D&D General How am I a D&D outlier? How are you one?

[Malmuria]

One thing that possibly makes me an outsider is that...I don't particularly use the lore? I mean, I see the lore (for monsters or whatever) as possibly interesting for ideas, but I never use it wholesale. Rereading the (5e) Genie and Rakshasa entries recently, I thought that if I were using these as a DM I would chuck about 3/4 of the lore. Similarly, I can't read an adventure module without wanting to change things starting paragraph 1 (usually the horrendously cheesy names).

 

[Smackpixi]

I’m mid 40s, and had never played or DMed D&D prior to a year ago. Feels pretty outlierish.

 

[Oofta]

Bards are my favorite class.

The first step in therapy is admitting you have a problem. I'm proud of you.

 

[payn]

The first step in therapy is admitting you have a problem. I'm proud of you.

This is a Bard's therapist.

 

[Professor Murder]

I've been playing since 1st ed, have abandoned each edition when its been replaced with a new one, and unequivocally feel 5th is the best incarnation of the game.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

1. So is half of one of my groups...not an outlier (these days in some areas at least)...unless my group is all an outlier

4. Okay...now you are ostracized. Definitely an outlier.

9. That MAY be an outlier in today's gaming
10. Seems to vary from group to group...so maybe?
11. Seen #1 above...BUT...reading another of your posts...it seems maybe it is far less common than I thought?



That actually goes with my experience as well now that I think about it. Starting in the 90s a majority of my groups became recruited by me, so that meant that those I hung out with usually were the ones who became players. That could mean that the composition of those I play with differ greatly than those who generally play the game otherwise. I don't go to CONS and other things, so my exposure to large groups of people could be different.

At least one of my groups is composed of players that are 86% POC with only one white guy who plays with us (7 players one DM). It never occurred to me that this may actually not be typical.

I've had Japanese, Chinese, and Korean players in my groups occasionally, never a Southeastern Asian yet. I've had a few players from Central and South America.

Never thought of most of the things mentioned in the thread as outliers overall...but now that you mention it and discussed it, it may be that I and the group (I have several gaming groups, this particular group I've been gaming with for around 5-6 years?) actually might qualify as an outlier (meaning my statement on #1 above is actually wrong, it is an outlier).

Strange, I never really thought of the group as the odd ones out or on the fringes of gaming. They are the MOST D&D oriented group I play in as well. The farthest we've gone from D&D is mixing some stuff from various editions together and maybe some C&C stuff, but that's the most we vary from D&D itself. I don't think any of us ever saw ourselves as being different from the rest of the gaming community...but now that it's mentioned...maybe we are?

Weird thing to think about all of a sudden.

It’s that old distinction between anecdotes & data.

Before one of my friends invited his GF to join us in the mid-80’s, I hadn’t even seen a female human being in a game store besides Moms buying stuff for their kids.

I met my first female game store employee in the 1990s...most of them in a single location of a local game store chain.

When I started looking online at gaming boards likr this one, I encountered dozens of players wit experiences similar to yours. Even met a few female GMs. But the more I looked, the more I realized how atypical the latter situation was.

Hell- I didn’t meet my first uncloseted gay player until the 21st century, when a small gaming group asked me to be their DM. (I had known 2 of the players for years, but never gamed with them.) Sadly, I haven’t met any since then- not in person, anyway.

So I really appreciate the changing demographics of the hobby!

 

[Yora]

I think D&D was the best in the early 80s, even though I only started in 2000, and first looked at B/X in 2015.
It's not nostalgia, I think the whole system is a genuinely better game than what D&D became after that.

 

[Lanefan]

As a player?

1. 
   
2. I've played all sorts of races and alignments (other than evil).

This one got me thinking. At some point or other as a player I've played every class in our game except Monk, I've played every PC-playable species in our game plus a few (Dryad, Sylph) that aren't normally PC-playable, and I've played all nine alignments.

Of the nine alignments the only one I won't play if at all possible is LG, because LG in my eyes is the abbreviation for "boring". LN can be a blast if taken over the top a bit, and NG can certainly be fun in the right situation, but combining them into an LG character makes for a dull time for me* if I'm the one stuck playing it.

* - unless I go full-on Paladinic and take it way over the top, but that tends to (quite justifiably!) be very short-lived in play as the other PCs will usually throw it out of the party at the first opportunity.

 

[Lanefan]

I think I'm the only person ever to break out into song during a session...

I've (co-)written a song during a session, about events happening in the session as they happened!

Even scarier, we recorded it the following week.

 

[Older Beholder]

This is a new one but since having to go online, both the groups I play in don't use online dice.
We all just roll our own physical dice and say the result based on the honor system. It requires a bit of trust, but we've never had an issue. Every single player has had a bad day where they were rolling terribly, or missed a save they really needed to make at some point.