Gaming Generation Gap

[amysrevenge]

I just started reading Jack Vance. I'm through the Cugel books and into Magnus Ridolph. I got the nostalgia in reverse: "ah, so this is what OD&D was based on when I played it!"

I'm reading Dying Earth for the first time myself (at age 34). I find that I'm not enjoying it, and I probably will move on to other books without finishing it. And I doubt that the problem is the age - I'm a big time Golden Age SF buff, and continually read SF from the 40s and 50s. I just don't feel any empathy at all for the characters, who I find universally morally reprehensible, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I just can't get through a book about one sociopath after another.

 

[Ariosto]

I do not think that "literature" in the customary or "high-brow" sense, had excessively much to do with the origins and early development of D&D! Universal, Hammer, and Harryhausen pictures were probably at least on par with the classic tales on which they drew for inspiration. The Kung Fu TV show has always seemed a strong association with the Monk class (a stranger in the strange land of predominantly Western D&D) -- along with the "Kung Fu Fighting" pop song!

Ancient myths and legends continue to inform works even by artists who have themselves received them only via very recent reinterpretations. Shakespeare's plays were part of the "pop culture" of his day, as perhaps were Homer's poems. They stand out as especially fine works, long recognized and preserved as "art" while most of their contemporaries have been forgotten. The roots of Story in them, though, are perennial stock from which popular works sprout. Fantasy has, I think, come to much greater prominence in "mainstream" entertainment than it enjoyed 35 years ago.

I see a slight difference in generations, though, in the role that the visual media play. I think they weigh a bit more heavily in the balance these days than reading and listening do -- or at least than those once did. Besides the decline of radio as a dramatic medium, face-to-face storytelling seems less commonly indulged in as a form of entertainment. Young people have hardly stopped reading books, and SF magazines are notable among the few short-fiction venues still precariously clinging to existence. Television has grown, though, and video games pretty much came into existence, in the decades since D&D first appeared.

 

[Ariosto]

I just can't get through a book about one sociopath after another.

That is not as ubiquitous in Vance as his unique prose style, but certainly predominates in the jaded and cynical Dying Earth. The Demon Princes series is another in which even the protagonist (a man driven by vengeance, reminiscent of the Count of Monte Cristo) is not very much more sympathetic than the villains.

If memory serves, The Languages of Pao, Big Planet and the Tschai (Planet of Adventure) series are among those in which Vance portrays characters of more traditionally heroic bent. I have yet to read Lyonesse, so cannot speak to that.

 

[Herschel]

I haven't read a lot of them either and I turned 40. Heck I just got around to actually reading LotR a couple of years ago (although I had heard the BBC radio play a few times. Most of my early reading was Donaldson and then historical records of mythology, warfare and a few of the true "classics" (Homer). Later, I read the Forgotten Realms books when I wanted some fluff, and read a few of the Dragonlance books, but always really hated Raistlin as a character and never got why people like him.

Then again, maybe I'm geek-light.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Heh, that's most certainly NOT the first REH Conan story. However, that's the first one of the reprints, so, that's fair enough.

Ok, when Conan is a young teen, he's afraid. Note, while being afraid, he still takes the sword and kills the undead creature. So much for being so scared he runs away.

Yeah, it was like 4 am, I meant to say the first story I looked in, "Tower of the Elephant."

That's what being a hero is about. Heroism is action, not due to lack of fear, but despite it.

Also Conan WAS running from the wolves, but I don't think it was in fear, just practical. He knew he couldn't handle an entire pack of wolves, although in the movie, we see him wearing skins of some sort after he leaves the cave. Nor does it mean the pcs in D&D are necessarily afraid when they retreat from overwhelming odds or deathtraps. It's merely pragmaticism.

 

[Reynard]

Is Tomb of Horrors merely a satire then, never intended to be actually run? That makes a lot of sense tbh.

Tomb of Horrors is a very specific kind of adventure and not representative of anything else.

But I'm guessing you knew that.

 

[amysrevenge]

That is not as ubiquitous in Vance as his unique prose style, but certainly predominates in the jaded and cynical Dying Earth.

I think that the style is an indication of this culture gap as well. I started playing in 2E, and I have this impression that many of the people playing ahead of me played similar types of characters to the Dying Earth ones, who were only interested in things they could kill, steal, or hump. Obviously this impression is incorrect (or at most vastly exaggerated in my mind), but it still colours how I react on a gut level, and makes me feel disconnected from my gaming elders.


As an aside, how funny is it that my favourite modern fictional character is Bender from Futurama, who exhibits most of the characteristics I dislike from Vance, and yet it's OK because he's a robot? There's hypocrisy for you lol.

 

[jmucchiello]

You certainly have a point in saying that D&D has been extremely influential in the modern conception of fantasy, but I think you overstate exactly how influential it is.

Sure, the original Final Fantasy blatantly steals a huge number of ideas from D&D in general and Dragonlance in particular, and many of these stolen ideas (such as the Black Mage/White Mage/Red Mage distinction) continue to stay close to the thematic core of the series, but at the same time the Final Fantasy series has gone off to create a huge number of interesting and unique ideas that don't resemble core D&D whatsoever. I mean, at this point a significant fraction of the Final Fantasy games feature modern or futuristic settings in which swordsmen, wizards, guns, cars, and robots all exist side by side, something that D&D itself has not supported whatsoever, and probably won't support any time soon.

Sixguns & Sorcery:

Whether or not you opt to have time/space warp throw BOOT HILL gunfighters into your AD&D world, or the advernturers from your fantasy milieu enter a Wild West setting, the conversions are the same.

Mutants & Magic:

Readers of THE DRAGON might already be familiar with the concept of mixing science fantasy and heroic fantasy from reading my previous article about the adventurers of a group of AD&D characters transported via a curse scroll to another continuum and ending up amidst the androids and mutants aboard the Starship Warden....

These 3 pages of the 1e DMG explain how to convert AD&D characters to Boot Hill and Gamma World and vice versa.

Yes, you are right. D&D never directly supported bonzo Rifts like play but it certainly was not said that you couldn't add such to your D&D game should you choose to. (See also S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.) If you don't see the influence of D&D on Final Fantasy in all its forms, you don't know D&D as well as you might.

** Hey, remember when it called The Dragon.

 

[haakon1]

Whether you read fantasy books or not isn't about age, it's circles of geekdom. Some things (Tolkien) are pretty core. Other things are common among D&D players (liking comics), but at all required.

The circles don't all overlap. And being totally out of one circle (no interest in comics) doesn't make you not a geek.

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, it was like 4 am, I meant to say the first story I looked in, "Tower of the Elephant."

That's what being a hero is about. Heroism is action, not due to lack of fear, but despite it.

Also Conan WAS running from the wolves, but I don't think it was in fear, just practical. He knew he couldn't handle an entire pack of wolves, although in the movie, we see him wearing skins of some sort after he leaves the cave. Nor does it mean the pcs in D&D are necessarily afraid when they retreat from overwhelming odds or deathtraps. It's merely pragmaticism.

That wasn't from Tower of the Elephant. That's from the one where Conan is a teen ager running away. I forget right now what the title is. Tower of the Elephant, Conan is not a youth and there's no wolves or crypts. There's a honking big Elephant like god and a wizard, but, no wolves. And certainly nothing howls.

But, I think we agree more than we disagree. Conan is a really poor example of the idea that PC's should not be bad assed. Conan is the original superhero bad ass. He wades through armies and comes out on top.

Again, he's the biggest, baddest, strongest, whatever est warrior around. That makes him a super-bad ass in my mind.