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Also because the Boomers are literally still there occupying those roles.

It is ALSO true that if generations are arbitrary and vaguely defined, as opposed to being plotted against some kind of specific marker, that they're pretty useless as labels. And it is ALSO true that Gen Y existed long before the Millennial label existed, and was used extensively to describe...

Well, that's a bit different. We now know from multiple insider reports that 3.5 was a corporate mandate from Hasbro after the acquisition to pump sales and that nobody on the design team thought it was the right thing to do from a design standpoint. At best, they thought that if they were going...

Gen Y was the obvious name to call a generation that followed Gen X. Your description of Millennial sounds like something a Boomer would say, but what "Old Ways"? The "Old Ways" that the Boomers created after they themselves broke from the Old Ways? I often think that Boomers and Millennials...

Could be, given that I always tended to operate and prefer the genre that lower level provided to that which higher level provided.

I wonder. I'm sometimes mesmerized by hearing tales of people who sat in games with prominent designers at conventions at how little they followed the rules that they themselves wrote. I've heard similar stories about Tracy Hickman, Marc Miller, and many more. I also remember, from back in the...

Raises hand; I was a big proponent of E6 right up until I called it quits and looked for another system altogether (my good opinion, D&D, once lost is lost forever. For those who get the literary reference.) But there is a difference. In almost every edition of D&D up until 4e, power level was...

While I mostly agree with you, let me address each of these paragraphs in turn. 1) My Gen Z kids also complain that music isn't as good anymore. My 19 year old got really in to 80s Motley Crue, The Cult and Metallica. And he didn't really hear them from me; I'm much more of a synthesizer New...

No, that's actually not true at all. Gen Y was a completely separate generation that NOW makes up the first half of Millennials, while the second half of the Millennial generation is what was called Millennials back when product marketing people still cared about Gen Y.

I think that for a long time now there have been a lot of products that were written to sell, not necessarily written to be played. If it so happens that they're being marketed to armchair gamers who just want to read gaming books and imagine what they could do with them, rather than... y'know...

That seems related to my earlier comments about generational pop cultural zeitgeists. Maybe it shouldn't be surprising that PCs are like this in the same age that we have superhero movies dominating the box office. 5e is like the fantasy Avengers. I prefer games that are something more like...

While this only tangentially addressing your specific question, I think it's worth pointing out that there is really a vast gulf between the presumed playstyle of AD&D and OD&D, with B/X being more a continuation of the OD&D playstyle, and AD&D being the precursor to what would eventually become...

That's what the redefinition of Gen Y is, yeah—"older Millennials". But when I was getting my MBA in the very late 90s, Gen Y was defined by marketing people as its own generation. I've never been clear why someone decided to change that and Gen Y was folded into Gen X or Millennials, depending...

Probably a few, but I think it's still mostly Xers and Yers. Complete tangent, although maybe not completely and totally so: why have "the powers that be" decided that generation Y needs to be forgotten and folded into either X or the Millennials? Their pop culture and generational experience...

Thats a very interesting blog post. It does wonders for explaining my frustration with people who pejoratively use "story games" to refer to what are really "trad games" because it gives story games a real category that is not just "any game where elements of a story are integrated in any...

I guess I'm struggling with what you mean by the severance from mechanics and game play. Read literally, that should mean that the Hickman Revolution only has relevance in an AD&D paradigm. Quite simply, the mechanics have very little impact on play style, and people with playstyle preferences...

Its not necessarily generational. I'm 50 and I've been playing since 1979 or 1980, and I've always hated "technical dungeoneering."

That may have all been snake oil all along. It sounds to me like what 5e really intended to do was redesign 3e to be easier and simpler to run than 3e and its spin-off Pathfinder had become, because WotC recognized its enduring popularity in the 4e era. They also made some noise towards OSR...

The question is; is this a style that's widely recognized and widely used, and was it ever ascendant in any edition of D&D? I can't think of very many products that describe play this way, or any DM advice sections that describe play this way, etc. other than Perkins' DM Experience column during...

Worked in what sense, and what problem was he trying to solve? The problem of the OSR allegedly being full of DMs who can't find enough players for everyone who wants to run to be able to, or the problem of the 5e crowd allegedly being full of players who can't find enough DMs for everyone who...