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<blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 9376774" data-attributes="member: 3586">Quick question: Have you read The Elusive Shift by Jon Peterson?Quoting its opening paragraph:&quot;Dungeons &amp; Dragons famously resulted from the intersection of two cultures: a gaming culture of conflict simulation and a literary culture engaged with speculative and fantastic fiction. Or as Gary Gygax put it in 1976, &quot;It arose from a combination of warfare with miniature figures and the desire to create heroic epics of the strange and supernatural&quot; (SFF 87). To understand the first audience for D&amp;D, it is therefore necessary to understand the two preexisting cultures of wargaming and science-fiction fandom, where the latter is understood to encompass fans of fantasy fiction. Science-fiction fandom got organized decades before the first games fans banded together, and the wargaming community would copy the pioneering structures that enabled science-fiction fans to forge their own identity: national and regional clubs, which hosted both local and large-scale conventions and published amateur magazines, or fanzines, for disseminating ideas throughout their membership.&quot;I think there's a large part of &quot;New School&quot; play that is apparent in the original twofold nature of D&amp;D's audience, and while there have been more mechanical and procedural innovations since the early days, there's always been a tension there.Consider a core matter of the early game: Do you get XP from treasure acquired? According to Gygax and the official rulebooks, the answer was &quot;yes!&quot;, but there was a very strong strand of groups that said &quot;no!&quot;, and in 2E they gained ascendancy and so XP for treasure gained is relegated to an optional rule.I do recommend The Elusive Shift, as well as any other of Jon Peterson's books.Cheers,Merric</blockquote>

[QUOTE="MerricB, post: 9376774, member: 3586"] Quick question: Have you read [I]The Elusive Shift[/I] by Jon Peterson? Quoting its opening paragraph: "Dungeons & Dragons famously resulted from the intersection of two cultures: a gaming culture of conflict simulation and a literary culture engaged with speculative and fantastic fiction. Or as Gary Gygax put it in 1976, "It arose from a combination of warfare with miniature figures and the desire to create heroic epics of the strange and supernatural" (SFF 87). To understand the first audience for D&D, it is therefore necessary to understand the two preexisting cultures of wargaming and science-fiction fandom, where the latter is understood to encompass fans of fantasy fiction. Science-fiction fandom got organized decades before the first games fans banded together, and the wargaming community would copy the pioneering structures that enabled science-fiction fans to forge their own identity: national and regional clubs, which hosted both local and large-scale conventions and published amateur magazines, or fanzines, for disseminating ideas throughout their membership." I think there's a large part of "New School" play that is apparent in the original twofold nature of D&D's audience, and while there have been more [I]mechanical and procedural[/I] innovations since the early days, there's always been a tension there. Consider a core matter of the early game: Do you get XP from treasure acquired? According to Gygax and the official rulebooks, the answer was "yes!", but there was a very strong strand of groups that said "no!", and in 2E they gained ascendancy and so XP for treasure gained is relegated to an optional rule. I do recommend [I]The Elusive Shift, [/I]as well as any other of Jon Peterson's books. Cheers, Merric [/QUOTE]

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