The gaming community: online compared to the physical world

[The Shaman]

Dude, offense is often where you look for it. The guy's just relating his experiences and thoughts. If you really want to talk about weakening your main point, your own passage here is worse than his.

Please remember that those old editions are not maidens that need you to defend them. Folks are allowed to talk about not liking them, and should be able to do so without being jumped on.

I'll be sure to link this post the next time you or anyone else starts crying about edition wars.

And maybe I'll dig up some of my old posts on why I stopped playing 3e, and dump them at random into unrelated threads, since I'm free to talk about not liking it without being jumped on.

I'm not sure your point is actually counter to what Wingsandsword is saying though. Your personal experiences are such that without the options available to you through the Internet, you likely wouldn't be playing much at all.

My point is that it's an artificial distinction; gamers on the intrewebs are living, breathing human beings playing the games they enjoy in meatspace.

But you completely ignored that my post also speaks of the many gamers in our groups do not regularly participate on roleplaying forums, like no one in my Traveller campaign a few years ago, or three out of the four gamers from my current Flashing Blades campaign.

 

[Hussar]

But, The Shaman, the thing your Flashing Blades players have in common is you. If you weren't running this game, would they be playing it?

Do you really think that without the Internet, we'd have an OSR community as large as it is?

 

[wingsandsword]

Seriously, does any of this have anything to do with the subject of your post? If you had left all of this out of your post, would it have made any difference at all to your argument? Or is the opportunity to slag older editions of D&D just too tempting to pass up?First, do you understand that your view of the physical gaming community suffers from selection bias?The people with whom you play is largely made up of gamers who play more recent editions, therefore when you look around at other gamers, guess what you see? Yup, gamers who like the same things you like.

The reason for that passage was to show the kinds of disconnects I see. Online, such as ENWorld, I see people regularly championing old editions of the rules like AD&D, talking about how they are regularly played with large, vibrant user communities and have strong adherents. Offline, away from internet message boards and people that are regular contributors to message boards, I don't see that. In meatspace, by ~1998 the gamers I knew had either moved away from AD&D in favor of game systems with more unified and coherent rules, or had heavily house-ruled AD&D into something more coherent (and in some cases, actually predicted a good chunk of rules changes that came with 3e).

If you didn't have the internet to meet and coordinate the old-school edition fans that were out there, would you still be playing them? Would you know about other fans of AD&D and OD&D being around?

In one specific case, I remember a young lady who had only ever played the very highly modified version of AD&D 2e one specific group had played. She had no other gaming experience or knowledge than the custom variant of that group, but was kinda curious about the rest of the gaming world. One day I decided to show her what the regular baseline was for AD&D 2e, and showed her the core rules, and she was shocked and realized she would never have wanted to play a game that had that many inconsistencies The questions I gave in my original post, the ones you said were me trying to "slag" AD&D were ones I remembered her sincerely asking as she looked through the 2e PHB, as an example of what I had seen IRL at the time as questions I was asked about AD&D by gamers getting into the hobby. She also noted that her character would not have been allowed at all by the 2e RAW (Elf Bard/Druid).

That AD&D group I knew that switched to 3.5? I didn't meet them at a FLGS, or a Gaming Convention, or a Gaming Club, I met them because I met a nice girl at the dojo I train in martial arts at. We dated for a little while and at one point she invited me to meet her family, and her mother had been playing D&D since ~'75 and ran AD&D 1e for the whole family and some family friends and had been for a little over 20 years. However, when they saw the current state of D&D rules, the style and mechanics of d20 system and the degree of options available in 3.5 and they quickly came to the consensus that it would suit them better. That was an example of something I never, ever see talked about on ENWorld: An AD&D gaming group that decided to go from AD&D 1e to 3.5e out of consensus of the group that it was a better overall edition. Talk of such a thing might just be flame war fuel here, it would be a guaranteed flame war at Dragonsfoot. . .because the local online culture was not the same as what I was seeing out in meatspace.

See, if I look around at the gamers I know in meatspace, I see lots of gamers playing pre-3e D&D and none playing 3.0e or later. Should I draw from that the observation the presumption that no one plays 3e, 4e, or Pathfinder? No, 'cause that would be selection bias as well.

Now, as to your initial question?No, because many of the gamers with whom I play I met through online communities of one sort or another.

The reason I listed the wide variety of gamers I have met and known, and the places I have met them was to try to deflect allegations of selection bias, which didn't work.

I'll say it again: I know a lot of gamers from a wide variety of backgrounds. I've met lots at college gaming clubs, I've met more than a few at local gaming clubs hosted at FLGS's, I've met some at anime clubs, I've met lots at different FLGS's, I've met a lot at local gaming conventions, I've met them at the dojo I practice at. I've met some gamers at work when I was working in a call center. I've met some gamers at work when I was on Active Duty in the Army. I am now in the National Guard. . .and have met some gamers at my unit. I've even met a couple of gamers my current job with the State Police.

I've been meeting gamers in a variety of places since around 1997, in Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Illinois, Michigan, Tennessee, and Arizona, and most of those gamers are NOT on any gaming message boards (or at most occasionally lurk on a board for their favorite game). I have a few friends that lurk on ENWorld, and might have registered and posted once or twice ever. I've had a few friends that have posted for a while on Wizards.com before they got burnt out from the environment there. The old-school fans I knew generally didn't get on any boards (being of an older generation, they were much less likely to be online at all), the fans of smaller games like d6 Star Wars and Savage Worlds often didn't even think to go online.

I wasn't gaming in '89 when 2e came out, but have talked with many people who were. I was told plenty of stories of people who refused to play 2e, or buy the books, and that there was bad blood circa 1989/90 in the D&D community, but it faded over a few years. I was told of various accommodations and compromises that groups and DM's made: letting PC's bring 1e sheets to 2e games, of slowly converting games over a few rules at a time, of going with 2e but lots of "grandfathered" rules/materials, and that within a few years most groups were playing 2e, using 2e core books, some keeping grandfathered 1e materials at the table. For some of the groups that had house-ruled chimera editions, this was the start of the process as they began to liberally pick and choose what rules they used, and change things to fit their group or drop rules they didn't like. It is now almost 4 years after the release of 4e, and we're definitely not seeing that same kind of trend towards everybody gradually migrating to the new edition, despite claims I read on here of the 3.5e/4e schism being no different at all than the 1e/2e schism.

That's what all those anecdotes were for: to show I wasn't just taking the local gaming group I regularly play with or the regular crowd hanging out at my favorite FLGS and assuming that everyone, everywhere is like that and since it wasn't like what I saw online, that online communities did not always reflect the consensus of the meatspace communities. I was trying to show that I've participated in or spoken with gamers from a pretty wide variety of communities with a broad selection of gaming styles, system/edition preferences, and age range.

That's the kind of experiences I have when I say that a lot of attitudes I see online do NOT match up with common claims I've seen online like D&D 3e causing a huge schism with the AD&D player base (IME, AD&D was dropped like a hot potato by the vast majority of its player base for 3.0 within a year of release), that there are no "edition wars" offline and almost everybody plays 4e with only a handful of 3.5e/PF holdouts being loud complainers online (IRL I see "3e or 4e", with 3e including Pathfinder, as a common "getting to know you" question among gamers now), or of Castles and Crusades was almost as big as 3.5e (IRL, I knew a couple of people who bought the book as a collection item, nobody who actually played it), or that the gaming community is no more divided today than it was 7 or 8 years ago when 3.x was at it's peak (the overall community I saw was united on a general consensus of 3.x, and a real schism only appeared when 4e split things). . .because I would like to think that I've seen a fair sample of the meatspace gaming world.

 

[Umbran]

I'll be sure to link this post the next time you or anyone else starts crying about edition wars.

As if it'll discomfit me in the slightest?

I have a history of saying, "It takes two to tango". My personal gripes about edition wars generally hinge on how both sides act poorly in how they give and receive comments. So, really, you're not going to get much traction there. I'm not saying anything new to you, that I haven't said to dozens of others in one way or another.

 

[The Shaman]

The reason for that passage was to show the kinds of disconnects I see.

Could, "I stopped enjoying either edition of AD&D for a variety of reasons," make exactly the same point without the lengthy digression?

Or was the lengthy digression actually the point?

If you didn't have the internet to meet and coordinate the old-school edition fans that were out there, would you still be playing them?

Hell yes.

It was the experience of playing d20 games which fired a renewed interest in the roleplaying games I enjoyed years earlier. It wasn't an online community that lead me back to Traveller; it was me buying a copy of 1001 Characters, with the idea of writing something similar for d20 Modern, which got me excited about the idea of running Traveller again and introducing the game to some friends.

Would you know about other fans of AD&D and OD&D being around?

Of course, the same way gamers found each other in the days before the internet, through game stores, 'zines, uni clubs, and so on, or by creating their own groups through introducing people to the hobby.

But we don't live in a world without the intreweb, so the point is moot.

And that leads back around to my original point: trying to draw a line between the experiences of gamers who participate in online fourms et al. and those who don't is artificial, in my experience. For every gamer I know who does participate in these forums I know two or three who don't, and they're still enjoying all these games you seem to think no one plays.

Oh, and it really doesn't matter how many gamers you've played with, wingandsword; there's still a selection bias. It's like trying to find Dodger fans at AT&T Park; even if you do manage to find a few, you won't find too many people willing to cheer along with them.

As if it'll discomfit me in the slightest?

I honestly don't give any thought - seriously, none at all - to what may or may not discomfit you.

And by the way, I noticed you edited out the personal dig.

 

[saskganesh]

Do you really think that without the Internet...?

Isn't this a bit of a strawdog? I can think of very few industries, activities, subcultures, hobbies, relationships that haven't been affected by the internet at this point.

Says he writing on an online forum

 

[The Shaman]

But, The Shaman, the thing your Flashing Blades players have in common is you. If you weren't running this game, would they be playing it?

No games get played without someone to run them.

And btw, I brought in one player, he brought in two more, and one of those two brought in a fourth. All had played roleplaying games, but only two of us had experience with Flashing Blades.

Do you really think that without the Internet, we'd have an OSR community as large as it is?

(hat-tip to @sakganesh for that)

In the misty days of yore, gamers found one another without the intrewebs. But we don't live in that world anymore, so the question is moot. The intrewebs are a part of gaming, even if all roleplaying gamers don't necessarily participate on them to the same extent.

Does the OSR benefit from the intreweb? Certainly, as much as 'indie' games spawned by The Forge (a - *gasp!* - website!) do, something [MENTION=85479]wing[/MENTION]andsword pointedly fails to mention. The OSR wasn't a necessary to play older games, any more than The Forge was necessary to think differently about roleplaying games. What the OSR does in particular is allow gamers to sell products for older editions; it was never a necessary component to simply play those older games anymore than the continuing existence of Fantasy Games Unlimited is necessary for me to play Flashing Blades.

But the question posed in the original post is, is there a disconnect between what happens in meatspace and what happens in cyberspace, and for me, that's a silly question: the gamers in cyberspace are also gamers in meatspace, and from my experience, the games enjoyed by those in meatspace isn't limited to only those who participate in cyberspace.

 

[Corathon]

But, The Shaman, the thing your Flashing Blades players have in common is you. If you weren't running this game, would they be playing it?

Do you really think that without the Internet, we'd have an OSR community as large as it is?

Hussar, the OSR community would be much smaller without the internet, but some people would still be playing "old school" type games.. None of the players in my tabletop 1E AD&D game were recruited online. I've tried using the internet to recruit players, but the only recruiting successes that I've had have come by other means (e.g. one of my players knowing somebody that'd like to play, posting a notice in a gamestore).

 

[WizarDru]

It's been said many times, but often bears repeating: "The plural of anecdote is not data." My experiences are my own and sometimes mirror wingandswords. And sometimes they don't. I've been playing since I started with Basic D&D in 1979. My experience matches SOME of what w&s describes...but some of it is different. Self selection bias is a factor. Both The Shaman and wingandsword describe their experiences and they are correct for them. They are not necessarily correct for me...and there's no reason they should be.

The core idea that online forums don't match real-world experience is, IMHO, self-selective. ENWorld is not the only place on the web to discuss D&D. It's not even the only place to discuss ENWorld! Online communities, like their offline counterparts....that is just plain communities...adhere to all sorts of variation. The mood at one gameshop is totally different than another, for example. When I bought my first AD&D book, I bought it a non-gaming bookshop in a strip-mall. I bought my second at a store that was (honestly) half gameshop-half pet store. My third book was at a waldenbooks. My fourth at a hobby store that sold all kinds of games. They were all different stores and all had different communities and feels to them.

The Compleat Strategist I used to frequent at college was a home to grognards of the old order. They were hardcore into D&D. My group AT college was more experimental; we ran GURPS and Runequest. My group at home ran everything. As a frequent DM, I often shaped what we played...so I was transformative for some of my group. My future-wife had never played an RPG before.

Many things I hear discussed here I have discussed in 'meatspace'. Many problems reported herein I have experienced. Likewise, many I have not.

What really seems under discussion is the assumption of a core universal gamer standard of some sort and how the online community (also assumed as some sort of core standard) relates to it. But those are illusory, IMHO. As Umbran points out, there are multiple communities both online and off. The idea of their being a disconnect between the experiences is really no different than the arguments in Dragon's 'Forum' column back in the day. I'm sure it exists...I'm just not sure it matters.

 

[Umbran]

What really seems under discussion is the assumption of a core universal gamer standard of some sort and how the online community (also assumed as some sort of core standard) relates to it.

Not quite, I think. You don't have to have a "core standard" to have a subset that is notably different from the whole. This is one of the strengths of statistics.

Demonstrative analogy: Take the folks who live in your town. The only "standard" is that they live in your town. Now, as a subset, take all the people who live on your street. We did not have to know the "average address" of the folks in town in order to define the subset, or to talk about what those folks have in common that might be different from everyone else.

Or, to be more analogous - take the subset of people who visit a particular coffee shop at least three times a week. We don't need to know the full habits of the rest of the population to differentiate the coffeeshoppers from the rest of the townsfolk. The only thing we need to know is that they don't go to that shop often.