Fralex
Explorer
I'm only four years older than this student of yours, and I pretty much feel the same way as him.
The main difference is that the first version of "D&D" I played was just me and my cousins making up silly stories and pretending it was D&D. We gave our characters stats, mostly basing them off video games we'd played, but when we actually started playing we promptly forgot about them and just explored the castle I had drawn. I don't think we even used HP, even when they fought dragons. It was a lot of fun!
Eventually I began getting interested in actual D&D. I gradually formed a picture of what it was really like, and finally decided to buy the books. Problem was, everything I'd heard about the came was from people describing 3.5e, and I had unknowingly bought the books for 4e, which I didn't even know existed. I was pretty confused when I started playing; it was so different from what I'd been lead to believe. It was kinda fun, but once I realized my mistake I felt like I needed to keep playing to justify buying the books when I could've just played the game I really wanted for free. I truly tried to make it work, and like I said I got some enjoyment out of it, but the more I read about the previous edition and all the things it could do, the harder it was to be happy with it.
Then a friend of mine wanted to start a 3.5e game with me, and I leapt at the opportunity. And when we played, it was everything I'd wanted in a game. It felt like I was playing with my cousins again, but more structured and even more funny. I was older, so my capacity for stupid ideas was much greater, and literally every session had me collapse into fits of laughter at some point. We never managed to finish the game, but it was nice to see what I'd been missing.
I tried playing 4e some more after that, but I couldn't really get excited about it anymore. So when I learned a 5th edition was coming out, and that it was going to be more like 3rd, I immediately signed up as a playtester and tried it on my college friends. I liked it even more than 3.5e! It was like they took all the fun stuff from that edition and left out all the needlessly hard-to-remember rules. For me, the "rulings not rules" thing wasn't new, but I had never played an official D&D that had it, so it was great to see another thing from my freeform games as a kid return. Coming from a perspective like mine, this edition is the best of all.
The main difference is that the first version of "D&D" I played was just me and my cousins making up silly stories and pretending it was D&D. We gave our characters stats, mostly basing them off video games we'd played, but when we actually started playing we promptly forgot about them and just explored the castle I had drawn. I don't think we even used HP, even when they fought dragons. It was a lot of fun!
Eventually I began getting interested in actual D&D. I gradually formed a picture of what it was really like, and finally decided to buy the books. Problem was, everything I'd heard about the came was from people describing 3.5e, and I had unknowingly bought the books for 4e, which I didn't even know existed. I was pretty confused when I started playing; it was so different from what I'd been lead to believe. It was kinda fun, but once I realized my mistake I felt like I needed to keep playing to justify buying the books when I could've just played the game I really wanted for free. I truly tried to make it work, and like I said I got some enjoyment out of it, but the more I read about the previous edition and all the things it could do, the harder it was to be happy with it.
Then a friend of mine wanted to start a 3.5e game with me, and I leapt at the opportunity. And when we played, it was everything I'd wanted in a game. It felt like I was playing with my cousins again, but more structured and even more funny. I was older, so my capacity for stupid ideas was much greater, and literally every session had me collapse into fits of laughter at some point. We never managed to finish the game, but it was nice to see what I'd been missing.
I tried playing 4e some more after that, but I couldn't really get excited about it anymore. So when I learned a 5th edition was coming out, and that it was going to be more like 3rd, I immediately signed up as a playtester and tried it on my college friends. I liked it even more than 3.5e! It was like they took all the fun stuff from that edition and left out all the needlessly hard-to-remember rules. For me, the "rulings not rules" thing wasn't new, but I had never played an official D&D that had it, so it was great to see another thing from my freeform games as a kid return. Coming from a perspective like mine, this edition is the best of all.