical Role Q&A, and was struck by how most of them had started with 3e, 4e, or PF. Even Matt Mercer only goes back as far as 2e. They had one guy who went back as far as AD&D 1e. It's similar with WotC live games; even the old timers go back as far as 2e. In addition to making me feel old, it really brings home the realization that I, having started with B/X and AD&D, simply see the game differently than a good chunk, if not the majority, of D&D players.

I don't know if that'll really change with 5e.

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You aren't the only one. I'll say that my experiences are that 5E has a wide appeal, and is building a strong player base across all ages - from the 14yo who was at my table Saturday last to the 50-somethings I've seen at my FLGS last fall.

shidaku said:

I'm a solid decade older than your friend Mr OP, but I didn't really start playing D&D until late 3.5 and 4th was my big break into D&D. I think there's a build-in assumption that being older means you started with older editions of D&D, but this simply isn't true.

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Well of course it isn't ALWAYS true but I'm guessing that it is USUALLY true, by simple logic. Let's say that the majority of players start sometime in the age 10-15 range. Some older (like yourself - presumably in your late teens?), some younger. Depending upon which games were extant at the time one started, one is likely to start with that game.

I was first exposed to D&D when I was 7 or 8, but didn't get really into it until a year or two later. This was the early 80s, when the main versions in publication were AD&D and the B/X boxes. I was gifted four hardcover AD&D books, so that was where I started. I didn't even know about OD&D until the internet era. Now maybe if I started in my early 20s, in the mid-90s, I might have started with 2E - but again, we tend to start with what's popular at the time.

Mercurius said:

Well of course it isn't ALWAYS true but I'm guessing that it is USUALLY true, by simple logic. Let's say that the majority of players start sometime in the age 10-15 range. Some older (like yourself - presumably in your late teens?), some younger. Depending upon which games were extant at the time one started, one is likely to start with that game.

I was first exposed to D&D when I was 7 or 8, but didn't get really into it until a year or two later. This was the early 80s, when the main versions in publication were AD&D and the B/X boxes. I was gifted four hardcover AD&D books, so that was where I started. I didn't even know about OD&D until the internet era. Now maybe if I started in my early 20s, in the mid-90s, I might have started with 2E - but again, we tend to start with what's popular at the time.

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Yeah, I started with 1st Ed in 1986, and moved onto each new edition as it came along; 5th Ed for me is like the 2.5 I wanted back in August 2000.

Mercurius said:

Well of course it isn't ALWAYS true but I'm guessing that it is USUALLY true, by simple logic. Let's say that the majority of players start sometime in the age 10-15 range. Some older (like yourself - presumably in your late teens?), some younger. Depending upon which games were extant at the time one started, one is likely to start with that game.

I was first exposed to D&D when I was 7 or 8, but didn't get really into it until a year or two later. This was the early 80s, when the main versions in publication were AD&D and the B/X boxes. I was gifted four hardcover AD&D books, so that was where I started. I didn't even know about OD&D until the internet era. Now maybe if I started in my early 20s, in the mid-90s, I might have started with 2E - but again, we tend to start with what's popular at the time.

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I started in 1981... with a mix of B/X and AD&D. I was well aware of the existence of older editions, had even seen a copy of Holmes... but until the early 90's, had never seen a copy of Original D&D. From that point on, I owned a copy.

Why was I aware of Original Ed? Because it was advertised in the back of a number of other products! And it was advertised as "Classic D&D"...

I've followed D&D since... but many players were unaware of anything before AD&D 1E. Ignorance, even amongst 1E players, was rampant - proof that they didn't read the advert blurbs in the back of modules.

Then again, D&D was also my first encounter with net pirate editions... someone posted a lovingly retyped text-only edition of Moldvay Basic to WWIVnet...

Many D&D players were, even in the 80's, completely ignorant of non D&D RPGs, too. Especially those picking up BX or BECMI from big box stores like Toys-R-Us, Sears, or JC Penny (before they went all clothing).

[MENTION=6779310]aramis erak[/MENTION], back in the early 80s, most of my knowledge of other games was from reading Dragon. I remember they used to have reviews of other RPGs and such, and of course advertisements. But I don't remember "classic D&D" - although that doesn't mean I didn't see it. We're talking about 30+ years ago!

Definitely feeling a bit of nostalgia for print Dragon - when it was the "gathering place" for all things RPG-related.