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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Galloglaich" data-source="post: 4748495" data-attributes="member: 77019">Look, Mallus, I'm sorry if my post rubbed you the wrong way, please give me the benefit of the doubt on the whole email subtext thing, I'll do the same. I probably worded my post less diplomatically than I could have with a little more time, I'm not trying to be a jerk, just honestly express some ideas and observations. YMMV.  I think DnD gotten much less mainstream over the years. I'm around the same age you are and my observation is that it was a lot more mainstream when I was a kid.  The question we have to ask is, why has DnD continued to get such a hostile reception in our culture while many of the elements of DnD have achieved wide mainstream acceptance in other vehicles such as World of Warcraft of Peter Jacksons Lord of the Rings films, and the basic concepts like fantasy role playing, clearly still have an appeal? What is it about DnD / tabletop FRPGs that engenders all the popular derision?  I have read the Story Hour section somewhat, often found it quite inspiring, I know there are many creative people who can do a lot with any version of DnD and really make an art form out of it, that is not my point, I'm talking about what the system increasingly slants things toward.  Most of what you are talking about here, the adventures in particular, were add-ons, not part of the Basic rules. Most people I knew in the early days of the game used the box or Basic Set and never saw a module other than maybe B1 or B2. These other modules you mention are fine and / or fun and appealing to a certain audience, but not something everyone had to buy-into just to play the game (like the idea of a Teifling or a Dragonborn). It was also much easier in the earlier days to pick and choose things you wanted or didn't want from the core rules too, like say removing Gelatenous cubes if you thought they were stupid. Making major changes to 3.5 or 4E, IMO, is much trickier and I say that as a published game designer and industry writer.  Sure you can have both, but forcing a certain mixture of both aspects that you find appealing may not resonate with a wider audience. And I personally don't think there does have to be something adolescent in fantasy adventure, for example I don't actually find Lovecraft or Robert E Howards original conan books to be particularly adolescent, at least not in the same way as say more modern incarnations such as Beastmaster or the second or third Conan Movies. They were a yarn, but had broader mass appeal that you didn't have to be an adolescent boy (of whatever age) to get into.  The same is true for sci fi and fantasy films, IMO. The 'grown up' ones, that didn't carry tons of baggage of compromised cliches that are acceptable to just that one demographic, had broad appeal and did very well, even though they were often technically detailed and not at all homoginzied. Matrix, LOTR, Blade Runner, Alien, Mad Max, these were films almost anybody could and usually did like. And were widely successful as a result. Compare those to say, Dungeons and Dragons the movie or the average Star Trek film...  Another analogy I often use is cartoons. To me, Buggs Bunny is appealing to people of all ages and both sexes. The best ones are like that. Whereas a cartoon like say He-Man / Masters of the Univese is really for a much more narrow range of boys from mental age of 8-12 or something like that. I think DnD is designed in a manner much more aimed at the latter kind of niche than the former unfortunately. (Not that I'm saying it forces you to play that way if you are a creative and experienced gamer.)  True, good point...   I'm sorry if I overreached with some of my examples, this is just how it appears to me. I'm not trying to be offensive, and I don't know anything about you, you seem articulate and fairly reasonable. I don't mean to have offended you.  I don't think you should ignore your core audience at all, I think your core audience and your entry level audience are different audiences. Thats why I advocate a modular game. I also don't think there should be any shame frankly in Geeking out all you like, I certainly geek out into all kinds of things, what I'm saying is that I think the core entry level of the game should not carry all that particular geek baggage, it should be as accessible as possible to a wide audience, not by dumbing it down or making it overly simplistic or bland, but by taking it out of this particular rut and making it grown up in it's assumptions enough that kids will respect it as much as adults do. Like Buggs Bunny <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> G.</blockquote>

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