My first gaming club was sponsored by my junior high librarian. I bet if you sponsored an after-school D&D club you could re-kindle the environment that you remember from your childhood. I agree that a new edition alone will not bring in new gamers, but I don't think a computer game necessarily will either. It takes current gamers to spread the fun to new gamers, IMO.
Sorry, slightly miffed by your response, if you think I haven't tried etc. That it's as simple as that. The games I've started last exactly as long as I can put in the hours, longest run was through the Sunken Citadel.
If I were to go into the methods employed, the effort I've put in- sound effects, drawings, puzzles, quizzes, prizes, monsters played by jelly snakes, all manner of daftness, and of course high fantasy. At the end of the day the most entertaining thing, regardless of what rpg we were playing, was me- at least that's how it felt.
And the competition for their attention is constant, if I had a £1 for every time a kid had said to me- 'this would be great on a computer...', I'd have retired years ago.
I get that I can enthuse them but there's no one else playing the games, and no shops in Grimsby selling rpg stuff, and no clubs etc. And over here, Harry Potter and Vampires aside (which are good things don't get me wrong), reading is not high on a lot of kids agendas.
But at the end of the day, I miss a week (because of work, home-life or whatever), and the next week half of the kids are gone, and back on their consoles; or even worse- I get phone calls and complaints. They even bring their handhelds to the sessions, I think I must be living in a different world to you.
I've just stopped teaching for good, my last years were spent teaching in higher education- degrees et al. I used to ask my students at the start of the units I was delivering to complete a questionnaire- about social media, what they read, watch etc. So that I could tailor some of the delivery to match their interests, and I'll say this again- these are degree level students. In some classes over a third of the students had never read a book all the way through. And if you exclude Harry Potter and Vampires then for over 50% of the students the last book they read was at school when they were kids.
Sorry if I was a little stuffy to begin with but your reply seemed a little glib at first, like I'd not thought to try starting my own group. The other thing is its difficult at times to do a job that accounts for far more of your hours than you spend at work- all the prep at home. Then having to spend weekends catching up because I'm putting more hours in for a side project- gaming.
Last bit, gaming with kids is good fun at times, but I'm approaching the half-century- I have very little in common with them, save that I'm their teacher. It's like being on duty all the time- because that's exactly what it is. I stopped trying after about 3-4 years because I wasn't getting anything out of the experience, or very little, it didn't remind me at all of the times when I was DMing people of my own age, with similar cultural experiences.
I game on-line now, and my group has been together for years, and we talk about life, and love and loss as much as we talk about anything, and its great.
Sorry for the over-written aside, back to the thread...
I still think the FR is meh, and I've a loft full of all of my old gaming stuff, and I'm still waiting for 5e to light a fire under me...