D&D is an Adult Game?

[Clavis]

Content =/= marketing. That's totally my bad too because I brought up content in the initial post. The content inside the game is not what I meant. And I totally did not mean that D&D was immature or anything like that as a pastime. Again, I can see how people could get that from my first post, and, again, totally my bad.

I agree that there seems to have been a total disconnect between the way AD&D was written/presented, and the way it was marketed. Gygax and co. seemed to assume an adult audience when writing and illustrating the game, but wisely realized that any game is also going to appeal to a teen audience. Gygax cited Vance, Howard and Lieber as among his primary influences on AD&D, and played down the influence of the more kid-friendly Tolkien. Vance's Dying Earth is filled with selfish and opportunistic characters and lots of implied and threatened rape. "Red Nails", often cited as one of the best Conan stories, features a fair amount of lesbian B&D, and the character of Conan is best described as "amoral".

I will admit that Basic D&D, however, was always intended for a younger audience. Witness the problems with the original art for Palace of the Silver Princess. Then again, Molday's suggested reading for the basic D&D rules clearly included separate lists for children and adults (and some of the books on the adult list are very much for adults).

 

[Aeolius]

So, exactly when was D&D marketed to the 20+ crowd? When has D&D ever been an adult game?

My knee-jerk reaction would be "ever since the 10+ year olds grew up?". I started playing when I was in my mid-teens, and that was 30 years ago.

If my mother had seen the 1e AD&D Monster Manual succubus, she would have taken the book away from me an burned it!

Granted, Disney's "Fantasia" had harpies with nipples, and it was given a "G" rating.

I do think that the "gloss" (for lack of a better term) is aimed at a younger audience (i.e., uses more recent influences than the original), but 4e is not a rules-light game.

That was part of my reason for skipping the 2e core rules, as I felt the game had been written for and marketed for a younger audience (I was finishing college when 2e came out). To me, 4e has far more of a 2e feel to it.

I'd say the opposite is true now; D&D is primarily played by adults who refuse to completely mature.

okay, okay.... guilty

Today I see D&D mainly appealing to an older audience, mainly because the younger audience is glued to their collective PS3/X-Box/Wii.

Enter the age of the internet and online gaming. If I include mature themes in my game and a child is a player, I might be opening myself up to potential legal hurdles. I might be tempted to consult the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) and label my games as “M”, simply because of the violence (combat), use of drugs/alcohol (taverns), sexual content (all those half-templates), strong language (even if it is in orcish), nudity (mermaids, etc), crude/mature humor, gambling, etc etc.

With the ESRB in mind, yes, D&D can easily be an adult (17+) game. Granted, I could also use D&D to run a smurf-laden “E” game, but I wouldn’t want 6-year olds wading through D&D books in the attempt to dummy-down combat and so forth.

 

[Raven Crowking]

the character of Conan is best described as "amoral".

Disagree. Conan is generally chivilrous towards women, loyal toward friends and followers, capable of deep empathy with alien beings, a champion of freedom of religion, a champion of free speech, concerned with education (we first see him updating Aquilonia's maps), and rightly concerned with being a good and just ruler. He is all of those things even if they are unpopular, even if they cost him loot, even at the risk of his own life.

Don't judge Conan by the pastiches!


RC

 

[jaerdaph]

If my mother had seen the 1e AD&D Monster Manual succubus, she would have taken the book away from me an burned it!

Granted, Disney's "Fantasia" had harpies with nipples, and it was given a "G" rating.

Clearly, you haven't met my mother...



The opinions of film review boards, advertising, the media, popes and pundits all meant nothing. I wasn't allowed to see certain G and PG movies back in the 70s if she declared it non imprimatur.

 

[Mark]

In the early Eighties I called in and won a D&D hardcover from WKRS (out of Waukegan, Illinois) that required winners to be eighteen years of age or older (Illinois state contest rules/law, in all likelihood).

 

[pawsplay]

D&D was marketed to adults simply by being advertised in gaming magazines. Teenagers do not buy a lot of magazines. Even teen-oriented things, like RPGs or video games, in magazines are likely to skew toward older individuals with steady salaries and a well-developed interest that grew over time. D&D orginally grew out of wargames, so the original advertising definitely appeared in publications aimed at adults.

During the 80s, D&D became a fad, and like most fads, filtered down rapidly to young teenagers. Thus, it made sense to market it to a younger crowd, the thinking being that if you can hook them young, you have a customer for life.

But things like 25 Years of Dungeons & Dragons, or the preview books, those are for adult fans, not teenagers.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

I'd say the opposite is true now; D&D is primarily played by adults who refuse to completely mature.

That's certainly true for me. My last two girlfriends have asked me when I'd be giving up comics and RPGs, and all I can do is stare at them blankly. Why would I ever be giving up comics and RPGs?

 

[Clavis]

Disagree. Conan is generally chivilrous towards women, loyal toward friends and followers, capable of deep empathy with alien beings, a champion of freedom of religion, a champion of free speech, concerned with education (we first see him updating Aquilonia's maps), and rightly concerned with being a good and just ruler. He is all of those things even if they are unpopular, even if they cost him loot, even at the risk of his own life.

Don't judge Conan by the pastiches!


RC

He's also a thief, and a pirate who slaughtered joyously and indiscriminately for his lover Belit in "Queen of the Black Coast". I'm actually a Howard purist when it comes to Conan. Conan definitely has a personal code of honor, but he doesn't seem to share the morality of civilized men. Of course, Howard's point with the Conan stories was that civilization was unnatural and perpetually doomed to be destroyed by the barbarians.

 

[Desdichado]

For me it was RPGs and video games more than comic books. But it literally took years for my wife to "get" that I had absolutely no plans on ever giving them up.

She still occasionally makes comments like, "Do you really see yourself sitting in a retirement home in your 80s playing D&D with all the other old geezers and firing up Street Fighter?"

To which I reply, "When in the world have I ever looked that far ahead?"

 

[billd91]

She still occasionally makes comments like, "Do you really see yourself sitting in a retirement home in your 80s playing D&D with all the other old geezers and firing up Street Fighter?"

We actually do joke about this. And with more than just a little bit of hope that, when retirement comes, we'll finally have a little more time on our hands to play. So I guess my answer would be "Yes".