The big things I wanted to hit on why has the traditional adventure/game seemed to have been replaced? Why the weird weird mixed feelings on Thirdparty/homebrew content? Why is the current online recruiting spots (reddit, Startplaying) so... bad? Why are modern players so bad at the game and the seeming want to remove the G from RPG?
Speaking as an old grog (stared playing in 1982) with 1st edition AD&D, D&D has always been a hybrid of tabletop battlegame and collaborative storytelling, with different groups favouring different ends of the spectrum. Pre-internet, people tended to be unaware of just how different groups could be. In the UK the growing popularity of Warhammer in the 80s took away a lot of the battlegamers, leaving D&D dominated by storytellers. This was supported by the vagueness of early rulesets, and that the idea of "balance" having not really been invented. Early D&D was not a very good ruleset for battlegaming! In it's defence, it was a lot faster paced than the modern game.
Dunno, when I stated playing D&D was just one amongst many RPGs (I played a lot of Traveller, and a Games Workshop superhero RPG called Golden Heroes), and TSR was just one small business amongst many producing content for D&D.
I grew up reading Dragonlance, Dragon riders of Pern and a bunch of fantasy. I grew up watching a bunch of shows like the DnD cartoon, Pirates of Blackwater, Masters of the Universe and more. Playing games like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and a ton of RPG's
D&D has always been reflective of the pop culture of the time. When I started, LotR, Conan, and Moorcock where the D&D touchstones, and the likes of Masters of the Universe was the childish rubbish.
Other people have already mentioned this, but the people I play with are all from my friendship circle, just as they were back in the 80s. In modern parlance, we are all from the same "bubble". We have similar tastes, similar politics etc. I play D&D with my friends, and would never consider playing with random strangers. If I wouldn't choose to socialise with a person I don't want to play D&D with them. For those who try to play with strangers over the internet, I don't have a solution, I don't think there is one. You are going to encounter a lot of jerks.
Yes, but HOW did they "win the edition war" or how did they tell WotC ... you actively miss that part and then ignore the obviously question WHY. All you have done is regurgitate edition war dialogue instead of actually answering the question.
EDIT: To add, if by your estimation 1e and 4e focused on the G element, then 2e and 3e did not or to a lesser degree. Why did that change happen? Try explain the reason for the gradual decrease from G to g as you see it.
I know this is mostly USA centric forum and majority of people here are from USA. But, when it comes to online play, you might get players from all over the world. Pronouns are distinctly USA thing. They/them, as gender neutral, works in english language. It doesn't work in slavic, romance or to some degree in german and some germanic languages. If there is third gender in language, usually is IT, which is used for inanimate objects. Using it for people is dehumanizing and insulting. It's about maping your native language to english and disconnect between those two.
Much the same with Greek.
You also use the plural verbs to reflect respect either due to a person's age or rank/title and sometimes when you want to be welcoming to new persons into a community as an example. The plural is not for everyday use with your role-playing mates.
As was already discussed earlier in the thread, if I think being asked for basic courtesies like using someone's correct name or pronouns is an imposition on my game time, I'm the problem.
It's not. It's outside the fiction. For nearly all cases, there are going to be times when I as DM or another player need to address or refer to a player in a way that's distinct from their character. Even if we're not talking about real life "issues", but just for basic table logistics like passing the dice or a pencil, pulling in your chair, referencing bathroom breaks, snacks or drinks at the table, etc.
A fun dodge, but not always applicable. Especially when the ones the OP was complaining (listing themselves as LGBTQ+ Friendly) about weren't con games or one-shots.
Well, we can safely hazard a guess that great Cthulhu doesn't CARE about pasta. Whether knowledge of it enters into the mysterious and eldritch precincts of his aloof, alien mind is beyond mortal ken.
I'd like to respond to a part of the OP that is, perhaps, somewhat different from what both most others in the thread have responded to, and also different from what I myself initially felt drawn to respond to. I do feel that the more-typical part should be addressed, but since it's not my main point, I'll spoilerblock it. Read if you like, ignore if you like, up to you.
To get a few points outta the way: I'm a gay man who has just found my first proper, actual boyfriend. So, when my future life and existence are considered "modern politics", yes, that already raises my hackles a bit. I had to stay in the closet for the vast majority of my life, because I lived with someone who repeatedly talked about things like putting all the "homonoids" in work-camps. My own home was a potential enormous danger to me if my identity were revealed. Hence, because of the choices of certain political groups at present, I literally cannot have an identity that isn't separable from "modern politics". I wish I could. I would love for people to stop making my identity a "modern politics" issue. They have chosen not to.
But I'm also a Pentecostal Christian. Yes, you can be gay and also be Christian. Yes, it is more complicated than if I were straight. No, I don't see it as a rejection of my Savior's words or commands. No, I don't really feel like talking about it that much more than this paragraph. I'm just noting it because, well, being a Christian means I have in fact seen some hostility from folks on the basis of my faith, rather than my orientation (since the vast majority of people I've interacted with did not know I was gay, as I was, as mentioned, deeply closeted.) I genuinely know both sides of this issue, and I can say: the hostility I would have received for my orientation is orders of magnitude greater than anything I've ever received for my faith. Unquestionably so.
But what I actually wanted to talk about was this:
They're like that because that's what the community told WotC they wanted.
WotC designed a genuinely quite excellent roleplaying game. It's called 4th Edition D&D. It actually took seriously, for the first time in the hobby's history--or at least the first time since MAYBE 1e--that D&D is, in fact, a Game experience as well as a Roleplaying experience. In other words, 4e articulated the notion that to roleplay in D&D should be gaming, and to game should be roleplaying. The two need to actually be inseparable from one another.
Both 3e and 5e separate those things--and quite clearly denigrate the "game" portion. Balance is an irrelevancy in 5th Edition--and that's at the best of times. In most cases, it's viewed as an active scourge, something to be destroyed whenever it appears, as soon as it appears, with maximum prejudice. "Balance" is functionally a four-letter word to the people that WotC listened to when they created 5e. That's because the people they listened to were the victorious hardcore edition warriors who made it their mission to destroy 4th edition. And the vast majority of those were people who wanted 4e to just be a carbon copy of 3e, which is notoriously the worst balanced edition of D&D ever created, to the point that the rules in several places don't even function, meaning, you can't actually make sensible USE out of them in the first place. It's one thing for rules to be merely badly-made. It's another for them to actually not work, which is why various how-to guides out there have to make a special place for the Truenamer class from 3.5e: it's literally so broken it doesn't even work, like, you can't actually play one because the rules fail to function at all, not even poorly!
So, why does it seem like people want to jettison the "Game" of this Rolepaying Game?
Because the people who wanted to do that won the edition war, and WotC exclusively favored them over all other voices.
On a thread that has nothing to do with the version of the game being played you're trying to start edition wars yet again? I almost admire your dedication. Almost.
On a thread that has nothing to do with the version of the game being played you're trying to start edition wars yet again? I almost admire your dedication. Almost.
Mod note:
4e went out of print over a decade ago. The Edition Wars are over. It is past time to get out of the trenches.
There's a point where you (and everybody) must make space to allow folks to like or dislike games, without you assigning them partisan positions in order to dismiss their considerations. This is a site for discussing gaming, and that means critique must be allowed to happen.
Call 'em by their character names if they're otherwise strangers, say at a con game or something, as odds are that's the only context in which we'll ever interact.
Call 'em by their character names if they're otherwise strangers, say at a con game or something, as odds are that's the only context in which we'll ever interact.
