The Great D&D Schism: The End of an age and the scattering of gamers

[Eric Hughes]

I'm new to EN World, and therefore new to this discussion. I admit I have not read all 200+ posts. But I have to wonder if the thread as attempted to address the question "What constitutes the Golden Age?"

 

[Obryn]

I'm new to EN World, and therefore new to this discussion. I admit I have not read all 200+ posts. But I have to wonder if the thread as attempted to address the question "What constitutes the Golden Age?"

Quite often it's "How gaming was when I was twelve and/or when I had the best time with it."

But otherwise it's a combination of the number of people playing RPGs, its level of awareness in popular culture, the quality of existing games, the variety of new games, and the vibrancy of gaming culture. Or something like that. At least a few of those has to hit. I don't think we'll ever see a gaming phenomenon like we had in the early 80's again, so if you only get one chance at a golden age, that one's it. Otherwise probably 2000-2002 or so would be fair, and I'd argue that right now we're either in another one or on the cusp of it.

 

[Eric Hughes]

Why do you say we are either in a new Golden Age, or on the Cusp of one?

 

[Obryn]

Why do you say we are either in a new Golden Age, or on the Cusp of one?

A few factors, but it's driven by two big factors - Kickstarter and tablets.

Kickstarter is a game-changer - look at the successful campaigns for Fate Core, Numenera, (Timewatch!) etc. These are games which may have had a minor profile, but thanks to the funding method, exploded. Games are being made now (exciting games!) that would have never had a chance before.

Tablets, too - almost everyone, now, can afford a way to read PDFs. PDFs are amazingly inexpensive for publishers to distribute, and the world has gotten used to buying them.

 

[RedBoxDwarf]

In retrospect, the early to mid 2000's were a Golden Age of D&D.

I registered for these forums just so I could ask, "Huh?"

When I started playing D&D in 1998 . . .

This would be like me saying, "I've been reading comic books only since '98, but the Golden Age of comics was 2003."

If you have been playing D&D since '98, then I'm sorry, but you lack personal experience in the hobby and its historical context. What you mean to say is that your favorite edition is 3.0. And that's great. But the Golden Age of D&D probably occurred before you were old enough to play the game.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I registered for these forums just so I could ask, "Huh?"



This would be like me saying, "I've been reading comic books only since '98, but the Golden Age of comics was 2003."

If you have been playing D&D since '98, then I'm sorry, but you lack personal experience in the hobby and its historical context. What you mean to say is that your favorite edition is 3.0. And that's great. But the Golden Age of D&D probably occurred before you were old enough to play the game.

I started to play in 2e... 1995 or so and I think the golden age was the 80's... not playing or even being able to read duringing doesn't make it any less the golden age...

 

[wingsandsword]

I registered for these forums just so I could ask, "Huh?"



This would be like me saying, "I've been reading comic books only since '98, but the Golden Age of comics was 2003."

If you have been playing D&D since '98, then I'm sorry, but you lack personal experience in the hobby and its historical context. What you mean to say is that your favorite edition is 3.0. And that's great. But the Golden Age of D&D probably occurred before you were old enough to play the game.

I have more context than you think. I am quite aware of the strife between Basic D&D and AD&D players, of the edition war between 1e and 2e, and of the strife between White Wolf and D&D players in the early '90's.

You want to know why I say that the 2000's were the golden age and not the '80's? Personal experience of what happened when I tried to play D&D in the late '80's.

I was growing up in rural Kentucky. I had a classmate in junior high who had picked up the core 1e D&D books at a shop in Lexington, and brought them back to our small town. Knowing that I had a lot more friends than he did, my friend asked me to see if I could recruit around to drum up interest in the game.

So, I started asking around to my friends to see if they'd like to play D&D and that me and a friend were getting a group together. How did that go?

Inside of 48 hours later I was sitting in the guidance counselors office, being told that my peers had reported that I had "suicidal tendencies" and "was recruiting for a satanic cult". Apparently many classmates I'd talked to immediately ran and told the teacher that I was acting suicidal and trying to recruit people for some sort of mass suicide, or that I was trying to get people to join in some kind of satanic worship service. The teachers, principal, and guidance counselor all thought D&D was all about satanism and suicide as well.

They told my parents. My mother was level headed and thought it was absurd, but my Dad strictly forbade me from ever playing D&D while I lived under his roof. He called my friend's parents and told them he owned D&D books and should burn them. My friends parents didn't burn his books, but he couldn't get anybody else, not a one, to play with him, everyone thought it was an evil ritual or had been forbidden by parents who thought that. A few years later in High School we skirted around that ban by playing the Star Wars RPG, nobody cared about some kids sitting around playing Star Wars, even if they'd freak out at "Dungeons and Dragons".

Hard to see D&D as being in a "golden age" when it was basically forbidden across the entire town when I was growing up. Now, I look at the facebook page for my old school and see pictures of their D&D club from a few years back, they started a D&D club during 2000's apparently.

So, when I went to college years later, after several years there I found the local gaming club, and joined up. I met people who still refused to play D&D because they jumped to White Wolf years prior and thought of D&D as childish, I met people who were still bitter and refused to ever play 2e AD&D and would only play 1e, I met a guy who still swore by Rules Compendium D&D and only very begrudgingly played any other edition, and I knew some people who gave up D&D in favor of GURPS because they thought the class system was too restrictive.

When 3e came out, you know what happened? They *all* moved over to playing it. Not all as their favorite game, but some people who refused to play 2e AD&D because they were 1e loyalists switch their long running campaign to 3.5 when it came out. I saw the people who only played GURPS at least dabble with 3e because it was more flexible, they still didn't like it, but at least said it was the best edition of D&D they knew.

Don't say I lack context, I've got context. What I lack is belief that the '80's were this mythical golden age of D&D, because from where I sit, it was a LOUSY time to be a gamer because everybody thought you were a satanic cultist about to commit suicide if you even said the words "dungeons and dragons" in public.

By the 2000's, nobody cared. Public schools had gaming clubs, people who had given up on D&D years prior came back, and pretty much every gamer I knew, knew how to play 3.5 and was open to at least the occasional game of it. Sounds an awful more like a Golden Age to me.

 

[DMZ2112]

Hard to see D&D as being in a "golden age" when it was basically forbidden across the entire town when I was growing up. Now, I look at the facebook page for my old school and see pictures of their D&D club from a few years back, they started a D&D club during 2000's apparently.

The bad publicity D&D raked in from the Egbert incident and similar urban legends that cropped up throughout the decade were a classic example of the old chestnut that there is no such thing as bad publicity. The game was everywhere, and if you were into that sort of thing or had friends who were, you knew about it and may even have played it. It had a Saturday morning cartoon! Action figures! You could buy modules in Toys R Us and KB Toys! That doesn't just /happen/.

Granted, if you still lived with your parents, and in a conservative community, that's another story, but Gary and Dave were in their 30s when they created D&D. Middle- and high-schoolers are only a part of the demographic of the game, and not one with a lot of liquid cash, if you catch my drift.

My experience was much different. I started playing in 1985 at the age of 7. My parents were too protective to let me cross the street at the top of our suburban cul-de-sac without a chaperone, but they let me play D&D and later allowed it to utterly consume my attention. My father railed against my love of video games but never felt D&D was more than a silly board game. It never affected my grades (neither did video games), although I did leave Christianity because of it so I suppose I'm not a great poster child.

The 2000s were fantastic for D&D, no doubt. The game was accessible and modern, and still enjoyed moderately good exposure. But the 2000s were not a time when the game had true /cultural meme status/, and it is unlikely D&D will ever be that popular again. Someone would quite literally have to die (or at least be presumed dead).

 

[Sadras]

It never affected my grades (neither did video games), although I did leave Christianity because of it so I suppose I'm not a great poster child.

The only way I can possibly see this is if you dropped Christianity due to the fact that Christianity equated RPGs with satanism?

 

[DMZ2112]

The only way I can possibly see this is if you dropped Christianity due to the fact that Christianity equated RPGs with satanism?

No, although that attitude certainly didn't help. ...Probably not a conversation for the thread, all things considered.