Sign of Things to Come?

[Pickles JG]

I wish I could heal myself by eating bacon. Mmmmm, bacon.

Bacon is its own reward

 

[Aeolius]

Sure. I came from video games myself, back in 1988 or thereabouts.

Try 1979 with Atari's "Adventure:

1979 was also the year I started playing D&D.

or 1972 with Magnavox's "Haunted House for the Odyssey:

You are looking at a plastic overlay that you taped over the TV screen. You played a moving square (similar to Pong) on the TV.

 

[thalmin]

Bacon is its own reward

Immortality and XP for you!

 

[roguerouge]

In Dark Sun, they have fruit of healing.

 

[RFisher]

Interesting. Is recreational reading less popular than it once was? Or is that best left to a forked thread. Hm.

I don’t know, but I think there really is something to “we come from books”.

 

[mmu1]

By the way, if they were novices to D&D, how did they know they had "low hit points" . . ?

They were probably comparing what their characters had to what a starting characters gets in a videogame, would be my guess.

WoW characters have thousands of HP, most JRPG ones hundreds, many games start you off at 100. Low level D&D characters might have single-digit HP...

 

[BryonD]

Once it was explained to them, the three said that it was stupid not to heal with food and that every video game was set up like that.

With all the advances in computer games, the range of computer "gamers" has definitely grown. I believe the conventional wisdom seems to follow that the pool of "gamers" therefore has grown as well. I believe this is flawed thinking. The table-top immersive role player is still a pretty select group (either a compliment or an insult depending on where you are sitting).

You end up with more and more people who may love computer fantasy games, but ultimately would have no desire in the least to sit around a table with dice and paper and take on a personality.

It is entirely possible that if you moved these guys back in time 25 years they would think all fantasy games were stupid. And it is just as probable that many of the kids we all knew 25 years ago that thought D&D games were stupid would love today's computer FRPGs if they were still 15 years old (or even now at 40).

Nothing has changed except the quality of computer games. It is a mistake to think this in any way changes the core table top gamer population.

 

[FATDRAGONGAMES]

I wish I could heal myself by eating bacon. Mmmmm, bacon.

Bacon, the fruit of the pig.

 

[Remathilis]

Bacon, the fruit of the pig.

The Divine Swine!

 

[Festivus]

You could punch one in the shoulder and then tell him to get a sandwich when he goes "Ow!"

We used to call those "Hertz Doughuts".

The food for life thing has been around forever. My D&D days predate video games but I can remember back then playing with some friends who played video games who thought the same thing. Back then we were of course 15 year olds.