D&D General Why grognards still matter

[Micah Sweet]

You could also, however, ask how many long time gamers drifted out of the D&D sphere to other games. D&D is the common entry point into the hobby (and with old enough gamers like myself was literally the only game in town when they started) but that doesn't mean they're fastened into it by glue, and if anything I think sometimes there was more potential exposure to other games in the early days when D&D's dominance was huge but not as overwhelming.

I know I played a bunch of other games in the '80s and '90s. Cyberpunk, Deadlands, Shadowrun, Palladium, Traveller, Marvel Super Heroes (FASERIP), Legend of the Five Rings, 7th Sea...the list goes on.

 

[Maxperson]

For 2024 version, all 3 books were 45 euros a piece in local game shop, with free delivery for orders above 80 euros. So it was 135 e for full set of 2024 rules, divided by 6 of us, that's bit over 20 euros per person. And we are good for some time. 2014 were also in similar range, about 40-45 euros from amazon.de with free shipping, there were some actions and discounts, so all total, we spent around 350-370 euros . 60 e per person in 10 years. For comparison, one round of drinks for 6 of us in our favorite bar is 30 euros ( and everyone buys a round).

In my group, all 5 of us bought all 3 5e core books. All of us bought Xanathar's and Tasha's. I bought pretty much everything through Fizban's that wasn't an adventure, plus Dungeon of the Mad Mage and the anthology adventures. One of my players bought a bunch of the campaign adventures. And three of them probably bought another book or so that I am not remembering.

For 5.5e only one player has purchased the core three books. Nobody else is really interested in it, and the one guy that bought them, did so without knowing about the controversial changes that have happened. When I pointed those out, he started looking like he regretted his choice.

For myself, I'm getting a free 5.5e DMG, and the only reason I'm getting it is for the bastions and Greyhawk. I don't care about anything else in the book.

 

[Parmandur]

And I suspect most of that money is not going to WotC. It is hard to spend a lot of money on D&D through buying a few books a year. I manage to do it by basically turning it Warhammer, requiring a small fortune in miniatures and terrain, but WotC sees almost nothing from that. So the underlying premise of the OP is problematic - even assuming that we "grognards" spend more per person than "kids these days" do on D&D...it's not a going to be a huge difference from WotC's perspective, when put up against the much larger size of their cohort.

We play pretty ToyM, so most of my outlay is for books, though not all 5E so WotC doesn't see all the spend.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I know I played a bunch of other games in the '80s and '90s. Cyberpunk, Deadlands, Shadowrun, Palladium, Traveller, Marvel Super Heroes (FASERIP), Legend of the Five Rings, 7th Sea...the list goes on.

Yeah, I have no way to determine if modern gamers get less exposure to other games than was common back then or not, but I sometimes get the impression so. It might turn on how many people who got into RPGs back in the day did most of their purchasing in hobby shops (where usually other RPGs would be fairly visible) as compared to the days of D&D in the toy or book sections of other kinds of stores (whether finding other games, other than maybe some licensed ones, appears to have been less common)>

 

[popuman]

I might be a master grognard according to OP, but do not have the grognard attitude.
young blood and open minds are needed for anything to move forward.
otherwise, it will get stale and boring. some of you might find comfort in that. i don't.
you do what brings you joy. have a great day!

 

[Emerikol]

You could also, however, ask how many long time gamers drifted out of the D&D sphere to other games. D&D is the common entry point into the hobby (and with old enough gamers like myself was literally the only game in town when they started) but that doesn't mean they're fastened into it by glue, and if anything I think sometimes there was more potential exposure to other games in the early days when D&D's dominance was huge but not as overwhelming.

Yes, I would agree that old timers have tried more games. We are a market for D&D though and if D&D is our primary game then we will spend a lot on it.

And I suspect most of that money is not going to WotC. It is hard to spend a lot of money on D&D through buying a few books a year. I manage to do it by basically turning it Warhammer, requiring a small fortune in miniatures and terrain, but WotC sees almost nothing from that. So the underlying premise of the OP is problematic - even assuming that we "grognards" spend more per person than "kids these days" do on D&D...it's not a going to be a huge difference from WotC's perspective, when put up against the much larger size of their cohort.

This is the reality. While we dominate if in the race few of us are in the race. We are a small cohort even if we bat way out of proportion to our size, it still is small.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yeah that's a strawman.

No it isn't. All three components of that statement are factual. I suppose you could say that claiming the first Iron Man Movie was good could be considered merely an opinion (backed up by audience reviews to show that it was the prevailing opinion) but it certainly isn't a strawman.

So by that metric Ramey should have not done Spidey as there were was a Spidey movie prior.
We are in the era of remakes, alternate timelines, reboots. And it is not just in Marvel...we are constantly remaking/rebooting old movies.

Do you really want to compare the latest slew of Marvel movie failures to Mike Morales alone and use that as your metric?

None of this really addresses the point? I am completely unaware of any spider-man movie before the Ramey films. Looking it up, there were some films back in the 80's, which I have literally never heard anyone talk about before.

But, let's look at the actual point I was making. The Raimi films were good. Brought Spider-Man to the big screen. Then they made the Amazing Spider-Man movies as a reboot which... didn't do as good. Then they told Spider-Man's story as part of the MCU, which did quite a bit better. Neither of those two can touch how impactful Spiderverse has been though.

So what makes MCU Spider-Man and Spiderverse different from Amazing Spider-Man? You can just say "better writing" and dismiss it as unimportant, but the MCU Spider-Man was not telling the origin story of Spider-Man. It wasn't just Peter Parker dealing with criminals in New York. It was Peter Parker dealing with the fallout of Civil War, informed by the Invasion from Avengers, and navigating a relationship with Tony Stark. It was a Spider-Man most people had never seen before. And Spider-Verse? Also dealing with a version of Spider-Man most people have not seen before.

Why do you feel the need to say that we are in an era of "remakes, alternate timelines, reboots." Because people keep tilling the same ground over and over again. Why? Because to make a multi-million dollar movie that is supposed to make back hundreds of millions of dollars for the studio... they don't take risks. This isn't a lack of creativity on the part of the creatives, it is market pressures strangling new ideas in the crib. And when those new ideas do make it to the big screen? A lot of them are very well received. Because just making "what the fans want" doesn't work. No fan of Star Wars wanted Star Wars until Star Wars was made.

Change is fine. I'm not advocating for no innovativeness. You have me mistaken with someone else.

EDIT: As an example, Marvel characters died. That certainly would usher a change.

I didn't realize the video I posted talking about mostly Star Trek fans called you out directly by name. You might want to complain to the creator about that.

The pattern is that hardcore fans largely don't advocate for the changes that are actually good. They advocate for extending the status quo. Because they are fans of the status quo.

 

[popuman]

The pattern is that hardcore fans largely don't advocate for the changes that are actually good. They advocate for extending the status quo. Because they are fans of the status quo.

This.

 

[Parmandur]

I am completely unaware of any spider-man movie before the Ramey films. Looking it up, there were some films back in the 80's, which I have literally never heard anyone talk about before.

I can only see the reasonable side of this conversation, but as an aside I am a huge fan of how the Toho live action kaiju Spiderman TV show, where Spiderman has a sentient alien Leopard mecha companion named Leopardon, directly inspired Super Sentai and thus ultimately Power Rangers.

 

[Hex08]

You could also, however, ask how many long time gamers drifted out of the D&D sphere to other games. D&D is the common entry point into the hobby (and with old enough gamers like myself was literally the only game in town when they started) but that doesn't mean they're fastened into it by glue, and if anything I think sometimes there was more potential exposure to other games in the early days when D&D's dominance was huge but not as overwhelming.

I started playing D&D in 1980 or 1981 I think. At the time TSR was putting out other RPGs like Star Frontiers, Boot Hill, Top Secret and I think others and I played them all in addition to games like Champions and Villains & Vigilantes and others. I drifted away from playing a few times and when I would start playing again there were a plethora of other games I played as well. but finally gave up on D&D when 4E launched and have never looked back. You could argue that my move to Pathfinder as my primary game was still D&D but ever since Pathfinder 2E came out I have moved onto games that are not D&D clones (other than the rare short Castles & Crusades game). I certainly have D&D to thank for my intro to the hobby but there are lots of games out there that appeal to me more and there are enough that I doubt I will ever run a D&D game again. I might play D&D as a player if invited to a group I like but that would be more because of the people than D&D.